"Daddy," the blonde girl whined, surprised at herself. Usually, she would jump at the opportunity to accompany her handsome father on a business trip, but watching Mike lead his wife down the snowy trail, Sueanne was not at all anxious to leave the area. "Daddy," she sighed, "I'll miss school and I can't afford to. We have two tests scheduled next week."
"But, darling," her father said, leading her in Mike and his wife's deep footsteps, "the maid has two sick children and she can't sleep in. I can't leave you in the house alone for a week."
"Daddy," Sueanne argued, "I'm a big girl now."
Mr. Rogers could feel his daughter's pert full breasts pressing against his arm and he knew, indeed, that his daughter was a big girl. Too big to be left alone in the house for a week. He envisioned waves of teenage boys coming and going, his daughter lying naked on the bear skin rug in front of the fireplace, her slender thighs spread open, ready.
"I won't leave you alone," he said, raising his voice.
"Daddy," Sueanne wailed, loud enough for Mike and his wife to hear.
"Now, I don't want to hear anymore about it, honey," her father said sternly. "We'll go home and pack. They expect the airport to be open for traffic by three this afternoon."
"Daddy," Sueanne whined childishly. "I don't want to go and I'm not going!"
Mike's wife looked around, surprised at the rebellion of the young girl. She was such a pretty little thing and accustomed, Mike's wife guessed, to having everything her way.
"Maybe we could help," she said over her shoulder. "She can stay with us, Mr. Rogers. The bus to Rockberg leaves every hour from our corner. She could take it to and from school."
"You've done too much already," Mr. Rogers argued.
Mike shuddered at the thought of Sueanne in their home. His wife was not stupid by a long shot and he knew it wouldn't take her much time to read the love-light in Sueanne's innocent young eyes. Then, they would be in trouble, for sure.
"No trouble at all," his generous wife said. "Just pick up her clothes and drop her by this afternoon."
Sueanne selected her laciest things, her prettiest nightwear, and stuffed it along with her toothbrush and school clothes. This was going to be a week of real fun, she thought. She'd let Mike make the choice between her and his wife – right there in the same house. She smiled, thinking of her own pert young body and the plump body of Mike's wife, stretched, she was sure, from baby-making.
She pictured a scene in which Mike's wife interrupted them, naked, Mike's big buttocks plunging downward, cramming his thick shaft between Sueanne's slim thighs. She would throw Mike out – and Sueanne would be waiting. All the rotten confession stories and bad movies that Sueanne had ever seen, filled with fantasy and romance, raced through her head. She wanted Mike and she thought that now she had the chance to get him, once and for all.
Mike paced the tiled kitchen floor, back and forth, back and forth, as his wife stirred the stew on the back burner.
"Stop pacing, honey," Myrna said sweetly, "I know you had a bad time in the woods…"
"It's not that," Mike interrupted, "it's the kid. I don't want her here. She's spoiled rotten."
"Honey, you told me yourself that having a friend in high places can help you land the accounts you need to get a raise. And Mr. Rogers is just about as high a friend as you can get in this county."
Mike knew that was true. He also knew that Sueanne's interest in him was adolescently romantic and he knew for certain that she'd cause him trouble. He sighed and hugged his wife. "Just keep her out of my way, will you, hon?"
"I'll keep her busy with the babies, Mike," Myrna promised. "I'll give her a taste of the way real people live."
There was no guest room in Mike's house. He had three bedrooms, one for him and his wife, one for the boys, one for their infant daughter.
"Set up the bed downstairs in the basement," his wife advised him and Mike trotted down the wooden stairs to the basement which he had, with skill and patience and cheap paneling, converted into a recreation room.
As he pulled out the convertible sofa and patted the pillows into place, he looked up on the wall.
"Hey, hon," he hollered up the stairs, "Nicky has been writing on the walls again."
"Miss Williams sucks." That's what his son's graffiti said. Mike laughed. Miss Williams was the first grade teacher and she'd been at the local elementary school since Mike was a first grader. The only thing that Miss Williams might have sucked would be a grapefruit.
"At least," Myrna called from upstairs, "he's learning how to write."
Mike pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and spit on it, rubbing it against the wall. He didn't get quite all of Miss Williams' name, but, he did thoroughly remove the words "sucks".
He shook his head. He was going to have to speak to that kid of his. He was getting out of hand.
Mike looked around, making sure that everything was in order, for the rich, pretty girl. There was an old TV set in the room and it worked well. His son Nick's phonograph, a cheap dime-store model, sat on the floor. It wasn't worth much but it played a record. Mike stooped and picked up the records that were strewn nearby.
"Old Mac, the dog and his singing adventures."
Mike tossed it behind the couch. He figured that Sueanne wouldn't be interested in "Old Mac, the dog". Fuck her, he thought angrily, she can bring her own damned records. He was only offering her shelter to please her old man – he wasn't setting up housekeeping with her. At least, he hoped he wasn't. He sure wouldn't like the look in her blue eyes when she last saw him.
He jogged back up the stairs and gave his wife a squeeze on her plump buttocks.
"You know something, woman?" She turned and smiled at him. "I love you."
Myrna leaned back against him. "I know it," she said factually. And she did.
"We've got to start fooling around at night, honey," he said and nibbled the back of her neck, "it's been a long time."
"Goodness," Myrna laughed, unaccustomed to the sexual attention of her big husband, "it must have been a long, cold night in that cabin. I'd pray for a blizzard once a week if I knew it would create that kind of reaction."
Mike laughed and pressed his pelvis against his wife's buttocks, liking the plumpness, the cushion, the warmth and security of her body next to his.
"I been working too hard, that's all," he said in his wife's ear, "things'll get better now. I did a lot of thinking in that cabin."
"I hope so," she smiled, "but the boys are growing up, you know. First thing you know they'll be wanting cars and then we got to send them both to college."
Mike's ardor wilted.
"I'm going in the living room, hon," he said and took long strides down the hall, "call me when supper's ready."
He sat by the picture window, watching the snow-laden street, dreading the moment when Sueanne's father would pull up in his expensive car and unload his beautiful daughter right into Mike's home.
"Daddy, Joe kicked the baby!"
"I did not! I just nudged her a little."
"Nick," Mike said to his eldest boy, a replica of himself, "don't be a tattle-tale."
"Nnnnnnaaaaa," Joe screamed. "Tattle-tale, tattle-tale, Daddy called you a tattle-tale."
He rushed into the kitchen to inform his mother.
"Nick," Mike said to his boy, ruffling his short dark hair with a big hand, "I saw what you wrote on the wall in the basement."
Nick blushed and looked at his feet.
"Your daddy spent a lot of time putting up that paneling, son…"
Nick, like his father, was basically a good person. He looked at his dad's dark eyes.
"I'm sorry, Dad," he said, "I was mad. I'll wash it off."
"I've already done it," Mike said.
"I'm sorry," the boy repeated, "I was real mad."