Sadie's Little Christmas - Maren Smith Page 0,10

and sending her down the hall with a pointed look. “All of you,” she announced to the handful of Littles gathering to see what the commotion was about, but no one moved. Or if they did, they didn’t move fast enough, and Sadie couldn’t bear it. Everyone was looking at her, judging her. She never should have touched the other girl. In some distant, less animalistic/reactive part of her mind, Sadie knew she was in the wrong, but there was no such thing as pulling herself together at this point. She was shaking, cornered, and now the tall, sexy, ‘Master’ Derek had seized hold of her bag, and with all his Littles wide-eyed and watching, she compounded sin upon sin.

She grabbed his hand, but she might as well have been trying to pry steel open with her fingers for all she could make him release her bag.

“Let go!”

“What do you have in here?” Derek demanded, suspicion alive in his dark eyes.

“Nothing! It’s my stuff!”

“No one behaves this badly over everyday stuff. Let me see.”

She panicked. “No!” Grabbing the shoulder strap with both hands, she threw her whole body into the fight to wrench it out of his grasp.

“I said clear the hall!” Nanny J snapped, the sharpness of her scolding tone sending the Littles scurrying for their classrooms. Only one door out of the four occupied rooms, however, closed.

Appalled at herself, yet helpless to stop, all Sadie knew was she had to get out of here. She stomped on his foot as hard as she could and yanked. The plastic ring that connected the shoulder strap to her duffel bag snapped, which would have sent her sprawling had Nanny J not grabbed her by the arms, jerking her around to pin her with a very stern look.

“That, young lady,” she warned, “is enough.”

There was no such word in her vocabulary. Just like she’d shoved the other girl, she shoved Nanny J. The only difference now—one, Nanny J didn’t fall over backward, and two, Derek dropped her duffel bag to seize firm hold of her arm. Yanking her back from Nanny J, he spun her around so fast, her feet almost couldn’t keep up.

Three hard swats cut through her panic and irrational rage, arching her up onto her tiptoes in open-mouthed shock... swiftly followed by wave after crashing, settling wave of weirdly calm relief.

Sadie sucked a loud breath, wilting back down off her toes when no fourth swat occurred.

She sucked another hard breath when Derek spun her back around far enough to level his stern frown directly at her.

“You will apologize to Nanny J right this minute, and you will never—and I do mean, never—raise your hands to her again. Is. That. Clear?”

One more time, Sadie breathed in deep, but when she tried to exhale, her throat and chest both locked in tight and refused to let her. The attempt to force the breath out broke her. Her shoulders jerked once, then every bit of emotion she was struggling to keep locked up tight shattered her in its need to get out.

“I’m sorry, Nanny J,” she wailed, bursting into tears.

If the other woman was mad at her, she hid it well behind a tsk and an embrace. She pulled Sadie in, hugging her so tight, for just a moment, Sadie was convinced the embrace was the only thing keeping her from falling apart entirely. She stood limp in Nanny J’s tight hold, her head on the other woman’s shoulder, and accepted the scolding she was given and which she knew she deserved.

“What was all that fuss about, hm?”

“I don’t know,” Sadie confessed brokenly. “I honestly don’t.”

“I don’t think I have ever seen such bad behavior in these halls and that, my dear girl, would almost be worth congratulating, trust me,”—she chuckled dourly—“I have seen my share of bad, bad behavior!”

It wasn’t funny, but between gasping sobs, Sadie still managed a shaky laugh.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

She only realized Nanny J was stroking her back when her hand stilled. Turning her head, Sadie froze when she saw Derek standing there with her unzipped duffel bag in one hand and her white kitten, Spankles, in its pretty blue princess dress in his other. He looked from it to her, and Sadie came unglued.

Nanny J tried to hold her, but Sadie launched out of her arms. Snatching Spankles away from him, she backed away, stopping only when she bumped up against the wall behind her.

“Don’t laugh at me,” she hissed, hugging her kitten fiercely close.