Daddy's Little Liar - Maren Smith Page 0,30

phone or wondering if I should start calling hospitals!”

“I didn’t want to be a bother!”

He took another sharp step back, but the way he kept squaring off against her didn’t make that extra distance feel any safer.

“And that?” he asked, pointing at the envelope. “Was that you not wanting to be a bother as well?”

“Um…” There was no stopping her fingers from fidgeting now. She looked from the envelope to him. “Well…”

“I thought we were agreed on that part. That was supposed to be your security in case something else went wrong. Again, if you’d had any objections, all you had to do was give one, but you didn’t. You lied to me, Georgia. Again! Twice now, in fact. Grown-up young ladies who know how to take care of themselves don’t pull crap like that. Do you know who does?”

She wrung her fingers as the sinking in her gut grew, afraid she was about to find out.

“Self-sabotaging little girls.” He closed the distance between them in a single step. “I’ve been trying all day to come up with any other reason you’d have lied to me twice in two days, knowing how I feel about it, and I can’t think of one. So, if you have a reason, now’s the time to help me change my mind.”

Her voice abandoned her. She could barely make herself think beyond how close he was and how crazily alive the flesh across her tensing bottom felt.

“Nothing?”

Her heart was beating a thousand times a second as she stammered, “It felt wrong.”

He tipped his head. “Wrong? What do you mean? In what way was this wrong?”

“It’s what prostitutes do!”

He stared at her without moving or saying anything for almost a full minute. Eyebrows arching again, he took another deliberate step back.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You gave me money after we did some, you know, pretty sexual things, um… and I didn’t want you to feel obligated, and um… you’d already done… done so… um, much…” The more she tried to explain, the more ridiculous she felt and the faster her voice was dying to a whisper. The heat flaring inside her in equal parts remembered liking this feeling last night. It wasn’t quite as enjoyable right now. It was just mortifying.

“It was just very sexual, you know?” she tried again, almost desperately. “The whole Daddy thing?”

“The Daddy thing,” he echoed.

God, she was starting to hate when he did that.

“Did we have sex?” he asked. “Did I block that part out of my mind?”

“No! B-But you had me call you Daddy, and you did the butt thing and spanked me, and I liked some of that, and you can’t say it wasn’t sexual!”

“You liked it?”

Her humiliation deepened. She cleared her throat. “Some of it.” Flustered, she squeezed and strangled her fingers. “Then you pay me, and I’m supposed to leave. It… it felt wrong.”

He held up a staying hand, quieting her.

“Your feelings are valid, and had you brought them up this morning, we could have discussed them. Starting with, the money was not a payment. It wasn’t even a gift. I believe I was very clear when I said it was a loan, specifically meant to get you from here to Santa Fe, then from Santa Fe back to Oregon without either of us worrying you might get stranded somewhere else.”

“Yes, but—”

“No,” he cut her off. “No, Georgia… no buts. This wasn’t open for misinterpretation. I wasn’t treating you like a prostitute, and I sure as hell am no woman’s john. You took something that was meant to keep you safe and completely disrespected both it and me.”

“No!” She shook her head, appalled. “No, I didn’t! Daddy, I didn’t!”

“Be very, very careful.” He held up his hand and pointed at her with a stern finger. “Do not call me Daddy right now unless you want a Daddy to respond.”

Her jaw dropped. For a moment, she couldn’t answer. She couldn’t pull so much as a single thought together beyond the dismaying realization that first, she’d hurt him, and second, he was kind of right. That stunned her. When he’d given her the envelope and declared, in that Daddy tone of his, he wouldn’t accept her giving it back, she hadn’t pushed. She hadn’t shared her thoughts or concerns, just walked back into the house, hid the money on the table, and left, hoping she’d be long gone before he noticed what she’d done.

“All I wanted to do was come and share my good news with you,” she protested, hoping