A Life Changing Experience 1

It had been a long day, and all Jim Reynolds wanted to think about was taking in an evening run and enjoying a quiet Friday night at home. He had a full weekend planned ahead of him, finishing up the renovation work on his latest real estate investment. Running and working was his way of staving off depression. Since his divorce five years ago, he had been buying older homes, living in them while he updated them, and then selling them. If you didn't mind living in substandard conditions for a while, it was a good way to make a tidy profit outside regular work, and keep your mind off growing old alone.

His latest project was nearing completion, but he had run into a snag with some plumbing and air conditioning problems. He figured he had about one more week before the house was livable, and then he would start selling it.

It took him less than five minutes to change into his running clothes, and as he walked out the door he was thankful that the heat of the day had passed and it was getting dark. He took off at a brisk pace, hoping to get in 3-5 miles. His running habit had kept his old body lean and fit, in much better condition than most his age.

Jim was nearing the end of his run when he came up on a young couple apparently having an argument in the street. The girl was getting up off the ground and the guy was yelling at her. It didn't look right, so he slowed to a walk to make sure the girl was ok. He heard the man telling the girl to shut up and get in the car, and she was resisting. The man apparently didn't see Jim coming up, and he grabbed the girl by the arm and tried to muscle her into the car.

"Hang on there, is everything ok here?" said Jim.

The man turned in surprise. "Yes, we're fine," he said quickly, not letting go of the girl's arm.

Jim had a life-long philosophy of avoiding trouble, but he wasn't about to let the man take the girl against her will. She looked scared, and was crying.

"Do you want to go with him?" Jim asked her.

She looked at Jim, and then at the man, and then at the ground. Slowly, she shook her head no.

The man got really perturbed, said something harsh to her that Jim couldn't hear, and again tried to pull her by the arm toward the car.

Jim took a deep breath and steeled his will.

"I can't let you take her if she doesn't want to go," Jim said with as much authority as he could muster. While Jim was older, the other guy was half a foot taller and 50 pounds of muscle heavier.

The man turned to glare at him. "Yeah," he said. "And who are you?"

Jim tried to keep his cool, knowing he wasn't going to win a fight. "I'm a cop," he said. "And if you don't let go of her, I'm going to have you arrested."

The guy's eyes got big, his arm loosened its grip, and Jim could see his boldness waiver.

"Whatever," the guy said. He half pushed the girl away, got into the car and drove off.

Jim walked over to make sure the girl was ok, and as he got close to her he could see that her legs were dirty and one was bleeding. She was crying, and shaking.

"Hey, are you ok?" Jim said, touching her arm to console her. When she looked up at him, Jim realized for the first time that she was extremely attractive. She breathed in slowly to steady herself.

"Yes, I'm ok," she said slowly. "Thank you so much for stopping, I'm no match for my boyfriend...my ex-boyfriend."

"I'm glad I was here," said Jim. "I live around the corner, can I give you a lift somewhere?"

The girl looked around and suddenly seemed to realize she didn't have a ride, it was nearly dark, and her best option was a stranger. She looked at him carefully, trying to gauge his intentions.

"You... you're Mr... you're Beth's dad," she said suddenly.

Caught by surprise, Jim looked at the girl again to figure out who she was. Jim's daughter Beth was 20 years old and spending the summer interning in another city. He had no clue who this girl was, but was guessing it was on of Beth's friends from high school.

"I'm Maggie, Maggie Grogan, I used to hang out with your daughter in high school.

Jim's mind tried to rewind, tried to place the girl, and he suddenly remembered Maggie Grogan. Only the Maggie he remembered was an awkward teenager with straggly hair and braces, who had so much trouble getting a date she took her little brother to the prom.

"Maggie, right, I remember you," he said. Before he could stop himself he started a sentence he couldn't finish. "You've gotten....really...a lot .... different — you're a lot taller," he stammered out.

Despite her predicament, Maggie couldn't help but smile, and for the first time Jim saw the resemblance to the Maggie he remembered. She was a homely teenager, but she always had a great smile.

"Wait, I didn't know you were a cop," she said curiously.

"I'm not," he said. "But that line works every time."

On the short walk back to the house, Jim learned that Maggie had finished her second year at the local college and was working as a waitress over the summer. She had been dating Bill, her now ex-boyfriend, for about six months and it had been going poorly for a while. Unfortunately she had moved in with him about a month ago, so she was currently without a place to go. She had a friend she could stay with, and the plan was to call her from Jim's house.

When they got back to the house, Maggie tried unsuccessfully to call her friend.

"Well, let me take care of that leg while we're waiting," Jim said, pointing her toward the kitchen.

Maggie looked down at her bloody leg and nodded. They walked into the kitchen and Jim had Maggie sit down on a kitchen chair. As he wet a towel in the sink, he explained that the kitchen sink was the only plumbing that was currently working.

"How do you take a shower?" Maggie asked with a grin.

"The last few days I've been using a hot tub I have on the deck," Jim said. He kneeled in front of Maggie and began cleaning the blood and dirt off her legs.

"Oh," said Maggie, and her eyebrows raised with what Jim thought was something between understanding and interest.

As he rubbed the cloth up and down first one leg and then the other, Jim became aware of Maggie's young, toned legs. Her black skirt came up about mid thigh, and she coyly pulled the skirt up a little higher so he could clean the blood off. The higher the skirt got, the more he saw of her tanned, muscular legs and Jim suddenly became flustered at the realization that he was stroking his daughter's friend's legs. He stopped suddenly, rose to his feet, and pretended to survey his work, but mostly just enjoyed looking at her legs.

"Well, I got most of it cleaned up," he said. "Your... you have very nice legs."

"Good job," she said, smiling and looking at her legs and then him. "I don't want to keep you from anything."

"Well, I am a little sweaty and need to get cleaned up," he said. "I'm going to jump in the tub and get cleaned up, make yourself at home and I'll drive you to your friend's in a little while."

"Ok, I'll try to call again in a little while," she said.

Jim stepped out onto the deck, flipped the jets on the hot tub, peeled his sweaty shirt off and stepped into the tub. He leaned back and closed his eyes, and made a conscious effort to not think about the fact that there was a very attractive girl a lot younger than him in his kitchen.

There is no way she is interested in you, he thought. If you hit on her you're going to be humiliated. You can't handle rejection right now.

When he opened his eyes again, she was standing beside the hot tub, looking at him, smiling.

"You look relaxed, do you want me to get you a beer?" she asked.

"Ah... sure," Jim said, thinking a beer right now would be a bad idea that would taste really good.

As she walked back into the house, she stopped and turned to look back at him.

"Do you mind if I have one?" she asked smiling.

Jim felt a combination of embarrassment for being a bad host and weirdness for giving a beer to one of his daughter's friends, but he nodded and gave her a thumbs up. She returned with two cold ones and sat down in a lawn chair by the hot tub. She had taken her shoes off and stretched her long legs out in front of her, causing Jim to drink close to half the beer in one swig.

Young, hot women are not attracted to old guys, he told himself.

Jim tried to keep the conversation light as they sipped the beers, him in the hot tub and her in the lawn chair. It was a beautiful, but humid night, and you could look up and see stars from the open air deck. In the distance, there was a faraway flash of lightning, portending a coming storm. The beer had gone straight to Jim's head, as he had not eaten dinner, and his mind kept wandering as he looked at Maggie, who was recalling a story about a time when she and several friends had come to Beth's for a sleepover, and had decided to catch all the neighborhood cats and herd them into Beth's bedroom. But then the door got left open and a dozen cats were running loose in the house.

"I remember one of them ran into your bedroom, and I ran right in after it," she said. "Just as I caught it, I looked up and you were standing in the bathroom with a towel on. I don't think you saw me."

Jim laughed and scratched his chin. "I don't remember that!"

"Well, I remembered!" said Maggie, and suddenly realizing that she may have spoken the words to emphatically, she continued on. "Beth's mom was so mad she sent us all home."

Jim rolled his eyes. He kept telling himself he was imagining things, but it seemed like Maggie kept looking down at his bare chest as she was telling the story.

"Why did you and Beth's mom get divorced?" Maggie said, taking a long draw off the beer.

Jim usually gave a stock answer to the question, but he decided to be honest for a change. "She found another guy, decided things would be better there."

Jim felt Maggie's eyes linger for a moment, drift up and down his chest. "I can't imagine," she said quietly.

Jim let that go, but he could feel his heart skip a beat. They sat in silence for a while, enjoying the night and watching the lightning in the distance. Eventually Maggie broke the silence.

"I think some of that road dirt got ground into my leg, I can't get it out," she said, looking at her leg. "Do you mind if I join you in there?"

Jim again felt his heart skip. "Ah... of course," he stammered. "Beth keeps some clothes here in the second room on the right, I think she has a bathing suit in there."

Maggie stood up and nodded. "OK, be right back."

Jim sat up in the tub, stunned, listening to the bubbles gurgling up around him in the tub. She was going to get into the hot tub. With him. Don't get carried away, he thought to himself. She is just being friendly.

When Maggie came back out on the deck, Jim's heart didn't skip a beat, it stopped completely. Dressed in his daughter's sexy yellow swimsuit, carrying a beer in each hand, she was absolutely stunning. He knew she was fit before, but the swimsuit revealed a completely perfect body. Flat, toned stomach, long, lean legs, soft, shapely breasts. She stepped into the tub just a few feet from him, giving him a mind numbing look at her incredible body, handed him his beer, and eased down into the water opposite him in the tub. If Jim had not gone completely numb, his mouth would've been hanging wide open.

"You look very nice in that suit," said Jim, trying to sound patronly.

"Thanks, its a good thing I'm about the same size as Beth," she said. "The water feels great."

Maggie slipped forward in the tub, letting her head sink below the water. It was an average size tub, so when she moved forward her legs came forward far enough to brush against Jim's legs, and the light touch was electrifying. He realized, with a mix of arousal and embarrassment, that his cock had grown quite hard and was pushing the limits of his running shorts. Maggie came back up out of the water and sat back against the edge of the hot tub, her torso out of the water, her arms resting behind her, her eyes closed. She was an incredible vision, and Jim got the sense that she knew he was looking at her and she wanted him to. That was a good thing, because he could not take his eyes off her.

She's just teasing you old man, he thought. She's going to tell all her friends about how she teased an old man until he made a pass at her, and then how she shot him down.

As they sat in the gurgling peace of the hot tub, the storm that had been off in the distance gradually moved closer. Flashes of lightning began to become brighter, and the slow, steady roll of thunder began to get louder. After a long quiet spell, there was a bright flash and a loud crack, and both sat forward in the tub.

"I guess we'd better get out," Jim said, and he began to stand up before remembering that the protrusion in his shorts was going to be an issue. As he came out of the water he turned to the side and stepped out of the tub, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around his waist. When he turned back to look at Maggie, she had a sly grin on her face, and he got the impression that he had not been successful at hiding his arousal. She stood up and he handed her a towel, and as the first few drops of rain began to fall they clamored back into the house. They had just gotten back into the house and were standing in the kitchen when another flash of lightning hit, a huge crack of thunder, and the lights blinked and nearly went out.

"That was close, we almost got caught in the dark," Jim said.

Almost immediately, another boom, the lights went out and completely and the two of them were in total darkness waiting for their eyes to adjust.

"I guess that one was closer," whispered Maggie. "At least now we can take the towels off."

Jim had a mental image of Maggie standing a few feet away from him, taking her towel off, standing there in the kitchen in a swimsuit.

"I've got some candles in the cabinet behind you," he said. "Let me slide by you and I'll get them."

They both chose the same direction to go by one another, and walked straight into each other in the dark. Jim's reached out to steady her from the contact, and his hands found the warm bare skin of her torso. He felt her hands come up instinctively onto his chest, but it was still so dark he couldn't see anything.

"Oops," said Maggie, giggling hysterically. Her laughter made him laugh as well. He backed away from her.

"Ok, I'll go right and you go left," he said, not realizing that while the directions were different, they were facing each other, so when they started forward again they ended up at the same place, bumping into each other in a half embrace in the dark.

Now they were both giggling, realizing their mistake. Jim's hands felt so warm and good on Maggie's beautiful body he did not want to let the embrace end.

"Well now that I know where you are NOW, let me just waltz by you to get to the candles," Jim said, still laughing. They moved in unison this time, their bodies still in a half embrace, until he had moved around to the other side of her. There eyes had adjusted enough to make out shapes in the dark, but they still lingered in the embrace, before Jim finally eased away and turned to the cabinet, his mind and body on fire.

As the light from the first candle bathed the kitchen in warm light, he saw Maggie coming into focus, standing in the middle of the kitchen with a smile on her face, looking a bit flushed. She had indeed taken off her towel, and looked even more glorious in the soft glow of the candlelight. Another ominous roll of thunder caused her to turned her attention to the window.

"I wonder how long this storm is going to be," she said. "Its probably a bad idea to drive me somewhere in this."

Jim looked at his watch, it was past 10, and then outside, where the rain was coming down in sheets.

"Maggie, you are welcome to stay here the night, you can take the bed and I'll take the couch, and then I'll take you to your friend's house tomorrow," he said. "I think Beth has some pajamas or whatever here you can borrow."

Maggie nodded in agreement, and they had the usual standard battle you would expect over who gets the couch and who gets the bed, but Jim was insistent. The arrangements settled, they each took a candle and went their separate ways to put on some dry clothes.

As he walked back to the bedroom to change clothes, Jim was trying to appear cool and calm, but inside his mind and body were in turmoil. Either he was being hit on by a beautiful girl way younger than he was, or he was totally misreading the situation. His mind replayed the events of the evening as he slowly changed out of his wet shorts and into some dry ones. He stopped for a moment to look at himself in the mirror, trying to convince himself he was still desirable. Then he thought about Maggie, and felt like kicking himself for thinking that a girl that young and attractive would be interested in him. As he pulled a t-shirt on a flash of lightning lit up the room, and he thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. When he looked in that direction he noticed the bedroom door was slightly ajar.

Had she been looking in? Did she think he was a pervert leaving the door half open? Or a dork for not taking her into his arms?

He shook it off and walked back into the kitchen. It was still raining and storming, but his eyes had adjusted to the darkness so he could make out shapes pretty well. He was putting a blanket down on the couch when Maggie came out, holding a candle, dressed in a short, silky white bathrobe.

"I'm going to turn in, but I wanted to tell you again how much I appreciate everything," she said softly.

Jim was only half listening, his mind entranced by how good she looked in white, how aroused he had become once again. He had made up his mind that she was worth taking a chance for. He was going to walk right up and take her into his arms, pull her close and give her a night of passion she would never forget. Or be slapped and embarrassed. He never got the chance to find out.

"Anyway, I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't been there," she continued. "Thanks so much for being there for me, Mr. Reynolds."

Mr. Reynolds. MR. Reynolds. The words rung a thousand times in his ears.

He caught his breath enough to respond. "I'm glad I was there to help honey," he said. "I'll see you in the morning."

With that she turned slowly and walked to his bedroom, the one where he had just been changing clothes. He watched her long silky legs moving like works of art, go into the room and pull the door closed.

Jim Reynolds felt the air and the blood and most of the heart go out of him. He felt old, foolish, even a little perverted. He laid back on the couch, put his hands behind his head, and counted the raindrops hitting the skylight.

Two hours later, he was still staring up at the ceiling. The rain had stopped and it had gotten warmer, and his mind kept going back to scenes from earlier, which wasn't helping to cool him off. Flustered by the heat and pent up frustration, he took his shirt off and pushed the sheet down to his waist. At some point he half dozed off, lying on his back, and he heard a noise that woke him up.

It was Maggie, standing beside the couch, looking down at him.

"I...I couldn't sleep," she said slowly.

"Yeah, I'm sorry it gets hot in here without the a/c," he said.

"Its not that," she replied. "There's something I need to tell you."

Jim sat up slightly on the arm of the couch and gave her his full attention. In doing so he opened up some space beside him on the couch, and she took it as an invitation and sat down by his waist on the couch. He was fighting the urge to become aroused again, when he noticed that up close it was apparent that Maggie was upset. He impulsively laid a hand on her arm and asked her what was wrong.