Page 60 of When She Loved Me
Trevor winked at her. “What have the little beggars gotten into now? Do I need my stern voice?”
“Definitely. Your son has chopped off a fair length of your daughter’s hair.”
Trevor’s eyes widened.
Behind them, Katie inquired, “What are you whispering about? Why is daddy always whispering things to you?”
Raising his voice so that his children could hear, even as he kept his now heated gaze on Nicole, moving from her eyes to her lips and back again, he said, “Your mother and I have many secrets, things too delicate for your unworldly little ears. Best stay back, children. Before I tar and feather that scallywag, Thomas, I need to be kissing this woman.”
“Ew,” groaned young Trevor.
Katie giggled. “Grandmother said you kiss mother entirely too much.”
“She was smiling when she said it, though,” young Trevor modified.
“Yikes,” Nicole whispered. “What else might your mother be saying behind our backs?”
“You can ask her at dinner tonight,” her husband advised, letting her see how his gaze had settled so hungrily upon her lips.
“Mother!” Shrieked Julia, for her parents seeming lack of outrage at her mistreatment.
Trevor kissed his wife. Not entirely chastely, but then not as ardently as she’d have liked, despite present company.
“Now tell me you love me,” he instructed.
“I do, very much,” Nicole obeyed. “And then more so, when you take charge of your children.”
Grinning, Trevor turned and planted a hip on the edge of Nicole’s desk. He crossed his arms over his chest and considered his offspring until his now hard gaze fixed on a suddenly wary Thomas.
The boy, all of eight, already the very image of his father, began to defend himself.
“Father, she said I wouldn’t dare so then—”
Trevor only shook his head, slowly, until the boy quieted.
“You have committed a crime against this gorgeous child,” he said, and Julia rushed forward, crying softly now as the reality—and less so the outrage—began to sink in. She was scooped up into her father’s arms and pressed her chin on his shoulder. “How bad is it?” He whispered to her.
Julia lifted her head, and then her hand, showing the foot long tail of hair squeezed in her fingers.
“Egads. But you know that hair grows back, right, poppet?”
She nodded, but cried still, tucking her face again into his lapel.
To his son, “Of course, this is an affront for which you will pay dearly. You may not ever harm a person, least of all those you love most.”
Thomas scrunched up his face. “I don’t love—”
“You do,” said his mother. “You just don’t know it yet.”
“And when you do injure a person whom you love most dearly,” Trevor continued, “you must repent, and show that person how very sorry you are—not sorry that you have been caught and punished, but sorry for the damage you have done to them. It might well take you weeks, months, or years to earn their trustonce more and prove to them you will never do such a disastrous thing again.” He’d enunciated and lengthened these last words. He glanced around Julia in his arms to ask of his wife, “Am I missing anything?”
Nicole smiled at him, seeing very clearly the parallel he drew. She hoped Thomas understood this, as well as his father had.
There had never, not once, been a day that she’d regretted trusting him with her love, putting her heart in his hands once more. But then, he would never have allowed it, having been so determined that she never doubt him again.
“Only the punishment,” she said, and spared a mother’s sorry glance to Thomas, who swallowed hard. Trevor had managed to imbue just the right amount of parental disappointment into his tone, which always had greater effect than any railing and raging might have.
“I cannot give him ten lashes,” Trevor said, pretending to debate this, “he’d never survive it.” Thomas
