Page 4 of Lacey's Daddy
I pull my hands under the table and put them in my lap. “It’s not a big deal. I’m fine. Really.”
Brian pushes off the table and stands to his full height of almost six feet. He stares down at me with narrowed eyes. “How about you let me take a look at it, Little one? We can go in a private room so no one pays any attention to you.” He holds out a hand.
I shake my head. “It’s okay. I promise. I should probably get home anyway. It’s getting late.” I push my chair back a few inches.
“Lacey…” Brian says in a commanding Daddy voice.
I hesitate. He seems determined. What could it hurt for him to look at my arm? It doesn’t change anything. I’ll still tell him I fell. I’ve perfected the art of looking adults in the eyes and lying about my clumsy behavior. Even though I am an adult now and have been for a while, I still feel like everyone is more adult than me.
What if he thinks I need an X-ray, though? I can’t do that. I can’t go to a clinic or the hospital. My father would lose his shit. Plus it would cost money. I don’t have money.
“Come, sweet girl.”
A tingling sensation goes up my spine when he calls me that. It makes me feel special, like I matter. He has called me that before, and I’ve never heard him call any of the other Littlessweet girl.
Brian takes a few steps around the end of the table to get closer to me. He squats down so we’re eye to eye. “There’s even a medical room here. It’s meant to be for people to do private scenes in, but we can just pretend we’re playing doctor. How’s that?”
I bite my lip at the thought of playing doctor with him. I squeeze my thighs together tightly. I’ve thought of playing doctor with Brian lots of times. It’s where I go in my head late at night when I’m alone under my covers. I’ve pictured Brian as my nurse, really, because he is a nurse.
In my imagination, he takes my temperature, checks my pulse, and uses a blood pressure cuff on me. He asks me private questions and records my answers in his tablet. He asks me really personal things like if I’m sexually active and if any boys have touched my private parts.
I always get fidgety when I think about Brian like that, and I can’t avoid doing so now. I’m so embarrassed that I need to get out of this room, and the best escape I have is to agree to go with him. “Okay.”
He gives me a beaming smile and rises to hold out a hand again. “Good girl.”
I can feel Amelia watching us, and she breathes out a sigh of relief. I’m still mad at her, but not very. She’s my friend. I don’t have many friends. She’s just trying to help me.
I take Brian’s hand with my good one and let him guide me from the playroom. He stops in the hallway and speaks to one of the managers. “Is the medical room open?”
The man nods. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Can you block an hour off for me?”
“Sure can.” The man walks away without another word.
An hour? Surely it won’t take an hour. He can just look at my arm, and then I’ll find an excuse to go home.
I shuffle along beside Brian, my hand still in his much larger one. When we get to the private room, he pushes the door open and lets me pass ahead of him.
When he flips on the overhead lights, the room gets very bright. The rest of the club is nowhere near this bright. I squint.
Brian chuckles as he shuts and locks the door. “It’s really bright in here, isn’t it? I think that’s on purpose. When people do medical scenes, they like to feel very exposed.”
My tummy does flips as he guides me toward the exam table. I’ve never been in here before. It looks exactly like every doctor’s office I’ve ever seen. Granted, it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a doctor. When I was a kid, my mother took me for regular checkups. My father has only taken me to the local clinic a few times since my mother died and only when I’ve been so sick I needed an antibiotic.
Brian releases my hand and reaches for my hips. “Let’s get you up onto the exam table, Little one.”
I wince audibly as his fingers wrap around my hips.Shoot. Crap. Darn. His hands are so big, and I’m so small that his fingers dig into a bruise on my stomach.
Brian frowns as he sets me on the end of the exam table. “Did I hurt you?”
I shake my head a bit too vigorously. “No.”
He keeps his hands on my hips and bends at the knees a bit to put us at eye level. When he moves his thumbs around, I try very hard to stifle a wince but fail.
“Lacey, why does your tummy hurt to touch?”
“It doesn’t,” I lie. My face heats, and I look away.
