Page 71 of Daddy's Naughty List

Glancing over her shoulder to make sure Edie hadn’t followed her in, Taylor made her way over to the chair and plopped down on the floor beside her friend.

It was still a bit weird to consider Jesse her friend. They’d been a few years apart in school so they hadn’t known each other all that well growing up. And then Jesse had left for Hollywood and become a huge star seemingly overnight, which had put her even more out of reach than when she’d lived in Lost River.

Mostly, though, it was weird because Jesse and Edie had history with a capital H. They’d had one hot summer together before Jesse had left without a word, shattering Edie’s heart in the process. Sometimes it still felt like she was being disloyal to Edie by making friends with Jesse, but seeing as how Edie was now Jesse’s Mommy as well as her lover, Taylor knew Edie would want her to be friendly.

With that in mind, she offered up a smile at the scowling girl in the chair. “Everything okay, Jesse?”

“No. Mommy and Daddy are beingmean.”

Uh-oh. Dangerous ground. “What happened?”

The noise in the living room dropped considerably as the other Littles abandoned their conversations to listen to Jesse’s woes.

Sniffling back tears, Jesse jerked a shoulder in a shrug. “It doesn’t matter.”

“If it’s making you sad it definitely matters,” Carly said, her voice coated in sympathy. “And maybe we can make it better somehow.”

“You can’t. Nobody can. Nothing will make it better.”

If she hadn’t looked so sad, Taylor might have laughed at the dramatics. “At least give us a chance to try.”

“We were supposed to come home and decorate the house for Christmas, but since we got home so late, Mommy said there was no point in hauling everything out just to take it back down again in a couple weeks. She said we could decorate inside a little bit, but not outside.”

Since it was still light outside, Taylor hadn’t even noticed the lack of lights on the house. “That stinks. But it’ll be okay. The inside looks super pretty.”

“It’s not okay!” Jesse wailed. “What if Santa skips us because there’s no lights? What if he doesn’t know where to find me? This is my first Christmas here, what if he doesn’t know this is where I am?”

“Oh, sweetie. Santa always knows.” Climbing up in the chair with Jesse, Carly wrapped her arms around the sniffling Little and squeezed. “He’s magic.”

“She does know he’s not real, right?” Noelle whispered, forcing Taylor to swallow a laugh.

“Little logic,” Taylor whispered back with a shrug.

“Surely Edie has some small decorations we could put up without too much trouble.” Now it was Ginny piping up, her tone thoughtful. Of all of them, she was the ‘oldest’ Little, more like a teenager than anything. “Maybe if we didn’t make her do any of the work she’d be okay with it.”

Hope glimmered in Jesse’s eyes as she wiped at the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Maybe. But she told me if I asked again I’d get a spankin’.”

Grinning, Ginny rose gracefully from her chair. “Then you don’t have to ask. Be right back, girls.”

An almost reverent hush fell over the room as Ginny disappeared into the kitchen. Even straining her ears, Taylor couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, but soon the voices grew louder.

“Edie, you’re being ridiculous. We just want to put up a couple strands of lights. You don’t have to do anything.”

“And that isn’t the point. The answer is no, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

“But—”

“Pick your battles, princess.” Rex’s voice held a note of amusement, as if he found the whole thing hilarious. Which, knowing him, he probably did. “I’d hate to have to spank you just because you don’t know how to take no for an answer.”

“Ugh,fine. But I want it noted that I think Edie is being completely unreasonable.”

A moment later, Ginny came sailing back into the living room, twin flags of pink flying high on her cheeks and her eyes glittering. “I’m sure you all heard the answer is no.”

“We heard,” Jesse said sulkily. “Thanks for trying.”

Ninety-nine percent of the time, Taylor was on Edie’s side. Especially when it came to Jesse.

But what kind of Mommy denied her Little girl some Christmas magic?

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