Jewel Breckenridge
Daddy_s little girls
CHAPTER ONE
She was, after all, only a child.
As she walked down the arrow-straight road from the school bus towards home, her head barely cleared the taller hedges and her blonde hair tossed at her shoulders, one of which was slightly raised from the effort of carrying her schoolbooks. She had a light, inoffensive manner of staring through every gate and through every window which looked inviting as she stepped along. The quickness of her glance seemed right for her pert walk, her smallish, lean frame, her age – but this quick gaze was dictated also by the quickness of her mind and temperament.
Thirteen-year-old Ellen Johnston was precocious, an inventive young genius, a little dynamo. Her long blonde hair twirled as she spun her head for a quick look at anything interesting – but what interested her most in this old, familiar Cape Cod neighborhood was not the respectably stuffy people or the fifty thousand dollar houses so much as the newness of her own experience. Ellen was fast becoming a woman, and she was very much aware of the fact, and aware too of the subtle changes that were going on inside her slowly maturing body. When asked her age, she said she was "going on fourteen", and it was true. Ellen would be fourteen in only eight more months.
Not too far behind Ellen, Roger Johnston swung his big Rolls Royce around the corner by the school bus stop. The car was a rich lustrous black, only a few months old, but already covered with dust. Inside a crisp unseen voice droned out the day's predictable news of scattered wars and disasters which Roger gave only half an ear to. The interior of the car reeked of new leather, although it had already acquired an unkempt look from a back seat covered with papers, a kleenex box broken and spewing its contents over the rear shelf, and sand, dried mud, and a forgotten soft drink bottle on the floor.
Roger valued the quality and prestige of an auto only when he bought it, seldom giving it a thought thereafter, since to him a Rolls, no matter how new, was nothing new. It was checked only when his garage phoned him to remind him to bring it in. As forgetful and distracted as he was these days, he should have had both a chauffeur and a mechanic – and before long, he probably would.
While he was so preoccupied by his troubles to give only half an ear to the news, and not to notice at all the early degeneration of his car, his eye spotted rapidly the beautiful young blonde girl on the road ahead of him. She had on a very short skirt which bounced along with her walk, revealing every few steps the beginning of the curved, full rise of her smoothly rounded buttocks clad in what seemed to be pink bikini panties. He looked more closely at the spot where the short skirt sometimes bounced up as he guided the car along behind her absent-mindedly by instinct. Yes, they were pink, this little blonde bombshell had on pink lace bikini panties! He could even see the tight, firm cheeks of her almost naked buttocks rise and fall beneath the skimpy pink cloth, jiggling saucily and invitingly, until he got too close and could no longer get the right angle. If only he could slow down without being obvious! Now he raised his eyes to the narrow girlish waist and the delicate curve of her back rising to slender sloping shoulders under a faded, clinging sweatshirt.
Johnston came up directly beside the girl and saw now that the jutting breasts beneath that sweatshirt were bouncing provocatively together with her walk but not as much as he had expected. They seemed taut, firm and youthfully full. Yes, but not as much as the tightly revealing clothes, the full hips and buttocks, the long inviting bare legs, and the long swirling blonde hair would suggest. The girl must be very young and, as a matter of fact, those must be school books under her arm. But damn was she appealing! Her stiffened nipples thrust enticingly far out against the worn material of her clinging sweatshirt. Jesus! That he could see! If only he could slow down, or if only he were on foot and could follow her; but no, now he was fully past and he raised his eyes directly to her face and found himself looking squarely at… could it be…? His own daughter.
His own daughter! Holy Jesus Christ! And he had been looking her up and down like some cheap whore! Fortunately she had not noticed him, looking instead into the yards of the houses she was passing, and he shifted his gaze and continued driving, badly shaken emotionally. This girl whom he had examined as best he could from ankle to breast, on whom he had allowed his frustrated, sex-starved desires to speculate wantonly – this girl was his daughter Ellen, his own child. Christ almighty! But she had not seen him and he continued driving. Perhaps he should stop – or should have stopped, to give her a ride the rest of the way home; but now, thank God, it was too late.
Roger Johnston guided the dusty Rolls Royce down the long straight road and into an opening in the hedges which led to his garage. There he parked the car, gathered up some of the papers from the back seat, knocking others onto the floor, and rushed into the house with them. The house was cool, quiet, and deserted, and he was glad for that since his present guilt demanded peace and solitude. He called out his wife's name perfunctorily, but he knew she would be out on one errand or other. There was no answer.
He went up the winding staircase and directly entered his study where, tired, without giving a thought to changing his clothes, his hands trembling as they clutched the papers, he sat down at his desk. Peace was what he needed, and he would just sit now and think the whole matter through. He laid the papers down and began to sort through them, spreading them out before him. Oh yes, there was the property transfer for the new fish catcheries, and the rough draft of the prospectus for the Hyannis Hotel which he had to look over – these things were fairly reassuring.