The five parts of this story will be published over the Summer but due to my other commitments there may be a longer gap than usual between chapters, just so you are aware.
Sorry but there is no steamy sex in part 1. If that's what you are looking for then I'm afraid you will be disappointed.
There will be some in the later chapters so please bear with the story.
Please feel free to leave constructive messages but, as always, hateful trolling comments will simply be deleted.
Remember it is just a story.
Enjoy.
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DADDY'S GIRL
Chapter 1 -- Danny, Jessica & Lucy
Sergeant Danny Wells lowered his kitbag to the floor and looked dejectedly around the empty barracks hut for what he expected would be the last time in quite a while.
Carefully noting the chipped metal bedframes, the worn paintwork and even the cracked window pane, his eyes took in every minute detail so he would remember it in the future. Not that he was ever likely to forget.
This had been his home for the last six years and he knew he would miss it more than he could ever imagine. He had spent some of the best times of his life here and had made some lifelong friends along the way.
Ever since he had enlisted in the military straight after finishing college, at the age of 21, he had been a Royal Marine. Going through some of the toughest training in the forces and two deployments overseas he had eventually been promoted to the rank of Sergeant.
"Bugger it. I'll miss all this." He murmured quietly under his breath as he ran a finger along one of the iron bedsteads.
He hadn't wanted to take extended leave from the service, in fact from the moment he enlisted he had always seen himself as a full-time twenty-two-year man. However, family circumstances and being needed by the one person who meant more to him than anything else in the world had forced this situation on him.
Standing by himself he paused and reflected, not for the first time, on the disaster that his life had been, outside of the army.
A few months after he had passed out as a marine Danny had met Stephanie Danby while he was on a drunken night out in Plymouth, with his mates.
The slim, attractive, blue-eyed blonde had immediately set her sights on him which, given his cute good looks, was hardly surprising.
At 6' 2" and just over 200 pounds of muscle, he had piercing, grey-blue eyes with a messy mop of short brown hair and, from the moment she saw him, she had thought him extremely desirable.
Making eye contact with him across the bar she had smiled coyly and he had gone across and asked her if he could buy her a drink. It had been that simple for her to get his attention.
They had started dating and six months into a whirlwind romance they had decided to marry. Despite his mother urging him to wait they had gone ahead with their plans and booked a ceremony at the Plymouth registry office to tie the knot.
At first everything had been fine between them and, after moving into a small rented apartment, they had settled down to married life.
Of course, being a marine Danny had had to spend a lot of time at the base and Stephanie, despite having her own job and friends to occupy her time, found the lengthy periods of separation from her new husband difficult to deal with.
It was inevitable that they argued, mostly over Danny being away so much, but they always made up, at least for the first year or so of their married life.
However, things really began to take a turn for the worse when Stephanie had found out she was pregnant. It had happened after a lengthy period of leave and, for once, they had been getting on well. He had hoped that the news might improve the situation between them but it just seemed to make everything worse.
The couple had certainly not planned to have children, at least not yet, and while Danny was ecstatic about the prospect of being a father his wife was definitely less than enthusiastic about the idea. They had only just begun to come to terms with the fact that they were going to be parents when, a few weeks later, Danny received orders that he was being posted overseas and would be away for the next nine months or so.
That was when things really came to a head between them.
Stephanie, already unhappy about the prospect of being a mother, had been spending a lot more time out with her friends. That and her complete disinterest in him had led Danny to have his suspicions that she might be seeing other men, although he never found any evidence to support his concerns.
Then, when she found that she was going to be left alone for the entire term of her pregnancy, she had really lost it with him. She had blamed Danny for everything and while he had done his best and tried to mollify and re-assure her, every conversation they had seemed to end in a massive argument.
By the time he finally had to ship out things had become about as bad as they could be between the pair of them and they were barely talking.
"What am I supposed to do while you're gone?" She had asked him bitterly, clearly resenting the fact he was being deployed overseas while she was stuck at home.
"I'll write and e-mail you while I'm away. And I can face time you as well." Danny had stood with his kit, ready to leave, while making one last attempt to appease his wife.
"Great." Stephanie had replied sarcastically, "You go off to god knows where and I get to sit at home getting fat."
"Afghanistan, Steph. I'm going to bloody Afghanistan not on a sodding holiday."
"Right, well you have a nice time." His wife told him sourly.
"Steph please. I'll miss you."
"For fucks sake just go and play soldiers and leave me alone." She had turned away dismissively and walked off into their kitchen without even so much as a kiss goodbye for him.
"I have to go Steph. Please."
"Fuck off then." Was the only answer he got from the other room.
With an over-riding feeling of impending doom Danny had, resignedly, picked up his bag and walked out of their flat and, as far as he could tell, Stephanie's life.
He had come to realise that he didn't love his wife but he was about to become a father and it was a role he took very seriously. He was determined that he would try to make the marriage work for the sake of his unborn child. Without a doubt Stephanie didn't love him, that was patently obvious, but he hoped that when the baby was born, she might settle down and become a real mother and then maybe they could be a proper family.
What they had felt for each other in the beginning hadn't really been love and had simply vanished during their first year together. In its place their relationship had simply become habit and then more recently it had changed, at least on Stephanie's side, to intense dislike and maybe even hatred of him.
To begin with he had tried to call her whenever possible while he was away, at least to attempt to try to sort things out. However, because of his duties, he wasn't able to get to a phone as much as he would have liked, not that it mattered.
At first, she simply didn't pick-up when he rang, then, a couple of weeks into his tour after the fifth or sixth attempt, he got the number discontinued message. That was when he had realised that he would never get an answer, she had changed her phone number.
Over the next couple of months of his deployment he had carried on trying to reach her and had continued to write, letters and e-mails, on an almost weekly basis. All his letters home went unanswered and e-mails simply bounced back saying the recipient's address no longer existed.
Eventually he simply gave up, she had made it totally transparent, she didn't want anything to do with him.
It hadn't really come as much of a surprise when, midway through his tour of duty, he finally received a correspondence from his wife's solicitor. It simply told him that she had left him and wanted a divorce due to irreconcilable differences.
There was little in the way of assets for them to split; the flat was rented and they had hardly anything in the way of savings. So, the process was relatively straightforward especially as he hadn't contested the ending of their marriage.
Everything went through the courts without a hitch and, shortly before Stephanie had given birth to a 5lb 12oz baby girl, the couple had received their decree absolute.
Coming home Danny had fallen in love with his daughter Jessica the moment he saw her and, fortunately for him, his ex-wife had wanted as much of her old life back as she could get. She had happily agreed to him having joint custody of their daughter so it would let her go out partying without any concerns about a babysitter.
Life had been difficult for Danny at first, with being away a lot of the time, but his mother Christine had been more than happy to look after her grand-daughter. Despite the problems that came with him being a soldier he had made every effort to spend as much time with Jess as possible when he had her, and it showed in the close relationship he had with his little girl.
Things had struggled haphazardly along for three years, with Stephanie gradually foisting Jess onto him on an ever-increasing basis, while she was off enjoying herself with whoever the man of the moment happened to be. Not that he minded, he was always happy to have her and she, likewise, loved spending time with her father.
Then just two weeks ago everything had changed when he had received the telephone call telling him his ex-wife had been killed in a road traffic accident. Apparently, she had been out drinking with friends and had been driving home when she had collided with another vehicle. The other driver had also been drinking, as it turned out, and both of them had died instantly in the collision.
Of course, he had felt a certain amount of grief when he had heard the news, but it was mainly because she had been Jessica's mother rather than due to any deep unresolved feeling's he held for her.
He had gone to the funeral as a matter of respect but Stephanie's family had totally ignored him and, after the service, he had been relieved to be able to quietly slip away.
As Jessica's surviving parent, sole custody of her had automatically been awarded to him and, wanting to be there every day for his daughter, Danny had made the extremely difficult decision to take extended leave from the army and, at least for the moment, become a full-time dad.
He sighed again, it would be a huge wrench leaving all his comrades behind but his daughter meant more to him than anything and he knew exactly where his priorities lay. He would have a decision to make at some point; to go back or to resign, but it could wait for now.
"You off now sarge?" The voice of his best friend Corporal Andy Weatherall jerked him out of his contemplation and back to the present moment.
"Yeah, time to make a move I guess."
Andy clapped him on the shoulder, "I'll miss you mate. You keep in touch you hear and look after that little angel of yours."
"I'll certainly do my best." Danny grinned.
"Do that and I'll get down to see you when I'm next on leave."
"Anytime mate there'll always be a bed for you." Danny embraced his friend one last time.
