Page 51 of Protecting Little Phoebe

“Right. We need a chat.”

Her eyes widened in alarm, and she pushed her hand behind her to cover her butt. “I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me! I’m innocent, I tell you!”

“Little girl, what are you talking about? Innocent of what?”

“Um, of whatever you were about to punish me for.”

“I wasn’t going to punish you,” he told her.

“But you said chat. Chat is the code word for I’m gonna spank you.”

He shook his head. “Sweetheart, no. Sometimes a chat is just a chat.”

“Drat. Gonna have to update my internal book of Daddy code.”

“You have an internal book of Daddy code?” he asked.

“Yep. It only had one word. Chat means you’re gonna get spanked. Now chat can have a dual meaning.”

“I’m sorry,” he said solemnly. “That seems very confusing.”

“Oh, it is. You have no idea how confusing you Daddies can be.”

“Have other Daddies been confusing you?” he demanded.

Rein it in. You sound jealous.

“Um, no, just you, I guess.”

Right. He smothered his jealousy. “I just wanted to talk to you about why you aren’t looking at anything.”

“Um. What do you mean?”

“Before you were all excited about everything. Now you keep telling me you don’t want or need things. Is it because I’m getting these things for you?”

“It doesn’t feel right to spend your money, Daddy.”

“I don’t want you worrying about money,” he told her.

Maybe you should tell her that you have plenty of money. That you could likely buy everything in this shop four times over and still not put a dent in your bank balance.

He opened his mouth to do just that, but something held him back. Or should it be someoneheld him back? Because all he could see was Krystal telling him that she’d only been with him for his money. It wasn’t that he thought that was the reason that Phoebe was interested in him.

Far from it.

She had no idea he had money. And did she need to know yet? It wasn’t like she’d spoken about her finances. This was early days, and those conversations could come later. Still, he didn’t want her to worry about that.

“This isn’t something for Little girls to worry about, understand?” he said. “Money is an adult worry.”

“But even Littles have to worry about money.”

“Did you come to Rawhide so you could worry about adult things or so you could escape for a while and indulge your Little?”

“Well, yeah, I didn’t want to think about Big stuff for a while.”

“Then you won’t. Understand? You’re going to trust me to have this handled.”

“I’m not taking advantage of you?” she asked worriedly.

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