Georgia's Daddy (8 page)

Funny how even the change of just one little word made all the difference. She bit her lip to hide her smile. “Well, that’s not
so
bad, but I just don’t know…”

“I’d like to be your daddy, if you’d let me.”

Georgia’s eyebrows shot up nearly to her hairline. “I… I don’t understand.”

“It means that I want to take care of you. I want to protect you, even from yourself. I want to reward you when you’re good and punish you when you’re naughty. I want to cuddle you, and make you feel safe. I want to make sure you know every day that you’re loved. All you have to do is let me.”

She was at a loss for words. That was a first. She literally had no idea what to say.

“You don’t have to answer right now. Just take some time and think about it.”

“No, I… I don’t need time to think. I… I can’t, Sam.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t want to. That’s… I’m not into stuff like that. You make it sound really nice and all, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not my thing. Sorry.” Then, before he could reply, she scurried off his lap and opened the door and climbed out. “Goodnight, Sam.” She closed the door and headed for the house without a single backward glance.

* * *

He watched her go, feeling a pang as she didn’t so much as wave goodbye. Not that he should have expected her to. In fact, he should have known exactly what to expect. True, he’d only done this a time or two before, but it had ended the same way every time. The thing about Georgia was, it just seemed to hurt more now that it was her.

“When will I learn to keep my damn mouth shut?” Sam mumbled aloud as he watched her sprint inside the house.

He couldn’t help the deep, pulsing desire he had to dominate women. But he wanted to do more than that—he wanted to be everything he’d said to her and more. He wanted to comfort and protect, to provide guidance for a woman in need. And if ever there was a woman in need, it was Georgia Miller. But if she couldn’t see it, well, he sure couldn’t make her.

“Samuel?” his gran called out as he walked inside. “Aren’t you home a bit early?”

“A bit,” he called back. He’d hoped to stave off this conversation for a few days, but it didn’t look like he was going to get that lucky.

“Is Georgia with you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, didn’t the two of you have a date?”

“We… we decided not to go tonight.”

“Oh, Samuel,” she sighed, and he could hear her disappointment from clear in the other room. He could just imagine how her face would look, too. She would be wearing that mask of hers that was stubbornly determined to be positive despite the fact that they both knew how let down she was. “I had high hopes for this one.”

Me too, Gran. Me too
.

Chapter Four

He hadn’t seen her in three days, so he knew she wasn’t about to change her mind, but that didn’t stop him from thinking about her. Thinking about Georgia had become a habit in the short time that he’d known her and it was apparently going to be harder to break than he’d thought. It was strange, because the two times he’d gone through this before he’d been with the girl a lot longer before he brought up the idea of her being his little. You would think that each of those would have hurt more, he should have been more invested, but somehow Georgia had wormed her way into his heart from the very beginning. It was only now that he was realizing how very deep she’d gone.

Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t see her again—chances were that last night was exactly the motivation she’d needed to get her essay done. She would probably be choosing her college based on how far away she could get from this town. From
him
. If he did happen to bump into her before she left, she would either turn away and pretend not to notice him, or she would be brave and make awkward chitchat until she could find a reason to get away. The thought of either stung more than he’d expected.

Focus, man
, he told himself as he looked at the tractor. He was hoping to have it up and running by planting season, and even though that was a few months off, suddenly he found he had the strength and energy of at least five men and had managed to knock everything else out of the way already. When he got this finished—assuming he did, that was—he’d have nothing else to do but to finally get around to installing those shelves his grandmother had been asking him to put up.

“Sam?”

Her voice sounded tremulous, certainly not the sassy, confident girl he knew, but he’d still know that voice anywhere. Then when he poked his head up and saw her, the breath literally left his lungs in a
whoosh
. His memories of her were nowhere as beautiful as the living, breathing vision that was Georgia.

“Can… can we talk a minute?”

“Sure.” He set down the wrench he’d been wielding and sat up, grinning at her. He couldn’t help it—the girl made him smile. But to his bewilderment, as she looked at him, her face began to crumple and she began to cry. “Georgia? What is it?”

“N-nothing. I just… I don’t know w-why you’re… so nice to me!” she wailed.

He was up on his feet like a shot and moving with deliberate steps toward her. She held up her hands and signaled him to stop. Sam paused, undecided, until she broke into great, heaving sobs. That made his mind up quick and in a few steps he had her pulled into his arms.

“Hey, what’s this about? I’m sure it’s not as bad as it seems,” he attempted to soothe her as he ran his hand over her hair.

“I-it is!” she insisted, burying her face into his shirt and soaking him with her tears.

“Okay, well, whatever it is, we’ll get it figured out. Why don’t you calm down, now, and we’ll see what can be done?”

“Y-you’re too n-nice!” she exclaimed again, dissolving into body-racking sobs.

Sam moved his other hand to her back and rubbed up and down, patiently waiting for her tears to subside. It didn’t matter how long it took, or the fact that his girl was in tears. She was in his arms, and that was all that mattered. He’d wait it out for as long as she needed for him to.

* * *

She couldn’t believe she was here. She couldn’t believe she was dripping mascara-colored tears on Sam’s shirt and he was just standing there, acting like she was a princess. She loved the way he held her—even now, even after she’d been so mean to him, even though she hadn’t bothered to so much as text since their last conversation, he was still holding her and letting her cry her heart out when he probably had much better things to do. But somehow, she’d known this was how he’d be. He was a person who was unfailingly kind, and he would be that way with her, too, even though she’d hurt him. Even though she’d lied.

Of course, he didn’t know about the lie. Not yet. But that was why she was here, tripping over every other word she tried to use to explain.

She felt awful about the way she’d reacted to him when he’d suggested that she be his little girl. The truth was, she’d been confused by her feelings, and still mad about having a sore butt and she’d used that moment to lash out at him. He’d been vulnerable, he’d opened up to her, and she’d been mean for no reason. And the guilt had eaten her up alive ever since.

The truth was, the idea of having a loving, protective authority figure didn’t bother her that much. What he’d suggested sounded kind of nice. But she’d been caught off guard, and instead of taking time to process what he’d suggested, she’d taken off and run. And she’d regretted it every moment after. For one thing, Sam deserved better than that, and for another, she hadn’t realized quite how much she cared about him until she wasn’t seeing him every day.

That had been another bad choice. She’d felt too embarrassed to tell Sam the truth, that she’d been more pensive than put off by his suggestion, and the longer she waited, the more she felt like she couldn’t come clean. By day three of no contact, she was sure he must hate her. She’d seen the look on his face when she’d turned him down flat, which was exactly why she hadn’t been able to look back as she went into the house. If it had been her, she’d hate her, so surely he must.

But this morning she’d known she wouldn’t be able to take it for another day. She had to see him, even if he did hate her, just to tell him that she was sorry. She knew that didn’t mean that he’d give her a chance to correct her mistake—she didn’t deserve that—but at least she would come clean.

Only, the minute he’d looked up and saw her, his eyes had lit up and she’d known that he wouldn’t hate her. He wouldn’t hate her, because he didn’t have it in him, and that was why she’d started crying in the first place. She’d ruined a great thing with a great guy just because she’d been afraid.

“That stuff you were talking about earlier…” She swallowed past the burning lump in her throat, forcing herself to look up and meet his eyes. “About… me being a… your…” She couldn’t go on. She gritted her teeth against the sobs that longed to burst free, forcing them back down. But that didn’t stop the burning hot tears from continuing to rain down onto her cheeks. Once she’d started, she couldn’t stop, and she began sniffling as they poured down her face.

“What’s this about, Georgia? You don’t need to be so upset.”

“B-but… I do,” she choked out, peering up at him with watery eyes. “I… I lied to you, Sam.”

His brow furrowed as he looked down at her. He was torn between giving her the comfort she so obviously needed and grilling her on the lie she’d supposedly told. In the end, he took her by the hand and led her to the nearby picnic table. He took a seat, pulling her down along with him. She took to his lap easily, immediately snuggling into his chest. The act warmed him to the point where he didn’t even feel the tears she continued to shed into his shirt. He held her tight, cuddling her and pressing gentle kisses to her bent head until she calmed down.

When she finally settled down to a sniffling cry, he hooked a finger under her chin and tilted her head up so that her eyes, still beautiful, even in a sea of tears, looked directly into his. “Do you feel better?” he asked gently as he used the back of his hand to brush away the tears on her cheeks.

“N-no.” She scrunched her face up as though she was trying to ward off another crying jag.

“Shh, it’s OK, honey. We’ll figure this out. Tell me what I can do to help.”

Georgia’s face screwed up tighter as she contemplated his words. “I don’t deserve your help.”

With a tender touch, he cupped her face in his hands and turned her so that she was looking at him once more. “You’ve got to calm down, Georgia.” Though patient, his tone took on a sterner quality.

It worked. Though her lip trembled, she fought back another wave of tears and after another few moments of sniffling, she managed to pull herself together. As well as she could, anyway.

“Now,” Sam began again, his voice a mixture of concern and authoritative firmness, “tell me what all this is about.”

Under the intenseness of his stare, Georgia froze. Suddenly, coming clean didn’t feel like such a good idea after all. For one thing, she’d already admitted she’d lied to him, and he’d told her before what he thought about things like that. Hell, that was a big part of the reason she’d turned tail and run in the first place, proverbially screaming all the way. But if she truly wanted the things he could offer her, she didn’t have a choice. Now was the do-or-die moment. She could either refuse to tell him, which would be hard enough, given that she’d already admitted to wrongdoing, or she could confess all her sordid feelings and the fact that she’d lied because she hadn’t known how to handle them. If she told him the truth, then she’d surely be punished, and the thought terrified her. If she didn’t, then she might have to live the rest of her life wondering what would have happened if she’d wrangled up the courage to open up.

“Georgia?”

His voice was a soothing balm to her anxious heart. She looked up at him with shy, adoring eyes, nibbling her lower lip and trying to find the words. Because from the moment he’d said her name in that tender, concerned tone, she’d known she would tell him, if only she could figure out how.

“What is it, baby? Tell me, so that I can make it better.”

She swooned inside, then and there. If there’d ever been sweeter words spoken, she’d never heard them. It was his infinite kindness that made her stubborn lips budge. “I… I messed up.”

“Yes, so you said.” He smiled kindly and moved her braid to rest over her shoulder and gently began to massage her shoulders. “You’ve got to help me out here, sweetheart.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I like it when you call me that,” she admitted. “And… and baby, and even little girl.”

“I see.”

But did he? She wondered. Did he
really
?

“Do you like being treated like a little girl sometimes, too? A grown woman who becomes little only for me?”

She hadn’t thought about it like that. Put that way, it sounded much more sane and reasonable than it had roughly seventy-two hours ago.

“Do you like the idea of having a stern daddy who will spoil you, but also make you follow his rules?”

Just the thought made her arms prickle with goosebumps. Yes, oh yes.

Though she hadn’t spoken aloud, he didn’t seem to need verbal confirmation. Instead, he began to stroke her braid as he spoke in a firm, patient voice. “I take those rules very seriously, Georgia. I’d have to know that if you agree to this, to be my little girl, then you’ll be willing to accept the consequences for breaking the rules I set.”

She took a deep breath. She wanted to be the kind of person who could, but she just wasn’t sure. She loved him, she knew that, even if she wasn’t ready to tell him so yet. She loved him and she wanted to be with him and she liked the way he made her feel. She felt treasured every time she was around him, and she didn’t think that would change no matter what he called it. If he wanted her to give being his little a shot, she thought she could do that. At least, she wanted to try.

“What… what if I’m not good at it?” she worried aloud.