He cupped his hand behind her head and swooped in, kissing her like she was the air he needed to breathe. When he pulled back up, both of them were breathing heavily, hearts racing.
Setting her on her feet, he stood and took her hand in his. “Come on, brown eyes. Let’s get to the Littles’ room before we both get ourselves into trouble.”
“Here, Daddy. What do you think of this one?” Betsy pointed out the Legos creation she’d made using the instructions.
He glanced over at one of the other Little’s Legos creation. Which was a hot mess of half-built buildings which looked to be a veterinarian’s office combined with a barber shop.
“It looks great, button,” he told her. Shit, she looked cute in the outfit he’d bought her. The caveman instincts were obviously strong in him because he seemed to get a great deal of satisfaction out of providing for her.
“Do you want to play with the Legos people?”
She glanced down at the people, then over at Fern who had created some sort of samurai battle inside her vet-slash-barber shop. People were flying everywhere while she made noises as they obviously died.
It was kind of bloodthirsty.
He admired that.
Turning back to Betsy, he noticed a look cross her face. Something had upset her? What, though?
“All right, Daddy. I…” She seemed to be at a loss for what to do. She reached for one of the people.
He leaned in closer. “Button?”
“Umm, yes, would you like to be this person?” She was using her polite voice. It was a sign that she was uncomfortable and trying to hide it.
He laid his hand over hers. “Brown eyes, you don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to. If you would rather create things than play with them then that’s fine. There’s no right way to act.”
She bit her lip. “She looks like she’s having fun. But I’ve never…I mean…I didn’t have any of this…”
It suddenly clicked. “What did you play with when you were a child, button?”
“Oh. Well. I had a doll’s house.” She brightened at the memory. “And a tea set. But Mama only let me have the tea set when she was around. She liked to show me the proper way to act at a tea party.” She rubbed her hand over the top of the other one. “She was quite angry when I got it wrong.”
That fucking bitch.
“A lady doesn’t slouch. A lady doesn’t interrupt others. A lady doesn’t slurp her tea.” Betsy attempted to grin, but he saw the pain behind it. Yeah, having someone correct your every movement would start to take the fun out of playing.
A thought occurred to him. “Tell me, does Mistress Angelique look like your Mama?”
She gave a nod. “Yes, Daddy. A bit.”
Christ. That explained a few things.
“Would you like to play with the doll’s house, button?” She’d never shown any interest in it before. It was just a small wooden one that sat by the wall of storage.
Her eyes lit up and she nodded shyly. He stood, reaching down a hand to pull her up. He held her hand as he led her across the room. Lara was already sitting in front of the doll’s house. She looked up with a big smile as Betsy approached.
“Betsy!” Today the short, curvy sub was dressed in a pair of denim overalls with a shockingly bright pink top underneath. Her hair was up in two pigtails with pink ribbons.
He tried to picture Betsy in pigtails. She’d look damn cute.
There he went again. Cute. Gah.
They started playing with the small dolls. Betsy gradually started relaxing, although she did look over at him several times.
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He had to admit, he did kind of like the way she searched him out. As though looking for reassurance. Or as if she thought he might disappear.