Daddy's Little Liar - Maren Smith Page 0,29
even notice right away that he wasn’t smiling.
“I got the job!” she crowed, then gave a little squeal and even clapped her hands. She’d have bounced, but her ankle knew better.
“Congratulations,” he said mildly and wiped his hands on a cloth that probably hadn’t been completely white in months. He wasn’t smiling.
“My cousin’s husband helped me get it,” she acknowledged with a nod. “He says it’s a great company to work for, and I start in three weeks.”
“I’m happy for you.” Still neutral, still not smiling, he wiped his hands and waited, which was when she noticed how very tense he seemed. The spark of warmth in her stomach died a little. It was feeling a little like it had last night when she’d been in trouble.
“Um…” She cleared her throat. “I’m starting at almost twenty an hour,” she offered, trying to reclaim the giddy happiness. It wasn’t resurrecting.
He held up his finger. “Wait right here.”
Turning on his heel, he went to his office in the garage. The sexy strut of his hips drew her eyes, but the tension inside her never fully went away. It only got tighter, in fact, when he came back with his cellphone in his hand.
She clutched her hands together, her stomach knotting.
Daddy waited until he had reached her side before switching the screen on, plugging in his passcode, and opening his messages.
“You want to show me where you texted to say you made it to Santa Fe, okay?” he sternly demanded.
Feeling all of two inches tall, she squeezed her own fingers until it almost hurt.
“Oh, that,” she said.
“Yeah, that,” he echoed, definitely not smiling.
Her stomach dropped.
“I didn’t send one.” The knots tightening into nooses, she reacted defensively. “Well, I didn’t think you were serious.”
“You didn’t think I was serious?”
She wished he’d stop echoing her. Her palms were sweating enough as it was. Clasping tighter, her hands clutched each other in a stranglehold so she wouldn’t fidget. She didn’t like what his tone and stare were doing to her.
“How was I to know you really wanted to keep in touch? I mean, people say that all the time, but they don’t really mean it.”
His eyebrows arched, although he didn’t look half as surprised as upset. “You want to tell me what part of last night led you to believe I didn’t mean it?”
Her bottom clenched despite itself.
“I-I’m sorry,” she stammered.
“Not half as much as you’re about to be,” he said, the warning kicking a wave of prickling ants straight up the back of her legs to crawl across her bottom. “Especially since that’s not the only thing you did, is it?”
Her nipples shouldn’t be this perked and aroused. She really shouldn’t be feeling the low, thumping pulse just now throbbing to life between her flinching thighs. This was not something to be aroused by, yet the pulse was growing. Her belly grew warm, despite the tightening knots. Everything was happening all over again, just like it had last night—right before he’d taken her across his knee and made her call him Daddy.
Was he going to do that again, and why wasn’t that a dismaying, unpleasant prospect?
“Come here, young lady.” He beckoned to her, the authority in that come-hither gesture intensifying the building throb while her stomach sank lower still.
She could have left.
She didn’t. She followed him all the way back through the garage into his kitchen. They stopped in front of the table, and she knew even before she saw the envelope exactly what she’d done wrong. He pointed at it, still where she’d left it.
“What is that?” he asked, calm yet demanding.
“Oh,” she softly said again.
“I’m a little upset.” Yet he sounded so mild. “When you left here this morning, you left me with the impression you were going to text when you got there, and you would have the finances I loaned you in your possession just in case it was needed. Do you have any idea how many hours I’ve spent today worrying about you?”
“You didn’t have to,” she protested. “I was fine.”
His eyebrows shot all the way up, then he backed up a step.
“I didn’t have to.”
The more he kept repeating her, the more ominous his tone became, and the worse it made her feel.
“I didn’t have to?”
“Please stop repeating me,” she begged.
Shoulders squaring, he went on the attack.
“Young lady, you said you would text me. You didn’t say, no thank you, I’m on my own now, and I’m good. If you had, I wouldn’t have spent the day haunting my