Wynter and Jimmy Part One: Just Friends

One

Wynter stared out her bedroom window, her eyes not seeing the side yard, the trees, or the mountains beyond, not even the Fergusons' house next door. Her long blonde ponytail, draped over her left shoulder, was clutched lightly in her small, slender fist. Her other hand absently scratched the ears of Dragon, the ever-present black Labrador retriever who had stuck to her like a second skin since she had saved his life as a puppy. The voice of her friend Suzie Middleton, also eleven, was no more than distant bees humming a vague soprano note. She had planned to spend that mid-August Thursday with Jimmy McCauley, perhaps checking the status of the spiders about to hatch under Seven Dock at the lake, but Jimmy's mother had decided to visit Jimmy's maternal grandmother that day.

_Maternal grandmother_. That was a funny term, one that Jimmy had used when he called to say he would be out of town all day. Jimmy knew lots of strange and funny sounding terms. Of course, Wynter knew a bunch of them, too, having learned many of them when she was planning to be a nurse. Now she was going to be a doctor! "Wynter King, Future MD" was how she signed notes she sent to Jimmy, and to Doctor Taylor who had talked her into becoming a doctor, and to Nurse Carter, and to Kenny Taylor who was also going to be a doctor, just like his dad. And to her parents, of course.

But not to dumb old Aunt Diane or yucky Uncle Bob. She only wrote to them when she had to, just to be polite. Wynter tried to always be polite, even when Aunt Dumb and Uncle Bozo made it into such a burdensome chore for her. She tried ever so hard to be polite like her father, who was the nicest person she knew, and Jimmy and Doctor Taylor, who were also very polite people, so that she wouldn't reflect poorly on them.

Wynter also knew some other strange and funny sounding terms, ones she had learned while isolated in her first home up in the mountains early that spring. That was when her father was helpless in all those casts because of his accident and her mother was sent to Europe on business. Nurse Ellen Carter had been her father's in-house nurse. She had made an emergency trip to town to correct a prescription error. An avalanche had buried the road, and Nurse Carter couldn't return. Wynter had to become her father's nurse. One thing just led to another, and by the time Nurse Carter could return Wynter knew all about several different types of sexual activities.

Well, not _all_ about them. Her father said that if you were lucky you could always learn something new with the right partner. But she sure did know the basics of masturbation and oral sex and sexual intercourse. She even knew the two basic types of sexual intercourse: "Fucking" and "Making Love." She learned all kinds of new words about sexual activities those three days, both the technical terms and the funny terms grownups used among themselves. She learned so many strange words that the only way she could keep track of them all and be sure to use them properly was to put them in one of the many private notebooks she kept on her bookshelf. She had titled that notebook...

"'Sex Terminology'?"

Those words penetrated. Wynter gasped and spun about. Suzie was sitting a corner of the bed and turning the title page of that notebook.

"_Suzie!_"

Suzie didn't look up, but her green eyes grew really big when she started reading the terms and their definitions.

Wynter rushed to Suzie's side and held out her hand. "That's mine and it's personal! Give it back!"

Suzie giggled and pointed to a word. "'Cocksucking: See Blow Job.' That's not real, is it? I think Jason was kidding when he told me about it."

Wynter stamped a white-sneakered foot. "Suzie, gimme that back! _Now!_ That's personal!"

Suzie didn't look up. "Well, you don't get much more personal than 'Fucking,' do you?"

Wynter grabbed the notebook and tried to pull it away. "Suzie, give it to me now!" She was trying ever so hard not to cry, but she felt the quiver in her voice as she also felt Dragon brush against her leg. "_Suzie!_"

"Girls?"

The two froze and looked up at Angie King standing in the doorway rubbing her temples with a pained expression. She'd been lying down with one of her headaches and they were supposed to be quiet.

Wynter recovered first and jerked the notebook away from Suzie. She clutched it to her small breasts and wrapped her arms around it like a cocoon.

Suzie looked apologetic. "We're sorry we woke you, Mrs. King," she mumbled, pushing back a strand of her full, reddish-blonde, shoulder-length hair.

Wynter said nothing as a tear trickled down one cheek. When her mother's sleepy eyes focused on that and then dropped to the notebook they suddenly went very wide.

"Girls, what's going on?"

Wynter sniffed. Suzie found a speck of dirt on one of her own sneakers and brushed at it with her fingertips. "Nothing. We were just playing."

"What were you doing with one of Wynter's notebooks?"

Suzie flinched at the harsh tone. She'd never heard Mrs. King speak to her like that before. "I was just looking at it. She's always being so secretive with her silly old notebooks." Suzie smiled a really weird smile. "Now I know why! You'll never guess what that one's about!"

Wynter gasped.

"You're right about that, Suzie. I won't even try. It's Wynter's and it's personal. It's not my business or anybody else's except hers. _Anybody's_. Is that absolutely clear?"

Suzie's face had that look that Jimmy had called "contrite." "Yes, ma'am."

"Wynter doesn't pry into your personal things, does she?"

Suzie shrugged. "No, but I don't have any personal things that others can't see."

Wynter knew that was a fib.

"Well, if you did have, would you want her looking at them or handling them without your permission?"

Suzie sighed. "No, ma'am."

"If you can't respect her privacy, then you'll have to stay out of her room." She looked at her watch. "Wynter, your father will be home in about twenty minutes. Can you take care of lunch, please? I'm not up to it."

"Uh-huh." That was no chore for Wynter. She liked doing things for her father. She threw her arms about her mother and squeezed. "Thank you," she whispered.

Her mother squeezed in return, one hand making circles on Wynter's back. She made a happy humming noise, though Wynter didn't see how she could be happy with such a bad headache. "Tell Richard I need to speak to him when he gets back."

Wynter pulled back and looked at the pained expression twisting her mother's face. "Do you want me to bring you a tray?"

"No. But have Richard bring me some tomato juice when he comes up, would you please?"

Wynter put the notebook on its shelf. Jimmy had asked about her notebooks the day he had helped her unpack and put away her things in the new house. She had told him they were private, and he'd never mentioned them, or even seemed to notice them, again. Jimmy was always thoughtful like that.

Suzie sat quietly for a moment, as if waiting for Wynter's mother to get back to the master bedroom before looking up at Wynter and sighing. "I never saw her that bitchy before. I guess it's _that time_ again."

"The headache is bothering her. It's another bad one. She always gets one when she has to go out of town."

Suzie bounced off the bed. "Maybe they're all in her head."

"I asked Doctor Taylor if they were psych... if they were psy-cho-so-matic, but he said they were from strain." _Drat!_ she thought. She hated stumbling over words, especially medical terms.

Suzie gave her a weird look. "Duh! I was making a joke."

"It wasn't funny." She picked up an envelope marked "Daddy" from her desk. "Let's go make lunch."

Under the envelope was a piece of paper with "Jimmy" written on it several times in different styles, each with a little heart dotting the "I." Suzie frowned at it and then frowned even more at Wynter. She looked at the paper again, made a faint growling sound to herself, and huffed before stamping out the door after Wynter and Dragon.

~ ~ ~

Angie waved the wet washcloth to cool it, lay back on the bed in the darkened room, and placed the folded cloth over her eyes and forehead. She had been too sharp with Suzie, but she couldn't help herself. It wasn't the headache but the fact that Suzie had pried into one of Wynter's notebooks that had steamed her clams, as her father had always described it. The little bitch--well, that wasn't kind. But Suzie had been lucky that she hadn't been even more severe. Perhaps the headache had actually been a deterrent that had saved Suzie.

Angie had kept a diary when she was young. When she was fourteen her sixteen-year-old sister Diana had picked the lock and read it. Worse, Diane had blackmailed her with threats to tell people what she had read. _On second thought_, Angie decided, _Suzie was lucky that I wasn't armed_.

Suzie was also lucky that Dragon hadn't intervened first. Angie knew from his posture and his raised hackles that he was about to issue his first warning growl.

She sighed and tried to put the thoughts out of her mind because they were just making her headache worse. All of the thoughts but the one she was saving for Richard.

~ ~ ~

Suzie had to leave after lunch. Richard dropped her off at her house, and then he and Wynter continued on to McKeown's Hardware. By suppertime, all of Wynter's notebooks were still on their shelf, but they were behind a locked door, and Wynter had the only keys. The look on her face when he told her what he was going to do was reward enough, and the look she gave him when he sat on the corner of the bed and handed her the keys was doubly so. Still, she had jumped into his lap, thrown her slender arms about his neck, and crushed her lips to his in the best lover's kiss she'd ever given him, her little tongue writhing like a beheaded snake in his mouth. It left his gasping for air when she finished.

"I should have made those doors as soon as I was able," he said between gulps of air.

"Well, now you're going to have your best Friday night ever!" she announced and crushed her mouth to his again. They had arranged a schedule that gave him six nights sleeping with Angie and one night with Wynter. Friday night was Wynter's night.

He managed to push her back and take another breath. "Wynter, you forgot that this Friday is your mother's because she's leaving Saturday morning."

She sagged. "Yeah. I forgot." Then she brightened. "But that means I get you Saturday night through Tuesday. I'll make love to you until you can't walk!'

He gave her a stern look that made her giggle. "If I can't get up to walk, then I might pee in the bed," he warned her.

She shrugged. "I know where the urinal is."

Which was true. Richard had spent so much time recuperating from various injuries at home that one bedroom had become, in addition to Richard's home office, a recovery room with an adjustable hospital bed and a closet half-filled with medical equipment. Richard had a ruggedly handsome face, but his body, arms, and legs were a mess with scars on top of scars. Their mountain home had been a ranch, but their town home was a tri-level, and the bedrooms were all on the top floor. Wynter had said that having his recovery room on the top floor was an incentive to keep himself uninjured.

He shook his head. "Bedpan and urinal duty is for nurses. You're going to be a doctor now."

She shrugged and mimicked one of her mother's exasperated sighs. "I guess I'll just have to sacrifice for you." He wasn't sure which one started laughing first, but both were hugging each other and roaring in seconds.

Angie's voice cut through from the doorway. "There's entirely too much jocularity going on in this room." They turned so see her leaning against the door frame, her arms crossed under her small breasts and her face looking as if she'd been sucking lemons.

"Mother, look!" Wynter pointed to her shelves. "See what Daddy did?" She slid off his lap and took her mother's hand, pulling her into the room. "Suzie can't get into my notebooks now. Daddy did it just for me!"

He winced as Angie gave him _that_ look. "Well, that certainly was thoughtful of him, wasn't it," Angie said. She wrapped her arms around Wynter and lifted. Despite the onset of puberty Wynter was still reed-thin and was easy for her mother to lift. Except for her swell of her small breasts and the roundness of her buttocks, Wynter had the body of a pre-pubescent. Angie wasn't sure whether Wynter's hormones were beginning to shape her hips or if the slight flare was merely her pelvis unable to shrink as much as her skinny middle.

Richard cleared his throat. "Actually, honey, it was your mother's idea. I just built it the way she said that she wanted it."

Wynter's angelic face brightened even more and her blue-green eyes sparkled. "Then it's a present from _both_ of you! That's even _more_ special!" She hugged Angie tightly. "You thought of it and Daddy built it. Thank you! I love you both with all my heart!"

Richard grinned as he watched Angie lose the battle to keep the stern expression on her face. Wynter's infectious enthusiasm had that effect on everyone. Even Dragon looked happy as he swished his tail about from his seat on the floor. Richard was about to say something when Dragon suddenly rose to his feet, tilted his head, and raised his ears while lashing his tail in a blur.

"Jimmy's here," Richard said an instant before the doorbell rang.

Wynter again thanked them, excused herself, and flew out the door with her shadow in tow in what seemed only a half-second.

Angie shook her head at him. "What I would give to have that much energy again." She sat beside him and wrapped an arm about him, lifting the other to point at the new doors. "You didn't paint them."

"Nope. She's going to do that herself."

"Little Miss Perfection thinks you can't match the color exactly." It wasn't a question.

He grunted and nuzzled her neck. "She was very polite with the explanation she gave me, but I believe that you have a firm grasp on the actual reason. How's your head?"

"Better. I just wish I didn't have to go to Fort Worth."

"I know." He began kneading the base of her skull with a thumb and forefinger. "We miss you, too."

"You managed to get along quite nicely without me when I went to Geneva." It could have been the beginning of an argument, but the tone of her voice said it wasn't. "I came home to learn you'd found a source of relief and I had a sexually active daughter, and the two discoveries were related. I'm afraid of what I might come back to this time."

He sighed. "Angie...."

She squeezed his knee. "It's okay. I'm just having trouble adjusting sometimes. The change in Wynter herself is actually bothering me more than your relationship now."

He grunted understanding. "Now that she's around other kids all the time, she's acting more her age and less like a miniature adult," he said. "You'll have more time to adjust."

"That's just it. I was used to the miniature adult. I'll have just enough time to adjust to her being a normal eleven-year-old, and then I'll have to adjust to the switch back to miniature adult."

He worked his thumb over a tense spot in her neck, causing her to moan slightly. "Well, she's already taken an interest in boys." He thought he sounded disappointed when he said that.

"No," Angie corrected. "Just Jimmy. She doesn't spend much time around any others, except maybe Kenny Taylor. And I think that's because he's planning to be a doctor like his father. Her interest in Kenny is professional, not personal like it is with Jimmy."

Richard hesitated. "You, uh, don't think they're 'playing doctor' then?"

She turned her head to stare at him. "Not with Kenny. And not with Jimmy either. I wouldn't worry about that relationship until he starts bringing her flowers and candy. Then you can start worrying about sharing her the way I have to share you."

Richard felt sheepish. "I didn't mean it that way."

"Yes, you did." Both of them knew she was right. "Would you do that spot with your thumb again?" she asked, turning away again. "It was loosening up."

Wynter rushed back into the room, a huge smile on her face and her blue-green eyes shimmering. "Jimmy couldn't stay, but look what he brought back for me!"

She thrust out her small hands to show them a bouquet of columbines and a bar of Cadbury's milk chocolate.

Two

Suzie Middleton rushed about like a small blonde tornado, picking up dirty clothes and dropped toys and CD cases, straightening things--more or less--as she went. Several shorts and tops were turned into dust rags. It was quicker than going back later with the duster, and she was a girl with no time to spare. She didn't like cleaning her stupid room, not one bit, but she'd volunteered to do it today, a Friday, rather than wait until tomorrow when Wynter would go with her dad to take Mrs. King to the airport. If she cleaned her room today, and if she could get to Jimmy before Wynter asked him to go to Denver with them, she'd have him all to herself tomorrow.

CDs went back into the storage rack without regard to orientation. You could just forget about that stupid alphabetical order by type of music, the way Wynter stored hers. Dirty clothes were soccer-kicked to the hamper, to be picked up in one big bundle and crammed inside. Stuff on top of the dresser and chest was raked into open drawers which were then pushed shut. Suzie knew exactly how much she could get away with and did no more than was necessary to pass her mother's inspection. Some of the larger stuff she kicked into the closet and shut the door, praying that this was one of the times her mother wouldn't open the closet door.

It wasn't.

She wanted to scream as she lost more valuable time putting stupid stuff away that would just be scattered about again over the course of the next week. At least she hadn't had to listen to another stupid, "Why can you be more organized like Wynter?" speech, though.

_Wynter!_ She moved faster. Jimmy had spent almost all of the week with Wynter instead of with her. It wasn't fair. She'd found Jimmy first, and he'd been spending a lot of time with her until Wynter moved to town. What's worse, Wynter lived barely a block from him on Seabridge Trail while she was five whole blocks south. And worse, you also had to go all the way over to Ninth Street because of the way they had laid out Wynter's stupid subdivision on the other side of the stupid creek and those stupid hills! It wasn't fair!

She wondered if Jimmy ever got to look in Wynter's stupid notebooks. She wondered where Wynter learned all the stuff in that "Sex Terminology" notebook. Probably on the internet. She'd bet that Wynter didn't have all that stupid parental control junk on her computer, and that's where she found all that stuff in her stupid "Sex Terminology" book. At first she thought Wynter had made up some of it, but Wynter would have named it "Fictional Sex Terminology" or some similar stupid title if she had. Wynter was like that. Besides, Kenny Taylor had already confirmed some of the things she'd seen, based on what he'd read in his dad's medical books and magazines and stuff.

What if Jimmy got to look in that "Sex Terminology" notebook? What if he sat on her bed, next to Wynter, and they went over all that stupid Sex Terminology stuff together? He'd probably get all turned on the way Kenny did when she asked him about some of those terms she'd read in the few stupid seconds she'd had before Mrs. King interrupted them. Kenny had squirmed around and tried to hide that stupid bulge in his shorts while answering her questions, and at the same time he had tried to sneak a look down her blouse at her boobies.

What if Jimmy had gotten turned on talking about them, too? What if he'd tried to look at Wynter's stupid boobies? Wynter didn't always wear a training bra. What she hadn't worn one of the stupid things and Jimmy had gotten a look at her stupid boobies? It wasn't fair!

Of course, Wynter's boobies weren't as big as her own. Okay, her own boobies weren't much themselves--though they were a little bigger than those of her older sister, Caroline the town slut-- and she didn't _need_ a training bra either, and she did have that stupid birthmark on the inside of her right one. But they were a _little_ bit bigger than Wynter's. Everybody knows that men like bigger boobies better than smaller ones. And Jimmy would be with Wynter before she could finish cleaning her stupid room, and Wynter would be letting Jimmy look at her stupid boobies just so Little Miss Future MD could take Jimmy away from her. It wasn't _fair!_

And today of all days her stupid mother had to look in the stupid closet and make her pick up that stupid stuff lying in the stupid floor! By the time she was finished with her stupid cleaning that stupid Wynter was going to be doing some stupid stuff with _her man_ and she was going to be left _out_ of it _again! It wasn't_....

She was done? Already?

"_MOOOOM!_"

~ ~ ~

Angie put the make-up bag in the corner of her suitcase and answered the phone.

"_Hello, Mrs. King. I hope your headache is better._"

Angie wasn't surprised to hear Suzie's voice. "Hi, Suzie. It's better today. How are you doing?"

"_Very well, thank you. I hope you enjoy your trip to Fort Worth and don't work too hard._"

"Well, thank you. I'm sure I'll enjoy it knowing that you'll be here helping Richard watch out for Wynter for me." She couldn't help grinning. If Suzie hadn't asked about Wynter, that meant only one thing.

"_Is, um, Jimmy there?_"

Bingo! "No, he and Wynter went to the lake." She knew she shouldn't make Suzie ask, but she was still pissed about the incident with Wynter's notebook.

There was a pause. Then, "_They went to Barber Beach?_"

"No, Wynter didn't take her swimsuit. I think they went to the public docks."

_Click_.

Angie shook her head and hung up the phone. She'd give up her travel bonus to be here and watch this drama unfold. Before she could turn back to packing it rang again. _Suzie calling back to apologize for hanging up abruptly?_ She looked at the caller ID as she reached for the handset. Her smile faded as she brought the handset to her ear.

"Hello, Sis. What's up?"

~ ~ ~

Harbor Club Road ran eastward from Cheyenne Road to the Harbor Club and its Members Only docks. At the midway point Rainbow Drive ran south to the public docks. Legally they were the Carlton Docks, named after former Mayor Carlton, but nobody under the age of sixty called them anything but the public docks. Five years ago another large section was built and the people stopped using Seven Dock, the oldest surviving pier, but Seven Dock was left standing. It was falling into disrepair but still serviceable and was thus open. At the far end of the wooden dock Wynter and Jimmy lay on their stomachs, quietly peering over the edge as a water skimmer moved across the gently rolling surface of the water.

"Here he comes again," Jimmy whispered.

Wynter watched the shiny shape gliding slowly upward in the sunlight. Then, with a snap of its tail, it lunged forward and the water skimmer disappeared from the surface in a splash that rained droplets on the two observers.

Wynter laughed in delight as the fish dove to await another passing snack. Jimmy had told her how the bug had stayed atop the water by not breaking through the film caused by the surface tension. She already knew that, but the funny stories Jimmy used to explain things to her were so neat that she held her tongue and listened to him talk.

She was about to say something when she felt the vibration of footsteps. Jimmy felt it too, and they both looked over their shoulders to see who it was.

~ ~ ~

Suzie huffed when she saw the two of them lying together on the dock. Jimmy was probably talking to Wynter about those stupid fish. The boy was cute, and that was a fact, but he had the weirdest interests! Why couldn't he be interested in sports like other boys? Why couldn't he be interested in _her?_

They both looked back at her clomping down the gray planks of the dock. "Suzie, come here!" Jimmy said with that weirdly excited tone he used when something weird was going on.

"Walk softly, Suzie," Wynter said. "The trout is eating water bugs."

Wow, she certainly didn't want to miss that. That was right up there on the excitement scale with watching the sea gulls take a dump.

Wynter, who was lying in the middle of the dock, indicated the space to her left with a jerk of her head. "Lie down here and watch!"

_Oh, sure. Let Wynter have the middle and be next to Jimmy? I don't think so!_ She squatted beside Jimmy's right side and shifted slightly, aiming the line of her inner thigh toward the center of his head. She was wearing the most baggy-legged shorts she had and hoped they were loose enough. Only Jimmy wasn't looking back now, he was looking into the stupid _water_ again! "How come you aren't over at the beach swimming?" Barber Beach was a quarter of a mile to the southeast across the water, though for all Suzie knew it could have been five miles.

Jimmy lifted his head and tilted it back over his shoulder, looking at her upside down. From that position he couldn't even see her leg, much less the frills of her panties around her leg. The panties were the least favorite item in the wardrobe she had carefully chosen when she had learned where he was, but everybody knew men couldn't resist women when he saw they were wearing frilly panties. Somebody had said, "All's fair in love and war," and this was both for Suzie Middleton.

"We came here to watch Spinderella. Today's the day...."

"Who's Spinderella?"

Wynter waggled a finger over the edge of the dock as Jimmy lowered his head to look below the edge. "She is. Her babies should leave the web today, and we came to see where they go."

Suzie frowned, trying to think of a way to get Jimmy to look up her shorts leg. "Babies? Web? What do.... _A SPIDER?_" She shrieked and tried to stand up, stepped back into empty air, and tumbled backward into the water.

Out of habit she took a deep breath before her head went under. She hadn't intended to do Plan B until Plan A had been given time to work, but here she was. She might as well make the best of it. Her head broke the surface and she saw Wynter and Jimmy gaping down at her, eyes wide, mouths open, and... _hands on each other's forearms?_ She fought down the rush of anger and cried, "Jimmy! Help me! I got a leg cramp!"

Jimmy released Wynter, ripped his navy blue tee shirt off, and plunged in feet first beside her. Suzie wished she could think of a way to get him to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but she couldn't. Besides the _Future MD_ would probably insist on doing it herself. She threw her arms around his neck, being careful to leave him room to swim, and first crushed, then rubbed, her boobies in their thin white blouse against his bare chest.

"Relax," he said. "I got you. I'm gonna side-stroke us to the shore."

The cold water had made her nipples as hard as little pink peas. Couldn't this dolt even feel them? She wiggled and rubbed them harder against his chest. "I can kick with my other leg and help." If she did it just right, she could slow them down and keep them together a little bit longer.

~ ~ ~

Wynter got mad at herself. Very mad. She was a Future MD. Doctors don't panic when something goes wrong, they force themselves to stay calm and think. _She_ had to think! _Take a deep breath! Think, drat it!_

She did, and her thoughts surprised her. _Why is Suzie having trouble? She's the Captain of the swim team and has had leg cramps before. And how could she suddenly have a leg cramp? Well, she'd been squatting at a really weird angle--one that could have let Jimmy see her underpants in those big shorts!--and then she stood up really quick. That plus the shock of the cold water could have triggered the cramp, I guess._

She decided to follow them to shore rather than race on ahead. If Jimmy needed help with Suzie, she'd be right there, though she wasn't a very good swimmer. She picked up his shirt and clenched it to her chest with her arms. The dark cloth, warmed by the sun, felt good, felt comforting to her. Suzie moved away from Jimmy for a second and she thought.... _No, I'm just excited and seeing things. I need to stay calm and think._

Near the waterline the ground rose up so that Jimmy could stand. He moved behind Suzie, slipped his arms under hers and across her chest. He grasped his elbows with his fingers and pulled her up onto the shore. She seemed to be using both feet for a moment, then suddenly moaned and said something about her leg. He eased her down into a sitting position and stepped away. She lay back as Wynter jumped the short distance from the top of the dock to the sandy soil. When Wynter looked at Jimmy, he was staring at Suzie's blouse.

No, not at the blouse, which had become almost transparent where the wet white cloth touched her body, showing off the darker circles of Suzie's nipples and the blotch of her birthmark. Suzie had forgotten to wear a bra! She'd be really embarrassed when she realized Jimmy was looking at her breasts--her _tits_, as grownups would call them.

"Here, Suzie," she said, flipping Jimmy's tee shirt out to cover her dear friend's accidental near-nakedness. Then she realized Suzie could still be embarrassed and said, "This will help keep you warm," hoping that would distract her from her embarrassing mistake. But Suzie's face was turning red. Suzie had already realized what had happened. Wynter really and truly felt sorry for her friend. She knew what it was like to be embarrassed and was sorry she hadn't been quick enough to help Suzie avoid it.

~ ~ ~

If ever there had been a time that it was appropriate to scream, "_Fuck!_" this was it. And Suzie would have, but she wasn't sure how Jimmy would react. She knew most men would get turned on by hearing a girl say that word, but Jimmy was such a weirdo that she decided not to risk it until she'd had some time to retrain him properly.

Jimmy was finally paying attention to her boobies when Wynter had to go put that stupid shirt over her chest and hide them!

_No! He wasn't looking at my boobies, he was just looking at one. The right one. He was looking at that stupid birthmark!_ She felt her face redden as her anger flared, then forced herself to stay calm. _Plan C._ "Jimmy, would you rub my leg? The cramp hurts."

"I can do it!" Wynter said. "I rub Daddy's cramps all the time."

"_Jimmy can do it!_" she snapped.

Jimmy shrugged. "I don't know how," he said. "Wynter can show me."

That turned Wynter's smile up a few degrees. "Okay!"

Suzie gritted her teeth and forced out one word: "_Fine!_" Then she remembered she was supposed to be in pain and tried to look hurt instead of really, really _pissed off_. She wondered what Jimmy would say if she used THAT word, but decided not to risk it, either. Maybe when they were alone, but not here with... _her_.

"Which leg is it?" he asked.

He was standing by her left leg. She tried to look big-eyed and really and truly helpless. "That one."

Wynter's face scrunched up. "I thought it was your right one."

"_It was! Now it's the other one!_"

"Oh. Well, I'll show Jimmy how on this one and he can follow on the other." As she knelt, she kept talking. "Nurse Carter said that massage can help a sore muscle even after the pain has abated."

"_Will you get on with it?_"

"Sure. Now, Jimmy...."

Suzie had been glaring at the clouds. She looked down when Wynter stopped talking and saw the girl looking up and down the left leg. Wynter looked at her face, and she remembered to look like she was in pain. "Where's the cramp?" Wynter asked.

She'd forgotten about that. "The calf. Hurry, Jimmy. It hurts something awful." If she could just get Jimmy's hands on her leg, she could maneuver him from there. And if he thought she was in pain, he might stop the little witch's talking and start himself _doing_.

"Like this, Jimmy," Wynter said as she took Suzie's right calf in her hands. But Suzie saw that Wynter's eyes were on her left calf, with some kind of stupid, confused look on her face. Then Wynter said "Huh!" and shook her head once before looking at Jimmy's face. "Put your hands this way, so your fingers are here. That's it. Now, you want to rub deep enough to make the muscle relax but not so hard that you make the pain worse. Keep your hands on her leg and squeeze down with just your fingertips...."

Suzie glared at the clouds again and thought that "F" word in a loud, screaming thought.

_Wait a minute_, she said to herself. _I wanted him to rub my leg, and now he is. Okay, so he's listening to... _her_... but he's rubbing my leg. He has to notice. I wonder if his thingy is getting stiff yet. Probably not because he's still listening to _her_. But she'll run out of words soon, and then he'll just have my leg to think about. Should I have him lift my leg to see the ruffles on my panties? No. Wynter would probably just put _her_ shirt over my leg and let Jimmy see her in that stupid bra. Men like looking at bras just as much as they like looking at bare boobies, though _she_ probably doesn't know that. Unless Kenny told her, that little....

I know! I'll tell him that the cramp is moving up to my... my... rotator muscle or hamstring? The hamstring would make him lift the leg and see the ruffles. But the rotator! I can work his hands right up to the ruffles. Kenny and Caroline say men really get turned on when they touch the inside of girls' thighs. I'll bet that if... _she..._ weren't here, I could have him trying to cop an "accidental" feel of my cunny before he was done. Oh, _damn!_ Instead of those stupid ruffles I should have worn those white ones with the pink flowers and the busted leg elastic. He could see some hair if I was wearing those. I bet if he saw some hair he'd get a stiffy that would poke his eye out._ She couldn't stop herself from giggling at the image.

"Did I hurt you?"

She lifted her head to look at him. The dolt had thought the giggle was pain.

"No. I, uh, I just...."

Wynter had to butt in, of course. "It sounded like you were laughing."

"_It tickled, okay?_"

She nodded and smiled! The stupid little witch didn't even know when she was being insulted and was... she was _being patient_ with Suzie like she was dealing with someone demented!

Wynter kept rubbing Suzie's calf--gently now, and it did feel really good, the way it felt with Jimmy rubbing the other one--and said, "When I said to rub easier, I didn't mean to rub so lightly you tickle the muscle. That can cause her to tense it and trigger another spasm. If you want to, I can let you practice on me later."

"_He's doing just fine!_" She forced herself to be calmer when she saw him react to her voice. "But, Jimmy, the rotator muscle is trying to spasm. Can you rub it a bit?"

She couldn't believe it! The dolt asked _Wynter_ where to rub! And she was _holding his hand now!_ But Wynter just moved his fingertips to the inside of his thigh and pressed them down. _Say, that feels pretty good!_

She'd had leg cramps rubbed out before, but she'd forgotten how good it felt to have her muscles massaged, even if Wynter was one of the.... What the heck was that stupid word? _"Massagers,"_ she finally decided. It felt even better to have Jimmy's hands on the insides of her thigh. She should talk him into staying with her tomorrow and let him massage her thighs some more. Once he had fallen in love with her and would do anything she asked, she'd have him massage her legs every day.

_Why stop with just my legs?_ she decided.

"That feels lots better, Jimmy, but could you rub a little higher, please?"

He moved his fingers up half a hand-width and she felt as if an icy electric shock had passed through her body. She started fantasizing what could happen if Little Miss Future MD wasn't around to interrupt her session with Lover Boy, pausing her fantasy occasionally to ask, "A little higher please?"

She finally realized he had pushed up the wide leg of the cotton shorts and couldn't help but see the ruffles. She opened her eyes and looked at him.

He had his head back and his eyes closed! He wasn't looking! "A little higher please?"

She half-expected Wynter to stop him, but instead it was Jimmy who said, "I don't think I should go any higher, Suzie. You should let your mom or Caroline take over. Or Wynter! She's a girl, and she's going to be a doctor."

The flash of anger passed almost immediately. She'd been lucky to get him this far with Miss Smarty Pants there. She should just count her blessings and wait until it was just the two of them. And Jimmy would have time to think about fondling her leg after he was away from... _her_. She could just picture Jimmy lying in his bed tonight, playing with his stiffy and thinking of her and the feel of her leg. He'd probably have a _wet dream_, too.

"That's okay," she said. "It feels better now. Would you help me up?" As he stood she realized just how good her legs did feel. When they were married she'd have him massage her every night before she'd let him do it to her. That last thought broke the reverie. She's almost forgotten to look! _Oh, shoot!_ she thought. _Now I can't tell if he has a stiffy or not._

Three

Dragon lay in the grass just off the sidewalk, his nose pressed into the gap in the pickets of the gate. He inhaled deeply and released it in what Jimmy would call in humans "a frumpy sigh." His eyes flicked left, right, straight ahead. He lifted a forepaw and tilted his head to wipe a bug from his ear. Instead his ears perked and his head rose, then the forepart of his body, looking as if he had been lifted to that position by his ears. With his ears still perked he rotated his head slightly into what Wynter called his "curious pose." In an instant he was on his feet, his tail a blur as he looked toward the east and the sound of Wynter's bicycle.

He spun in circles, lashed his tail, and whimpered as his human leaned the bicycle against the fence and opened the gate from the driveway. He tried to lick her face with doggie kisses as she hugged his neck and said, "C'mon! We gotta see Mother and Daddy!"

Wynter and Dragon found them snuggling on the family room couch and watching "Casablanca." She thought it was weird that people would watch movies in black and white when they didn't have to any more, but she could ask about that later.

"Mother! Daddy! Guess what happened down at the docks!" She was still gasping from the hard ride.

Mother gave Daddy some kind of weird look that Wynter didn't understand, but apparently Daddy sure did, and reached for the DVD remote. "Suzie came to see you," she said, pausing the movie.

"Yeah!" Then she did her own version of Dragon's curious pose. "How did you know?"

"She called here looking for Jimmy."

"Oh. Yeah! But when we told her about the spider, she jumped up and lost her balance and fell into the water and got a leg cramp and Jimmy had to rub it out!"

This time both Mother and Daddy gave each other that weird look.

"Ummmm...." Wynter looked at the way that her parents were holding each other. Against her will her voice grew faint and hesitant. "Am I interrupting something?" _Drat!_ she thought, and felt red creeping into her face. _They were about to make love or something and I made them stop._

Each held the free arm out to her. "Not at all, honey," her father said. "Your mother just needs a shoulder to cry on when she watches a mushy movie. She--_OUCH!_"

Wynter giggled at the way her mother had pulled her arm back, punched her father's ribs, and then flipped it back out in an invitation to her, all in one smooth move. She stepped into the group hug and wasn't sure which felt better: that type of group hug or the way Dragon got all excited about seeing her upon her return from somewhere without him. She decided they were equally good; just different expressions of love for her was all. Both made her heart feel too big for her chest as a warm, tingly feeling rushed through her body.

"Sweetheart, you're never an interruption for us," Mother said as she kissed the top of Wynter's head. "And we were just watching the movie, anyway. We can watch it any time."

"'We'll always have Paris,'" her father said in a funny voice that sounded sort of like one of the actors in the movie.

Wynter was confused. "Paris?" She drew back to look at her mother. "You're going to Europe again?"

Daddy laughed. "No, honey, that was a line from the movie."

Mother gave her a weird smile and nodded toward Daddy. "Your father was being a smarty pants again."

Wynter giggled.

"So let me guess," her father said as his hand rubbed one warm circle on her slender lower back and her mother's hand rubbed another above it. "Suzie's leg cramp was bad enough that she needed Jimmy's help to get home, but then it was cured?"

"No," her mother said before Wynter could reply. "Jimmy isn't with her. I'll bet he had to stay with her--in case the cramp came back."

"We both rode beside her in case it came back, so she wouldn't fall over. When we got to Ninth she said Jimmy could help her the rest of the way and that I should come on home and wait by the phone in case she needs me and calls."

"That's original," her father said.

Before she could ask for an explanation of what that meant her mother asked, "What else happened?"

Wynter's face echoed the sadness in her voice. "Oh, it was _really_ embarrassing for Suzie. She was wearing a white blouse without a bra, and the water turned it transparent. I had Jimmy's tee shirt...."

Her father's hand stopped moving. "What were you doing with his tee shirt?"

"He took it off when he jumped in to save her," she replied and noticed that her mother had given him a _really_ sharp look. "I put it over her, but she got kinda red-faced. I think she knows he saw her breasts through the shirt because I wasn't fast enough to cover her up. I tried to keep her from being embarrassed, but I wasn't good enough." She snapped her head around to look at her mother's grinning face. "Why are you laughing? It wasn't funny for Suzie."

"No," her mother agreed, forcing herself to stop, "I'm sure Suzie wasn't laughing."

Her father made that funny noise that happened when he gave up on holding in a laugh and let it out. "I'm sure it was anything but funny for her," he said before breaking up in a howl of hysterics.

That started Mother going again, and Wynter suddenly felt like a child showing her ignorance to the adults. "What?" She grimaced when she realized she had whined the word. Dragon noticed it and pressed his cold nose into the back of her thigh, causing her to jump.

Instead of answering, Daddy gasped, "Was that Suzie's only embarrassing moment?"

Wynter looked back and forth between the expectant faces. "Well, yeah. I mean, Jimmy didn't notice the other thing. Before she fell off the dock. She was squatting down in those baggy shorts, and you could see her underpants."

"No, don't tell me, let me guess," Mother interrupted. "They were frilly?"

_How did she know that?_ "Well, yes."

Her parents started laughing again. Her father gasped, "Of course they were. And Jimmy didn't notice!"

"_What?_" She couldn't stop the whine, nor could she stop the tear that trickled down her left cheek. That stopped her parents' laughter like throwing a switch.

Daddy got a worried look on his face. "Oh, honey, we're sorry. But we weren't laughing at you." He wiped the tear away with his thumb and returned his hand to her lower back.

"No, sweetheart, we weren't. Your father and I have been waiting for something like this and wondering how she was going to do it. We hadn't said anything because we wanted to let it work itself out. Here." She released Daddy and scooted to the side. "Sit down and we'll tell you what's going on."

Slender as she was, Wynter still had to squeeze into the space between them, but that wasn't a bother. The tight spot was just a sit-down hug that got even better when Dragon put his head down on her knees. She knew that all three loved her with all their hearts, just as she loved them. But just like real Doctors, Future MDs had to take care of business before enjoying personal issues. "What?" she asked a third time, but without any whine.

"Well," her mother began, "before we moved in here Ellen told me that Suzie had her eyes on Jimmy. She had staked him out as her property. Then we moved in and Jimmy took an interest in you. Suzie's trying to get his attention back to her."

Wynter was shocked and ashamed of herself. "You mean I broke them up by mon... by mon-op-o-li-zing his time?" _Drat!_

"Of course not, sweetheart!"

"Well, maybe in Suzie's mind," her father added, "but..."

"_OH NO!_" How could she have been so dumb! "I asked Jimmy to go with us to take Mother to the airport! I'll have to tell him to stay here and be with Suzie."

"Unh-uh," Mother grunted, shaking her head.

"No, ma'am," her father said. "You invited him along and he accepted of his own free will, didn't he?"

"I thought maybe we could go to the museum or zoo or something."

Mother laughed. "For Jimmy that might be construed as coercion."

"No! I didn't say anything to him about that! I wanted to ask Daddy first."

"I was kidding, sweetheart. But your father's point is that you asked and he accepted. You can't take back the invitation without a good reason. It's not polite."

"But Suzie...."

"...had her chance to ask first. She didn't. She decided to play games and trick him."

"_Trick_ him?"

"Yep," Daddy said. "The frilly panties."

Mother nodded. "'Everybody' knows men can't resist a woman in frilly underpants."

"They can't?" Daddy hadn't told her about that.

"No," Daddy said. "I mean, no, we can. Well, most of us can. It's one of those things that 'everybody' knows that isn't true."

Wynter understood that. "Like rubbing snow on frostbite."

"Uh, yeah. Exactly. And when that didn't work, she fell in the water. Maybe that was an accident the way you described it, but the thin, white blouse that turns transparent when wet and the lack of a bra? I'd say she was planning on doing something similar if the panties didn't work."

Wynter frowned in thought for a moment. "Like when you told me you were a 'tit man' and liked to look at women's breasts. Suzie thought maybe Jimmy was, too?"

"Uh, yeah." Mother looked at him, and he smiled back at her, looking like an old sheep.

The lights came on. "Suzie didn't really have a cramp?"

He shook his head. "I doubt it. It's possible, but not likely."

"Sweetheart, you're a Future MD. Did anything seem odd about the cramp?"

"Well... no. Except that it went away by itself when the other leg started to cramp." She thought about that for a moment. "Oh."

"Now you're catching on."

"She's using sex to get Jimmy's attention?"

Her father nodded. "Looks like it."

Mother added, "She probably learned from Caroline that it's the one sure way to get a man's attention."

Wynter wasn't sure about that. Mother's pronouncements about "men" sometimes were as wrong as Suzie's were. She made a mental note to ask her father about it when they were alone. However, she had heard Suzie's sister called "the town slut" and had to ask her father what that meant so she could put it in her "Sex Terminology" notebook. And Caroline did have a lot of boyfriends. But, "I don't think that would work on Jimmy. He's not interested in sex."

"He's not?" her father asked.

_That's weird_, she thought. _He sounded just like that when Doctor Taylor said he wouldn't have to wear a leg cast any longer_. "No. Except from a scientific point. He's kinda thinking about becoming a biologist if he doesn't become a physicist or chemist. He's never said anything about girls."

She had an idea. "Can I ask Suzie to go with us so she can spend time with Jimmy?"

Mother raised an eyebrow. "Suzie?"

Daddy chuckled. "Honey, you know Suzie. Do you think she'd have any interest in either the museum or the zoo?"

She hadn't thought of that. "No. Elitch Gardens? She'd like the merry-go-round and the Ferris wheel!"

"Yes, but what else? Can you really picture her on the parachute drop or even a roller coaster?"

"I guess not. Well...."

He shook his head. "Honey, you asked and Jimmy accepted. Suzie's free to ask him to do things, too, and he's free to ask her if he wants to. You each have to work out your own social calendars."

"Time management?"

Wynter and Mother both giggled at the look on Daddy's face. "Are you sure you're only eleven?" he asked. He cupped a hand over her right tit and squeezed. "These are about the right size for an eleven-year-old." Then he squeezed Mother's. "Of course, so are these. _OUCH!_"

He shook his hand to remove the sting where Mother had slapped it.

"Wynter, somebody is being a smarty pants again," she said. "But he's right for a change. When you start dating, time management becomes a necessary skill."

"But we aren't dating."

Wynter was growing tired of watching them exchange _that_ look. "We _aren't!_ We just hang out together. We're _just friends!_"

"Well, _when_ you each start dating, you can think of this as practice. Okay?"

She felt warm and tingly all over when Mother kissed her forehead. "Okay, I guess. Does this mean Suzie won't call me and I can take Dragon to the park?"

Her father also kissed her forehead, making her heart feel too big for her body again. "I think that's a pretty safe bet. But if she does call, I'll come get you. Okay?"

Wynter bounced to her feet. "Okay. You two can get back to your movie, then. And whatever else you were doing." She kissed them goodbye and bounced up the steps to the hall, her four-legged shadow in tow.

~ ~ ~

As the front door closed Angie reached for the remote control but snuggled against Richard before continuing the movie. "Were we doing 'whatever else'?"

Richard gave her a smirk and a kiss, running his tongue briefly across hers. He reached for a breast and had his hand slapped again.

"They're the right size for an eleven-year-old, remember?"

"That's okay," he said, cupping his hand around it. "I like eleven-year-old tits."

Her acid retort was cut off when he crushed his mouth to hers and tried to block her vocal cords with his tongue. _At least it's only Wynter's he plays with and not Suzie's or any other eleven-year-old's. Or a sixteen-year-old's like Caroline's._

It was so typical of a man to resent having to share Wynter with Jimmy and not caring about sharing himself between his daughter and his wife. But, she had to admit, she also was grateful that Jimmy was keeping his little pecker out of her daughter and, if Wynter was to be believed, that Jimmy had no interest in sex at the moment. Not that she thought Wynter would lie to her. No, but Wynter was still naive enough to not understand what was actually happening. Like with Kenny Taylor, who she'd seen trying to sneak peeks down Wynter's blouse a couple of times. She might not have to worry about Jimmy yet, but she had to keep an eye on Kenny.

Her thoughts were pulled back to the moment when Richard's hand slid under her shorts leg and his fingers fumbled their way into her panties. "Are we going upstairs now?" she mumbled around his tongue.

He pulled back and grinned at her. "Nope. We haven't christened this couch in a long time."

"Mmmm," she purred. "But what if Wynter returns?"

"Maybe she was too subtle for you," he replied as a fingertip found her clitoris, "but she was telling us that she wouldn't be back and that we had time to screw without Dragon or anyone else to interrupt."

She gasped as his light stroke ignited the smoldering coals in the furnace of her crotch. "God, I hope Suzie doesn't call."

He pushed her sideways until she was lying down and began removing her shorts. "She won't. You can bet money on that."

She jumped as, a foot from her ear, the phone rang. "Fuuuuck," she groaned and reached overhead for it. "Hello?"

She lifted her butt to assist Richard as she listened to the reply. "For piss sake, Sis, this isn't a good time to talk."

As usual Diane was oblivious to everything but what she considered important. Angie had to use the mute button twice when Richard tongued her to orgasm. She was nearing a third one when Diane finally had to go.

Richard hung up the phone for her while she tore open his shorts and seized his throbbing erection. "Well?" he asked.

"Fuck me," she said. It was both a command and the answer to his question.

Four

The white fabric roof of Denver International Airport was designed to look like snow-capped mountains thrusting into the air and was visible from miles away over the open plains. The first glimpse of it made Wynter's heart as heavy as one of Aunt Diane's yucky cakes. Sure, she would enjoy extra nights with her father, but she didn't want to give up having Mother around just to get them. Mother said the occasional out-of-town trips were the price she had to pay for being able to telecommute three and sometimes four days a week.

Jimmy, who was sitting to her left, behind her father, seemed to notice the sadness in her heart and stopped talking, as if he didn't want to intrude on her thoughts of her mother. He was always considerate that way, doing the right thing as naturally and as unspectacularly as he breathed. In fact, she might never have noticed it if her father hadn't said something to her about it. She guessed Daddy noticed it because he was that way himself most of the time. But Jimmy seemed to be like that all the time.

When Daddy took the left turn to the United Airlines side of the terminal she felt like she might start crying, and that wasn't the grownup thing to do. She sniffed and suddenly felt a warmth on her left forearm. She looked down at Jimmy's hand and followed his arm back to see him softly smiling at her. He squeezed her forearm for a moment and gave her a gentle, understanding smile and a nod, and then his hand was gone. She understood his message: _It's okay. You can cry if you need to_. She decided she wasn't going to cry, as much for Jimmy's benefit as for her mother's. She didn't want Mother's last memory of her for the next few days to be that of a crying child.

At the passenger drop-off Wynter thought she might have whimpered for just an instant when she said, "I'll miss you."

Mother gave her a big squeeze. "I'll miss you, too, sweetheart. But I'm happy to know that you'll be here taking care of your father for me. If you weren't, he'd probably set himself on fire trying to cook supper tonight."

Jimmy laughed while Daddy just shook his head and looked like an old sheep, knowing that she was right. That helped chase her sadness away. Mother and Jimmy said their farewells. Wynter watched her parents kiss goodbye, and they waited until the skycap had taken her mother's luggage through the door.

"Okay," her father said as he turned to her. "Next stop: the Museum of Nature and Science. Who wants to sit up front?"

"Um," Wynter said, "I, uh, I already have my seat belt adjusted. But Jimmy can sit up front. If he wants to."

Jimmy looked startled for some reason. "Uh, mine's adjusted, too. I'll... I'll just stay back here. It's not that far. It's, uh, just a few miles. To the museum."

Daddy sure had a weird grin on his face when he went around to the driver's door.

~ ~ ~

Wynter stared up at the huge allosaurus skeleton poised to pounce on her as she entered the museum. She knew that as a Future MD she should be able to see muscles and organs and skin around the bones, but she was having trouble doing that and said so. Allosauruses just didn't look much like people, even if they did stand on their hind legs.

"It's easy," said Jimmy, and in a few short sentences he had her seeing the creature as it must have looked when it was alive. It was even scarier than the skeleton, but she knew she was safe because she had Jimmy and her father to protect her. Even Daddy was impressed with what Jimmy had made him see.

Daddy was buying the tickets before she realized she'd put Jimmy before her father in her thoughts. She couldn't have been more surprised--unless she'd put yucky Uncle Bob first, of course.

They were disappointed that the planetarium renovation wouldn't be completed for almost another year, but they did have tickets for _two_ of the shows in the Imax theater. They had time for the gems and minerals exhibit before the first show started. Jimmy didn't know much about those, but her father was a geological engineer. She was amazed at all the questions Jimmy had and how he recalled her father's answers later when he asked other questions. Daddy sure did look impressed as well.

When she looked into the room that was built like part of a cave and filled with gypsum crystals growing everywhere, she couldn't believe anything so beautiful would be hidden under the ground where people couldn't see it. Even more amazing was the six-foot wall of rhodochrosite crystals from the Sweet Home Mine. Daddy said he'd been in that mine before and told them about it and the rhodochrosite. There was one huge crystal on display that reminded her of a ruby shoebox. When she mentioned that, Jimmy explained the difference between the color of rubies and rhodochrosite. As he did that Daddy looked like she felt when her heart was too big for her chest.

Between the Imax shows they ate at the T-Rex Cafe and then went through the Prehistoric Journey exhibit, where Jimmy again brought long-dead creatures to life for her. After the second Imax show, where Wynter was still awed by the six-story-tall screen and the way images seemed to pull her inside them, they toured the Egyptian mummies. Both Wynter and Jimmy were disappointed that the exhibit didn't have any dissected mummies they could examine. Jimmy proved to know as much about mummification as he did about the extinct dinosaurs and mammals in Prehistoric Journey. When he explained it he reminded Wynter of Doctor Taylor explaining surgical procedures to her. She guessed that, in a way, they were surgical procedures.

They talked Richard into going through the North American Wildlife exhibit before leaving for home, though they had to move quickly because the hour was growing late. She was amazed when Jimmy told her how much the bears resembled human beings, though it was difficult to tell because they had those big muzzles and wore all that fur. Daddy was obviously impressed as well as Jimmy pointed out areas of similarity, such as ratios of bone length in the legs.

They let Jimmy out at his house well after sunset. He had stayed in the back seat with her for the return trip, and they had discussed all that they had seen at the museum for the entire trip. Before he got out he asked Wynter if she wanted to go to the new _Star Wars_ movie matinee at the Aspenleaf Center with him the next day. She almost accepted before she remembered Suzie.

"Um," she said, finding the words suddenly difficult to say for some reason. "I'd really love to, but you haven't been spending much time with Suzie these days. I... I think maybe you should ask her first."

The look of disappointment on his face surprised her. She hadn't seen that look since she'd moved into their house in town and she'd told him she didn't need any help unpacking.

"But," she added, "if she doesn't want to go, then I will. Okay?"

"Okay!" Now he looked like he did when she finally told him she could use his help putting things in her closet and on the top shelves of her bookcase. "Good night, Mister King. Thanks for a great day!" He grabbed his sack from the Museum Shop and jumped out. In the sack was the half of a geode that he'd bought. When Jimmy bought that for his souvenir of the museum, Wynter thought her father's face would split because he was grinning so wide.

"Good night, Jimmy. And think about what I said. You'd make a great geologist, and we don't have enough."

Wynter giggled when she realized how much Daddy had sounded like Doctor Taylor when he was talking her into attending medical school instead of nursing school.

~ ~ ~

Richard closed the dishwasher door, punched the start button, and rinsed his hands in the sink. Naturally he'd been a little disappointed when Wynter had invited Jimmy along for the trip to the airport. He'd made one or two secret plans for things to do with Wynter when they were alone on the return drive. He hadn't thought at the time she said she'd invited Jimmy that he would be happy about that. He'd learned more about the boy that day than he'd learned since they had moved to town. He'd had no idea what a natural talent the boy had for geology and geological engineering.

He turned off the water and reached for a paper towel. He'd have thought that Wynter would be more attracted to Kenny Taylor, who wanted to be a doctor like his father. Like Wynter. But he could see why she enjoyed being with Jimmy. Like his parents, Jimmy was a decent, polite, responsible, first-class person and, without being unfair to Keith and Marti, was so much smarter than his parents. Richard didn't like the idea of a home without Wynter in it, but he had to accept that some day it would be just Angie and himself. He could do much, much worse than Jimmy McCauley for a son-in-law. Why, the boy was practically a genius on top of his other sterling attributes. If he and Angie had been able to have a second child, he'd have wanted a clone of Jimmy for a son. Not that he was displeased with his daughter, nosiree! A man wants a son in order to carry on his lineage, but a man really needs a daughter to feel like a father.

"Daddy?"

He turned to see Wynter standing there in one of his Broncos tee shirts, frowning up at him. Her shadow wagged his tail beside her. He hadn't heard the dog's toenails clicking across the vinyl. She crossed her arms below her small breasts.

"Daddy, did you go away again?"

He was holding a paper towel in one hand and dripping water from the other into the sink. "I guess I did," he admitted. "It was a nice place. You were there."

That brought out the dazzling white teeth. "Well, I'm here now. Dragon and I want to go do the den, but we don't want to be alone. A bear might be hiding in there and attack us."

Richard dried his hands and tossed the wadded paper towel into the trash can from behind his back. "If a bear is dumb enough to attack you while Dragon is around, I feel sorry for the bear. Do you want something to drink?"

The coral lips pursed and skewed sideways, considering. "Maybe just a small orange juice. I'm stuffed. You sure did a good job with supper."

Richard opened the cabinet with the cups and glasses. "All I did was microwave the leftovers your mother put in the refrigerator."

"Yes, but there's an art to microwaving," she said as she removed the juice container from the fridge. "Not everyone can do it properly."

"Your Aunt Diane who could burn water in one, for instance?"

"But like you said, she has created some interesting variations on cement in hers."

They had to wait until they stopped laughing to keep from spilling the juice while pouring it. Richard noticed that Dragon's expression seemed to indicate his agreement. The only thing he'd ever seen that dog refuse to eat was one of Diana's attempts at Thanksgiving dressing.

After Wynter returned the juice container to the fridge he proposed a toast with his glass. "To a wonderful day with the sweetest daughter in the whole wide world."

She dipped her head and eyes for just a moment, but she didn't blush. Richard was pleased that she was finally able to handle compliments. "To a wonderful night with the bestest daddy in the whole wide world," she said, clicking her glass with his.

After they sipped juice he put an arm around her and started toward the steps down to the den. "You're not wearing a bra," he noticed.

"Nope. I'm not wearing underpants, either."

~ ~ ~

Richard's diaphragm forced a growl/moan through his constricted throat. He was slumped against the backrest of the couch and had his feet on the coffee table. He wore a tee shirt on his torso and an exceptionally aroused blonde around the Beast. She straddled him, with the Broncos tee shirt tied around her neck like a scarf. His arms reached around her, cupping her small, firm breasts in either hand and squeezing her nipples. He watched glistening beads of sweat trickle down along her spine in a staccato rhythm as she fucked him with a savage ferocity.

With her feet on the floor and her hands on his knees, she rhythmically slammed her hot, slick little tube down around him, jerked her hips upward, barely keeping the head of his erection within her, and slammed down again, over and over in her frenzy of need. He marveled at how she always stopped just short of hurting herself on the excess length of the Beast.

Wynter usually wanted to make love the first time they had a "sexual encounter session," as she called it, though she'd just fuck him if he needed the release first. Twice before had she needed the self-centered release first, but he'd never seen her so desperately horny as she was now. She needed the orgasm and was having trouble achieving it. The Beast was a steel pipe threatening to spew its load at any instant, and he was fighting to keep it from doing so until she climaxed. He forced himself to concentrate on what he could do to help her.

As Wynter made a high-pitched, mournful whine he had an idea. He slid his right hand down and around her side until it was cupping one of her butt cheeks, not an easy thing to do while she was slam-fucking him, but the concentration required helped keep him from launching his load into her. He wet his middle fingertip in her juices and then drew it back to caress her brown rosebud. With a wiggle he inserted the tip into her rectum.

He thought King Kong had squeezed his nuts, forcing them through the Beast and into her body. As he came down from the orgasmic high he regained enough sense to realize that Wynter was in the throes of her own massive release, her slender body jerking on the edge of convulsions. When he felt the spasms cease and the tension begin fading from her body he waited a few seconds, then eased his fingertip out of her butt. Her body stiffened and jerked three times, then resumed its slow collapse backward onto his.

When he could lower his head and mumble into her ear he asked, "I'm sorry. I... I missed that... last thing... you said. Was that... 'Mmmmgmmmf... or 'Gormmmf'?"

She fit a giggle around her gasps and rubbed the side of her head against his neck while she regained her breath. "I needed that," she said.

"So I could tell." He was now breathing heavily but no longer gasping. "What got into you?"

She stopped rubbing his neck. "Are you being a smarty pants?" she asked in a suspicious tone.

"No. I know I was in you. I meant, why were you so horny this time?"

She was silent for several moments before her shoulders rubbed his chest in a shrug. "I don't know. You once said that people have different levels for horniness and that sometimes you don't know how horny you are until you start. Which, I guess, could be from looking forward to it for so long, or maybe it's because you think of something different, something special, while you're doing it. Maybe it was one of those times."

He was struck yet again by how analytical she could be even at a time like this. "Maybe it's because you didn't get your regular Friday night with me."

"Maybe." She didn't sound convinced. Then she giggled. "You never did that before."

He twisted his lips around and planted a kiss somewhere on top of her head. "You seemed to be having trouble getting off, and I didn't want to cum first and leave you hanging. I had to think of something."

He wasn't sure if the sound that she made was a grunt, groan, or giggle. "Thank you for thinking about me first. I love you, Daddy."

He wrapped his arms around her and held her in a snug embrace. "I love you, too, honey. I was just paying you back for those times you put me first. But don't think I didn't enjoy it, too."

"I knew you enjoyed it by what you said."

"What was that?"

"It sounded like 'Eeeeeeyorrrrrrg!'"

He snorted. "Now who's being the smarty pants?"

She giggled and brought her hands up to squeeze his arms tighter around her body. "Daddy, can I ask you a question?"

He started to make a smart-ass comment about the difference between "can" and "may," but something in her earnest tone changed his mind.

"Always. You know that."

"Is..." She paused, as if searching for words. "Is that what love is like? Always thinking of someone else first?"

"Maybe not always. This time you thought of yourself first, but I knew you loved me anyway and would think of me next. I think most of the time it's true, though. Why?"

She was silent for a few moments, during which the Beast slipped out of her. She was so wrapped in thought that she didn't voice her usual "Drat!" Finally she shrugged again. "I'm not sure. I was just curious, I guess."

She pulled to her left and turned to face him. "But speaking of putting you first, you need to lie down and recover your strength."

"I do?"

"Uh huh. On one condition. You have to hold me while you rest so you can get it up again. Then we're going to make love until bedtime."

"I see. Then what are we going to do when bedtime gets here?"

She gave him a wide-eyed stare. "Well, I just don't know! But you're the smartest Daddy I ever had. I'm sure you'll think of something."

A sound from the floor interrupted his reply. Dragon had finally learned that Wynter was okay when she made all those strange noises with Richard. He had slept through the whole thing. His feet twitched and he whimpered as he chased something in his dreams.

Richard turned his face to hers. "I just thought of doggy style."

She looked at him from under her eyebrows for a moment, slowly smiled, and then gave him one of the gentle end-of-nose-and-lips daughter-style kisses that had been something special between them most of her life. "I knew I could always count on you to take care of me."

His welling tears surprised him, too.

~ ~ ~

Wynter opened one eye. She could just see the window over the pillow. The sun was up. The western sky, visible over the trees dividing their lot and the Fergusons', was a striking shade of blue, with a wisp of clouds looking as if it had been drybrushed onto the heavens. The sky didn't look like that very often, especially in the summer, but whenever it did it was always the signal for a special day.

Her father's breath gently stirred the hair near the top of her head. His arm was draped over her, its weight resting on the forearm bone, _the ulna_, and was holding her slender back to his scarred chest in a gentle squeeze. His upper leg was lying over her lower one with the top of his thigh softly pressed against her split--her _pussy_--making her feel all warm down there. She thought the day was already pretty darned special. A little sigh escaped as she ran her morning diagnosis.

_The patient_, she decided, _is suffering from a distended bladder caused by the need to void an overnight accumulation of urine. However, the patient is otherwise comfy and doesn't want to give up her snuggle. The patient can wait a little bit longer._

She sighed again and closed her eye. Besides that, the patient didn't want to disturb her snuggler, who might be having good dreams while he held her. She didn't want to feel guilty about interrupting those dreams. She already felt guilty enough because last night, while she was having her massive orgasm, her thoughts had slipped away from her father for a moment--just a brief moment--to someone else. There he was, her father who loved her with all his heart and who was doing his best to think about her needs first, who was trying his best to take care of her before taking care of himself, and for an instant she was thinking about someone else. It wasn't fair.

Five

_"Suzie, the phone's ringing."

"Ignore it, Jimmy. It's just Kenny. He's supposed to call now to tell me if 'muff diving' is a joke or is real, like 'blow jobs,' since Caroline won't tell me. Kiss me, Jimmy, now."

_Mmmmm_. "Oh, Suzie, I love to kiss you."

"I love to kiss you, too, Jimmy. Would you like me to give you a blow job? You can muff dive me afterward."

"Why, yes, thank you, Suzie. I would very much...."_

Her mother's voice echoed down the hall. "Suzie! Telephone! It's...."

Suzie dropped her arms to the bed, the renamed Ken and Barbie dolls temporarily separated. "I know," she shouted back. "Tell him I don't feel well and I'll call him tomorrow. Okay?"

"All right!"

_"Where were we, Jimmy?"

"You were about to give me a blow job, Suzie."

"That's right. Let me help you take off your pants. Why, Jimmy, what a huge thingy you have!"

"Thank you, Suzie. You know how us men like to be complimented on the size of our thingys. You know, you're the only girl who's ever seen it. You're the only one I love enough to show it to."

"And you're the only boy I love enough to let see my boobies. Would you like to see them without a wet blouse in the way?"

"Oh, yes, Suzie, I would. They looked ever so good through the wet blouse, and I'd love to see them naked. Why, Suzie! The birthmark! It's gone!"

"I had it removed just for you, Jimmy."

"Oh, Suzie! If you love me that much, I'll muff dive you first. Would you like that?"

"Why, yes, Jimmy. I made it easy for you. I left my panties at home. See?"_

Suzie was still trying to work out the mechanics of muff diving, holding the Suzie doll in a handstand, when the phone rang again. A few seconds later her mother called to her again.

"Suzie! It's Kenny!"

"Fuck," she muttered. Suzie didn't use that word very often. It was an especially dirty word, and she saved it for super-special occasions. Kenny's calling back to interrupt her fantasies with Jimmy certainly qualified as one of those occasions.

She scooted to the side of the bed and lifted the handset to her ear. "I've got it!"

She waited for the _click_ that said her mother had hung up before snarling, "Why are you calling back? Didn't Mother tell you I'd call you tomorrow?"

After a moment of silence Kenny stammered, "I...she...I mean, well, she said you weren't feeling well and weren't taking any calls this morning. I told her that I'd promised to call you earlier but I was late getting home. I said I'd call back later if you didn't feel like talking. Then she hollered and you answered the phone."

Suzie frowned. "You didn't call fifteen minutes ago?"

"No. I just got home. I couldn't call you on the cell phone because I was in the jeep with Dad, and you didn't want him to hear me tell you that muff diving is really called 'cunnilingus,' did you?"

"If it wasn't you.... Huh! Must have been Wynter King, Future MD, wanting to play doctor again. So it's real?"

"Yeah! It's called 'cunnilingus' and is also called," Kenny's voice lowered to almost a whisper, "'eating pussy.' But the guy just uses his tongue, not his teeth."

_Real! Imagine that!_ "Listen, if Wynter asks, you don't know, okay? Then I'll know something Little Miss Smarty Pants doesn't know."

Silence.

"Kenny!"

"I can't. We're both going to be doctors. It wouldn't be professional to withhold information."

Suzie snorted. "That sounds like something... _she_... would say."

"Well, actually, she did. We were talk...."

"I'm not feeling well, Kenny. I gotta go." She hung up and glared at the phone. At least she now knew "muff diving" was real. She thought it might be, the way her slut sister had teased her when she'd asked. She'd bet Wynter didn't know it was real. Or how it was done.

She groaned. She'd forgotten to ask Kenny how it was done. He said the guy used his tongue in her cunny. Well, obviously he thrust it in and out of her just like he'd do with his thingy when they were screwing. Her eyes fell on the caller ID display on the base of her phone, and she cleared Kenny's number in annoyance.

The McCauley number stared back at her.

She gasped and threw back the sheet. She had trouble getting out of bed until she remembered to pull her panties up from around her knees. Then she raced to the kitchen.

"Mom! Did Jimmy call?"

Her mom blinked at her, like a stupid cow at a soccer ball. "You said you knew it was him and had me tell him you'd call him tomorrow, remember?"

She almost growled in frustration. She didn't need _that_ reminder. "What did he want?"

"He wanted to know if you wanted to go to the new _Star Wars_ matinee with him." Suzie groaned. "But since you weren't feeling well, he said he'd ask Wynter instead."

"_WHAT?_" She threw her head back and stared at the ceiling, then closed her eyes. _It wasn't fair!_ "I'm feeling a lot better now. I think I'll get dressed go down to the Aspenleaf Center for a couple of hours. Maybe look for... um, some school shoes, or something." She turned toward her room but was stopped by a sharp, "Hold it!"

Her shoulders sagged and she turned back to face her mother, who said, "Jimmy called to ask you out. You were too busy to talk to him. Instead he asked Wynter. Now you want to go down there and shoehorn yourself into the crowd? No, ma'am."

"But _Mother!_" she whined, stamping her right foot.

Carolyn Middleton waggled a raised forefinger. "Unh uh! You aren't going to ruin their time together because you passed on your opportunity."

"But I thought it was _Kenny_ on the phone! It's not _fair!_"

Her mother straightened and cupped her left hand over her mouth, staring for a moment before sliding the hand down enough to ask, "Are you saying you had me lie to Jimmy for you, thinking I'd be lying to Kenny?"

Suzie sagged further. "No ma'am. I think I'll go lie down for a while longer."

"I think you'd better."

~ ~ ~

Suzie squeezed her eyes tight and rolled her head back into her pillow. "How's that, Jimmy? Isn't that better than a stupid old movie with that stupid Wynter?"

Suzie shivered and moaned before "Jimmy" replied, _"Oh, yes, Suzie! If this makes you happy, I'll do it for you every night before we have sex."_

"I would love for you to muff dive me every night, Jimmy."

_"Then I'll muff dive you three hundred and fifty-six nights a year."_

"You don't have to muff dive me during 'that time,' Jimmy. I'm not a slut like Caroline."

_"Whatever you ask, Suzie. All I want to do is make you happy for the rest of your life because I love you."_

The rough features of the doll's unyielding head were beginning to make her cunny sore. She pulled it out, yanked down the doll's pants, and bent its legs back at the hips. "Fuck me now, Jimmy. I need to feel your huge thingy doing me."

_"And I need to do you, Suzie. You know how us men don't think of anything but doing beautiful women, and I think of doing you all the time. I need to fuck you to make you happy."_

Suzie pressed the rounded bulge at the doll's groin against her clitty and began rubbing it up and down. Her knees rose, tenting the sheet, as they strained outward against the constricting panties around them. She liked the tension of her knees trying to push outward against the cloth as she rubbed her clitty, but she had to be careful. She'd already torn three pairs, and her stupid mom had asked questions that were none of her business the last time. She wondered if it would be possible for her to wear them like that when Jimmy did her every night after they were married.

_"Am I doing it right, Suzie? Making you feel good is all I want in this world."_

"Oh, yes, Jimmy," she gasped, reminding herself not to make too much noise or her stupid mother would come to check up on her. "You...."

It happened. She jerked the doll rapidly against her clitty, glad in some distant corner of her mind that she had enough cunny-cream smeared around down there to keep it from burning her this time. Her knees pushed against the panties. Her head strained backward as she shook, then snapped forward as she tried to curl into a ball. Her whole body shook. And again. And again. Her cunny throbbed and throbbed and throbbed, sending little waves through her body on top of the spasms.

Slowly she relaxed and gasped for air. Happy giggles escaped at intervals.

"Jimmy, you did good," she whispered. She bet Miss Future MD never had a cum that good. She bet Miss Future MD never had a cum at all. She bet Miss Future MD though a clitty was just something to describe in one of her stupid notebooks. She bet....

_Whoa!_

Her head rose from the pillow. Her knees were wide apart and lying on the bed. She lifted the sheet with the hand holding the doll and saw the torn yellow cloth.

"_Fuck!_" shot out in a whispered explosion. "Jimmy! Look what you just did, you idiot!"

~ ~ ~

Jimmy let Wynter pick the seats. She gave him a shy smile to show her appreciation for his thoughtfulness and chose the middle of a row slightly forward of the middle of the theater. She liked that area because it was close enough that the screen filled her vision and far enough back that she didn't have to jerk her head around trying to see everything. And the middle of the row made her feel like she was in the middle of whatever was happening. She sure liked those new seats the theater had installed last year. She could lean back a little, like it was a recliner, and they were soft and comfortable, and they had cup holders built into the armrests.

When she was seated Jimmy handed her the popcorn tub and used his now-free hand to tilt down his seat to the left of hers. She had wanted to buy the popcorn and drinks because Jimmy had paid for the tickets, but he insisted that since he had invited her, he should pay for those as well.

Jimmy put his drink in the cup holder on his side and took the tub. He tilted it so that she could easily get popcorn from it. She smiled and thanked him for all he had done. He'd even asked the girl at the counter for extra butter because he knew she liked it that way, even though he didn't. He could have bought individual popcorn and had his own with less butter, but he'd said his dad had told him that sharing popcorn was the best way to see a movie with someone.

She liked the thoughtful way he always waited until after she'd moved her hand out of the way before reaching for another mouthful for himself. Kenny would just grab for the popcorn, sometimes knocking it out of her hand before she could get it out of the tub.

They talked about Spinderella and the museum exhibits until the lights began to fade. During the previews they whispered about whether they thought each would be something they might want to watch. She thought that upcoming _Sky Captain_ movie looked a lot like some of the old movies that Mother and Daddy liked to watch, despite its giant robots, but they decided that it looked interesting. Jimmy asked if she'd like to see it with him when it opened next year. She was so excited she said, "Yes!" before she thought of Suzie. She chastised herself for being so selfish and wondered how she could make it up to her friend. Then the slide announced the Feature Attraction, and all the kids and many of the grownups cheered.

When the drum roll, horn fanfare, and strings played, she read the music in her head. She knew it by heart. She thought the string part sounded nice on her flute, but it didn't do the brass fanfare the justice that her piano did. And she had worked out a way to make the piano play the drum roll and sound right.

The screen went dark, and then the blue words faded in, causing her breath to catch:

"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."

She was still holding her breath when the screen faded to black. And then she jumped and let out a little scream when the opening b-flat chord blasted through the sound system! She wasn't alone--she'd heard many other shrieks beside her own, and Jimmy had jumped in his seat too. Still, she was embarrassed about it and hoped he couldn't see her face glowing in the dark.

_Oh, no!_ He was looking at her! But he just grinned and nodded his head, and she realized he was saying he'd been startled, too, and he understood. Then both turned their heads back to read the words scrolling up the screen.

They sat wide-eyed and almost motionless, fully absorbed in the movie, as only their hands and arms moved to fetch popcorn or a sip of their drinks and their mouths moved to chew and swallow. When the pale, poisonous, millipede-like creatures began crawling along Senator Amidala's bed, Wynter could barely breathe. Her hand crept into the nearly-empty popcorn tub and froze in mid-air. Jimmy's hand followed and closed around hers. Neither was conscious of that until Anakin cut the two creatures in half, and then both looked at the tub and then to each other's faces.

Jimmy's was as red as hers felt. He began to stammer an apology.

"It's okay," she whispered. "I'm not mad."

Some time during the flying car chase the empty popcorn tub found its way to the floor and they sat with their hands gripping the arm rests. She squirmed in her seat as the changeling made her way through the bar and drew her pistol. She relaxed after Obi-Wan whirled and cut the creature's hand off with his light saber.

And realized her hand was now gripping Jimmy's.

They looked at each other simultaneously again, and once more he blushed, jerking back his hand and stammering again.

"I don't mind if you don't," she whispered. "It's natural for people to turn to each other for support when they have shared anxieties."

He seemed to look relieved. "You sure?" he asked in what sounded like a hopeful whisper.

"Uh huh." She nodded.

"Okay."

He matched his hand to hers, palm-to-palm, and slowly, tentatively, entwined his fingers with hers.

It was the best movie Wynter had ever seen.

~ ~ ~

Wynter turned from talking to Jimmy when the door opened. "Hi, Mrs. Middleton."

"Hello, Wynter."

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Middleton."

"Good afternoon, Jimmy. You two come in, please. How was the movie?"

"Um, it was, uh, great!" said Jimmy as he waited for Wynter to enter first.

Wynter saw that same weird smile on Mrs. Middleton's face that she'd seen on her father's at the airport. She followed the lady's gaze to Jimmy's face and saw that he was blushing, almost hiding his freckles with the intensity. Wynter knew very well what it was like to be embarrassed in front of others. She stopped in the middle of the living room and drew Mrs. Middleton's attention back to herself.

"Yeah! I mean, yes, ma'am. It was _really_ good. We came to see how Suzie is doing," she explained. "We were worried about her since she didn't feel like going to the movies today."

Mrs. Middleton's eyes shifted to Wynter. "Oh, I think she's feeling much better now. She spent the day in bed, and I think it's done her a world of good." Her voice sounded to Wynter like her father's did when he was saying an inside joke to her that nobody else understood. She didn't understand the joke, but maybe Jimmy did. If she needed to know, she was sure he'd tell her later. "Would you like to come in? She's in her room. I'll tell her you're here."

Both thanked her and waited in the living room while she went to Suzie's room. They checked the display cabinets in the corners for new additions to Mrs. Middleton's collection of small ceramic dogs. Wynter's favorite was the one that looked like Dragon.

Wynter's mind was elsewhere as she glanced through the case. Since Suzie had turned down going to the movies with Jimmy, she was afraid that her parents were wrong and that Suzie had really been hurt at the lake. She was sorry she'd misjudged her wonderful friend.

"Wynter?"

She blinked and turned. Jimmy was frowning at her. "Huh?"

"Are you okay?" _Anxiety in his voice_, she diagnosed. "You didn't answer me, and you were just standing there, staring."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I guess that's what it like when Daddy 'goes someplace else,' as we call it. I was just worried about Suzie." She didn't think it was a good idea to tell Jimmy that she was concerned because she'd been wrong about her friend. Not tell him now, that is. She would tell him later because Daddy always said that real friends could tell each other anything. Anything except her sexual experiences with her father, of course. "What did you say?"

He smiled and nodded, the way he always did to tell her he understood and that it was okay. She liked the thoughtful way he did that, and she thought he looked kinda cute when he did it.

Jimmy pointed. "I said that Shar-Pei is a new one since the last time I looked. I think its face looks like old Mister Fogarty's."

She looked at it and giggled. "Yeah, it does."

"I think so, too," said Mrs. Middleton, startling them. Neither had heard her enter the room. "In fact, I call it 'Fogie' because of him."

They all laughed, and then Mrs. Middleton said, "Suzie said for you to go back to her room. Would you like some lemonade? I just made a fresh pitcher, and Suzie wants some."

"Yes, please," Jimmy said.

"Me, too, please. Jimmy, you go on back and I'll bring the glasses so Mrs. Middleton doesn't have to make an extra trip."

As Jimmy went toward Suzie's room Wynter turned back to Mrs. Middleton and found the lady shaking her head and smiling at her. "Wynter, I don't know very many kids your age who are as thoughtful as you are."

She couldn't stop her head from lowering, but at least she didn't blush. "It's just what Mother and Daddy said I should do. And Jimmy's that way, too!"

Mrs. Middleton wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. It felt really good, like when Mother hugged her. Mrs. Middleton was really nice and reminded her of her mother in several ways. "I know he is. I hope the two of you will rub off on Suzie a little. You're both good examples for her."

The plastic tray had six indentations that matched the bottoms of the insulated drinking glasses, making it easy to carry drinks without spilling them. Wynter was extra careful anyway, not wanting to spill the lemonade on the beige hall carpet. The Middletons had an older house, and the carpet pile was showing signs of wear, but Mrs. Middleton kept it clean. Wynter wanted to help keep it clean, too. She liked that house. It had a warm, cozy, lived-in feel, like their old house in the mountains where she'd grown up. It was clean, but it didn't have an antiseptic-clean feel like a hospital. Or like her new house had felt at first, though the new house was slowly becoming more cozy.

As she reached Suzie's door she heard Jimmy say, "_Suzie!_" with a gasp. He sounded more shocked than surprised or thrilled.

She stepped through the door and saw Jimmy standing red-faced beside Suzie's bed. Suzie had thrown back the covers and had one leg on the bed and the other over the side, as if she were getting up. Suzie's nightie was up above her hips and _she wasn't wearing any underpants!_ The fat little pads of Suzie's outer labia were puffy, covered with a little more abundant and slightly darker pubic hair than her own, and they were apart, showing the inner redness of Suzie's split and of her labia minora. Suzie's natural lubrication glistened in her split and on the pubic hair around her vestibule. "Oh!" Wynter gasped. _She's been masturbating, and she forgot that she didn't have her underpants on!_

Suzie seemed to glare at her for a moment, then looked down. "Oh, my goodness!" she said as she pulled her leg back onto the bed and spread the sheet over herself.

Jimmy had once described "time displacement" to her. Wynter thought that was what she was experiencing because Suzie seemed to move too slowly for someone who had just been embarrassed like _that_. Jimmy had turned toward her, his face as red as hers felt.

But Suzie, she realized, wasn't blushing at all.

~ ~ ~

_Fuck!

_For an instant Suzie was mad that Wynter had chosen _that_ moment to enter the room. _But_, she realized as the dolt turned away from looking at her wide-open cunny, _he wasn't going to look again today, anyway_. Tonight, after he went to bed, he'd lie there in the dark and play with his stiffy, unable to think about anything except what she'd shown him. Plus he was close enough that he could smell her cunny cream when she threw back the sheet, fanning it in his direction. She knew that men couldn't resist the fairy moans that Kenny had said were in it. She didn't really understand how the heck you could smell a moan rather than hear it, but Jimmy probably did. If she ever needed to know about something that stupid, she would just ask him after they were married. She didn't need to worry about it now.

Miss Smarty Pants Future MD, she suddenly realized, had done her a favor. Wynter hadn't given Jimmy a chance to get a really good look at her cunny. He'd be lying there rubbing his stupid stiffy and smelling the fairy moans in his nose and trying to remember exactly what he'd seen and wouldn't be able to. He'd jump at the chance for a better look and would hang around her waiting for another chance to see it. She'd overheard her stupid slut sister talking about that very thing with that other stupid slut, Annie MacReady.

That was what had given her the idea in the first place. When Mom had told her that her man was in the living room with... _her_... the plan had jumped right into her mind.

As she slowly pulled the sheet back over her, making sure that it fanned more of the fairy moans toward Jimmy, she decided that maybe it wasn't such a curse having Caroline for a sister after all. Even decent girls like her could occasionally learn something useful from a slut.

Six

_Fuck!_

In the quiet emptiness of her room Suzie Middleton fumed in the middle of her bed, her legs crossed under the sheet at her ankles, her arms crossed under her small boobies, and her face in a frown that could intimidate a little yip-yap like Mrs. Robinson's Yorkshire terrier. It wasn't fair! Little Miss Perfection had gone to the movie with _her_ Jimmy and _something_ had happened. Suzie wasn't sure what it was, but every time somebody mentioned the movie their eyes would glance at each other in that "I know something you don't know" way like girls sharing secrets. Why Jimmy would want to look like a girl hiding a secret was beyond her, but then he did so many weird things anyway. For a moment she wondered if maybe she should start retraining him now rather than waiting until after they were married, but she quickly gave that question up. She had to get him _back_ from that man-stealing little witch first or there wouldn't _be_ any wedding.

Her frown deepened and her lower lip slowly disappeared back between her teeth.

Why couldn't Wynter find her own man? Why did... _she_... have to steal _hers_? It wasn't fair! Why not take that stupid Kenny? This was all his fault anyway, for not calling when he was supposed to. And he wanted to be a doctor just like Miss Future MD. Obviously Kenny was perfect for her! And Kenny knew a lot about sex. He could teach Wynter how to do it, leaving Jimmy available for his future wife to train properly to serve her womanly needs every night of their marriage just the way she liked it.

She snorted a laugh. If she failed to get him back she could just see Wynter and Jimmy on their wedding night, sitting on the edge of the bed fully clothed and saying, "Now what?" and Wynter would have to get out one of her stupid notebooks to see if she had written down any instructions.

Jimmy wouldn't have that problem married to Suzie McCauley. No way! She'd see to it that her husband knew exactly what to do to please his wife. Jimmy would clearly understand that he wasn't about to just shoot his stuff in his loving wife and roll over and go to sleep, the way Caroline complained that her boyfriends wanted to do. Jimmy was going to understand that _her_ needs came first, and _then_ he could shoot off and go to sleep. Jimmy was going to _show_ her how much he loved her!

She moved her leg and felt the panties Jimmy had torn still lying there. She couldn't leave them under the cover. Her stupid mother might find the stupid things and start asking a bunch of stupid questions. She grabbed them, slid out of bed, and crammed them into the bottom of her backpack. She'd throw them away somewhere else.

She lifted the bottom of her nightie up to her waist, crawled back into bed, and slid to the middle. She changed her mind and slid back until her butt bumped the pillows. She liked the way the sheets felt when they slid across her bare bottom, and she took a moment to enjoy the sensation before getting back to the real problem.

At least Jimmy had agreed to take her to that stupid movie tomorrow. She couldn't believe Wynter had actually been stupid enough to say that she thought it was a good idea and had _encouraged_ him to do so. She guessed Little Miss Perfection thought she had him sewed up for herself, and he was so rapturized by her that Suzie didn't stand a chance of ever getting him back. Well, she'd just improve on whatever it was that Wynter had done. Everybody knew that men were such mindless dolts that it was easy for another woman to turn their heads. Even if it was to turn them back to the woman their heads had been turned away from in the first place!

_Well_, she corrected herself, _it looks like everyone knows that except Wynter_. And once she got Jimmy's head turned back in the right direction, she'd see to it that he _never_ had a chance to get it turned away again!

She re-crossed her arms under her boobies and thought about that. What _had_ Wynter done? Had she kissed him? That stupid nose-and-lips kiss she'd seen Wynter give her father a couple of times? Jimmy was probably weird enough to think that was cute or something if Little Miss Just-as-Weird did it to him. No, not "probably." Jimmy needed a lot of work to straighten himself out, but fortunately for him, she was the only one who loved him enough to bother.

She'd just have to teach Jimmy what a real kiss was like. Everybody knew a man couldn't resist a woman who French kissed him, though she had no idea why the French kissed like that. She wasn't even sure where France was. Somewhere north of Chicago, maybe? But that wasn't important, and when she decided she wanted Jimmy to take her there, _he_ could figure out where the stupid place was. Figuring out a way to kiss Jimmy and make him think it was his idea was the really important thing. She'd heard Caroline and Annie saying that you had to make the man think it was his idea and then he'd do anything. Men were such dolts. But how was she going to make _her_ dolt want to kiss her?

She took a deep breath and let it out in a groan of frustration. She felt her boobies lift from her arm and then slowly settle back down onto it. Her lower lip slid out of her teeth, and she pulled the neck of her nightie out so that she could look down it. Her round cheeks pushed outward as a grin spread across her face.

~ ~ ~

They turned right when they pulled out of Suzie's driveway, heading west along Wheeler Way until it ended at Fourteenth Street. They crossed it and rode their bikes down the trail through the pine and cedar trees and into Otter Park. They waved or spoke to the hikers, joggers, bicycle riders, and Sunday picnickers they met along the way. At the clearing with the ball fields, where three different baseball games were underway, they took the northern trail and were quickly back among the aspen and evergreen trees. They dismounted and walked their bikes across the bridge at Porcupine Creek, then parked them off the west side of the trail and followed the creek upstream a few dozen yards.

It's a shame Anakin has to become Darth Vader," Wynter sighed. "I like him. He's nice."

Jimmy's eyes scanned the trees and turned to hers as he said, "I guess lots of people start off nice and then change into mean ones. I guess it's sometimes because they misunderstand what's really going on, the way Anakin does, and sometimes just because they want to be mean."

"I just wish he could stay nice. That all people could stay nice."

A splash drew their attention to the water. They stopped and watched, but saw nothing. As they resumed their trek Jimmy said, "But Luke brings him back to the light side of the Force before he dies, though."

"It must be nice to help people not to be mean anymore."

Jimmy looked sideways at her. "Probably as nice as helping them not be sick any more."

She hadn't thought of that. "I hope so," she said, giving him a soft smile that he returned. "Here we are."

They had reached the big spruce tree and a flat, reddish sandstone outcropping that caused the water to bend around it. The bend had a backwater pool on the downstream side. The water was lower this time of year, but the pool was still about three feet deep. They lay on the rock and looked over the edge into the cold water as it eddied in the dappled sunlight.

They whispered and pointed at different things they saw. They lay quietly for several minutes. Wynter glanced up and gave a soft, "Shhh," as her right hand crept over her left forearm and closed just below Jimmy's elbow. "Up slow right," she whispered. It had taken practically no time for them to devise a whispered code for their nature watching, as if each already had the same meaning for the words in mind. Wynter had said, "Up," not "Trees." Moving nothing except his eyes Jimmy looked at the ground across the creek and followed it upstream. Not twenty feet away a mule deer stood with her fawn on the opposite bank, looking at them. They almost held their breath to keep from making a sound or moving their bodies.

The doe's head and eyes moved as she scanned the area, always coming back to the two of them. The fawn's front legs splayed out and it lowered its head to drink. When it finished she also drank, pausing several times to lift her head and scan for danger. Then, as silently as they had arrived, they turned and disappeared into the trees.

"Oh, wow!" Jimmy whispered as he looked at her with large eyes and a big grin.

Wynter grinned back and nodded, leaning her shoulder into his for a moment. "Have you ever seen that before?" she whispered.

"Not this close! Did you see the way she kept looking at us?"

"And the way she used her head to push the baby back into place when it started to wander away?"

After several more whispered exchanges she suddenly realized her hand was still on Jimmy's arm. She didn't mean to look down so quickly, but she couldn't stop herself in time. He glanced down and then back up at her eyes. She started to apologize, but he said, "Shhh," and then grinned and nodded in that "It's okay" way he had. She kept her blue-green eyes on his blue ones, but felt her head dip of its own accord. _Drat!_ She still couldn't control that, no more than she could control the shy smile that crept along her coral lips.

Jimmy leaned his shoulder against hers and looked down in the water. "Brook," he whispered.

Wynter looked down at the trout drifting lazily across the pool. It halted on the upstream side of a fallen branch. "Unh uh," she corrected. "Brownie."

"Yeah."

A minute later she realized that while she'd tried to apologize for not removing her hand from his arm, she'd left it there. She applied a little more gentle pressure to the shoulder that was leaning into hers. After another few minutes of silence she carefully, tentatively, scooted sideways against him.

She thought she heard a soft sigh, like Dragon made when he was content.

Like Daddy made when he squeezed her in his strong arms and kept holding her after he loosened his grip.

She knew that thought should have made her feel guilty, but she didn't. She felt guilty about not feeling guilty. _That_, she realized, _doesn't make sense_. She wanted to ask Jimmy about it, but it might raise questions, and she didn't want to tell him that she couldn't answer them.

A pine squirrel on a branch above them barked its displeasure at something and then was silent. Two minutes passed.

"Brownie left two," Jimmy whispered.

Two feet left of the brown trout a school of a dozen small minnows slowly made its way upstream in a series of sideways darts. As it passed the fallen branch the trout lunged. All but two minnows scattered. Those two had been eaten.

Jimmy gave her a sly sideways glance. "He who hesitates is lunch," he whispered.

She giggled and stuck her tongue out at him. "Smarty pants." She glanced at her watch. "Time."

Instead of looking at his watch Jimmy twisted his head to look at hers. "Yeah." He sounded disappointed. He stayed close to her as they backed off the rock in a low crawl.

They were in no hurry as they started down the trail. "I wish we could stay longer," she said.

"Yeah. Me too. I'd like to come back tomorrow."

She shrugged. "Well, maybe you could bring Suzie here after the movie."

Was that a snort she heard?

"Suzie doesn't appreciate all this stuff the way you do," he said, studying his shoes as they meandered back toward their bikes. "Sometimes she pretends to like it, but usually she acts the same way she did at the docks."

"Well, then you should take turns doing things the other likes. That's what friends do."

Jimmy's head came up. He looked aside into the trees. "Suzie's idea...."

When he didn't finish the thought she asked, "What?"

He glanced at her and then looked away again. "Suzie's idea of taking turns is doing what she likes and then not doing what she doesn't like. You know that."

She did. "It's probably attention deprivation. Caroline got all the attention because of her problems. It sure couldn't have been easy growing up as the sister of the...." That wasn't polite, and she was sorry she'd almost said it.

"The town slut," he finished. She thought that he sounded like saying it bothered him, too. But she had learned that Jimmy wasn't one to back away from the truth, even when it wasn't pleasant. He would always say what had to be said even if it would hurt someone's feelings. Even then he'd try to find the least offensive, least hurtful way to say it, but he would say it if necessary.

"Yeah."

Jimmy was quiet for a minute. "Do you think something like that is hereditary?"

"What?"

"Being the town slut."

That surprised her. It sounded more like a question Kenny Taylor would ask, but she and Jimmy had an understanding that they could ask each other anything. Her father had taught her to accept any question without getting mad as long as the other person was willing to accept "No comment" without getting mad. She was surprised that Jimmy felt the same way, and that a response of "I can't answer that" was always final with him, too.

She thought for a minute. "It could be hereditary, I guess. Why?"

It was Jimmy's turn to shrug. "It seems to run in the family."

She froze in her tracks. She felt a tug as Jimmy jerked to a halt. She was surprised to discover that her arm was under his and that their fingers were interlaced. Without releasing her grip she asked, "What do you mean? Mrs. Middleton is one of the nicest ladies in town. Everybody says so."

He shook his head. "Not her. Suzie. Maybe it's a recessive gene and skips generations."

Wynter's head tilted sideways as she stared at him, sort of like Dragon's in his "curious pose." She couldn't make sense of what he said. "Suzie? She's not a... she's not like Caroline."

Jimmy shrugged. "I dunno. But you saw her at the docks in that see-through blouse."

Wynter nodded. "Yeah. I tried to cover her up before she realized what she'd done and got embarrassed, though."

"She knew what she'd done and she wasn't embarrassed." He let her think about that a moment and added, "And then there was that leg cramp business."

"Physi--physi-o-logically, the way she was sitting and then the exposure to the cold water could have triggered a muscle spasm."

Her father sometimes gave her a certain look just before he started explaining a mistake she'd made. It was very subtle, but she'd learned to recognize it. She'd just recognized it. "Wynter, you've had muscle spasms and rubbed them out, haven't you? Or rubbed them out for other people?"

She nodded. When she was her father's assistant nurse, back before she decided to become a doctor, she'd helped Nurse Carter with his leg cramps on a few occasions. And she sometimes had her own calf muscles cramp. "Uh huh."

"What did her leg feel like to you?"

"It felt supple. But you had the one with the cramp."

"It felt the same way."

"But...." Her face puckered and she pushed her lips sideways in thought. _Could Mother and Daddy have been right after all?_

"And this afternoon, showing me her... showing herself like that."

The way his lips had pursed, Wynter was sure he was about to say, "her pussy." But Jimmy had always used the proper medical terms whenever they had mentioned anything to do with sex. He didn't use the grownup words she used with her father whenever they were alone and having sexual activities together. "Maybe she just forgot she didn't have any underpants on."

She recognized that look again. "Have you ever.... Um.... Do you ever...."

She could tell he was looking for the right words to avoid embarrassing or offending her. She'd never known anybody that thoughtful or considerate of her except her parents and grandparents, and her heart suddenly felt as if it were trying to outgrow her chest again. "Just ask, okay?"

"Um, yeah." He looked aside.

_Anxiety disorder again._

"Have you ever been in bed without any underwear on?"

She sure had. She didn't wear underpants when she masturbated, which was rather frequently now that she was a grownup. Except for her nights with her father, of course, and then she didn't wear underpants or anything else. But she couldn't exactly tell him that. She hoped he wouldn't ask why she didn't wear underpants to bed. "Sometimes."

"Yeah, me too." His reddish face reddened a little more. He was blushing! Did Jimmy masturbate, too? She'd never thought about that. She knew Kenny did, but it never occurred to her that Jimmy might. He continued. "Could you lie there with no underwear and a nightie up around your waist and not know it?"

"Only when...." Too late. She felt her face burn. Jimmy wasn't dumb. He'd just learned that much of what she did. "No."

He was looking away. Deliberately looking away, pretending he hadn't noticed. She just couldn't believe how thoughtful he was when she did something to embarrass herself. She hoped she was as thoughtful for him, but she was afraid that she wasn't. "Me either. So how could Suzie not know?"

Jimmy certainly sounded more grown-up than she was at the moment. But there must be an explanation for Suzie's behavior. "Maybe it's because of stress. Stress causes mental amber... um, aberrations." She hated stumbling over words when she talked to Jimmy. She didn't want him to think she was dumb. She thought a moment and then the words came out almost in a whisper. "Maybe it's attention deprivation."

Jimmy frowned. "Caroline again?"

"No." She sighed, feeling sad for Suzie. "Me."

"You?" Now he was giving her the look Daddy usually reserved for dumb old Aunt Diane when she said something really stupid.

"Well, I've been taking up too much of your time. She used to do stuff with you, and now you aren't paying as much attention to her because of me."

He arched his eyebrows and shook his head. Then a really suspicious look spread over his face. "Does that have something to do with why you said I should take her to the movie?"

_Uh oh._ Nothing to do but confess. "Yeah."

Now she didn't know what he looked like. He thought for a minute. "Suzie sure is lucky to have you as a friend. And," his head dropped the way hers sometimes did when she was embarrassed, "so am I."

She thought her heart was going to explode through her chest like that yucky creature in _Alien_. Her head went down, too, and her eyes fixed on their joined hands.

She sighed. "We gotta get home."

They walked back, holding hands and pointing at things with their free ones.

Something in the water caught her eye. At first she thought it was a goldfish, though she knew there wouldn't be any in Porcupine Creek. She stopped and looked for the cause of the flash. Maybe it was just the sun catching a fish just right. She glanced to her right and saw something oddly familiar sticking up from the bottom. _That looks like...._ "Wait a minute," she said and waded two feet from the bank. Cold water saturated her white socks and white tennis shoes, but it was only ankle deep.

She bent over and picked it up. It was!

"Jimmy! Look!" She turned and held the arrowhead toward him. His eyes got really big, but he took her gently by the wrist and helped her out of the creek. Then he took the arrowhead and turned it over in his hands, eyes wide with excitement. "Oh, wow! It's not a fishing arrow," he said. "It's too big and too broad. It's from a hunting arrow." He looked at it a moment longer and then held it out to her.

"You keep it," she said. "I've got others at home. That one's yours."

"Yeah, but you found it."

"Yeah. But you took me to the movies and paid for everything. You did something nice for me and now I'm doing something nice for you."

He shook the arrowhead at her. "You don't owe me anything. That was a gift."

Her shoulders bounced in a quick shrug. "So's the arrowhead." She held her left arm forward at an angle, her palm down.

He moved the arrowhead to his left hand and his fingers meshed with hers. "Wow! Thanks! But now I owe you. This has to be worth a lot more than the movie and stuff."

"I'm not keeping score, silly." The happy look on his face made her heart feel really good, and that was payment enough for her. She listened to what he had to say about arrowheads as they walked back to their bicycles hand-in-hand.

She had to remind herself not to be unhappy that Jimmy was taking Suzie to the movies the next day.

~ ~ ~

Dragon's head lifted from his water bowl. Water dripping from his lips and chin made the look he gave Richard all the more forlorn.

"I know, boy," Richard said. "I miss her, too. But she knows it's time to come home. She should be...." He stopped when Dragon tilted his head left and then right, lifted his ears, lashed his tail, and then rushed to the front door, leaving him alone in the kitchen. _Jimmy came home with her_, he realized.

He scooped the potato peelings into a plastic grocery bag and rinsed his hands, moving to the side where he could see through the storm door as he dried them. She was sitting on the steps removing her shoes and socks. They looked wet. Jimmy was looking at something in his hand and talking to her. When Dragon started dancing and whimpering loudly, Jimmy looked toward the door, said something to Wynter, and then stepped around her to let Dragon out.

Richard turned to toss the sack of peelings into the trash and put the pot of potatoes on the stove. The door opened with a creak--_Gotta spray some silicone in that hinge_, he remembered--and two happy eleven-year-olds and an ecstatic Labrador retriever rushed in.

"Hi, Daddy!" Wynter threw her arms around his waist and squeezed. He returned the squeeze and bent to receive a daughterly kiss.

"Good afternoon, Mr. King."

"Hello, Jimmy. Have a good time at the movies?"

Jimmy's eyes grew and he looked down for a moment. "Um, yes sir," he said. It was _really_ good."

Richard glanced at Wynter and saw her fight to keep her head up. _Apparently it was_. He changed the subject. "Well, thank you for bringing her home safe and sound."

Wynter snorted. "Me? I'm not the one who keeps coming home in bandages and casts!"

He pointed at her shoes. "Looks like you tried to fall in the water."

Jimmy looked at his hand with a start and then held it out. "She found this in Porcupine Creek and waded out for it and then gave it to me. Isn't it neat?"

Richard took the arrowhead and turned it. "This is good work," he said. "It's well made. Symmetrical. It should fly well on a straight--_OW!_" Blood oozed from his right index finger.

"Uh huh," Wynter said, shaking her head. "Next time, I'll go to the movie by myself and leave Jimmy here to keep _you_ safe. Let me see it."

Richard knew better than to argue with his Doctor. She examined it without touching the finger, not out of squeamishness but because she hadn't washed her hands.

"Needs a band-aid," she pronounced. "Wash it in the sink and I'll go get one."

"Yes, Doctor," he said as she rushed down the steps to the bathroom between the kitchen and den. He looked at Jimmy, rinsed the arrowhead, and handed it to him. "How can you hold it in your hand like that and not cut yourself?" he asked as he stuck his finger under the stream of water.

Jimmy shrugged. "I dunno, sir. I don't squeeze the edges or move it against my fingers and hand. I don't do anything else that I know of."

Richard grinned at him. "You're the only person I know who can tell me I'm an idiot and make it sound pleasant."

Jimmy looked horrified. Richard wondered if Jimmy had always been that way or if he'd learned that look from Wynter. "No I didn't! I didn't say that, sir! Leastways, I didn't mean to if I did!"

"Oh, relax," Richard said with a grin. "No, you didn't say it in those words, but two plus two equals four no matter what number system you use. Are you, uh, can you stay for supper?"

Richard felt himself relax a little when Jimmy shook his head. "We're having dinner at Uncle Jim's tonight."

Jimmy was named for his Uncle Jim. "Give him my regards and tell Aunt Nancy thanks for the apple pie. Maybe she'll take the hint and bake me another one." He grinned as Jimmy nodded. Aunt Nancy's apple pies always took first place at the county fair. "That's an unusual type of flint. I've not seen any like it in this area. Must have been brought in from some distance away."

Whatever Jimmy was going to say was preempted when the Doctor, having washed her hands and fetched a band-aid, bounded up the steps ahead of her four-legged shadow. She tore off a paper towel and handed it to him.

"Jimmy's been telling me that I'm an idiot." He held out his hand.

As Jimmy gasped, she replied, "Well, you're the only one who got cut just standing there holding it. I guess he's right."

"Do you have to sound just like your mother when you say that?"

The tip of her pink tongue crept out the corner of her mouth as she frowned in concentration. "Yeah." She aligned the pad and wrapped the adhesive around his finger. "Now, there's Bacitracin on there. _Don't_ get it in the food! How's that?"

He looked at it. "No."

Wynter put her small fists on the points of her hipbone, elbows wide out. "_Now_ what?"

"I wanted one printed with yellow duckies."

She looked at Jimmy. "This has to be the _worst_ patient I've ever had."

After the laughter faded, Richard accompanied them to the front door. Wynter and Jimmy's goodbyes sounded awkward. Richard suddenly felt the odd man out. "Gotta check the potatoes," he said. "Bye, Jimmy." He retreated and sat on the end of the corner breakfast nook bench, next to the dining room door rather than next to the hall.

When Wynter returned he motioned her over, wrapped his arms around her slender waist, and said, "I'm sorry."

She misunderstood. "That's okay. Jimmy knows you're a klutz."

"No. I mean I'm sorry about following you to the door. I forgot you're growing up. You two wanted to say goodbye privately, but you couldn't with me there. I'm sorry I treated you like kids."

"Daddy! Jimmy and I are just friends." It was the first time he ever heard her say it with the slightest bit of hesitation, uncertainty, in her voice. He pretended to ignore it.

"Well, even 'just friends' deserve some privacy."

She hugged him, squeezing the side of his face between the firm little cones of her breasts. Then she gave him a gentle nose-and-lips kiss that seemed more precious than ever to him. "I feel sorry for everyone else because they don't have you for their daddy," she said.

~ ~ ~

Richard lay on his back, gasping for air. Wynter lay atop him, panting like Dragon on a hot day as he gently squeezed her lower cheeks in his hands, trying to keep the now-soft Beast inside her hot young body. The blonde ponytail slipped off her bare shoulder and brushed his face. Her eyes sparkled as she said, "Thank you!" and crushed her mouth to his, taking away his remaining breath. It lasted but a moment and then she lowered her face to his shoulder. She was listening to him breathe, waiting for him. She had something on her mind.

"Drat!" she murmured as the Beast slipped out with a faint squishing sound. Then she was quiet until his breathing returned to normal.

He sighed as a signal that he was satiated and happy. She waited another minute before she spoke. "Jimmy's taking Suzie to the movie tomorrow."

He had suspected it was something like that. "You think she'll like it?" It was a legitimate question. Suzie's likes and dislikes were unpredictable in the extreme.

"It's more of a love story. She'll like that."

"Uh huh. How do you feel about it?"

"Oh, it was great! You'll like it, too! There was this...."

"No," he said as one hand moved up between her shoulders and the other began making small circular caresses on her butt. "How do you feel about Jimmy taking Suzie to the movie?" He waited. _Too much hesitation._

"She's finally getting to spend some time with Jimmy."

When she said nothing else he tapped her back with his bandaged finger. "Wynter?"

She lifted her head to look at him. He thought her eyes were, maybe, a little too damp.

"Do I have to call class to order and call the roll and ask my question as the teacher?"

Her perfect white teeth peeked from between her coral lips. "No." She shrugged and the smile faded. "Okay, I guess. Suzie's my friend, and I want her to have fun, too."

"She's lucky to have you for a friend."

"That's what Jimmy said when I told him...." She knew she'd said too much, but he didn't press. That was the relationship he had with her. He said nothing as she debated with herself. She finally continued. "When I told him why I wanted him to take her."

"And what else did he say to that?" He knew he was prying, but he also knew she could tell him she didn't want to answer.

She shrugged. "He said he was lucky, too."

For the rest of his life, Richard was sure his heart had stopped for a moment when she said that. The world spun for another moment before he replied, "Well, he is."

Her head dropped for an instant. "Daddy, would you promise not to tell anybody else ever if I tell you something?"

_Oh, shit!_ He wasn't sure he wanted to hear it. "You know you can trust me, honey, just like I trust you to keep secrets." He would have crossed his heart, but something wonderfully sweet and warm and blonde was in the way.

Her brows arched and one corner of her mouth drew up in a skeptical twist. "I think I let one secret out today."

The chill that ran though his body was so cold that he shivered involuntarily. "You didn't tell him about us, did you?"

"Oh, no! Not that! But I think he now knows that I sometimes masturbate."

He'd probably have felt worried if not for the relief flooding through him. "Honey, I told you. There are two kinds of people in the world: those who masturbate and those who lie and say they don't. Jimmy would understand. He probably does, too."

"Yeah. I think he let that secret out, too."

He suddenly had to know and silently prayed that she'd not avoid answering. "How?"

"It goes back to what I was going to tell you."

He listened as she explained Suzie's "accidental" exposure of herself. When he learned that Jimmy had already guessed Suzie's game plan, Richard felt as proud of the boy as would have for his own flesh and blood.

"And you still suggested that he take her to the movie tomorrow?" He shook his head. "Jimmy's right. Both of them are lucky to have you as a friend."

Her eyes looked a little too moist again. "I guess."

"I _know_. But honey, just because it's the right thing to do doesn't mean that you have to like it. It's okay to be a little upset about not getting to spend time with your... your friend."

"It is?"

"Sure. It's not really selfish. If you were selfish, you'd have told him he couldn't go with Suzie. You _let_ him ask her. You suggested it, but you didn't _make_ him either ask or not ask. Good friends sometimes have to think about what's right for the other people instead of themselves. But they don't have to stop being people with their own real feelings. You want to be a doctor, so you'll have to deal with people and their emotions. If you want to fix things without dealing with human emotions, you'd better give up medical school and apply for automotive repair college."

She grinned at his joke and lowered her face to his shoulder. He squeezed her naked body to his in a gentle hug while she trembled and his shoulder slowly grew wet.

Seven

Wynter was alone in bed. She opened her eyes. Yep. It was morning, and Daddy wasn't there. As she stretched and sat up, he walked in the door and seemed surprised to find her awake.

"I was just about to wake you up to tell you goodbye," he said with a big smile While she yawned he sat on the bed beside her.

"What's that in your hand?"

He pretended to be innocent. "What hand? Oh, this one? Just a feather I found lying there on your desk. It looked lonely, so I took it for a walk. We had a nice conversation while I shaved."

"You were going to tickle my nose with it." She made a stern face to go with the accusation.

His eyes got really big. He ogled her exposed torso, then lifted the sheet to look at the rest of her naked body, lowered the sheet, and put a hand to his mouth. "I never thought about your nose!"

She made the crossest look she could make without laughing. "Smarty pants! Just for that you have to suffer a dragon-breath kiss."

He sighed deeply, as if she'd told him he had to drink all the ocean in one gulp. "Okay." He turned his head toward the door. "Here, boy!"

Dragon leapt to his feet, came over, and licked him on the cheek. When he turned back to her she was struggling to keep her cross look in place. "Can I have one from you, too?"

She tried to make a comment about "can" and "may," but she felt the giggles about to break loose. "No!" She pounced on him, forced his back to the mattress, and planted twelve quick pecks on his lips. She sat back and grinned. "But you _may_ have a dozen."

He pulled her down for a quick hug that felt warm and special. "I'm sorry I have to go out today, but they changed their minds and want my report this week. I had thought we might do something together while Jimmy was at the movies."

She thought it was awfully nice of him not to add "with Suzie" to what he said. "Well, when we go get Mother from the airport Wednesday, we'll just be the two of us and we can do something together then. I won't ask Jimmy to go this time." She was about to say more when she saw the look on his face. _Has he already asked Jimmy? Or someone else?_

"Um.... We aren't picking your mother up Wednesday."

She was sure that Mother was supposed to return Wednesday. "She's been extended?"

"Oh, no, she's coming back then. It's just that, well, we... um...." His eyes went to the ceiling, then to the headboard of the bed, then somewhere else.

_Anxiety disorder._ Thanks to Jimmy she'd had a lot of practice at diagnosing it.

"What?"

"Well, she's, um, catching a ride with someone else."

Wynter breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, that's all? Well, we can do something...." The lights came on. "Oh, no!"

He nodded. "I didn't want to tell you until tomorrow night at the earliest. I didn't want you to be distracted by it during our times together."

She pressed her forehead down on his shoulder and took a deep breath. "Thank you for trying to watch out for me," she said. "How long?"

"Aunt Diane said they'd probably go home Sunday."

_Drat!_ "Can Dragon and I run away from home?"

~ ~ ~

"Daddy, I'm not a baby any more. I know to call you if I need to." She winced and took her fists off her hips. She didn't mean to sound so upset with him. She knew he was in a hurry and was speaking from years of habit. And it was her fault he was in a hurry. She twisted the toe of one slipper into the front porch. "I'm sorry. I just miss you already."

He stood on the steps and gave her that warm smile that told her he loved her with all his heart. "It's nice to be loved," he said. "And I know you're not a baby. They don't have tits like those. Are you going to put a bra on before Kenny comes over for lunch?"

She glanced down at the sweatshirt she'd thrown on. "I guess I'd better, but it won't stop him from trying to look. I think he's a tit man, too."

He shook his head. "He has hormones. He'll like everything he can see. Just don't go playing doctor."

She gasped and felt her face heat. She almost ducked her head down. "Daddy! We don't...."

"Honey, I'm teasing. You know...." He took a breath. "You know how to take care of yourself. I'm not worried about you."

She thought he sounded a little worried when he said that. She knew from experience that it sure wasn't easy being a grownup, having to worry about so many things all the time.

"You're the _only_ man in my life," she said with a bright smile, trying to reassure him.

"Maybe for the time being I'm the top one, but 'only' one?" He tilted his head to the right, down the street toward Jimmy's house.

She stopped the blush in time. "You're teasing again, aren't you?"

There was another weird look that went away as fast as it arrived. "Probably. I gotta go. I have to pick up Mr. Chang on the way."

She put her fists back on her hips. "Well, _don't rush!_ I'm going to _medical_ school and don't need more practice being your _nurse_."

When he hung his head and said, "Yes, dear," she broke out laughing. After a father-daughter kiss she waved as he drove down the street and then went back inside for a quick breakfast. She wanted to paint the new doors on her bookcase before her morning shower.

~ ~ ~

"More soup or some more juice?" Wynter asked when Kenny leaned back from the table.

Kenny opened his mouth to say something but made a loud burp instead. She knew some boys liked to burp real loud just to be gross, but Kenny wasn't like that. She guessed it was because he was going to be a doctor like his dad. Like her. "Sorry," he said, looking like an old sheep. "No, thanks."

"It's not your fault," she said. "It's that medicine you have to take. But that's only for a couple of more days."

"Yeah. Fortunately, 'cause it tastes like skunk-smell. So they didn't have any dissected mummies? Man, that's the pits. Maybe next time they get an Egyptian exhibition in, it'll have some and we can go check out the procedure. That'd be so cool!" He removed his black-framed glasses, looked at the kitchen light through them, and began cleaning the rectangular lenses with his handkerchief.

"Yeah! That's what Jimmy wants to do, too." As she said his name she looked at the clock.

"Hey, it doesn't start until one o'clock," Kenny said.

She turned back to him. Kenny often removed his glasses at the table, but now he was putting them back on. He had a serious look on his face. "What?"

"The matinee. It doesn't start until one. Can I ask you a question and you won't get mad?"

She shrugged. "You know it's okay to ask me anything you want as long as it's okay for me not to answer. I won't get mad."

His eyes didn't leave hers, even while he put on his glasses and tucked his handkerchief in a hip pocket. Kenny didn't look away like she did, or like Jimmy did, when the question might be trouble. "This time you might."

_Uh oh._ "I promise I won't get mad. Or if I do I won't mean it, and we'll still be friends and Future MDs together. Okay? Promise."

He nodded. "Are you and Suzie fighting?"

She didn't realize she'd been holding her breath. She let it out as she shook her head. "Unh uh. Why?"

He pulled his left foot up over his right thigh. When he did that it was a signal that the conversation was going to get very heavy. "I dunno. Just--just the way she's been acting. The things she's been saying."

Wynter had no idea that Suzie had been saying anything different. "Like what?"

Kenny's brown eyes grew wider and he shrugged. "I dunno. Just--things. Maybe I shouldn't have brought it up."

"Grownups don't avoid issues," she said. "Bad news doesn't get better if you make it wait." She tugged at her watchband with the tip of her index finger and waited for him to explain. He finally sighed.

"She calls you smart-ass names sometimes."

Wynter nodded. "That's okay. I understand. I pi.... Um, I made her mad at me. It's my fault."

Kenny's eyes still hadn't moved from hers. "How'd you piss her off?"

"I didn't mean to. Honest. I didn't know that she and Jimmy had been doing stuff together before I moved to town. Then Jimmy and I started doing stuff together and he paid less attention to her. I caused attention deficit syndrome."

The look Kenny gave her made her wonder if she'd just said the cure for anemia was bloodletting.

"Honest! It's my fault, not hers."

"Wynter, until just before school was out and Chipper.... His dad had...." He couldn't go on.

Wynter leaned forward and placed a hand on Kenny's forearm in sympathy. Kenny and Chipper had been best friends. "I understand," she said in a soft voice. Chipper's dad had been driving, and the accident was very much like her father's last one, but her dad survived. Nobody in Chipper's family did.

Kenny sniffed once. She looked at the clock again so that she wouldn't notice any tears, the way Jimmy would do.

"Until then her eyes were on Chipper. She barely knew Jimmy existed. But she's always complaining that Jimmy 'doesn't do anything normal' and that he's 'weird' and that he's 'always interested in goofy nonsense' and that he needs 'training' or 'straightening out.' She just wants whatever he can do for her. You care more about that Spinderella than she really cares about Jimmy. She just wants somebody good looking to show off so the other girls will envy her."

Wynter sat back on the breakfast nook bench. She couldn't look at Kenny as she spoke, focusing instead on a drop of soup on the table. "Well, she just doesn't know him, that's all. I guess she didn't get a chance to because of me. Suzie is my friend, but I butted in and messed things up for her." She thought her face would be burning hot with the admission of what she'd done wrong, but it stayed cool. She guessed it was because she was talking medically, colleague to colleague. "That's why I thought Jimmy should take her to the movies--so they can be friends and share stuff, too."

Kenny's brow wrinkled with a big frown, drawing her gaze back to his face. "That was your idea?"

"Well, Jimmy would have thought of it if I hadn't mono--mon-op-o-lized his time so much."

He gave her a weird look that pulled one side of his upper lip higher, showing his teeth. "Are you sure?"

"Of course," she said with a nod. "Hey, Jimmy's really polite and nice to everybody when I don't distract him by taking up too much of his time. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Cause I used to think you were the smartest girl I knew. You weren't like the jokes, where pretty blondes were always dumb. Maybe the jokes are right."

Wynter sat up straight. Kenny had never told her she was pretty before, even when he wanted something. She guessed he was describing the girls in those dumb old blonde jokes and really was just saying she was dumb. _But for what? Thinking Jimmy was polite and nice to everybody? Why would Kenny suddenly attack Jimmy?_ "He is, too, polite and nice to everyone!"

"Well, duh! Of course he is. That's why he took Suzie to the movies when he didn't want to."

If her jaw had dropped any farther it would have bounced off her lap and landed on Dragon. "He didn't want to?" She winced, afraid she'd sounded like she was whining.

He leaned forward and lightly rapped his knuckles on her head. "_Hey! Earth to Wynter! Hello!? Is anybody home besides a blonde joke? We're saying dumb things again!_" he said in a weird voice. "Whatever happened to attention to detail? He spends as much time with you as he can because he _wants_ to, not because you 'monopolize' him. You know every other sentence outta him has 'Wynter' in it these days? Maybe not when he's talking to you, but when you're not around and he's talking to the rest of us. Chuck said Jimmy talks about you so much that you must be doing him."

"_What!?_"

"Don't worry. I told him you were still a virgin."

"_What!?_"

He grinned. "Hey, I figure you must be or you'd let me do you. But I'm gonna be a gynecologist, so I could give you an exam for proof. It's only fair, since Jimmy told me Suzie let him examine her yesterday afternoon." He shook his head as his grin twisted and his brows peaked. "Man, I'm never around when I'm needed."

Wynter snorted. She was sure that Jimmy's words had been anything but that. "Last week you wanted to specialize in breast cancer exams. And an exam wouldn't prove anything because I ruptured my hymen in an accident when I was young. I fell straddling a tree branch." Just thinking about that pain made her vaginal region hurt again and she squirmed in her seat.

Kenny snapped his fingers and shook his head. "Darn!" His eyes widened. "Hey, I didn't know you'd inherited your dad's accident-proneness."

"Smarty pants." Wynter stuck out her tongue at him.

He stared at her tongue. "Hey, that reminds me. Do you know what 'muff diving' is?"

Did she ever! "It's oral sex, where the woman is the recipe--the recipr...." She gave up. "The receiver."

"Recipient," he said. She mouthed the word to herself a few times while he continued. "Yeah. It's also called 'eating pussy.' Suzie didn't want me to tell you so she'd know something you didn't."

"Huh? Why?"

"Well, I don't know for sure, you understand, but I think she means to have Jimmy 'eat' her to try and get him away from you."

~ ~ ~

_Why can't the dolt find his own stupid seats instead of asking me to pick them?_ she wondered. She looked down at the two seats next to them. "Here," she said. "These are fine." _Caroline said the back row is good because nobody behind you can see you making out. Maybe Jimmy will get lucky._ "You take the aisle seat." Suzie dropped onto the edge of the second seat and scooted forward a little, letting her weight pivot it down into place. She put her drink in the cup holder and placed her popcorn on her left leg.

After thinking for a moment, she moved her popcorn to her right leg. After his having massaged her thigh at the docks, Jimmy might be all turned on and want to touch her leg again. She had worn the shortest, loosest-legged shorts that she thought wouldn't raise any stupid objections from her mother. And the elastic in her panty legs was loose, too, so his fingers could slide in if they needed to after he was overcome by his lust for her. If he'd touch her leg as often as he touched that stupid arrowhead hanging inside his shirt from that stupid thong around his stupid neck, she'd have him engaged before the movie was over and married by the end of the week. If they could marry at eleven, of course.

Jimmy, however, had put his drink in the cup holder and used his free hand to pull the seat down before sitting on it. Obviously she needed to teach him how to sit down in a theater seat. One more item on the long list of things that needed correcting. Well, two. If he wanted to wear something around his neck, he'd have to get a proper medallion and not some stupid arrowhead on a leather thong. She sighed. _ It's not easy being in love with a dolt_.

And he put his popcorn on his right leg, next to her. Obviously he couldn't plan ahead like she could or he'd have his leg where she could play with it. Of course he _had_ come to the theater with Miss Professional Virgin yesterday and wasn't aware of what it was like to be with a _real_ woman.

Okay, so she was a virgin, too. But while she certainly wasn't a slut like Caroline, she also wasn't a virginity fanatic. She'd let the right guy do her, especially if it was the guy who was going to marry her and do her every night for the rest of her life.

He was awfully quiet, and had been ever since he'd started telling her about some stupid deer and her stupid baby getting a drink of water. He wouldn't shut up about it until she told him she didn't give a shit about it. She knew now that she'd made a mistake. She should have told him she didn't give a "crap" about it. Or maybe she didn't give a "theses" about it--or whatever that stupid medical word for shit was that Little Miss Future MD used because she was too embarrassed to say "shit." Hah! Jimmy was such a weirdo he'd probably say he didn't give a "doody" about it.

She supposed she'd better get him talking about things men were supposed to care about. "I'll sure be glad when it snows. Then you can take me to Wizard Basin and we can go skiing."

He blinked at her. "Sure. I guess. But I'm not very good at downhill, you know."

Well, remind her to look surprised next Tuesday. In PE Jimmy was always the last one to be picked for any team. He couldn't play baseball or basketball or volleyball. He could swim, but he wasn't her equal, of course. Nobody else in the school was. Well, she'd just have to teach him to ski better. He was lucky she loved him enough to do so, and he was going to appreciate that fact or else.

_Swimming? In clingy wet bathing suits and with your bodies underwater where people can't see what you're doing much of the time?_

"You know, I've not been getting enough practice swimming this summer."

He swallowed a bite of popcorn before replying, "Maybe you should go swimming more often. If your leg is up to it and you're feeling better, of course. I'd like to see you take the 200 meter gold at State next year. I thought you should have had it this year."

Well, _of course_ she should have had it this year! The stupid judges gave it to that little witch from Alamosa instead, saying she was a hundredth of a second faster. The real reason was probably the fact that most of the judges were men, the other girl had bigger boobies, and she also had a couple of pieces of her cunny hair poking out. You could just bet that Suzie Middleton wouldn't be trimming her bikini line before next year's match, no way!

_Wait a minute! The dolt can't take a hint. Or maybe he's just playing hard to get._

"You could take me to Barber Beach. Or to Otter Park Pool if you'd rather. I might need you in case I have another leg cramp." She made big eyes and stuck out her lower lip just _so_ as she rubbed her fingertips up and down her thigh. _The dolt isn't even looking_, she realized.

The screen lit up and music drowned out his words. She didn't really care what they were. It didn't matter what he said. He _was_ going to take her, and that was final.

She finished her small popcorn and tossed the container to the floor. Jimmy was still munching away on his because it was bigger. She wished he'd eat faster so his arm would be free. She had plans, and a movie was only so long. She hoped the previews would last until he finished. She didn't care all that much for popcorn, and besides, it gave her gas. It wouldn't be very romantic if she farted while he was muff diving her.

She was seriously thinking about screaming the "F" word when he finally finished his popcorn. He took a sip of his drink and then leaned toward her. She couldn't believe he was going to kiss her, and she was right.

"This next part's a little scary," he said as some weird woman cut a hole in a window and dropped in a pair of fat white worms with lots of tiny legs.

Maybe if those bugs--or worms, or whatever the heck they were--were in her bedroom she might be scared. But this was the first break she'd had all afternoon. "It is scary," she said, trying to sound like she meant it. "Maybe you better hold me."

Before he could say anything she grabbed his right arm and pulled it around her. He tensed but didn't pull away. She couldn't afford to rush and ruin things, so she watched him, waiting for him to get absorbed in the movie again. When everything was as right as possible she slowly, gently moved his hand against the side of her right boobie. She hoped he'd be so excited to discover that only one thin layer of cloth was between his hand and the object of his desire that he'd get an immediate stiffy.

When the weird woman in the movie died and her face rotted, Jimmy seemed to come to his senses. He relaxed his arm that was squeezing her shoulders. A few seconds later his hand tried to jerk away from her boobie. She'd expected that and was braced. It pulled away for an instant before she pressed it back in place.

"Suzie!" he whispered.

"It's okay," she whispered with the most sincere smile she could make. "I like it. It felt good the way you were playing with it, and you don't have to stop." Her free hand dropped to his bare leg and stroked toward his crotch in a slow, gentle motion.

Jimmy jerked his hand away from her boobie and removed his arm from her shoulders.

_Fuck!_ screamed through her thoughts. _I was too subtle!_

~ ~ ~

When Jimmy reached the Ninth Street bridge across Porcupine Creek he was surprised to find Kenny Taylor sitting on his bike and waiting for him. He hoped it was prurient interest on Kenny's part and not some kind of bad news from lunch with Wynter. Kenny straightened at his approach and pushed the kickstand up into place. Kenny didn't attempt any small talk, cutting straight through like an obsidian scalpel.

"Hey, how'd it go?"

"Hey." He didn't try to keep the feelings off his face. "You'd have loved it. How was lunch?"

Kenny grinned up at him. "Much better than your day. She was wearing a seamless light cotton training bra, and I think she got cold once or twice. Her cotton panties...."

"_KENNY!_" Jimmy relaxed a little. As upset as he was that Kenny was talking about Wynter that way, he was relieved to learn that it wasn't bad news.

"It was still much better. You two really need to talk. Did Suzie try anything?"

"Yeah." He had Kenny ride along with him as he related the afternoon's events, interrupting the tale to speak to or wave at people they passed.

"Holy shit!" Kenny said. "Hey, how come she never wants _me_ to squeeze her tits for her? Or never wants to play with my tool?"

"Maybe," Jimmy said as he returned Mrs. Johnson's wave and then looked straight ahead, "it's because she has some taste after all."

"Cocksucker."

Jimmy gave a sly sideways glance. "I think that was what she had in mind." When Kenny moaned he looked aside and pedaled faster to keep his friend from seeing the smirk on his face.

"Hey, hold up," Kenny said as Ninth Street ended at Seabridge Trail. There were no houses on the north side so that the street could be extended some day. They rode onto the empty lot and stopped facing each other. "So did anything happened after you stopped playing with her tit?"

Jimmy felt his face grow hot. "_I wasn't playing with it!_ That was just her imagination talking. Probably part of whatever her plan was." He was immediately sorry for his harsh tone. He knew Kenny was trying to get him to take the bait, and he had bitten. He didn't apologize, though, as much as he wanted to do so, because he knew from experience that would only encourage Kenny.

Kenny smirked. "And did you let her pull your pecker?"

"Kenny!" He made himself relax his muscles and take a deep breath. "I told her that if she couldn't be nice, I'd sit in another seat across the aisle and would take her home when it was over."

Kenny tipped his bike sideways, rolled on the ground, and clutched his chest. "Cardiac arrest! Cardiac arrest!" he yelled and began jerking his arms and legs around.

Jimmy rolled his eyes as Kenny kicked twice and lay still. "Get up, you dwarf dick."

Kenny spoke without moving. "Half the boys in school would give up their allowances for a year to have Suzie pull their peckers or to play with her tits. Why wouldn't you? Are you nuts, or just a fag?"

Jimmy had been afraid that he would ask that. He looked around as his hand closed around the arrowhead inside his shirt. "I dunno. I mean.... Well, you know why."

Kenny lifted his head and squinted because of the sun. "You mean you're saving yourself for Wynter?"

"_No!_ Well, sorta. I mean...." He wished Kenny would drop it. His mind raced to think of some way to change the subject. "I.... Well, Wynter wouldn't like it if I did that with Suzie. If I let Suzie do that to me. If--well, she wouldn't like it. That's all."

"You think she'd be jealous, don't you!"

It sounded like a taunting accusation, and he guessed it was. He sighed. "I think it would hurt her feelings. I don't want to hurt her feelings. She's nice, and I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Especially nice people's. Okay?"

Kenny raised up on his elbows. "It doesn't hurt her feelings when I try to get into Suzie's pants. Or hers."

Jimmy started to rise off the bicycle seat but forced himself to take a deep breath and relax. "Of course not. She knows you're just pathetic and horny and desperate."

"Hey! Who's pathetic?"

"You are, you... you... you putz."

Kenny's brow wrinkled. "What's a putz?"

_One point, Jimmy_. "It's a Jewish dick."

"Hey! I'm not Jewish."

"No, but you're a dick!"

Kenny grabbed his collar and tugged upward. It stayed around his neck. "Look! I'm circumcised!"

"That's what I said. You're a putz." He mentally patted himself on the back for having changed the subject away from Wynter.

"Do you want to get into Wynter's pants?"

Kenny had known what he was doing! He could tell by the smirk crawling across Kenny's face that he had known. Kenny had just been playing along. "That's not a nice question."

A big grin spread across the boy's tanned face. "So the answer is yes?"

Jimmy's mind raced for an answer that would satisfy his inquisitor. "I wanna be best friends with her and I don't wanna piss her off. Okay? I don't want to do anything that would hurt her feelings. The difference between her 'n' you is that I _like_ her." Too late he realized that Kenny would take the other meaning of that pronouncement and run with it.

Kenny sprang to his feet and cupped his hands to his mouth. "_Hey! Kenny to Earth! Kenny to Earth! News flash! Attention everybody! Jimmy McCauley likes Wynter King! Big surprise! World astonished! President to hold emergency cabinet meeting! Film at ten!_"

"You putz."

Kenny's head snapped around with a jerk, one of his "patented shit-eating grins" smeared across his face. "Hey, let's go back to Wynter's. I'll ask her to rub my head, and after she does I'll tell her she just jacked off a putz!"

Jimmy clenched his fists and threw back his head. "_AARGH!_" Jimmy didn't much care for violence, but he certainly could see how it could be justified under the right circumstances.

"Hey, you think Wynter jerks off?"

The question startled him. He wasn't about to answer it because he didn't dare tell the truth. "I don't think girls do it that way. Their bush beans aren't big enough." _Bush bean_ was a local slang term for a clitoris. Nobody outside of town ever understood the term and always had to have it explained.

"Well, you would know," said Kenny. "I haven't seen one, but you got to examine Suzie's."

"_I didn't examine it!_" The return smirk told him he'd lost a point for having lost his temper. But he had diverted the topic away from Wynter. If he had to, he'd stay with it until Kenny lost interest. If he ever did. Kenny hadn't lost it since puberty had set in.

"But you saw it. What did it look like?"

Jimmy shrugged. "Sorta like the one in that anatomy book."

"Sorta?"

"Well, it was a lighter pink than the rest of her. The rest of it was kinda reddish."

Kenny's eyebrows shot up. "And wet?"

Jimmy thought for a second. "Yeah, sorta wet all over. Glisteny."

Kenny frowned, pursed his lips, and nodded. "I'll bet she'd been bangin' her bush bean."

"Maybe. There was a smell in the air when she took off the sheet."

"Yeah? Hey, what'd it smell like?"

"Sorta like...." He shrugged. "I dunno how to explain it. Not bad. Why don't you go ask her if she'll let you sniff it. She's probably horny enough."

Kenny's eyes widened and the patented shit-eating grin returned. "Hey! You think so?"

Jimmy rolled his blue eyes and shook his head. "If not, maybe Caroline would let you smell hers. Let's go."

"Um...." Kenny threw a leg over his bike and thought for a second. "You better stop by Wynter's. She's got some bad news. She might want to move in with you for a few days."

_Bad news?_ "What's wrong?"

"Her aunt and uncle are visiting. The two creepos from Nebraska. Maybe you can cheer her up. I tried, but, I'm not her _lover-boy_." He stressed the last in his high-pitched imitation of a girl's voice.

Jimmy refused to bite. "You headed back home?"

"Later. I thought I better see how Suzie is doing first. She might need a friend."

~ ~ ~

Wynter pushed the pencil behind her ear and caught it in her drawn-back hair. She could tell by the way Dragon had rushed out of the room that Jimmy was the one who had rung the doorbell. She raced to the stairs but went down them carefully. Rushing causes accidents. At the bottom of the stairs she saw Jimmy through the storm door, but no Dragon on this side. The dog suddenly appeared as he raced around the corner of the house and up the steps. Jimmy leaned over to give him a dog biscuit and scratch his ears. She couldn't understand the words he was saying, but Dragon sure did seem to understand.

He looked up when she unlatched the storm door lock. The wide-eyed happy look that sprang onto his face made her heart suddenly feel too big for her chest. She pushed open the door. "Hi."

"Hi," he said, suddenly looking self-conscious. "I heard you had some bad news."

"You saw Kenny, huh? Yeah. They're bringing Mother home from the airport and staying until Sunday. I asked Daddy if I could run away from home."

"I'm, uh, I'm sorry."

Wynter suddenly remembered her manners. She couldn't believe she'd forgotten them, especially with someone as polite as Jimmy. "C'mon in. Want some soda or some juice?"

"Sure," he said, taking the door and letting her back away. "You got any of your mom's lemonade?" Jimmy always said that her mom was the only one who made better lemonade than Mrs. Middleton.

"No, but I made some."

"Really? I'd like to try it."

She suddenly felt worried that her lemonade might not be good enough for Jimmy. "Okay, but you have to promise not to spit it out if you don't like it."

He shook his head. "I'd never do that." His voice said he meant that with all his heart. She almost blushed.

He got the glasses from the cabinet while she got the pitcher from the fridge and some ice from the freezer. Dragon sat where they couldn't get past him to either the hall or the family room without awakening him, ate his dog biscuit, and dozed off.

"Thanks," he said and took a sip. "It's good!"

"Thanks. You didn't have to sound so surprised."

His face reddened and she laughed. He waited for her to sit on the breakfast nook bench before pulling out a chair.

"Would you, um...." She was afraid she would sound silly, but she decided to ask anyway. Jimmy was so polite he wouldn't make an issue out of it and embarrass her further. "Would you like to sit beside me?"

He looked like she'd told him that the museum had some dissected mummies and that they were going to see them. "Sure! I mean, if it's okay with you. I don't, um, have to if you... um, don't really want me to. I mean... you know."

"I know," she mumbled. "Um, maybe I could use some moral support since Aunt Dumb and Uncle Boob are coming." She gasped. She had meant to say "Uncle Bozo." But "boob" also mean a "bozo," sort of. Maybe Jimmy would take it that way.

If he didn't, he sure did a good job of faking it. "Sure. Anything to, um, help you feel better."

"Thanks."

She gave him room to sit as far away as he wanted. He scooted to within an inch of her. They sat quietly for several seconds, and then she slid sideways that last inch. She heard that same soft, contented sigh that she thought she'd heard at Porcupine Creek.

"Have you been drawing?"

The question startled her and she realized that she'd gone someplace else for a moment. "Yeah." She didn't say what, and he didn't ask. He knew that she'd tell him if she wanted him to know. She sure _didn't_ want him to know this time. Fortunately, Jimmy was a gentleman and he didn't pry. Like Suzie did. Kenny would ask, and he might tease her, but he wouldn't pry, either. Jimmy wouldn't even tease her. He was the most thoughtful person she could think of. She gasped as she realized that wasn't true. How could she have possibly forgotten her father, who loved her with all his heart?

Worry clouded his face. "Is something wrong?"

"No. I just thought of something. It's okay, though." How could she possibly tell him?

He relaxed. "Okay. Are you going to run away from home?"

She arched her eyebrows. "You think that deer might let me live with her for the rest of the week?"

He laughed, took a sip of his lemonade, set the glass back on the table, and stared at it.

She waited. He didn't say anything. "That bad, huh?"

He knew what she meant. "If I tell you, will you get mad?"

"Wasn't your fault, was it?"

"Well, no."

"Then why would I get mad at you?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. Sometimes guys do. Girls are--different. I'm not sure how you think sometimes."

"You wouldn't get mad at me if it wasn't my fault, so I won't get mad at you."

He gave her a shy smile and then it faded. His eyes returned to the glass. She gently pressed his upper arm with hers. Just for moral support, of course.

"When I told her the killer millipedes in Senator Amidala's bedroom were going to be a little scary, she grabbed my arm and pulled it around her."

Her stomach felt hollow, like everything in it had been teleported out. "Oh. Well, she just needed support so she wouldn't be afraid. It's natural for people to turn to each other in moments of crisis." The words sounded hollow this time.

"It's not just that. Um...." He sipped lemonade and stared at the glass again. She watched his eyes and knew he was deliberately fighting to keep from looking at her. "She, um, she wasn't, um.... Well, she wasn't wearing, um...."

"Oh."

Startled, she jumped when he spun to look at her. "But I didn't keep my hand there, I promise! I took my arm back as soon as I realized what she was doing! I'm sorry."

She knew he had no reason to apologize to her because it was all Suzie's doing. But it did make her heart feel good, for some weird reason. "I told you I wouldn't get mad. I'm not. Honest. You aren't responsible for Suzie."

"Thanks." He relaxed a little, but not much.

She didn't really want to ask but she knew Jimmy wanted to get it out. Repressed anxieties caused elevated blood pressure and pulse rates, and that wasn't good. "So was that all?"

"No." He looked at the glass again and straightened until he was barely touching her arm with his.

She applied gentle pressure and he pressed back, harder. _He was checking to see if I really wasn't mad at him._

"Remember when you showed me how to find her rotator muscle and to rub the cramp out of it?"

"Uh huh."

"Well, that's what she did to me."

When he said nothing more she said, "Okay."

He sighed. "But I told her to stop or I'd sit across the aisle until the movie was over. She knew I meant it, so she quit. She didn't say a word for the rest of the movie, except for when Anakin kissed Senator Amidala just before the arena."

She couldn't believe it! Jimmy must have been really _pissed off_ if he was _that_ discourteous. He must be feeling really bad because he had to be so impolite. "What did she say?"

"She said Senator Amidala was lucky to have a real man who was so good looking, too. She said she'd like to find a real man who knew how to kiss."

"Oh. Um, she was hinting?"

He shook his head. "I think it was supposed to be an insult, saying I didn't know how to kiss a girl."

She was quiet for a moment. "Do you?" She felt her face redden. She couldn't believe she'd asked that question. "I'm sorry. That's personal and I shouldn't have asked."

He looked at her and smiled. "The rules say you can ask anything as long as I can say I don't want to answer."

She smiled back and nodded. She was glad he hadn't answered her. But then he said, "No. I've never kissed a girl. Well, my cousin Amy kissed me last year when I gave her a Christmas present, but she's only five. Have you... um, have you ever, um, kissed a boy?"

She shook her head. Fortunately he had worded the question so that she could answer it truthfully. "I don't even have cousins to kiss except for Baby Christopher. He's barely one."

He seemed to realize she was embarrassed by the question and tried to change the subject. "Well, it's too bad he's Aunt Diane and Uncle Bob's kid. After what you've told me about them, I can imagine what he will be like when he's older. The world isn't ready for that."

"Yuck!"

Dragon sprang up. "I think your dad's home." He seemed to press against her just a little bit harder before sliding off the bench and holding out his hand for her. She took it and pulled, scooting out to the edge. He was such a gentleman with her.

"Um...." He looked at his feet.

_Anxiety disorder again._

"Um, thanks for understanding. And for not being mad at me. I wouldn't want you mad at me too." He seemed to emphasize the "you" more than the "too."

She felt her own anxiety disorder awaken. Her ponytail lay over her left shoulder, and she closed her hand around it. "Um, sure. You're my friend. Friends care, um, about each other."

He grinned at her from under his eyebrows. "Yeah."

The hallway dimmed as her father blocked the light coming through the storm door window. Dragon's tail lashed as he bolted the ten feet to greet him. Wynter suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be glad to see him, too. _No!_ She _was_ glad to see him.

"Daddy!" She ran to him, and he grabbed her under her arms and lifted her into a hug. She started to give him a daughter-type kiss but he jerked his head back. "Hey! Watch out for that pencil. You could put an eye out."

She gasped and pulled it from over her ear, then quickly kissed him.

"Hey, Jimmy!"

"Hello, Mr. King. "How was it?"

"Pain in the butt," Richard replied.

"Daddy," she said, trying to sound like Mother in her "reproachful tone."

"I'm serious! I sat down on this rock to take a note, and, well, I didn't see this piece of a broken branch sticking up from the other side...."

She giggled at the face he made. "I thought I told you to be careful. How many stitches?"

He put her down. "Oh, it's not that bad. Just a little sore is all. But the way the mine foreman was acting I thought about asking him to kiss it and make it better."

That got giggles from both Wynter and Jimmy. Then Jimmy said, "I guess I'd better get back home. Mom said supper would be early."

Wynter thought her father was awfully nice the way he said goodbye and then went up to his office to put his things away.

Jimmy stopped at the storm door. "Are you doing anything tomorrow?"

"I think Daddy wants to sleep late, so I will too," she said. "We'll probably run some errands late in the morning and then I'll be free in the afternoon. You have anything in mind?"

"No. Maybe check the bird nests? Or maybe... I dunno." He studied his shoes. "Anything special you want to do?"

She examined her own shoes. "Um, no. Maybe, um, just decide then?"

"Okay." After an awkward silence he said, "Well, I gotta go. Um, see you tomorrow."

"Okay."

He pushed the storm door latch and swung the door open. "Bye."

"Yeah. Um, bye." She reached for the latch, and her hand touched his. He held the storm door with his free hand, cupped his other hand around hers, squeezed, and then was down the steps before she could think. "See you tomorrow afternoon."

"Yeah. See ya!"

She watched him pedal down the street and then found herself in the bathroom by the den. For a moment she wondered why she was there. _Distended bladder_, she diagnosed.

~ ~ ~

Richard heard the toilet flush as he stepped down into the hallway. He glanced at the breakfast nook table and noted the position of the two glasses. He felt a tiny pang in his heart. But, he reminded himself, Jimmy was a first-class individual. He could do much, much worse for a son-in-law.

~ ~ ~

Kenny Taylor closed his door and threw himself on his bed. His ears still rang from standing on Suzie's porch and listening to her scream, "_FUCK OFF AND DIE, ASSHOLE!_" right in his face. Mrs. Middleton had no trouble hearing it from the kitchen. He guessed Suzie wouldn't be leaving the house for a day or two.

He tugged down the zipper of his fly. Suzie had leaned forward when she screamed at him. He had never seen her birthmark before.

Eight

As Daddy's slow, even breathing stirred the long blonde hair near her neck, Wynter opened her left eye and peered at the window. The morning sky promised another nice day. Well, it would be a nice day. She was going to spend most of the morning with her father, and then some of the day with Jimmy and Kenny and Suzie, and then the evening and night with Daddy again. It would be the last night with Daddy before Mother returned. She sure did want Mother home, but she didn't want to give up her special times with her father. Not just the sexual activities. Oh, no. She didn't want to give up their other special times together, even if it were only dinner together or watching television together or his listening to her play the piano just for him alone.

She immediately regretted that thought. Mother also wanted to have special times together with him, but she didn't even have shared times when she was out of town. Wynter was disappointed with herself for being selfish and not at all as thoughtful as Jimmy was. She hoped her parents couldn't guess her thoughts sometimes. She didn't want them to realize that she was so thoughtless. They might not love her as much if they knew she was so self-centered. They might think she was a big disappointment.

She closed her eye and tried to go back to sleep, but something began nagging at her, as insistent as a mosquito buzzing around in her mind. She was overlooking something important. But what?

Her father stirred slightly. His breathing changed, the way it did when he was waking up. Then his hand found her right breast and closed around it. He made a contented sigh, the way Jimmy did when she sat next to him, and his breath resumed its normal sleep rhythm. It made her heart feel too big for her chest.

_Jimmy_. She was going to spend part of the day with Jimmy. It was her father's last full day with her, too, and maybe he wanted some special times with just her.

She had never been more disappointed with herself in her whole life. Here she was, selfishly complaining to herself that she was going to be denied some special "just the two of us" time with her father, yet she was going to leave him, the man who loved her with all his heart, alone to go adventuring with Jimmy. School would start in exactly two weeks. She would be leaving him and Mother alone in the house--when they worked from their home offices, which was most of the day for five days a week. As much as she disliked hypocrites, just the same as her father did, she was one. She wondered how her father could love her at all.

But she'd already planned to go adventuring with Jimmy today. Daddy and Mother both said if she made plans to do things with someone else, she had to follow through. And she'd told her father last night that she had plans to spend part of the day with Jimmy as if it were a good thing. He'd said nothing to indicate his feelings, but clearly, she now realized, she'd broken his heart. What would Mother say when she found out? It was bad enough that Aunt Dumb and Uncle Bozo were going to come home with her, but she would be returning to a home that also had such a huge disappointment living there.

As if she weren't already ashamed of herself for what she'd done last night. Once again, just before she'd had a really big orgasm, she let her mind wander away from her father, who was trying with all his heart to make love to her in a way that was the best for her needs. Just before she came she let her mind wander, and she found herself thinking about Jimmy's having to lie there in his bed all alone and masturbate to relieve his sexual tension because he didn't have anyone to make love with the way she did. And just as she felt the throbbing wave of pleasure begin she was thinking about him lying there stroking his... his... his penis.

She just couldn't make herself think of it as Jimmy's _dick_. Not as nice and polite as he was. She sighed and rubbed her nose with the back of her wrist. She pushed it aside the strand of hair that was tickling it.

She would have to apologize to her father when he woke up. She sure hoped he wouldn't be too disappointed in her, but if it made him so upset that he didn't want to make love to her on their last night together, she couldn't blame him.

A noise in front of her face caused her eyes to open. Dragon was looking at her with a worried expression. He knew something was bothering her, and that bothered her more. Even a Dragon had more consideration for other's people's feelings than she had. What would her father say to that?

~ ~ ~

"I'd say Dragon's doing his job and you're doing yours," he said with a gentle smile that made her feel warm all over despite her disappointment with herself. He lifted his head from the pillow and moved his arm so that he could use his hand and forearm as a support. His other large, warm hand gently closed around her slender one. "Dogs are supposed to be sensitive to human emotions, and he obviously is. You're supposed to be enjoying your summer vacation with your friends. I get my share of time with you. They get their share. It's time management, remember? If you don't do different things, then you have nothing to manage."

She shrugged her right shoulder. "I guess. But I feel guilty...."

"Don't. Honey, you grew up isolated from what it's like in the real world. Well, this is what it's like. I know that I have to share you with your friends. I don't mind that. If I did, then I would be the one who's being selfish. Think about it. You're trying to make me be what you're afraid that you are. By your reasoning, I'd be somebody not worth loving. But it sure seemed to me last night that you loved me."

She felt her eyes grow really big. "I did, and I still do! Except that I, well, um...."

When the pause to collect her thoughts grew too long he said, "Just tell me and I'll sort it out with you. Okay?"

She did.

He laughed and gave her that warm smile again. "I guess I haven't been a very good teacher. All this time and I've never told you about sexual fantasies? Maybe you should be disappointed in me."

"Never! You said there was always something new to learn if I was lucky. I guess this means I'm lucky."

He blinked at her. "When we're done, remind me to check your birth certificate. I think your assumed age is off by a couple of decades."

That made her feel so good that she gave him the best kiss she could, dragon breath or not. Then she waited for her lesson. And did she ever learn a lot from it, though some of it seemed to be too weird to be true.

"You sometimes think of other women when you're with Mother?"

He shrugged. "Sometimes. And sometimes she thinks of other men. But that doesn't mean I don't love her or she doesn't love me. It's like.... Hmmm. Well, it's like a putting yourself in as the main character in a movie you're watching or a book you're reading. It's part of being a little selfish."

She thought she understood. "So it's more like fucking than making love."

"Yes." He took a deep breath and stretched. "But you can do it while you're making love, too, you know."

"Does everything have to be so complicated?"

"Of course."

She giggled, but then a thought struck her. "Do you think of someone else when you're making love to me?"

"No. I'm too busy enjoying watching you learn. Remember, I said fantasizing was a way to avoid boredom through repetition. It's never repetition with you. It's always something new. I'm sure I will eventually, and it will probably be Alice DeClerk because she was the first girl I had sex with."

She thought she would be upset to hear him say that, but she wasn't. Maybe telling her that meant he really and truly wasn't mad at her for letting her mind wander. She suddenly grew angry with herself because that thought implied that her father might have lied to her, and she knew he hadn't. He said he would always tell her the truth.

"Well, I'm glad you're not mad at me." She started to say more, but he cut her off.

"Honey, even if it weren't 'normal,' I'd not be mad at you. You're learning. This is all new to you. It's a lot to absorb and to deal with. Don't you ever worry about it again. Okay? Look, I know I'll have to give you up some day because you'll find someone, if you haven't already, and--yes, I know you're 'just friends' now. But eventually you'll want to make your own life with somebody. You'll have children and you'll have to give them up for the same reason. It's what life is all about. That's the difference between living and existing."

That didn't sound fair to her. "But I don't _want_ to give you up."

"You will. But that won't mean you don't love me. It will just mean that you love someone else, too. Just the way loving your mother and Dragon doesn't keep you from loving me." He hesitated and frowned in thought. "Maybe I'm wrong for thinking of it in terms of giving you up. I should be thinking of it in terms of sharing you."

She gave him a daughter-type kiss. "Thank you for explaining. I hope I didn't get your day off to a bad start."

He gave her a strange smile, but one that also said he loved her with all his heart. "Any day that starts with my daughter cannot, by definition, be a bad one. And, actually, I think you were the teacher and I was the student. What you really did was turn the lights on for me. Now, if class is over, I really, really need to go to the bathroom."

She noticed for the first time that she did, too.

~ ~ ~

Wynter was placing the last of the lunch dishes in the dishwasher when Dragon sprang to his feet and assumed his "Jimmy's here" pose. Her father noticed and said, "We're done. You go on with your friends. And don't worry about me. I'm big enough to take care of myself."

She pulled him down for the best lover's kiss she could manage in the seconds available. When she pulled back he gasped for air and said, "But another one of those and I may end up in the hospital. I love you."

"I love you, too, Daddy, with all my heart." She traced an "X" over her heart with a fingertip.

The light coming through the storm door dimmed and the doorbell rang. The doorbell was unnecessary. Dragon was whimpering loudly with excitement and dancing in circles. Wynter had to tell him to move so that she could unlatch the door. Then she had to wait while Jimmy greeted Dragon first and gave him a dog biscuit.

"Hi," he said with that warm smile as he stepped through the door. "Is Dragon going with us today?"

"Hi." Not even Aunt Dumb and Uncle Bozo could have erased her own smile. "No, he's staying here to keep Daddy out of trouble. My bike's in the garage. Hi, Kenny."

"Hey." He frowned and eyed her carefully, up and down. "I hope you didn't get all dressed up on my account."

She looked down at her blouse. It was the nicest forest green one she had for adventuring in the park. Her jersey shorts were new and matched the blouse, as did the elastic ponytail holder. She had changed her white ankle socks for clean ones before coming down for lunch.

"No," she said. When he smirked and started to say something to Jimmy she said, "I wore this for Daddy. I didn't want him to think I was you."

Jimmy lifted his hand and turned his body just enough to keep Kenny from seeing a thumbs-up sign.

"Where's Suzie?" she asked. "You didn't wait for her?"

"Oh, Suzie won't be along," Kenny announced in his tone that said he had a secret and wasn't going to reveal it. And he wouldn't, either, until he was ready. "She's been grounded again."

She was surprised to discover that she was relieved by that news.

~ ~ ~

Wynter was disappointed that the deer and her baby hadn't come back for another drink. She wanted Kenny to see it, too, but he had said that it was too early in the day. Jimmy had agreed with him. They lay on the sandstone and watched the pool for a while, but no trout appeared, either. Kenny had flopped down on the other side of Jimmy. Wynter had wanted to scoot up next to Jimmy again, but she knew that doing so would cause Kenny to taunt Jimmy. She didn't want that, and Jimmy's look, interrupted by a glance at the space between them, said that he understood and agreed.

On their way back to the bikes Kenny said they should check on Suzie. He wouldn't say why, but Wynter thought she could guess. Jimmy didn't seem to comfortable with the idea but he'd agreed out of his natural politeness. Kenny did have a really odd look on his face, not like the times when he was trying to get Suzie and her to play show-and-tell with him, or something similar. It had something to do with his secret, and he wasn't going reveal it. She worried that it might be some joke at Jimmy's expense.

They rode south at a moderate pace, three abreast except when they met other people on the trail. Kenny had suggested they ride in a triangle, with her in front. Suspicious about the tone of his voice, she asked why, and he said that it was so Jimmy could admire her butt. Jimmy called him a putz, a term she didn't recognize. Jimmy looked embarrassed as Kenny explained it, and he tried to apologize to her afterward. She'd told him never to apologize for the truth. She almost didn't know which thrilled her more: Jimmy's smile of appreciation or Kenny's open mouth and goggling eyes.

They rode in a column around some Canada geese waddling down the trail. They were moving back into line when Jimmy and Kenny skidded to a halt on the asphalt. Wynter stopped her bike between theirs. A dozen feet ahead, where the north trail opened into the ball field area of Otter Park, two large and very unclean boys, maybe two or three years older than her, had stopped their bicycles with the front wheels touching and the back wheels near the edges of the trail, blocking the paved path with a "V" pointed at them.

She heard Jimmy whisper, "Uh oh," and Kenny mutter, "Crapola!"

She kept her eyes on the two in front of them and whispered, "What is it?"

"Trouble," Jimmy whispered.

"First-class trouble," Kenny said. "And me without my guardian Angel."

© Russell Hoisington 2005

Continued in Wynter & Jimmy Part 2: Best Friends