I glanced toward the door. “I thought Sheila was going to be here soon.”

“Could take her a while. Do you know what daddy issues are?”

I gestured to the coffee table. “Field and Stream?”

Her gaze got pointed. “It means I have a thing for older guys. Not just any guys. Just certain ones. A certain…type.”

She wiggled her eyebrows at me.

I said, “Uh, look, Julie…I’m old enough to be your father.”

“But you aren’t my father. Did I mention he was a policeman?”

This was every kind of wrong all at once.

I shifted on the couch again. “If you want to hump your old man, baby, don’t tell me about it. Find yourself a shrink. Maybe find one under forty.”

That made her laugh a little. She stood. She shrugged as she tugged at the silk belt and that’s all it took for that dressing gown to slide down her smooth skin and puddle at her feet.

Her flesh was a creamy pale pink thing she wore with pride, her breasts neither small nor large but perfect, nipples erect within their puffy, darker pink settings, her waist tapering narrow then sweeping back out into full hips. She did a slow pirouette for me, proud of the rest of her flesh, too, the graceful back, the dimpled, rounded behind, which itself was an architectural marvel of uplift.

What was my secretary’s name again?

Then she sat in Daddy’s lap, where she was able to confirm her effect on me, and her arms went around my neck and then her mouth was on mine, warm and moist…

“Ten years ago,” I whispered into the sweet, naughty face, “what a wild time we’d have had. But, darling child, I have a woman at home.” Named Velda. “And you need to be more careful about who you share your riches with.”

“I have rubbers,” she said.

The bluntness of that wilted the moment, among other things, and I lifted the kid by the narrow waist and set her down next to me.

“Put your robe on,” I said crankily.

She looked embarrassed now, as if Daddy had scolded her, and she scooped the silk thing off the floor and went padding into the bathroom in the nearby hall, fanny jiggling. Somebody needed to paddle that kid.

But not me.

I was chuckling to myself, shaking my head, when the front door opened, and my first reaction was to think of what Sheila Ryan might have walked into.

But maybe she wouldn’t even have noticed an old man banging a young girl, because Sheila Ryan was crying, hysterical as hell, screaming, “Gino! Gino!”

I went over to her and took her gently by the forearms. “He’s not here.”

Her eyes were wide and wet. “I know he’s not here! …What are you doing here, Mr. Hammer?”