“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just making sure you didn’t actually use fire starter.”
She felt silly, like she always did when she did things wrong and was about to get yelled at.
“No,” she said sadly. “I didn’t have any.”
“I’m glad. That stuff should never be used indoors. Come here.” He patted the bare floorboards next to where he was kneeling. “Let me show you how to build a fire without starter fluid, and next time I’ll just watch while you do it all by yourself.”
Touched that he remembered he’d promised to show her how, she knelt down by him, hands on her knees to watch him. He showed her how to use tinder, found in the way down bottom of the woodbin and which were nothing more than a few pages of old newspaper, crumpled into twists and balls upon which he built up a pyramid of kindling wood, followed by a single bigger log. When he struck a lighter, the flame caught on the paper, andby the time the paper had burnt to ash, the kindling had caught. Red sparks jumped as wood popped and finally, lines of deep red began to appear all over the log. Little flames were licking along the edges, when he fished several sticks out of the woodbin and tossed them on the budding fire too, along with two more logs.
In no time, he had a fire roaring in the fireplace and the heat that came pouring into the living room soon had her taking off her coat.
“You did that really fast,” she complimented.
“Helps when everything is dry enough to catch right away. You should have seen me the last time I went camping. I couldn’t get that darn thing started to save my life.”
“Last time I went camping, I couldn’t get the tent poles up. I must have tried three times before...”
“Someone took over for you?” he asked. When he glanced at her in the flickering amber light, his smile was gentle, but there was a look in his eyes that just as clearly said he was about to bring this conversation full circle around to the reason he’d brought her over here in the first place.
Her shoulders drooped. She nodded.
“What did they say to you when they took over?” Brushing off his hands, Brock leaned back on his heels and stood up. He offered her his hand.
Staring at it, Stace felt the champagne bubbles of excitement mixed with apprehension racing through her head. Her fingers tingled even before she took his hand and let him pull her up to stand with him.
“He said I was impossible,” she said, a twist of an unhappy smile trying to make a joke out of something that wasn’t any funnier now than it could ever have been.
“Are you impossible?” he pointedly asked.
Did he want her to lie to him?
Is it really a lie?some quiet voice inside her whispered.
She shrugged. “I... I didn’t think so at the time?”
“You say that like it’s a question.” Taking off his coat, Brock draped it over the back side of the crib. Checking the baby to make sure he hadn’t just wakened her, he held out his hand for her coat.
The minute she took it off, she knew, she would be that much closer to the spanking that was coming. She hugged herself, confused by the tiny spark of happiness that leapt at the thought of him taking hold of her arm and pull her closer.
She seriously doubted her nerves would be sparking quiet so brightly once he bent her over his hip and started smacking. Her nerves begged to differ, and Stace hugged herself tighter, not at all understanding what was happening.
“I might be wrong,” she stammered, wincing slightly as she waited for his frown to deepen. It didn’t, and the longer he waited for her to finish her thought, the more the knots inside her loosened. Her stomach was starting to hurt, so she was so sure she was about to say the wrong thing. But it was the truth too, and what point was there in hiding the truth from him? He’d find it all out sooner or later, wouldn’t he?
“But...?” he coaxed when she worried her hands. The super-long sleeves made it hard to pick at her fingers, so she picked at the sleeve cuffs instead.
“But what if you’re wrong too? What if I’m just one of those people who can’t do things right?”
“What ifyou’rewrong, and instead of doing things incorrectly, you just do them your own way?”
“Yeah, but my own way when it comes to building fires involves using a hefty squirt of combustible liquid,” she pointed out. “I could have burned Aunt Maggie’s cabin down, you said so yourself. So was I doing it the wrong way or my own way?”
“Good question,” he countered. “How about you take off your pants and panties, and go stand with your nose to the corner until you can think of an equally good answer?”
Her shoulders slumped all over again, this time in defeat. “You said you were going to take off a punishment, not add more.”
Brock tsked, his expression softening. He reached for her shoulders. “Come here.”
