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She let out a small cry of shock. Shoot. Duke wasn’t waiting for her to even catch her breath, was he?
Smack! Smack! Smack!
“You are not, nor could you ever be a burden.”
Smack! Smack! Smack!
“And I will not hear another word like that! Understand me? Say it again, and it will be twenty.”
Smack! Smack! Smack!
By the time the last spank landed, she was kicking her feet, her bottom sore and throbbing. He hadn’t messed about.
Those spanks had hurt.
“I’m s-sorry,” she said as he moved her back into the same position from before so she was facing him.
He cupped her face between his hands. “You are the most important thing in the world to me, Sunny. I’ll walk away from the business tomorrow if I need to in order to show you that.”
She shook her head, tears dripping down her face. “You don’t. I already know it. I don’t know why I said it. I just . . . I don’t want you to ever feel like you can’t tell me something. Like you’re worried I’m not capable.”
“Hush, baby. I’d never think that. I need to protect you. That’s who I am. But I will try to tell you earlier if something like this happens again, all right? I don’t like that you were worrying whether we were having money problems. That’s on me.”
“Well, I’m glad we’re not. Because I’ve had my eye on this squishy Mad Hatter toy for a while now, and I was really hoping to get it for Christmas.”
“We’ll add it to your Christmas wish list, yeah?” He kissed the tears off her cheeks.
“Okay, Daddy.”
His mouth then dropped to hers, kissing her slowly, sweetly, before he deepened the kiss.
Then he drew back to stare down at her. “My beautiful girl.”
She smiled shyly. She didn’t think she’d ever grow used to him telling her how beautiful she was.
“So, do you know where you want the new shop to be? Of how you want to run it?”
“Yeah, I have a few places to look at in the New Year. You’ll come with me.”
Darn right, she would.
“The tricky part is finding someone to manage the new shop. They’ll have to have the same vision as me. I’ll need someone I can trust.”
“I could do it!” It was perfect. She knew what he wanted and he could trust her.
His face grew blank.
Unless he didn’t trust her. Maybe he didn’t think she could handle it.
Shoot. Her mouth went dry, and she cleared her throat.
“It’s all right if you—”
“You work with me,” he cut her off firmly.
“Um, I, but I’d still work with you.”
“No. You work in the same shop as I do. I need you to be where I can see you. You are not working in a completely different location to me.”
