“What happened today?” Something bad had happened for her to react this way. Didn’t take a genius to figure that much out.
“Lost my job,” she whispered. “Loved that job. Even if my boss was a pig.”
Oh, poor baby.
She had to be so stressed.
“You’ll find a new job.”
“Won’t give me any references,” she mumbled. “Knows everyone, I’ll be blackballed. All because I wouldn’t sleep with him.”
He froze. That motherfucker. “He fired you because you wouldn’t fuck him? Sue the bastard for sexual harassment.”
Or tell me who he is. . .I’ll go have a chat with him. Teach him the way you treat a woman.
“Right. Like anyone will believe me. There’s no point. Not sure what I’m going to do though. . .I’m so lost. . .”
She drifted off to sleep. He stood there for a long while, trying to convince himself to move. Standing there, watching her sleep was a little creepy. She would be fine. There was no reason for him to stay.
Finally, he managed to get himself to move.
But he didn’t expect to sleep all that much tonight.
5
She was a dork.
Oh God. A giant, idiotic, ridiculous dork. She crawled into the fort she’d built and hugged Moody tight, closing her eyes. But her heart still raced, memories filling her mind.
Dork. Dork. Dork.
What had she been thinking? Why?
She was never going to show her face outside this house again. She guessed that was the silver lining of no longer having a job. She didn’t have to go anywhere. Until she ran out of money, was no longer able to pay the mortgage and ended up living on the streets.
Maybe she should pre-empt that and call a realtor, put her house on the market. She could move, rent a small cottage by the sea and live out her days with twenty-five cats and a dog called Fido. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Anything would be better than having to see Duke again. She groaned, pressing the palms of her hands against her eyes. Had she really tried to pull down his boxers? Oh no, please don’t tell her she’d asked if he was going to spank her?
“This day can’t get any worse, it really can’t.”
Usually a blanket fort would make everything better. She hadn’t been able to create them when she lived with Greg; he’d have thought her ridiculous. But the day he’d left she’d called into work sick, the only time she’d ever done that, and spent three days in that fort.
Well, obviously she’d come out to eat and use the bathroom. She wasn’t some sort of animal.
But today it couldn’t work its magic. Even a blanket fort couldn’t counter the absolute humiliation of what she’d done.
“This cannot be happening to me. He’s not a Daddy. He can’t be. He. . .he’s too. . .”
Abrupt? Cold? Mean?
Rough, tough biker dudes couldn’t be daddies, right? That just seemed crazy. And yet he’d said the right things last night. Well, sometimes.
He hadn’t always gotten it right. But no one is perfect.
“You cannot be thinking that he is any way perfect, Sunshine River Bright.” She winced as she said her full name. Her parents had a lot to answer for. Seriously.
“Oh man, did I call him a biker babe? What is wrong with me? Really? What. Is. Wrong. With. Me.” She’d had a serious Daddy Dom addiction since she was nineteen when she’d signed up to this dating site that matched Daddies and Littles. Only, the Daddy she’d been paired with hadn’t turned out to be a love match. Or a sexual match.