Page 76 of Daddy's Naughty List

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’mreallysorry 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 wasmad.

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 justsawhow 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 youandGinny 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.

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