Daddy's Little Liar - Maren Smith Page 0,41

prepared to handle it the way I should have. I promise I will do everything in my power to make sure it never happens again. How do you feel about that?”

She blinked again. She wasn’t smiling anymore, but she still didn’t look like she was ready to run.

“I don’t think I have ever, ever heard anyone confess they got physically abusive with someone from their past to someone they’re just dating.” Startled misgiving flashed into her features as she realized what she said. “That... that is what we’re doing, right? Dating?”

He couldn’t help smiling. “That’s what I’m trying to do, yes.”

She relaxed a little, her fingertips tapping on the side of her glass. “Okay then, in that vein, I’ve got a confession, too.”

Easing back in his seat, he tried not to let it show how adorably earnest and somber she looked while she made it.

“About four years ago, while I was in college, I was dating a guy named Mike. Mike had this habit of shutting me out when he got mad. You know, the silent treatment. Here I’d be trying to talk the problem out, and he’d just stonewall me. No feedback. No forgiveness. There’d be times I didn’t even know what I’d done wrong.”

“To be clear,” he said, no longer enjoying this conversation. “I would consider that abuse too, albeit verbal.”

“And looking back, I can see that,” she assured him. “But it doesn’t change the fact that one day he did that, and I lost it myself. He turned and walked away from me. I was standing at the kitchen counter, and there was this little plastic drinking glass by my hand. The next thing I knew, I grabbed it, threw it, and it made the most...” She hesitated, her eyes unfocused as she looked back on that far away time and searched for a way to describe it. “Light-hearted tocking sound as it bounced off the back of his head. I’d hit him. I’d never hit anyone before, but I was just so mad at that moment, I… well, I’m sure I could have stopped myself, but I didn’t even try.”

He nodded. “Kind of changes the way you look at getting into arguments, doesn’t it? Makes you a little more watchful, so there won’t be a next time.”

She nodded. “I’d like to say I’ve been very careful not to let there be a next time, but the plain fact is, I haven’t dated much since he and I broke up. Not that I didn’t want to, or I couldn’t find someone. But because there were so many other things going on. I was graduating, couldn’t find the right job, being a waitress, I work weird hours...”

“Life got in the way,” he said.

She almost snorted. “To put it mildly.”

“I won’t let myself be put on anyone’s back burner,” Kace said bluntly, softening the harshness of that with another smile.

Georgia met his stare without fidgeting or looking away. “Me, either. I’ve never done the long-distance thing, though.”

“It’s not really long distance. It’s sixty miles, an hour trip at most.”

“I could probably shorten that by getting a place outside of Santa Fe,” she suggested.

Holding up a staying hand, he cautioned, “You don’t want to do anything that’s going to make getting to your new job harder than it has to be.”

“I’ll be working remotely,” she said, her face brightening. “I’ll only have to go into the office once a week or so. Frankly, I could live here, and it wouldn’t affect me, apart from the hour-long commute on office days. That’s still what, four hours in the car every month. I’d spend on average less time driving than if I lived within five miles of work and commuted every day.”

She was thinking of the future already, figuring out how to make it work if the next few weeks turned into something they wanted to pursue until it actually became something heart-defying.

“Good to know,” he said, making her smile. “Still, we don’t know where this is going to go, so let’s start with what’s good for you first. If what we have turns into something phenomenal, then we’ve got time and options to bring you closer. Okay?”

She played with her glass and nodded. She looked at him from out beneath her lashes again, and this time it was utterly coy as she softly said, “Yes, Daddy.”

Just the sound of that word on her pretty lips sent an electric jolt zipping through his veins, straight to his cock.

“What else?” she asked.

He had

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