Her sweet words were negated by the skepticism on her face. That was okay. The love of everyone in the Ranch would get her there eventually.
She stopped beside the king bed and stared at all of the goodies. “It’s all for me?”
“Every single package, pretty baby.”
Palmer stood in front of all the packages, shifting foot to foot.
“You can touch them, honey. They’re yours,” Beau encouraged.
Tentatively, with trembling hands, Palmer reached out and started examining the packages.
She held up a pack of mermaids and shark figures.“Bath toys!” She pressed the brightly colored packaging to her chest. “I don’t think I’ve ever had bath toys before.”
Her soft admission broke something else inside of him and he grew angry at how mean the world could be.
“Maybe you can take a bath with your friends tonight,” he encouraged.
She nodded before picking up another package. “Baby clothes! The baby will love these!”
Beau didn’t comment on how she referred to the doll as “the baby” and not “my baby” He knew how hard it could be to hope for happy things. Once again, he was confident the Ranch would get her there.
Each excited squeal and happy sigh went straight to Beau’s head and he felt invincible. He was pretty sure Superman didn’t stand a chance next to him.
“Pretty panties.” Those words were breathed much more reverently. She looked at Beau and he sent her a gentle wink.
“Every Little one needs prettytrainingpanties.” He’d emphasized training panties, hoping to shape the rest of their conversation.
“I’m a big girl!” she said, in an extremely Little girl way. She poked her bottom lip out so far, Beau could have parked his 4x4 on it.
Chuckling, he closed the space between them and gave her a squeeze. “I think you’ve been a Big girl for a very long time, but now you’re safe and I think you’d like to be Daddy’s Little girl.”
Flipping the panties over and over in her hands, Palmer stood quietly for a long while. Beau waited, not willing to rush her.
Finally she blew out a deep breath—a breath Beau imagined weighed a ton—and nodded.
“There’s nothing wrong with being Daddy’s Little girl, Palmer.”
“Is not bad?”
Beau’s skin prickled with irritation. Not with her, of course, but with whoever had taught her that her needs were bad. He’d like to be given five minutes alone with them.
Beau scooped Palmer in his arms and settled on the bed with her lying across his lap. “It’s not bad, baby.”
She tried to use her curls as a curtain to hide her face, but Beau gathered them in his hand and held them away.
“Sometimes I feel like I should be Big.” Her fingers twisted in her shirt, almost to the point of stretching the fabric.
“But why?”
She answered by shrugging her shoulders.
“Do you think the Little ones in the preschool program are bad?”
Whipping her head around to face him, she shook her head rapidly. “No! I don’t think that.”
“How about the Little ones in the nursery?”
“No! They’re not bad either!”
