Candy's Daddy by Cherry Lee

Chapter One
    Candy tugged the bodice of her
waitress uniform down and pushed her tits up higher. Didn’t matter. There
wasn’t enough there to ever make decent cleavage. But even the illusion of more
boobs made better tips
    Giving up on her pathetic décolletage,
she leaned over the sink and gazed into the mirror as she traced her mouth with
pink. She pressed her lips together and pursed them at her reflection. A pretty
brown-eyed girl with bubblegum pink lips kissed back at her.
    A quick brush of her long, brown hair
and she was ready to go back to work. She pushed through the bathroom door into
the noisy, steamy, crowded atmosphere of Jake’s Place on a Saturday night.
    “Table three’s calling for another
round. Get your ass in gear!” Bets yelled as she hurried past with a
drink-laden tray.
    “I’m coming. It won’t kill them to
wait a minute.” Candy drew a long breath and headed back into the fray,
counting the hours until close. In hard economic times beggars couldn’t be
choosers. She was lucky to have any job and she made damn good tips at Jake’s,
but Christ how she’d like to go out back and have a smoke. Or even better,
pretend to be sick and go home early.
    The group of young guys at the table
she’d neglected showed their annoyance with surly arrogance, demanding a round
and when she returned with the drinks, claiming they’d all switched their drink
orders and she’d gotten it wrong. When Candy went back to the bar with the
rejected drinks, the bartender gave her shit, too. Pissed off and flustered,
she swore under her breath as she waited for the fresh drinks.
    “Hard night?” The man sitting on the
end of the bar had a deep drawl that sent a little thrill through her.
    Candy glanced over at him and was
caught in his dark, deep gaze. She scarcely noticed the rest of his appearance
his eyes so fully captured her attention. “Uh…yeah. Table three. Bunch of frat
boys with delusions of royalty.”
    The man glanced over at them. “I know
the type.”
    Once his eyes had released their grip
on her, she was able to take in the rest of him. He was a big man with broad
shoulders, not overly good-looking but not unattractive either. His hair was a
lighter brown than those profound eyes. But oh, that voice and those eyes alone
were enough to get her into bed. If he only knew.
    He focused on her again and Candy
stopped worrying about whether the rejected drink order would be subtracted
from her tips. She stopped thinking about the bills she was behind on, her
broken car at the mechanic’s shop, and her job that barely put food in her
cupboards.
    She leaned her elbows on the counter
and smiled at the stranger. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before.”
    “You know all the customers?” he
smiled.
    “We do have a lot of regulars. And I’d
remember you.” She heard her voice go flirty and breathy. She sounded as if she
was about twelve instead of twenty-five.
    “You would? What’s memorable about
me?”
    “Your eyes,” she admitted. “They…” Look
inside me? See my soul? Such poetic pretension wasn’t her style. “They’re
kind. You seem like a caring sort of person.”
    “I kiss babies and puppies on a
regular basis,” he quipped. “You know, a guy prefers to hear that he seems
dangerous, wild, sexy. ‘Kind’ isn’t exactly hot.”
    “It is to me.” She leaned forward
farther, letting him get a look down her tank top at what little she had to
offer.
    Sal, the bartender slapped the last of
her drinks on the tray. “Jake’s going to hear about this fuck up. Booze ain’t
cheap.”
    Candy glared at him, wanting to
explain again those pricks were just messing with her, but Sal was already
turning away, and he wouldn’t listen anyway. She picked up the tray and smiled
at the man on the barstool. “Nice meeting you.”
    “But we haven’t met. I don’t know your
name.”
    “Candy. I know it sounds like a
stripper, but I’m named after my grandmother, Candace. What’s