Chapter 4

Bending over the manuscript on the lab counter, I tried to concentrate and yet again, I couldn’t. For the last week, I tried to hide in work. I tried to avoid Rory without being obvious. She busied herself going out with her girlfriends or having them over, the house full of laughter and brightness and music. Occasionally, when on her own, she’d knock on the office door mid-afternoon and finagle me into taking a swim with her when the sun was at its most intense. I did. I behaved. And we had fun.

But...

Yesterday after the swim, I dropped into the patio chair to sun dry, feeling relaxed from an hour in the water, and Rory asked, “Would you like a drink?”

I nodded. “That would be great.”

“Beer?” she asked with a grin.

She knew I rarely drank alcohol. I was an easy drunk. A few drinks and I’d be feeling it, my morals and tongue loosening.

“Bottled water, please,” I answered.

“You’re no fun,” she accused lightly. Two minutes later, she handed me an icy cold spring water bottle. “Here ya go.”

Rory sat at the patio table, turned her face up to the sun, popped open her Coke and sipped, sighing with pleasure. She brought her knees up, heels on the chair seat, and announced, “I love summer. We should go out on the boat this weekend.”

“Okay.”

Turning in the chair, gold dust sparkling in her eyes, she smiled. “I’d like to snorkel and have a picnic on the boat.”

She casually hooked one leg over the arm of the chair and continued, “We could make a day of it and...”

I lost track of what she was saying. Inexcusably, I looked down. With her leg up, her bikini bottom was stretched over her pussy making it look full and bursting against the bikini; so very female. But, when I saw where a couple of short, glossy, jet black pubic hairs had escaped the leg elastic, I stopped breathing.

It shouldn’t have shocked me the way it did. I knew Rory was going through puberty. Intellectually, I knew she must have pubic hair. But, actually seeing it hit me hard. Every man has his sexual kinks - parts of the female anatomy that arouse more than others - and mine was pubic hair. I loved pubes on a female more than shaved pussies. And, before I wrenched my eyes away from Rory’s crotch, my mind’s eye tried to complete the picture of what her bikini hid from view.

Guilt rushed into me as fast as arousal, blood flowing south.

“So you agree?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” I responded, turning my face away. Was the sun hotter?

That sight had stayed with me for the rest of the day. I couldn’t look Rory in the face, ashamed of my reaction.

Yesterday, I had changed.

Shaking myself mentally, I went back to studying the manuscript on the desk. Was it authentic?

Several hours later, Rory knocked on the office door. “It’s six o’clock! Time to quit!”

“Be out in a minute,” I yelled.

After carefully packing the manuscript away in the safe, I left the office and strolled into the kitchen. Rory was at the counter peeling carrots. Barefoot, in tight light grey shorts with a pink waistband and a matching tank top, she seemed so slender. Her tight shorts did an admiral job of outlining her rather attractive small buttocks and a fine job of molding to her butt crack. Her tanned bare legs were long.

Her exposed shoulders and arms were golden bronze and her skin glowed, silky smooth. Dark, dark hair was layered to her shoulder blades, free and slightly wild - like her.

“What’s for dinner?” I asked, opening the fridge for a bottle of water.

She glanced back at me. “Carrots and whatever you’re cooking to go with them.”

I laughed. She smiled, her eyes twinkling.

Still at the fridge, I opened the freezer and took out a couple of pizzas.

Rory’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding, right? Pizza and carrots?”

“What do you suggest?” I asked, feigning innocence.

“Real food. Anything but frozen pizza.”

Hunting through the overfilled fridge, I excavated two thick pork chops and set about cooking.

Through the kitchen window, light was fading. Rain fell in a steady drizzle yet the temperature was still hot, air suffocating. With pork on the cast iron grill, I opened slatted kitchen windows and turned on the ceiling fan hoping for air circulation.

When we sat down to eat, Rory tilted her head and studied me. Eventually, I asked, “What is it?”

“Where’s the wine?”

“What wine?”

“You said we could have wine with dinner tonight.”

I couldn’t remember agreeing to that. While I never denied her alcohol in the theory that denying her at home would make her want to consume it away from home, wine was rarely served. Usually it would be a beer.

“When did I agree to that?”

“Yesterday, when we were sitting on the patio. I asked if we could have wine with dinner Friday night. It’s Friday night.”

“You sure?” I asked.

Rory’s eyes did their feline thing. She smiled, exposing her canines. “Which?” she asked. “That it’s Friday night or that you agreed we’d have wine?”

I chuckled and shook my head. “Never mind.”

A couple of minutes later, I served ice cold Petit Chablis into glasses and sat. She nodded with satisfaction, sipped the dry wine, and sighed with pleasure. I sipped mine and silently agreed. It was light and fruity, perfectly chilled, and dangerously delicious.

Dinner passed with Rory bringing me up to date on gossip and some fashion finds she’d made during the week. Over in the family side of the room where we watched TV, her cell phone chirped. She ignored it.

Rory was an odd girl. From what I’d seen of her friends, they were addicted to their Smartphones, hooked on social media, and had trouble carrying on a conversation without checking the status of their friends on Facebook, Instagram, or instant messaging every few minutes. Rory didn’t seem to care about it. She was a voracious user of social media when the cell was at hand but would drop her phone somewhere, forget about it, and not worry. Like now. When her cell chirped announcing a new message, she didn’t react. She wasn’t addicted. And for that I said a silent prayer of thanks.

“Did I tell you today was boooooring?” she asked before reaching out for the wine bottle and refilling her glass.

“How so?”

She sipped, savored, and said, “I know you’re oblivious to everything when you’re working, but it’s been raining all day. I hate rain. Why do you think I moved all the way down here? For sunshine. That’s why!”

“You decided to move down here?” I asked with a grin.

“That’s right! I could ‘a chosen foster care! But I felt sorry for you being alone and all that,” she responded quickly.