Daddy by Surprise by Debra Salonen

prompted.
    “Oh, yes. Sorry. I was visualizing this design and got distracted. The TV show. Right. They are hiring people. My friend Libby put my name at the top of the list.”
    “I’ve never been around a movie or television set. They’re not doing this for a couple of weeks, you said?”
    “Uh-huh. I don’t know the exact date.”
    “But you signed up?”
    “Well…um…sure. I can always use the money. As long as the filming doesn’t fall during the Sturgis Bike Rally.”
    The guy he’d bought his bike from had urged Jack to attend the event. “Motorcyles like you have never seen in your life, man,” the guy had raved. “And the partying. Totally crazy.”
    Jack had purposely planned this trip to avoid the mayhem. A fact that would have made Jaydene laugh since his attitude seemed to support her contention that he was antisocial and unadventurous.
    “You attend the bike rally?”
    “Have for years. I can do a couple of grand’s worth of tattoos when the bikers are in town. A lot of their lady friends want the look, but not the permanence. I do body piercing, too.”
    He tried to look over his shoulder to where she was squatting. “Really? Maybe I—”
    She used the heel of her hand to push his head back down. “Piercing involves needles. No way around it. Now, sit still. I’m sketching in the gap from my stencil. Your biceps are pretty well developed for a dentist.”
    For a dentist. A general assumption he’d come to expect. His wasn’t the most glamorous of occupations, but as a little boy he could still recall how proud he’d been when his father came to the school to inspect his classmates’ teeth. Free. “Just doing my civic duty,” his dad would say humbly.
    Years later—after the accusation and brouhaha—people had speculated about his father’s motive for volunteering to do the school exams.
    Jack closed his eyes and concentrated on the strange feeling of a pen lightly dancing across his skin. The heat from her hand was there, too. The sensation was utterly sensuous and hypnotizing.
    He wasn’t sure how or when, but the next thing he knew Kat was shaking his opposite shoulder. “The first one is done, but I think we’re going to have to move inside before I do the one on your back and your chest. The wind’s come up. Feels like rain.”
    Rain? Not a good thing for a biker.
    He blinked and sat upright, a little groggy from his nap. “I fell asleep.”
    “I know. Happens all the time. The applicator works like a micro massage or something.”
    His embarrassment eased. He picked up his shirt, but she grabbed it from him. “This ink is drying fast, but not that fast. Why don’t you go inside and check out the design in the mirror? See if the black ink is living up to your expectations.”
    He stood, covering his yawn with his left hand. She held the door open for him. “The bathroom is straight ahead, first door on the left.”
    The vanity was spotless, but also jam-packed with juvenile toiletries—boy kind. A comic-book hero toothbrush. Some other action-figure soap dispenser. Two hairbrushes. Two tubes of toothpaste. Neither was the kind his father would have approved of.
    He turned sideways. The image on his bicep was larger, and much darker, than it had looked in the picture. The black seemed to shine like newly spilled tar. He assumed the brilliance would fade pretty quickly. What surprised him was how vibrant and dynamic the design looked when he flexed.
    “What do you think?” she asked from the doorway.
    “I’m beginning to understand why people get tattoos. This is great. I love it.”
    “Phew,” she said, wiping an imaginary bead of sweat from her smooth brow. “I’m glad. The gothic barbed wire has a lot of detail.”
    He looked at her in the mirror, standing close enough for him to see but not close enough to actually make contact with him. He found it funny that she remained so aloof after she’d just spent twenty minutes touching him. He wondered if her