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could see the absurdity of it since Ross clearly had not even turned forty, that he had a daughter who had grown up and left the nest, and that he’d probably got a divorce at some point along the way.
    Now, looking at the pinkness, and the frilliness of the shams on the pillows, and looking at the dolls on the shelf of the hutch atop the little girl’s desk, she could see that it was all much too new for that. This room had been occupied by a little—or, she could tell now, a ‘little’—girl within the last year.
    Or maybe he was divorced, and his daughter lived with her mother and came here to visit? And that explained the colonial doll catalog from the previous January?
    What the fuck was she doing trying to figure out whose room this was? Right now, it was Victoria’s, and she had apparently consented to getting a whipping with the belt of a rancher she had not even known for an hour. Should she try to run off into the night? Frankly, that would be stupid, and even if taking her jeans and panties down was stupid, running off across the range would be stupider.
    So pink. So little-girlish. Suddenly Victoria had the urge to cry. Why had Jack had to have known this one man who could give her a place to stay? Why did it have to be the fantasy that worked its way under her skin whenever, wherever she saw little-girl dresses and little-girl panties—when she read one of the books she had loved when she had been little, and thought about the dreams she had had then?
    How could it possibly have come about that in Jack’s pickup truck, on the way to the safe house he had found for her, Victoria Mason had received the information that the man whose house that was knew how to deal with women who felt that a part of them wanted to be treated as a little girl?

Chapter Five
     
     
    Ross opened the door of Victoria’s room—the room that had been Sally Mae’s—to find that Victoria was standing there next to the bed, looking lost. “Darlin’,” he said, “you need to get yourself over the bed now.”
    Her eyes had been fixed on the bed, but now they swiveled to him with a wild look in them. “You said you wouldn’t call me that,” she said, but not angrily—her voice sounded more as if she was trying to figure out what had happened in the past hour of her life.
    “I did, and after I spank you, I won’t call you that again. But I’m going to discipline you now, and for me that means that I’m trying to communicate something to you—part of what I’m gonna try to tell you is that I’m whippin’ you because I need to take care of you as best I know how. And if I’m gonna take care of you, you need to accept that I’m gonna think of you as darlin’, because you are.”
    “What?” Victoria shook her head in confusion. Her wavy black hair, caught loosely in a ponytail holder, shook adorably along with the motion of her face.
    “You’re darling to me, you’re dear to me—we just met, but we met under these circumstances where I don’t have to get to know you any more ‘n’ I have to feel an obligation to help you, to shelter you, and protect you.”
    He watched her bite her upper lip as her chin quivered and tears rose in the corner of her blue eyes. “Why does that have to include spanking me?”
    “Because that’s how I take care of girls. If this happens again, you’ll go over my knee, but for your first time I think you’ll have it easier on the bed. So let’s not delay anymore.” He put a little note of authority into his tone, and he saw how Victoria seemed to lean away as she heard it. “Last chance, darlin’, before I put you there and hold you while I take your pants and panties down and whip you.”
    Victoria hesitated for a split second, and then, to his surprise—for no girl had ever tried to get out of a spanking like this—she bolted for the door, yelling “Jack!”
    She had the knob of the door in her hand when Ross got his arm around her waist and picked her up like so much