Daddy's Little Liar - Maren Smith Page 0,48

so close; he rocked her gently.

“I’ve g-g-got to g-go home,” she bawled, the realization devastating her. Like this? It was a ten-hour drive! How was she going to hold on to the steering wheel when she couldn’t even raise her arms to hold him back, and she was crying too hard to see?

“Tomorrow,” Daddy said, stroking her back and hair, his own breath warm against the side of her neck. “Tomorrow’s soon enough to drive home.”

Soon enough to say goodbye, too. For the next three weeks, anyway.

It already felt like a lifetime.

Chapter Eleven

“Daddy?” Georgia whispered from the couch.

Tucked in a sleeping bag on the floor beside her, Kace didn’t answer right away, not because he was sleeping—far from it—but because she needed to go to sleep if she was going to have a safe drive in the morning. The more he talked to her, the less likely that was going to happen. It was already midnight.

“Daddy?” she whispered again. The couch springs creaked as she lifted herself up partway and looked at him over the side.

“It’s past your bedtime. You need sleep,” he reminded, and he really, really needed his cock to stop throbbing with unrequited need. Sex was off the table right now, he told himself. This was all moving fast enough as it was, and he knew it. He didn’t want regrets. He really didn’t want her to have them, either.

Sometimes good things are supposed to move fast, the devil on his shoulder whispered. Especially when you knew it felt right.

Slow and steady wins the race is a saying for a reason, the angel on his other shoulder replied. Don’t make this a one-night-stand.

There was a reason those never lasted, too.

“Can I ask a question, though?” she whispered, still peeking at him over the side of the couch.

“Yes. Question answered. Lay your head back on your pillow and go to sleep now.”

“But that wasn’t my question.”

Kace breathed in deeply, doing everything in his power not to smile and not to give in to his instinct. Iris and the baby were sleeping in his bedroom, and this house simply was not big enough or soundproof enough for him to put her over his knee and spank until she was pleading for the chance to go to sleep.

“One more question,” he finally allowed. “Then, seriously. You need to go to sleep, or I’m going to get cross with you.”

“Okay.”

He waited, eventually tipping his head to regard her more closely when she fidgeted with the seam of the couch cushion, and no immediate question was forthcoming. “I thought you said there was a question.”

“There is,” she whispered. “I just don’t know how to ask it.”

“One word at a time usually works.” If his quip won a smile from her, it was too dark in the living room for him to make it out. “What do you want to know?”

“Never mind.” She lay back down. “It’s too embarrassing.”

All right, his curiosity was pricked. Sitting up in his sleeping bag, he brought himself back to head-level with her. She rolled her head on the ghostly white of her pillow to look his way, her fingers picking now along the edge of the blanket tucked up under her arms.

“You have my attention,” he drawled.

She hesitated before rolling onto her side so she could face him. She wiggled as close to the edge as she dared, and he liked that she wanted to be closer.

“Will Iris go home in the morning?”

“She’ll go to her mom’s,” he replied. “And trust me, this—” he wiggled a circling finger to show all four of them and the current sleeping arrangements, “—will not be anything close to a habit. Margo is going to resurface, and I am not going to coy about telling her this better not happen again.”

“Okay,” she said, accepting that. “But that wasn’t what I was talking about.”

Studying her in the darkness, he dropped his hand onto his knee. “What are you talking about, then?”

“First, I think it speaks highly about you as a person that you would still help your ex in her moment of need, even after what she did to you. This can’t be easy for you.”

“I’d think it would feel a lot more awkward for you.”

“It’s weird,” she allowed. “But I admire your willingness to do it, anyway.”

All right. His curiosity was definitely peaked. “Thank you,” he said cautious, waiting for the ‘but.’

“But what I really want to know is…” She plucked and twisted at the hem of the blanket, biting her