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Not, she’d noticed, after he’d caught her breaking a rule just a few hours after she’d ‘moved in’. No, his mood shift hadn’t come until he’d opened the drawer.
Curious now, she gripped the simple porcelain handle and slid the drawer open again as quietly as she possibly could. But all she found was a stack of notebooks like the one he’d placed in front of her already, along with a scattering of pens in all different colors. There was a purple glittery one that was practically calling her name, but that wasn’t the one he’d picked for her. And if the pens were, somehow, to blame for his sudden plummeting mood, she didn’t want to mess with them.
But the notebooks were harder to resist. Lifting them from the open drawer beside her, she paused, listening for the sound of his footsteps, his breathing, anything that might indicate she was about to be caught.
Not sensing anything, she flipped open the first notebook, the one with a unicorn dancing on the front with so many bright colors it hurt her eyes. She had a vague memory from her childhood, of all the popular girls having similar notebooks, and wishing she could have something so pretty for once. But she hadn’t dared to ask.
The pages within were blank, so she moved on to the next, this one with a colorful cat in the same overwhelmingly bright style as the unicorn.
Still nothing.
It wasn’t until she got to the fourth book that she found something. That one was bright pink with the wordsDaddy’s Naughty Princessscrawled across the front in curly, glittery letters.
She should put it away. This was obviously something private, and she had no business snooping around. But even as she silently lectured herself, her fingers flipped open the cover as if she had no control over them any longer.
Heart pounding, she focused on the words on the first page, written in what was obviously a woman’s neat, bubbly handwriting.
I will not call Daddy a big fat stupid head (even if he is being one).
Halfway down the page, the parenthesis disappeared, making her wonder if the person who’d written those first few lines had gotten caught in the middle of being naughty.
Was Dean the Daddy in the book? If he was, who had written all these pages and pages of lines? Had he sent her away so he could bring MaryAnn here?
That would explain the sudden change in his mood. Anyone would be sad if they’d had to send their loved ones away in order to take care of a complete stranger.
And how had she repaid his sacrifice? By breaking one of his rules pretty much the second she’d gotten there.
Determined to be a better guest moving forward, she carefully returned the stack of notebooks to the drawer, making sure to rearrange them exactly as they had been before closing them away and picking up the pen he’d given her.
Her heart sank a little when she realized the ink was a stark white. Luckily, the pages of the notebook were more cream than white, so it wasn’timpossibleto read what she’d written, just difficult.
Maybe that was on purpose? Maybe he’d chosen that color so she would have to really focus on each word as she wrote it instead of just going through the motions?
Sighing, she leaned down so she could see the words without squinting quite as hard and got to work.
* * *
By the timehis phone chimed, letting him know her thirty minutes were up, he was feeling much more in control of his wayward emotions. Instead of torturing himself by watching her on the monitors, he’d used the time for a quick workout, putting himself through a grueling set of body-weight exercises that left his muscles trembling, but his head and heart blessedly empty.
He found her hunched over the desk, far more intent on her lines than any Little girl he’d ever known. It almost made him want to simply sit and watch her, but for some reason doing so in person felt even more intrusive than watching her on the security feed.
Doing his best not to startle her, he cleared his throat. She still jumped a bit, though not as much as he’d expected.
But as soon as she turned and saw him, her face fell. “Oh. I’m not done yet.”
There was that urge again, the itch under his skin. It was oh so tempting to cross his arms and give her the textbook ‘Daddy stare’ just to see what she would do.
Instead, he smiled. “That’s all right. How much did you get done?”
“Umm.”
Fuck, the way she was chewing on her bottom lip, looking all nervous and naughty, wasnothelping his situation in the least. “Umm…?”
“Well, it’s just, the pen you gave me makes it kind of hard to see. And I’m not complaining, or trying to make excuses, I promise, but that’s why it’s taking me so long.”
“What’s wrong with the pen I gave you?”
She paled, and he had to stop himself from sighing. If nothing else, he was determined she’d stop looking at him like he was some kind of predator intent on tearing her to pieces by the time she returned home.
