The luggage Emily dragged behind her as she came through arrivals looked big enough to not only hold enough clothes for a family of four but the family as well. I watched her, taking the opportunity before she saw me, the love I felt for my daughter welling up as it did every time she visited. Not so often these days, and as her Mom pointed out I had no rights anyway. Except Emily wanted to come. Emily always wanted to come. It was a tradition of sorts ever since Rachel and I broke up. Except broke up didn't even come half way to describing what we went through. What I went through. It seemed to barely affect Rachel.
Emily was six when the separation came and burst our family apart. I didn't see her for at least three years as the bitter divorce proceedings dragged on, all the while Rachel living with the young stud that was the primary cause of the breakup. Except Rachel didn't see it that way. It was all my fault. Everything. Whatever everything was. And then the year she turned ten Emily came out to the beach house I'd moved into, insisting she had to, simply had to spend time with Daddy. Sometimes I wondered if I'd moved east because it was about as far away as I could get from Rachel without leaving the continental United States.
Now here Emily was again, fresh out of High School with a long summer vacation ahead and nothing to do until she went to college in Atlanta. My daughter was short, barely five feet, and I suspect that was an exaggeration. Blonde curls that the last time I saw her fell to her chin but which she'd cut hard since so her ears showed. Blue-gray eyes that always seemed to know everything about whatever their gaze fell on. High cheekbones, straight nose, and a mouth with lips that were made for kissing even if we'd not done that for a long time now, not since puberty hit and she decided kissing her Dad was yuck. I was fine with that because kissing this girl, who was rapidly developing into a true beauty, raised uneasy feelings in me. Feelings I didn't welcome.
And now, all of a sudden, here she was. The full package. And it was some package.
She looked up, her face flushed with the effort of dragging the case, and saw me. She broke into a wide grin, abandoned the case and broke into a run. I had no choice but to grab her as she leaped at me. She flung her arms around me and hugged me tight enough to make it hard to breathe. Tiny she might be, but strong too. She kissed my neck and cheeks and only then did she pull back to stare into my eyes.
"Hey, Pop," she said.
"Hey, pumpkin," I said back, and she pulled a face.
"Not no more," she said, and she was right. She hadn't been my pumpkin for a few long years now. Puberty, growing up, the angst of teenage years all blunted the relationship between us. Now, for the first time in an age, we had the possibility of eight weeks ahead of us and it was fixing to be a great summer.
"You can put me down now," she said with a grin, and I realised she was sitting on my clasped hands and I dropped her faster than a hot plate. "And you can carry that bitch for me." She nodded at the case and I knew this summer was going to be different. I would be ours. A bonding we both knew was overdue, except neither of us quite anticipated the kind of bonding it would turn out to be, not then. Come Fall I would sometimes sit and think, out on the veranda with a good bourbon whisky, whether if I knew just what was going to happen would I have put her straight back on the plane or not? But I knew the answer. What happened had an inevitability about it. A rightness even if it was wrong.
I grabbed the case, started off and came to a sudden halt.
"Damn, but you got to be strong, girl," I said, and Emily laughed and flexed her arm so a tiny muscle popped.
"You still got that stupid giant SUV?" she asked, and I nodded.
"Think we can get this mother in the back?"
"There's two of us," she said. "And don't forget, I got muscles."
*
Between us we manhandled her suitcase up the stoop into the house. From there it got easier and I wheeled it along the wood-boarded hallway to the room she always used. Except the last time had been five years before and I'd seen her only twice since, both times fleeting when I found myself in Los Angeles and her mother allowed us to catch up with her supervising. But Emmy hadn't forgotten.
At last the suitcase went flat and she knelt to unbuckle the security straps and turn the combination on her TSA locks. She tossed the lid back like a magician performing a trick.
"How long you planning on staying, Em?" I asked. There were a lot of flimsy looking underwear on top, together with what looked like five different bikinis, none with enough material to make even a single swimsuit. I pressed my lips together, not wanting to say anything, trying not to act like a Dad.
"How long can I stay?" she asked, looking up at me, her face perfect in the afternoon sunlight falling through the window.
"Long as you want, baby."
She grinned. "That's what I was hoping you'd say." She looked around, looked in her suitcase, looked back at me. "You want to go for a walk along the beach when I've unpacked?"
"Sure. We can go up to Harvey's and eat fish for supper."
"Harvey's?" she said. "Hasn't that place blown down yet?"
"Close, but not quite. Is it a plan?"
"Damn right it's a plan. Go make coffee, Daddy, while I get changed. My clothes stink of airplane."
I did as I was told.
Emmy almost gave me a heart attack when she appeared a half hour later. I'd put the coffee on slow, knowing it would take her a while to transfer the contents of the suitcase to the closet drawers. She stood in the doorway and leaned on the side. Lean legs crossed at the ankle. Flat belly with a line down the middle where she had been working out some, I guessed. And breasts. I tried to remember ever noticing Emmy's breasts before and, other than knowing she'd got some, couldn't. It was hard not to notice now. The string bikini barely contained them. They weren't big like her mother's, but that hardly mattered because from what I could see — which was a lot — they were perfect. The bikini pants were no better, barely there at all, and I swallowed and turned away.
"Cream and sugar, same as always?" I said, uncomfortable at my reaction. She looked nothing like her mother but there had been the same raw rush of arousal as I stared at her, and it scared me. I didn't think I could manage with her wandering the house dressed the way she was. I might have to have parental words with the girl after all. Damn it.
As I poured I sensed rather than heard her walk across the kitchen and the next I knew her arms had snaked around my waist and her near nakedness was pressed against my back. God damn but I started to come hard, a deep sense of shame and guilt accompanying my arousal.
"Are you writing at the moment, Daddy?" she said.
"Some. A couple of ideas is all, while I wait for the Fall tour."
"I been doing some things." She released me and came around, took the mug of coffee and walked on to the porch. She leaned on the rail, allowing me to study her from behind, where the view was just as fine as the front had been. Then I shook my head and sipped my coffee, too hot but I needed a distraction.
"You've been writing?" I said, walking out and taking one of the rockers.
"Don't sound so surprised." She turned, grinning, came and took the rocker next to mine and put her feet on the rail. "It's genetics, ain't it? You write, I write."
"Can I see some?" I said.
"Not yet. And not what I've written so far."
"I could give you some pointers."
"Not this stuff you can't," she said, and sipped her coffee, snub nose wrinkling at the simple pleasure of it.
"Are you sure?"
She looked at me, smiling. "Oh, yeah, I'm sure."
"What, you writing porn of something?" I said, joking.
"Not porn, Daddy. Erotica." She looked at me, at the expression on my face, then laughed real hard. "It's all the rage these days. Sells like hot cakes."
"You, uh, published anything?"
"Not yet. Tried on a couple of websites to see how it goes."
"And?"
She shrugged, almost spilling her coffee. "OK, I guess."
I waited a while before saying, "I'm all growed up, Em. A bit of tit and ass isn't going to shock me. I could still give you some pointers."
"Let me think on it, Daddy," she said, and it was the last time either of us mentioned the matter until three days later when I found her laptop open and unlocked with a Word document on screen and sat at the desk and read what she'd written. But that's getting ahead of our story. Besides, by then it hardly mattered much. But it was a catalyst, speeding up what was going to happen anyway.
We turned south from the house and walked along the surf line, Emmy wandering in and out of the water. When I'd mentioned she might want to bring something to wear over the bikini she pulled a face but went and found a linen dress which I was expected to carry until it was needed.
Now and again she stopped and went to one knee to examine a shell or starfish.
Later, as we walked on, she went deeper and swam, coming back with her hair wet and her bikini almost transparent so I had to look away. But she came running up and flung herself against me, getting me wet too, laughing like a wild thing.
"You can look at me, Daddy, it's all right. I don't like to think of you getting embarrassed. Besides, you used to give me baths, remember?"
"That was a long time ago, Em." I tried to extricate myself but every time I thought I was making progress she slipped near again until eventually I gave up and let her cling against me. It wasn't too hard to get used to. Not too hard at all. And I guess it was around then I began to think those things a father should never think about his daughter.
"But I was nekkid then!" She laughed and hugged my waist, one leg curled around mine.
"And you didn't have..." I trailed off.
"Didn't have what, Daddy?" Her tone so innocent I had to laugh. "You mean these?" She put her hands under her breasts and lifted them, nipples almost popping free. "Oops," she said, and settled their small weight back inside the ridiculously tiny slip of material. "They're only titties. You've seen titties before, haven't you?"
"You didn't used to have those," I said.
"Shoot, I've had 'em for ages now. And really, I don't mind if you look. You're my Daddy after all. We're family and I love you."
Yes, I thought. We're family. That was the trouble.
I started along the beach, leaving Emmy standing there, then she gave a rebel yell and came running past me and on up the sand ahead, her breasts bouncing, her ass swaying and shimmying like wild creatures trapped in a sack. A very small sack.
Dinner at Harvey's was wonderful, as always. Emmy had slipped the linen dress over her head to cover the non-existent bikini and old man Harvey himself came out to chat, not believing she was the same little Emmy that used to play around our feet when her mother and I used to eat there not quite two decades before. After a while his son, young Harvey who was now almost fifty, came out the kitchen and joined us. I caught him slipping glances at Emmy and felt a jealousy rise within me, trying to tell myself is was no more than a father's protection of his daughter.
