Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

“Uh-oh. That’s not a happy look,” Dom said as Matt made his way back to the kitchen, his lips turned down in a frown.

“Nothing’s wrong. They’re all out there, having a blast. I couldn’t find Taylor and Jesse at first, but they were hiding by the porch to scare me.”

Cocking his head to the side, Rex gave Matt a long, hard look. “Then why do you look like someone just ate the leftovers you’d been saving and looking forward to all day?”

“That’s a very specific analogy.” Blowing out a breath, Matt shook his head. “And I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just my Daddy radar, but I have a feeling they’re up to something out there.”

“As long as they’re not doing anything dangerous, let them be.” When Matt glared at him, Dom just shrugged. “What? They’re Littles. Getting into trouble is built into their DNA. Let them live their lives.”

A year ago, Ian never would have imagined that he would consider Dom the voice of reason in the group. But he found himself nodding along, despite Matt’s scowl. “Seriously, Matty. They’re fine.”

“Yeah, I guess. I just worry. Carly’s still recovering from having the baby and she has a tendency to let herself get swept up in things, especially when she’s in Little space.”

“That explains why you’re being a bit more of a helicopter Daddy than usual,” Dom said with a laugh. “Can’t say I blame you.”

“Maybe. It’s just?—”

A loud crash from outside cut off whatever else Matt was going to say. For a moment, they all stared at each other, stunned.

Matt recovered first, turning on his heel and racing for the front door. “Carly!”

With the spell broken, they all raced after him, out the front door to where a group of shocked Littles stood staring at the tall ladder laying on its side just a few feet away.

Fear gripping him by the throat, Ian pushed past the others, running down the steps to Taylor. Her face was white as a sheet and when he pulled her into his arms, she was trembling.

“Are you okay, baby? Are you hurt? What happened?” Pulling away slightly, he ran his hands over her arms, then her legs, relief flooding him when he realized nothing was obviously broken.

“I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m so sorry.” Tears filled Taylor’s eyes as her trembling grew more pronounced. “Please don’t be mad.”

“Why would I be mad?”

“Um, well…” Trailing off, she looked past him.

He turned, following her gaze to the ladder. And the box of Christmas decorations beside it.

Before he could question her, however, Edie’s voice rose above the murmurs and crying surrounding them. “You were trying to do what ?”

Grant laid a hand on the back of her neck, obviously trying to soothe her temper, not that it was doing any good if the fire in Edie’s eyes was anything to go by. In front of them, Jesse stood with her head down, the pink hair she’d been growing out falling like a curtain in front of her face. “Perhaps we should take this inside,” Grant said, his tone even and calm. “Dom, would you be able to check the girls over for injuries, make sure we don’t need to take anyone to the hospital?”

“Of course.” Scooping Noelle up, Dom let her wrap herself around him like a baby monkey, her face buried in his neck. “Come on, girls. Let’s go inside so I can look you all over.”

Now that the panic had faded a bit, the anger Taylor had been so worried about made itself known in Ian’s chest. Turning to her, he raised a brow, pinning her with a stern glare. In response, she immediately threw her hands behind her, as if anticipating what was coming next. “Anything I should know before we join the others, little girl?”

“Um, well, maybe just that it was an accident and I’m really sorry and I don’t think anybody got hurt.”

Her voice quivered on the apology, and some dark part of him growled in response. There was nothing quite like a naughty little girl trembling in anticipation of a well-deserved punishment, and his cock twitched at the thought of delivering the spanking she had obviously earned.

But right on the heels of that came guilt. She’d said it was an accident. What kind of asshole got off on the thought of punishing someone at all, nonetheless for a simple mistake?

Still, the guilt wasn’t quite enough to appease the beast inside him. Not until he knew for sure what she’d been up to. “For your sake, I hope nobody got hurt. Come on, let’s go inside.”

Daddy was mad .

He was doing a really good job of trying to hide it, but every now and then she snuck a look up at him just in time to see that muscle in his jaw jump, the one that told her she was really in for it.

Which, if she was being super honest with herself, she deserved. Seeing that ladder come crashing down, just narrowly missing Carly and Noelle, had nearly stopped her heart. And she was flooded with guilt at the thought of what could have happened, even though Dom had given everyone a clean bill of health.

Now they were all crammed on Edie’s couch, except for Ginny, who had taken up her usual spot in one of the armchairs and was doing her best to look unperturbed by the whole thing. But then Rex glared at her and suddenly she was just a Little girl like the rest of them, about to get scolded by her Daddy.

“All right.” It was Edie who stepped forward, arms folded over her chest and a coldly furious expression on her face. On her own, she was intimidating enough, but flanked by all the Daddies she was downright terrifying. “Who wants to tell me what happened out there?”

When nobody volunteered, Edie raised an eyebrow, her stern gaze traveling over all of them before it finally landed on her own Little girl. “Jesse Lynne. You’re up first.”

“I’m sorry, Mommy!” The apology burst out of Jesse, along with a stream of tears as she twisted her hands together in her lap so tightly her knuckles went white. “We wanted to surprise you.”

“Surprise me with what?” Edie asked, though Taylor was pretty sure she already knew and was just making Jesse explain for the rest of the Daddies.

“Um.” Pink appeared on Jesse’s cheeks and she nibbled at her bottom lip as her gaze shifted nervously between her Mommy and Daddy. “Well, we thought, maybe… maybe if you just saw how pretty the house looked with the Christmas lights up and you didn’t have to do any of the work that maybe you would, um…”

Jesse trailed off, and Taylor didn’t blame her one bit. Not when the fury on Edie’s face was now blazing bright as the sun.

“So even after I told you and Ginny that we were not going to put Christmas lights up this year, you just decided to ignore me and do whatever you wanted anyway. Does that about sum things up?”

“I’m really sorry,” Jesse whispered.

“You’re going to be by the time I’m through with you. Because once your friends leave, you and I will be having a very long talk about what it means to respect your Mommy. I’m extremely disappointed in you, Jesse Lynne.”

The guilt that had been eating Taylor from the inside out finally grew so painful she could no longer keep it inside. “It was my fault!” she blurted out, shrinking back slightly when every grownup in the room turned their attention on her.

“Explain, Taylor Grace.” Her Daddy’s voice was tight with anger and disappointment, and she silently wished for a hole to open up in the floor and swallow her so she didn’t have to face the consequences of her action.

But there was no magical hole to be found, so she dragged in a deep breath and met her Daddy’s furious gaze. “Jesse was so upset about not putting the lights up that after Edie told Ginny we couldn’t, I sorta suggested that we could just… do it ourselves.”

“Whose idea was it to lie to us about why you wanted to go outside?” If possible, Matt sounded even angrier than Edie and Taylor’s own Daddy combined.

“Mine,” Taylor confessed in a whisper, forcing the word past the sudden dryness in her throat.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, her Daddy closed his eyes and dragged in a deep breath before lowering his hand and pinning her with a look that had her insides doing somersaults. “Let’s break this down. You knew that Edie had already told Jesse and Ginny ‘No’ about putting up the lights, correct?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“And you knew that lying to me and the other grownups about why you all wanted to be outside by yourselves was naughty, didn’t you?”

Tears of her own pooled on her lashes. “Y-yes, Daddy.”

“So you knew that when we found out you not only defied Edie’s wishes but lied to us about it, you were going to be in big trouble.”

“Um, well. Not exactly.”

She’d heard the phrase ‘the silence was deafening’ but she’d never really understood it until that moment, sitting on that couch, with six pairs of shocked eyes staring down at her.

“What do you mean ‘not exactly’, little girl?” Daddy growled.

Swallowing hard, she squeezed her hands together in her lap. On either side of her, Jesse and Carly pressed themselves closer to her, as if offering her their strength through some weird form of Little osmosis. “Well, I sorta figured, out of all of us, I might be the only one who could get away with it.”

Daddy’s eyes went wide. But it wasn’t the anger that had her stomach clenching so tightly she had to swallow again to keep its contents in place.

It was the hurt radiating from him that made her feel about two inches tall. “I need a minute.”

Turning on his heel, her Daddy strode out of the living room without so much as a look back over his shoulder.

Fear sat like a rock in her chest. But when she tried to rise to her feet, tried to go after him, she was firmly pushed back down by a heavy, familiar hand.

“He said he needs a minute, sweetheart.” Matt’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “I’ll go talk to him, calm him down a bit.” He hesitated, obviously weighing his words carefully before he sighed. “I’m really disappointed in you right now, Taylor. I think you need to sit here and really think about what you’ve done. How much you’ve broken your Daddy’s trust. We’ll be back shortly to finish this discussion.”

If she’d thought she felt guilty before, it was nothing compared to what she felt now, watching Matt leave. Wrapping her arms around her waist, she leaned into Carly as the sobs wracked her body.