Undercurrents Ch. 01

Todd Creighton tipped his swivel chair backwards in his home office. He held the phone to his ear and raised his eyebrows in a show of exasperation.

"Look, Len. Entry fee is four mil. That's not the final offer. It's the only offer. You're spread all over the place. If you want to come in, you've got to come in big. This isn't some penny-ante sideshow."

He stopped talking and began doodling on a pad. He dropped the pen and lit a cigarette, blowing a stream of smoke up to the ceiling.

"Look. There's no hurry. Why don't you sell some shit, you know? I mean, you own about half the property in the old neighborhood... yeah. Ditch a few storefronts. The market's right for it. okay? Are we good? Atta boy. Okay. See ya."

"Jeez. What a pollyanna." he mused, as he stretched overhead, revealing sculpted muscles beneath the blond hair of his forearms.

Trish, his wife, came to the open door.

"Hey, I'm going over to Maple's - short workout and a sauna. Want to come?" she said, zipping up a light-blue jacket.

"Hmmm, sounds nice." Todd pondered. "Nah. I'd better keep at it. I need a few more people on board to get this thing rolling."

"What about the guy we met at the club last week. Phelps? I think that was his name. Jack's friend. Seemed to be prospering."

"That's an idea."

"Anyway, I'm off. How about some cracked crab for dinner? I can swing by LaCosta's."

"You're reading my mind, babe."

"Really? Be careful what you think, then, big fella!" She laughed.

Todd heard the front door click shut. He went to the front room and stood watching in his T shirt and sweats. Through the blinds he saw Trish's Navigator move down the street.

Taking the long, sweeping staircase up to the second floor, he entered his daughter's room. He knew exactly what he was looking for, and a thrill ran through his powerful frame and settled into his loins. He made his way to the closet.

It was better than he could have imagined! Several pairs of her panties were visible in the wicker basket she used for soiled laundry. Not surprisingly, Todd began to feel guilty about creeping around his daughter's room, but he was good at dismissing such feelings. He knew how to compartmentalize. He held up a pale-yellow satiny pair and scrutinized it for the treasure he sought. And It was a gem! Jessie's dark honey stains were prominent in the front of the panty, and a slender brown streak graced the material behind.

He had missed these adventures for the four years that Jessie had been at college, but that absence only made the present opportunities all the more exciting.

Settling on this pair after perusing the others, Todd exited the room and headed for the hall bathroom, envisioning his tall, beautiful daughter as he went. He was getting in the mood, and the front of his sweatpants confirmed this with a sizable and shifting bulge.

Tod reached to open the bathroom door just as it opened from the other side. In the smallest fraction of a second, he gasped, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and his heart began to beat as if he had run a marathon.

He swiftly jammed the panties into his back pocket as the door swung open. He stood face-to-face with his daughter. Jessie was a woman just one year out of her teenhood, and she deliciously looked the part.

"Daddy! Whew! You startled me. I didn't know you were upstairs. What's up?"

"Just heading for the john, sweetheart." Todd said, his voice strangely high-pitched. Jessie looked at him quizzically.

"You okay, Dad? You look a little funny. I mean pale. I hope you're not sick, or anything."

"Could be." Todd replied. "There's something going around."

Jessie stepped out of the bathroom, and Todd entered quickly. He closed the door and pressed his back to it. He took deep breaths as sweat beaded onto his forehead. His shirt was damp, as well.

Back in his office, Todd reviewed over and over again the surprising presence of his daughter in the house. He swore that he'd heard her say that she would be going hiking with Bernard. But that was a few days ago. Something had changed. That was for sure. He chastised himself bitterly for just assuming this. Was he nuts? He couldn't imagine the fallout if his surreptitious hamper-diving got out. 'Fucking moron', he seethed to himself. 'Dumb ass'. He held his head in his hands as he sat at his desk, and began to calm down. There was a knock at the office door.

"Come in!" Todd called, feeling his adrenalin surge. It had to be Jessie. Now he did know she was in the house.

Jessie entered, her short brown hair spiked with gel. She wore tightly-fitting cutoff jean shorts and a gauzy white blouse with the tails tied at her midriff. She was barefoot.

"Daddy, I need to talk to you." she said in a serious tone.

Could be some personal thing, Todd thought desperately. She did often confide in him.

"Sit down, Jess. What's on your mind. Nothing terrible, I hope."

Jessie lowered herself into one of the two leather-upholstered chairs that faced the desk. Todd could not help watching her gorgeous tanned legs curl up onto the seat of the chair. In spite of the close scrape he'd just survived, he couldn't help imagining resting his face against the soft thighs.

Jessie sat there looking at the floor. Todd's mind was racing.

"Tell me all about it, honey." he said, feeling as if a judge was about to read his sentence to him. "Maybe I can help."

"I don't think that's possible." she said, and Todd noticed a tone of anger in her voice.

"Well, why not?" Todd rejoined, his bowels doing a slow churn.

"What were you doing with my panties, daddy!?" she blurted out, her lower lip quivering. She tried to control herself, but the tears came.

"Your...your..."

My panties!! for Christ's sake, daddy, I saw them sticking out of your pocket upstairs just now! And I looked in my room and they are missing!"

Todd let his head hang down so that he stared blankly at a pen and a crumpled page of paper in front of him. His mind was frozen, and the chill descended and lodged in his chest. Had he injured her, the one person in the world whose trust he had worked so hard to gain? Would she now think of him as a skulking pervert?

He listened to his daughter sniffling a few feet away. Slowly, he drew the undergarment from his pocket, and placed it on the desk.

"Here, baby. Maybe you can forgive me someday. I wouldn't."

With that, Todd slid from his chair onto his knees. He covered his face with his hands, and sobs rose up from deep within him. His shoulders shook.

"Maybe someday." he anguished. "God! I'm so sorry! I'm a shit. I'm not a father. I'm a fucking lowlife."

He looked up to see Jessie looking at him, confusion and pain in her reddened eyes. But there was something else there, too. Todd was too blinded by self-loathing to see it: the love and the pity that also shone through her tears. Weeping uncontrollably, Jessie left her seat and came around the desk to her anguished father.

"Oh, Daddy! Daddy! Don't cry. Please.Please, Daddy. Oh, Daddy."

She went to her knees and embraced him. She stroked the back of his head, feeling the thick hair between her fingers.

"Shhh.Shhh. It's okay." she said between her diminishing sobs. Forgiveness washed over her and the hard casing she had felt around her heart shattered slowly and fell away.

"I don't deserve you." Todd mumbled, unable to look at her. "Some father."

"No! No! Please, Daddy. You love me. I know you love me. What you did... well, really, was it so bad, so evil? But I was shocked. It just never occurred to me that..."

"That I'm a snake? That I am..."

"Stop it! Don't say that!" Jessie cried, and pulled Todd closer. "I can't take hearing you say that!"

Her body was quaking and she wailed loudly. This alarmed Todd, and he forgot himself and tried to soothe her.

"It's okay. Shhhhh. It's okay, sweetie. I'll stop. Really. I don't want to hurt you. Try to relax. Shhhhh."

"I know. I know that you wouldn't hurt me." Jessie said, her composure slowly returning.

They knelt there in each other's arms. Jessie began to shiver, though the room was warm.

"I'm cold." she said, and Todd held her closer and rubbed her back briskly to warm her. He pulled a zip-up jacket off of the nearby coat rack and wrapped his daughter in it.

How am I so blessed, Todd wondered. Any number of twenty-year-olds would have completely freaked out or called the police.

Todd rose and gently pulled Jessie to her feet.

"Let's sit over here for a minute." Todd said, indicating the sofa against the wall. Jessie, pulling the jacket closely around her, walked sniffling to the sofa. Todd sat beside her, and placed a box of Kleenex between them.

"Are you sure one box is enough?" Jessie asked, and Todd was encouraged to see her innate resiliency and spirit coming to the fore. What other young daughter could crack a joke under these circumstances?

Todd sat a respectful distance from Jessie. He waited while she dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.

"Jess. I don't know what to say. I've deceived you. And I've used you.You didn't know it, but I did." Todd searched for the right words. "I mean, I'm sure lots of fathers admire their daughters as they grow into womanhood, maybe most of them. But...I don't know. I stepped over a line, honey. A father shouldn't do that. He's got to be some kind of model, some kind of..." Todd's voice trailed off, and the glow of Jessie's forgiveness began to cool in him. Here he was assuming the role of the rational adult, taking control of the situation when, really, he should just own up to his utter failure as a parent and consider himself at the level of Roscoe, their dalmatian, in the family hierarchy.

"I want you to think whatever you want of me." he said. emphatically. "Forgiveness has to be earned, and it can't happen overnight. If ever. Don't be so quick to let this go, Jess. Your father let you down."

Jessie saw that her father, normally so robust and full of life, looked haggard and beaten down. She sensed deeply the pain and deep disappointment he now carried inside, and it moved her.

"Daddy," she said, reaching for his hand and holding it between hers. All right. I'm...I don't know, hurt, I suppose. But there's more to you than just getting off to your daughter's undies. A whole lot more. Look at how you've cared for me. So many times I've just...glowed inside to see you proud of me. And we've had such good talks. Believe me, other girls growing up had very little of that kind of attention and caring. And when me and Mom fought, you were so even-handed in helping smooth things out. You helped so much." Jessie's eyes teared up again, and she clasped Todd's hand closely.

"And what's so wrong with a father feeling something for his daughter? I mean, the way you feel when you... when you use my things like that? Love takes all kinds of shapes, I think. And none of them is wrong."

Todd dared, finally, to look into Jessie's eyes.

"You are really something, you know that?" he said. "What you are saying is so mature, really. I wonder which of us is the adult here."

"I'd say we both are, Dad. What do you think?"

"It looks that way." Todd said, looking admiringly at her.

"And I have a bit of a confession to make, since we're being so adult, and all." Jessie said, releasing Todd's hand and looking down at the floor.

"I've had feelings of my own, Daddy. Do you understand? I mean... I mean...about you."

With this sudden admission, Jessie colored deeply.

"I'm not exactly innocent, you know." she continued.

"And that's okay, too, Jess!" Todd hastened to say. "How are you going to stop how you feel about anyone, especially someone you're close to? You can't. That's the bottom line, baby. You just can't."

"Okay. A couple of times I listened to you and Mom. You know, in bed." And again, Jessie blushed. "Not recently. But it happened."

"That's okay. Families have secrets. That's no secret, is it?"

Jessie smiled. "Well, not if what my girlfriends tell me is true. Not just sexual stuff. But secrets, just the same."

There was a moment when neither spoke, and Todd reached out for Jessie's hand.

"I feel like you've saved my life. Like you're an angel, Jess. If you hadn't forgiven me, I can't imagine how tortured I'd be feeling right now."

"Let's just say you had it coming. Okay?" she said, and bent closer to kiss his cheek.

"It's good to get my own sneaky behavior off my chest, you know. I've always felt like I was doing something wrong. Once would have been one thing, but ... it was more than once."

"Young woman are naturally curious about sex. It's no big deal what you did." Todd reassured her. "That's how you got to be here, after all."

"It was, well..."

"No. Go ahead, if you want to talk about it. Just because we're a family doesn't mean we have to have secrets."

"Well, It was exciting! Especially the first time. I kind of had a feeling you were going to have sex that night. You and Mom were hugging on the couch in the living room, and later I saw you kissing. You didn't see me, though. I decided I would stay awake, and listen at your door when you'd gone to bed." Jessie looked at her father with an impish grin.

"And...?" Todd coaxed.

Welllll...after maybe ten minutes, I heard Mom moaning and saying something to you. She was talking to you, but it kind of came in spurts. In between, she moaned and sometimes she grunted or said 'Jesus' or 'fuck'.

I tried imagining what you were doing. I mean what you, Daddy, were doing." and here, Jessie laughed nervously and glanced at Todd, then quickly looked away. "I knew what you were doing, of course. You were inside her. I just tried to picture how...you know, how... you were doing it. Anyway, after awhile, I could hear you. You were starting to moan as well, and I could hear that you were breathing hard. I got so excited. I remember that my knees were shaking! Then, pretty soon, both of you were making a lot of noise - moaning, and all. And Mom was saying things like 'It's so good, Todd! It's so good, baby!' She also said," and Jessie hesitated before continuing.

"Go on" Todd encouraged her. "It's all right."

"She said: ' You sure know how to fuck me, baby!'"

Todd waited. They both sat there silently. Suddenly, Jessie giggled. She stifled it, but in a second she began to giggle again.

"I'm sorry, Daddy! Geez, I don't know what's so funny. I don't mean to make light of what we're doing here, you know."

"You're laughing at what your mother said?" Todd inquired, barely repressing a smile.

"Sort of." Jessie said. "I'd never heard Mom cuss before. And it was fun hearing her being so horny and all."

"Well, people say all kinds of things in the heat of passion."

"I was glad to hear her say that, though, that she liked the way you...the way you treated her in bed. It made me feel like our family was a happy one."

"We were a happy family, Jessie. Can we still be that?"

"We are that, Daddy. Yeah. we are."

Todd bent towards her and gave a peck on her cheek.

"Thank you so much for being so good to me, Jess. Let's talk more later. if there are still hard feelings, I'll understand. Okay?"

"Sure, Daddy. I think we'll be fine."