My Ward My Woman(2)

I was still in the habit of being there when school let out. Still over protective to a fault where she was concerned no matter how she claimed that she was old enough to be home alone with the staff for a few hours until I came home. Now I can’t get away from my home fast enough, but that’s another story. That shit only came after I started suspecting who her real target was.

In the beginning, all I saw were the changes that mom convinced me were natural. I guess it was a shock to see my little girl growing up right before my eyes. It was happening too fast. Yesterday she was a little urchin getting into mischief to keep her uncle Sol occupied. Today she’s a half woman with opinions that differ from mine, where once before she lived by every word that came out of my mouth. What the ever-living fuck!

Then came the clothes debacle. We’d had some major brawls over her new style of dress. I’d once seriously started researching a designer so I could hunt him down and rip his throat out for making the shorts she was now so fond of way too short. I would’ve done it too if mom hadn’t laughed her ass off and told me I was being stupid and that Alexandra would grow out of it.

Then I noticed that she stopped avoiding me, only we didn’t go back to the way things had been before the change. Now I saw what I could only call sneak attacks, but these weren’t the innocent tickle attacks of the little girl who would make me laugh until my sides hurt, oh no. These shits were designed to drive me batshit crazy.

Her favorite scheme was to come into whatever room I was in, wearing one of her latest scandal worthy getups and turn my life upside down. I was miserable as fuck. No matter what she did, or what game she was playing I was the adult, the man who’d raised her for fuck sake.

She was just sharpening her feminine wiles on the only man she knew, the only one she could trust. I made all those excuses for her behavior while fighting my own growing and totally unwelcomed feelings.

No way was I going there, it was sick. She was practically my daughter. I was the one person she had in this world that she could trust implicitly. How could I betray that trust with these thoughts that were plaguing me of late? I was convinced she didn’t know what she was doing, the danger she was in. And if she was doing that shit to me I didn’t want to think about the teenage fucks that were always sniffing around her.

I couldn’t find the words to warn her of the consequences of her actions without damaging her in some way; so my answer was to make myself scarce. That shit only made her ramp up her shit and our home became a battleground.

Then she took to waiting up for me at night, calling to me as I passed her bedroom door. I’d have to go in and stand there, talking to her while she innocently moved around on her bed in the skimpy shit she slept in, while telling me about her day.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. No, that came the day she turned eighteen and I lost my fucking mind. I’d thrown her a party to end all parties; shit had cost as much as some high society weddings. Her dad had left her a shitload of money, even with a special stipulation for her eighteenth birthday party, but I’d matched it dollar for dollar.

I’d given her the run of the show with the help of a kick ass planner and mom as overseer of course. I’d planned to drop in in the middle of the festivities, stay long enough for her to cut the cake and then leave her and her crowd to it. I’m sure they didn’t want an old man hanging around cramping their style. The guards I had planted on her twenty-four seven would be there, so I had no fear of anything going wrong.

I’d shown up straight from a late night meeting, still in a business suit, my tie long gone and the first three buttons of my shirt undone. I was tired and just a little angry because the shit I wanted done was going to take a little longer. I’d been accused lately of becoming a veritable ogre at work. I had to work off what the fuck was going on in my life somehow, and since I wasn’t about to tangle with her hormonal ass they were it.

I walked into the noise den, my eyes peeled for her in the crowd of about a hundred dancing screaming teenagers. I don’t think I’d known twenty people when I was her age. Leave it to my girl to be this popular. How could she not be? She was smart and sweet; kind, with a heart I sometimes marvel at.

Until she had turned into my main source of torture and torment, she had been the one constant in my life. That one last bit of innocence that I myself had lost a long time ago. When I looked at her I saw all that was good and pure in the world. I knew her inside out and the girl was a total fucking gem.

I saw mom standing near a wall by the windows with a few other parents who were there as chaperones, but I hadn’t seen my Alex. Then mom caught my eye and pointed and I followed her gaze across the room. I didn’t know who the beauty in the too short dress was at first. There was a familiarity, but I couldn’t place her. Though my heart knew before my mind accepted.

The face was round with a touch of baby softness left. Her eyes were wide deep pools of blue-grey, which I couldn’t see that well from that distance. Her hair was parted down the middle and caught at her nape with something that let it fall gracefully at the sides of her face before flowing down the middle of her back.

She wore some sort of chain around her hair that rested on her forehead with some kind of gem in the middle. That’s when I remembered the theme was Cleopatra or some other Egyptian thing she’d blabbed on and on about for the past month.

She turned back to her friends, she hadn’t seen me, and that’s when I realized who she was. I was moving across the room, my jacket off and in my hands ready to throw over her shoulders, when mom met me halfway.

“Don’t do it Sol, don’t embarrass her in front of her friends.” I looked at her as if not seeing her, her words barely penetrating the haze. The music piped through after the ringing in my ears stopped and I gritted my teeth. The room was full of teenage boys, half of which seemed to be in her vicinity or thereabouts.

I nodded my head slightly at mom to let her know I heard her before walking the rest of the way to Alexandra. Her friends saw me first as I approached, and the one, Cindy I think the name is, just stared up at me. Damn girl always went dumb deaf and blind when I walked into a room, why should this be any different?

I stopped behind Alexandra with my hands behind my back so that I didn’t take the jacket off again and cover her the way my mind was screaming at me to. I looked over her head at the opposing wall and after the first hint of her scent, held my breath until I got myself under control.

“Alexandra.” She gave a little yelp and flew around, flinging her arms around my neck. My hands automatically went to her waist to hold her since she had to get up on her toes and I looked down into those pools of unusual beauty and my heart stopped.

I pulled away as if burned but she seemed not to notice. I couldn’t tell you what she said then; something about thanks I think. My world had just stopped and restarted like an old record that had got stuck. That night was the first time I accepted that my little doll had grown up. It’s when I realized that something had shifted between us and things will never be the same again.





3





Solomon





“She was supposed to spend the night at a friend but she wasn’t there when we checked in.” Ralph’s voice penetrated my trip down memory lane. I looked at him without seeing for a few seconds as the memory of that night slowly faded away.

“Friend’s name and number.” He held out his phone to me with the number already dialed as I headed for the door. A young girl picked up on the other end. “This is Solomon Magna, where is Alexandra?”

“I already told those other guys I don’t know, she never showed up.”

“Where is your father?”

“He’s here, why?”

“Put him on the phone.” It took him two minutes and by then my nice meter had burned the fuck out.

“I’ll be at your door in ten minutes, if Alexandra isn’t there or you don’t have an answer as to where I can find her, I’ll slit your fucking throat.” I pressed end and passed the phone back to my soon to be dead head of security.

Outside, I threw myself into the back of the Rolls and Ralph gave the driver directions before heading for his car with the rest of my detail behind me. I calmed myself and tried not to think the worse.

She had the best security, nothing can go wrong. That might’ve been true in the past but lately she’s taken to conning them and she’s good at it. I’ve switched around her detail a time or two but no matter how I try, I can’t keep anyone on her that doesn’t fall for her little girl act.

She’s always had a team of one-man one woman, until a few months ago when I noticed the change. For some reason, after that night I changed her detail for the first time in about four years. She now had two women on her. I wasn’t taking any chances. Sometime in the last year when I hadn’t been looking my doll had turned into a desirable young woman and if I had noticed so would others.

She’s needed her security a lot more lately because I’d started staying away from her. Before that I always made sure I found time for her. I was still doing my best to be there in the evenings when she came home, but that time had grown later and later the older she got; what with all her after school crap. I think she signed up for all of them.