"Cow."
Adam glanced to the roadside where his daughter Nicole had raised a finger as they glided past yet another dairy farm, and a saw small herd of Hershey cows standing at a fence, as if watching the car traffic along Highway 55.
"Yes," Adam nodded. "Those are cows."
"Good girl!"
He playfully patted her leg, which flinched slightly outwards. Neither of them actually ever noticed this, but whenever he patted his daughter on the leg, her leg reflexively shot out an inch, an imperceptible parting of the thighs, as though her leg was moving instinctively towards his touch.
"Now, can you spell it?" he said, playfully.
"V.A.C.H.E"
"Vake?" he frowned.
"Vash," she said, correcting his pronunciation. ""Le vache."
Ah," he said. "Look at you, smartypants. Spelling in French."
"How are the French classes going, by the way?"
"I should have taken Spanish. That's how they're going."
"Tough, huh?"
"Qui."
"Well, can't help you there, I'm afraid. Math? Sure. Science. Yes. But I can barely spell in English let alone French."
Adam was an engineer who worked for the city of Chicago's waterworks department. A real left-hemisphere kind of guy.
"Maybe your mom can help you with that. She speaks a little French."
"Oh yeah," Nicole said in a mock tone, and then turned dramatically in her seat and spoke into the back seat of the car.
"Hey mom, can you help me with my French?"
She then looked at her father in mock surprise.
"Hey! Where's mom?"
"Ha-ha," he said dryly.
She turned back and slumped into her seat and began twirling a lock of her hair.
"What a cunt."
"Hey!" Adam said. "Watch the language."
"Well?" she looked at him pointedly. "Seriously. Her own brother's funeral. Her own fucking brother and she's not coming."
It had been a last minute decision. They had been assured that Kate's estranged sister, Monica, would not be at the funeral. She had never forgiven her sister for marrying her high school boyfriend, Bryce. And when Kate's father had died a few years ago, Monica had swooped in and claimed many of the antiques and paintings that he had amassed over the years. She had never forgiven her sister, and when she found out that, after all, Monica and Bryce would be coming to the funeral, she found an excuse at the last minute not to come.
"You know how much she suffers when she gets her migraines," Adam said.
"Dad, mom doesn't GET migraine headaches, she IS a migraine headache."
She wondered how often her father had heard "not tonight, dear - I have a headache" from her mother.
"That's not fair," he said.
"Even if it's true," Nicole said. "Her own brother? Take a fucking pill and suck it up. You know how bad this looks?"
"Well, at least you are coming, "he said. "Thank you, by the way."
"Why would I not come? I loved Uncle Dave. He was a sweetheart."
In fact, she had had a crush on her uncle all through childhood. Then again, she had a crush on a lot of older men, including her father. She had always had "a thing" for older men. Guys her age, even the really sweet ones, just did nothing for her.
And to be honest, guys her age didn't seem all that interested in her, either. She was pretty enough - blonde, with a beautiful smile and bright hazel eyes. She was a wholesome looking girl - not beautiful, but by no means hard to look at. She had a good body, shapely, with a nice round bum, but her breasts were, in her own mind, a little too small. Her mother, on the other hand, was a stunning blonde, lithe and lean, with perfect breasts. Even at 47, she could still turn the heads of teenaged boys. In fact, the boys she had brought home sometimes ended up more enamoured of her mother than her.
Kate's parents were wealthy - Adam had definitely married above his pay grade. She was beautiful but shallow and acquisitive. His platinum card trophy wife - a trophy he hadn't really earned. He had always felt that he had been a disappointment to her. He made a decent living as an engineer, but the fact he worked in a wastewater treatment plant was something of an embarrassment.
"Well," Adam said. "I'm glad you came. It will be nice to spend some time with my favourite girl, even if it's a sad occasion."
"Yeah," Nicole agreed. "To be honest, I'm glad she didn't come. I don't think I could stand to be in the car with her this long."
It was a three and a half hour drive from Chicago to Springfield to Kate's parents' house. Which would be full of relatives this weekend. Normally they would have stayed at Kate's parents house, but he had booked a hotel room this time, since the house would be full of out-of-town relatives.
"I think you're being a little unfair. She's not that bad," Adam said.
"Yes she is," Nicole said. "She's a cunt."
"Nicole! Stop using that word. You want a spanking?"
She perked up in her seat and clapped her hands together and spun her head towards him.
"Yes please!"
He laughed. "Keep it up and I just might."
"Is that an empty threat?" she said, mischievously. "Cunt!"
"Stop."
"CUUUUUNT!"
"You are a naughty girl."
"I think you like it when I'm naughty," she said, playfully.
She leaned toward him, in an exaggerated seductive gesture and began to trace letters on his thigh with her her index finger, starting uncomfortably high up.
"C," she said, as she slowly drew a half circle on his upper thigh. "U...N...T."
She then punctuated the imaginary word on his thigh with a straight line, slowly licked her finger and placed an imaginary period at the bottom of an exclamation point.
"Cunt," she purred.
Adam's cock stiffened in his pants.
"Ok, enough of that. You're going to make me have an accident."
"In your pants?"
He looked at her, and they both burst out laughing.
"You are so naughty."
"Only with you, daddy," she purred.
He reached for his vape an inhaled and then rolled down the window.
"It's getting warm in here," he said.
*************
Adam didn't like the way the hotel clerk had looked at him when they checked in. Originally he had booked two rooms, but when Kate told him she wasn't coming he had cancelled the room he had booked for Nicole. It seemed silly and wasteful to pay for two rooms. He had made a note of saying that Nicole was his daughter and that they were in town for a funeral. Still, the clerk had cocked his eyebrows at the idea of a man his early fifties sharing room with an 18-year-old woman.
They didn't have much time. They were to be at Nicole's grandmother's house in an hour. The funeral wasn't until tomorrow, but they were expected for dinner tonight.
"I need a shower," Nicole said. It was late June and already getting warm. She felt clammy.
"OK," he said, and opened the hotel fridge. "I need a beer."
As he waited for Nicole to finish her shower, he flipped on the TV, then checked email and text messages. There was a message from Kate.
"Text me when you get there."
He texted her back: "We're here. How's your headache?"
"Worse," she texted back. "Please apologize for me."
"I will," he said. "Get some rest."
Nicole emerged from the shower, wearing a towel on her head and around her body. It was high enough to cover her breasts, but barely covered her ass, which she then proceeded to flash to him when she bent over to open her suitcase, and began pulling out underwear.
He could just barely make out the pink folds of her pussy as she bent over. It was not the first time she had flashed him. She had been doing it for some time now. And her flirtations with him had become more and more pronounced.
"Cover your eyes," she said, but had already stripped the towel away, and then turned and stepped into her panties and then pulled on a bra.
He averted his eyes, but had already gotten an eyeful.
"Jesus, Nicole, you've gotta warn me when you do that," he said.
"I just did," she said. "OK, you can look. I'm decent."
He looked back and saw her standing there in pink, skimpy panties and a white bra, which she was still struggling to fasten behind her back.
"I'll let you change," he said and headed to the bathroom. He could not resist patting her on the bum as he passed her, though.
When he had showered and shaved, he emerged to see Nicole, still only wearing panties and bra, sitting up on one of the beds, looking at her iPhone.
"Still not dressed?" he said. "We've got to be there in 20 minutes.
"I know. I will. What, you don't like seeing me like this?"
"No comment."
He was about to say something but didn't know how to say it. Something like, "maybe we should tone down the sexual innuendo and flirtation." But to mention it would be to acknowledge it. It seemed as long as they didn't acknowledge the elephant in the room, it wouldn't stomp them. The elephant being the obvious sexual attraction that had grown between them recently.
They had always been affectionate with each other. But when she was little, it was truly innocent. When she hit puberty, she went through a couple of years of teen irascibility that had made her unlikable. They stopped showing outward affection for each other.
It was almost like some kind of teenage menopause. She had dramatic, defiant outbursts, and generally acted like a spoiled brat. Kate had actually lobbied to send her to a shrink, but Adam insisted that she was merely going through her crazy teen phase, and he was right. She eventually returned to normal when she got into her later teens.
And now, as she approached her nineteenth birthday, the affection she showed towards her father was becoming different. She still liked to touch him the way she used to, and give him light affectionate kisses on the cheek, but there was a new quality to them. It was no longer innocent. It was decidedly flirtatious and sexual.
He did nothing to discourage it. When she paraded half naked in front of him he looked. He drank it in. When she touched his leg affectionately, he stiffened. And when he patted her on the bum, she giggled and winked at him. That was the one thing she would do in the presence of others, including her mother - wink at him.
In private, they would flirt with each other openly - it was harmless, he told himself. There were unspoken rules - lines that they knew they could not cross. What harm was there in it? Knowing that they found each other physically attractive made them both feel good. He knew that, because her mother was so beautiful, Nicole was self conscious of her own looks, so he made a point of letting her know just how beautiful he thought she was.
*******************
