Page 7 of A Little Love

“Pity.” She play-pouted. “It just so happens that on my way into work this morning, I passed an old wire spool and thought of you. It would have made a perfect coffee table.”

More than his fingers were itching now. His whole hand had taken up the song, joining the urge to cup and mold his palms to her curvy ass with the now even stronger temptation to add a well-placed swat or two (or six) along with it.

“I don’t need a giant spool coffee table,” he told her dryly, resisting those urges only by supreme effort of will. It was the military in him. He had a lot of will and did so like to stay in control.

“But you do needsomething.”

“I’m not the only one.”

Those soft laughing eyes of her lit even brighter. “You’re right. I could totally do presents right now. What would you like to give me?”

That was a loaded question if ever he’d heard one. Nolan laughed, every inch of him knowing better than to answer that, and yet when he opened his mouth to tell her so, what came spilling out was as startling as it was intoxicating. “Stand up, and I’ll go get it.”

So much for staying in control.

“Seriously?” Her surprise mirrored his own, but was slower to recover. She blinked twice. “You got me a present?”

“Do you want it or not?”

She straightened above him, then stood up altogether to un-straddle his hips so he could stand. “If you’re going to send me into the bathroom with a cup of Pine-Sol and a toothbrush, I’m telling you right now, I don’t scrub other people’s toilets.”

He looked at her as he, brushing his hands off on the seat of his jeans, walked out of the kitchen. His smile must havebeen cryptic, because she followed him as far as the living room doorway. There she stood, tapping her fingertips together while she watched him pick through the neat stack of boxes to find one marked, ‘Fun and Games’.Hello, darkness, my old friend, he thought as he pulled it out of the pile.

Tricia tipped her head, curiosity sparking in her eyes as she watched him set the box on the arm of the sofa. “Are… we going to play a game?”

“Of sorts.” Nolan pulled his pocket knife from the sheath on his belt. Cutting through the tape, he opened the top flaps and reached inside.One of two things is going to happen, he thought, as he closed his hand on the straps of the big black duffel bag resting on top of the other contents. Either he was about to seriously overplay where he thought he and Tricia were heading, or he was about to open flood gates on a way of life he hadn’t indulged in over seven very long, dry years.

He looked at Tricia, watching her confusion melt into uncertainty. Her thoughts mirrored as plainly as words on the page of a book—Had she pushed too far, too fast? That, more than anything, gave him the courage to pull his bag out where she could see it. Setting it on the couch, he beckoned her closer before reaching into the box again. Revealed now that the duffel bag no longer rested on top of it, he grasped the top of the bright blue and yellow stool and pulled that out next.

She stopped coming the minute she saw it: a tri-legged, dark blue stool with the word ‘Naughty Seat’ both carved and painted in canary yellow letters a good two inches high.

“Do you have a favorite corner?” he asked, as her eyes shot wide open.

“I have to go sit in the corner?” Tricia cried, her face registering more shock and incredulity, and perhaps a bit of mild disgruntlement, than hurt. “That’s not a game!”

Wordless, he held out the stool and continued to hold it out while she picked and chose her way through whatever mental minefield kept her pretty pink sneakers rooted to his living room floor.

“Mm,” she growled, her eyebrows crashing down in a show of Little displeasure. But eventually she came to him, shot him only the briefest of dark glares, and finally took the chair. She looked around the living room with the same degree of reluctance that Jesse had once used while surveying her choices before cutting a switch off the willow tree in their old yard. Selecting her corner, she started toward it.

“No windows,” he told her.

She growled again. She also changed directions mid-step and retreated all the way across the living room to the only corner where windows were not viewable. Setting the stool down, she gave him another pouting frown before turning that look on the water-damaged sheetrock. Finally, sighing, she sat.

Hot twists of wanting gripped him as Nolan stood a moment, simply watching her. Her obedience, as grudgingly as it had been given, was as adorable as it was heady. It was a good thing he didn’t have any other chairs or he’d have given in to the near overwhelming desire to sit himself down just behind her, and pull her adorably sulky Little body into the comfort of his own. Some disciplinarian he was. Not that she’d done anything to deserve punishment, he mused. This wasn’t really that. He was simply testing the waters; laying down some ground rules; testing his authority and her willingness to bend to it.

He really wished he had another chair.

But he didn’t, so he did the next best thing. He gave her a good minute, sixty of the longest seconds of his life, before walking up behind her. Lowering himself onto haunches, he brought his mouth in just behind her ear. Softly, he said, “This is Daddy’shouse. Daddy will paint his walls whatever color he wants. Isn’t that right?”

Head bowed, she picked at her fingers. Eventually, she nodded.

“I know you were only teasing, Tricia, and that’s why this is not a punishment. Only a reminder; the first brick in the many ground rules we’re going to lay down together. If that’s even what you want. No.” He stopped her when she started to turn on that stool. “Think before you answer. I don’t know about you, but I have never in my life offered my dominance to anyone after so short a time as we have known one another. So, this is what I want you to do. I’m going back into the kitchen and I’m going to start painting. If you want me as a neighbor and a friend, that’s fine. I can do that. But if I haven’t grossly misread the situation and if what you want instead is me as your Daddy, then I’m going to need you to tell me so. Openly, plainly. No more chance of misunderstanding. Take all the time you need to think. I’ll be ready for whatever you decide, when you decide.”

And that, right there, had to be the biggest lie he’d ever told in his life. What if he had misread things? He didn’t feel ready at all.

His heart skipping all kinds of beats, he walked back into the kitchen. He moved as far out of the doorway as he could get, deliberately refusing either to let himself obsess over what she might be thinking or, if she caught him looking, to let his hovering presence influence her decision in any way.

She was going to want to stay, the devil on his shoulder assured. She had been too flirtatious and bubbly and nobody came over every single day, working like a dog on someone else’s fixer-upper, unless what they really wanted was to be closer to that special someone. She had to want him. She had to want what he’d just offered: Himself. Someone to make that tattooon the backs of her thighs be something more than just a pretty decoration.

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