Picking Poppy Read online

  When the footsteps returned, she whispered without looking, “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

  “I’m glad, Poppy. I know it’s tough being Little, but it’s much better to talk to me than to be deceptive. I’m very glad Sheriff Underwood was at his little girl’s shop. You would feel even worse to know that you had gotten her in trouble as well.” A kind hand dipped under the bottom of her shirt to rub the small of her back reassuringly.

  “Are you ready for your medicine and your punishment,” he softly asked.

  “Yes, Daddy,” she tearfully replied, unable to stop herself from turning to look at the large container of suppositories as he poured three out onto the desk. To her horror, she watched him open the lubricant jar and use his finger to scoop out a large dollop of the thick, white cream. She felt his other hand spread her small buttocks as the lubricated finger moved behind her.

  “Eeep!” she protested as his finger pressed against that small ring of muscles that protected her secret entrance.

  “Relax your muscles, blossom,” he instructed as his finger pressed without hesitation through that ring of muscles and into her rectum. Taking his time, Tyler spread the lubricant around all the surfaces of her tight passage.

  As his finger finally slid from her rectum, she exhaled the breath she hadn’t even realized that she was holding. There was no time to celebrate as he immediately picked up a suppository and placed it against that tight ring of muscle. With unrelenting pressure, he pushed the large bullet-shaped suppository as deeply as possible into her bottom before picking up another and repeating the process.

  The medicinal tablet was thick enough that she could feel her bottom having to stretch uncomfortably to allow it to enter. By the time, the third suppository was lodged deep inside of her, Poppy’s bottom ached from the invasion. She felt stuffed full. Overwhelmed, she laid draped over the desk. She did not protest as he lifted her pelvis slightly to slide a diaper underneath her.

  “Stand up and sit on the chair, blossom,” his voice instructed without emotion as soon as the diaper was secure around her hips. Tyler walked from the room.

  Poppy stood and waddled a couple of small steps, hampered by the jeans around her ankles. Collapsing to sit on the chair, Poppy wrapped her arms around her tummy. Already she could feel her stomach rumbling inside. She suddenly understood exactly how the medicine was going to help her tummy feel better. Sniffing miserably, she realized that she should have told him that she wasn’t feeling well. He wouldn’t have had to treat her with a large dose.

  When Tyler returned drying his hands on a paper towel, he removed from the plastic sack a spiral notebook and a black pen. Opening the notebook, he wrote a sentence at the top of the first page before placing it in front of her. “For your punishment, you will write one hundred times: I will be a good little girl who never gets her friends in trouble or disobeys her daddy.”

  As she picked up the pen and began to write, she moaned as her tummy cramped. “Daddy, can I use the restroom?” she pleaded.

  “No. Get started writing. I will change your diaper only when you have finished writing all your sentences. The longer you delay, the more you risk sitting in a messy diaper as you try to finish.”

  Staring at him in disbelief, Poppy’s mind whirled as she argued with herself about whether he could make her do this. His expression didn’t change. After several long seconds, Poppy slowly dropped her gaze down to the paper in front of her. Quickly, she began to write the required sentence, numbering the lines as she wrote to keep track of the one hundred sentences her daddy has assigned her to complete.

  Her pen flew rapidly over the paper. She tightened her buttocks, trying desperately to avoid having an accident. Poppy could feel her daddy’s eyes watching her from his position leaning against the doorway. Fat tears began to roll down her cheeks. Worse than her rumbling tummy or her hand starting to cramp as she gripped the pen, she was so sorry that she had disappointed her daddy.

  When he moved from his position to grab a tissue and wipe her cheeks, Poppy looked up at him in surprise. “Blossom, you’re still my little girl. I love you more every moment that we are together. Littles make bad decisions. You’ll learn from this one, correct?”

  “Yes, Daddy! I’ll never try to get around your instructions,” she fervently promised.

  “Yes, you will, blossom. And that’s okay. Littles make mistakes. That’s one more reason that they need their Mommy or Daddy. Write. You’re almost done,” Tyler gently reassured her.

  “Okay, Daddy,” she whispered as she leaned over the spiral pad. In just a few minutes, she was done. Jumping up from her chair, she bolted over to the man who had returned to his previous spot leaning against the door frame.

  Her sudden rush caused her to almost lose control and mess her diaper. Poppy stood perfectly still trying not to move again. She watched her daddy slowly count her sentences. Trying to hurry him up, she quickly said, “I numbered them all; there are one hundred sentences. See the number one hundred at the end?”

  To her horror, Tyler flipped the page back to begin counting again. “One, two, three…”

  Poppy bit her lip. Suddenly, it was too much. She felt her bowels empty into her diaper. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and looked down at her feet in abject misery. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Her daddy picked her up immediately and carried her upstairs to her changing table. Without any fuss or expression of disgust, he whisked the soiled diaper away and cleaned her bottom. When she was wrapped in a fresh one, he stood her on the ground to pull the jeans that still dangled around her ankles back into place.

  Lifting her back into his arms, her daddy hugged her tightly. “You don’t have anything to apologize for, blossom. Daddies take care of their Littles. It’s the way it’s supposed to be.” He held her blue eyes with his until she slowly nodded. “How’s your tummy?”

  She paused for a minute, and a funny look came over her face. “It feels better,” she whispered in amazement. He really does know how to take care of me, she acknowledged internally.

  “I’m glad. You may have another accident. Now you know it’s okay. Daddy will take care of you,” he reminded her.

  Nodding her head in agreement, Poppy crossed her fingers hoping that she’d never mess her diaper like that again. Her stomach roared in hunger. Her hand flew to cover her stomach in embarrassment.

  “It’s time for lunch and then nap time. We’re going to baby your tummy today, blossom. A bottle and some soup for you today. When you wake up, you can have something more substantial,” he promised.

  Although she was positive that she’d never be able to sleep after lunch, several hours later, she woke up in her crib dressed only in the absorbent diaper. After calling for her daddy to help her from the crib, Poppy tried to relax her muscles to use the diaper. As Tyler’s footsteps sounded in the hall, she filled the thick padding. Part of her subconsciously wanted to test her daddy to see if he really wanted to take care of her.

  To her astonishment, her daddy didn’t say a word but simply changed her diaper. When he set her on the floor, the supportive man pointed to a large wall calendar before reaching to the top shelf next to the changing table. Showing her a sheet of stickers, he carefully peeled two from the sheet. Taking her hand, he placed two beautiful flower stickers on the tips of two fingers.

  Turning her toward the calendar, he gave her a nudge and said, “Go put your stickers in today’s box and read the sentence at the top aloud.”

  Poppy looked over her shoulder uncertainly as she approached the calendar. She carefully pressed her stickers on the fifteenth. Raising her eyes to the top, she read, “Poppy is a wonderful Little who follows her Daddy’s directions. If she has earned 100 stickers for this month on the work calendar here combined with the home calendar, she will receive an amazing reward at the end of the month.”

  Whirling back to face him, Poppy quickly asked, “What’s the reward?”

  “You won’t know until the end
of the month,” her daddy said with a smile.

  Chapter 26

  Having her diaper changed became something exciting. Eager to amass the necessary flower stickers, Poppy kept a close eye on the number of stickers that she had. She was even careful to let her daddy know when her tummy hurt so that he could treat it with one of the glycerin suppositories.

  On the twenty-ninth, she held her breath as she placed the one-hundredth sticker on the calendar in her nursery at home. “Daddy! Daddy! LOOK!” she said, pulling him over to the calendar. “I did it! I used my diaper one hundred times!”

  Studying the calendar carefully, Tyler pointed to each sticker as if he was counting them. Poppy held her breath. When he turned to look at her with a wide smile, she knew that he had already counted the ones at work.

  “There are exactly one hundred stickers on the calendar. Very well done, blossom. I guess that means that you’ll get your reward at the end of the month,” he complimented her.

  “But that’s two days from now. There are thirty-one days in this month,” Poppy protested. Her eyes flew to the lines at the top of the calendar. Oh, no! It did say the end of the month. It was going to be so hard to wait.

  She changed her tone and batted her eyelashes at him, “Daddy? Couldn’t I have my reward now, please?” she begged.

  “You are so cute,” he answered swooping in to pick her up and hug her tightly to his chest. “The reward only comes on the last day of the month.” His word was final. She knew better than to argue. When she argued, her daddy reintroduced her to the paddle. Poppy didn’t like the paddle at all.

  She was so sure that the days would go slowly, but Tyler kept her very busy with a visit. The house in SANCTUM was being built now. The foundation had been poured, and the contractors were framing it in quickly. There was a smaller concrete slab in the back of the house that puzzled, Poppy. She had asked her daddy several times about what that was for, and he had explained that it was for a storage area. It looked awfully big for a shed to store the lawnmower and other equipment, but his answer was always the same.

  Each time they went to visit, Poppy got to visit one or more of the little girls already living in SANCTUM. Shelby was so sweet. She always gave Poppy lots of hugs and kisses. Priscilla enjoyed everything. There had been so much that she had missed in her early life that even wading in the creek to catch crawdads was exciting to her. And Lindy? She was the bravest of all of them. Ready to take charge and dive into anything. When Samantha could join them, the five Littles had a great time.

  Of the four Littles she had gotten to meet, Poppy felt closest to Samantha. It was tough not to feel resentful of the three lucky Littles who lived full time in SANCTUM. They could be Little all the time and didn’t have to balance their adult time with the fun little girl time.

  Poppy closed the ledger on the desk in front of her and dropped her forehead to rest on the hardcover. Even though it was the thirtieth-first day of the month and she would get her reward tonight, the florist was devastated for a totally different reason. There was no denying the truth.

  Her business had been hemorrhaging money almost since she’d opened. The popularity of ordering flower deliveries online made small floral shops like hers flounder. People just didn’t visit or phone in orders to their local florist; they ordered online for the cheapest price possible or grabbed a shabby bouquet of flowers from the grocery store if they’d forgotten a present.

  She couldn’t even raise her head to look at her daddy when she heard his footsteps enter the office. Lifted and cradled in his strong arms, she curled against his warm chest when he sat down in the chair, she had occupied only a few minutes earlier. His heartbeat reassured her. At least she had him.

  “Little girl, I think you’ve come to the same conclusion that I did,” his deep voice curled around her.

  “I can’t afford to keep the shop open anymore,” she said. Devastation dripped from every word. She had put every ounce of her energy into the store since it had opened three years ago. The thought flashed into her mind that maybe she’d endangered the profit margin of the floral shop when Tyler had entered her life. Immediately she shook her head against his chest, the books had been signaling danger for months. She had just refused to see it.

  They had already planned to sell her house. She hadn’t been back there except to empty the fridge and pick up clothes since she’d visited her daddy’s house and her beautiful nursery. Using the money from the sale, she could buy herself a few more months to stay in business, but she’d be left penniless. Poppy knew that it was better to have a small nest egg that she could fall back on in an emergency.

  Leaning back to look up at her daddy, she said, “You can write anywhere, right?”

  “Yes, blossom,” he replied with a gentle smile.

  “If I closed the shop, could we move to SANCTUM and live there with the other Littles full-time?” she asked. Just saying that out loud lifted the burden that she had felt on her shoulders.

  “We could. I would like that, too.”

  “Can we go out to see how the house is tonight? I’ll close the shop early after Zach finishes the two deliveries that I have to go out tonight.” She dropped her head against his chest once again. “Crap! I have to tell Zach that I’m going to close the shop.”

  “Just be honest with him, blossom, and offer to write him a glowing reference. That’s all you can do,” Tyler hugged her close to him.

  After several quiet moments, he softly offered, “I have plenty of money, blossom. I would be glad to give you the money to keep your shop open.”

  She leaned back to look at him. “I’ll think about it, and I love you even more for offering to help. I opened the shop because I loved flowers. I have a knack for making floral arrangements, but I really prefer to grow and cultivate flowers. Do you think I could have a garden at our house in SANCTUM?” Her sweet face shined with hope.

  “I think we need to go visit our house tonight and pick out the perfect spot,” he suggested. The air whooshed from his lungs as she flung herself forward to wrap her arms around his neck tightly before pressing kisses all over his face.

  “Thank you, Daddy!”

  Chapter 27

  Driving in the fading evening light toward SANCTUM, Poppy should have been very sad, but hope was kindling in her heart. Everything seemed to be falling into place, confirming that closing the shop was the right thing to do.

  Zach had apologized repeatedly when he had arrived to do the deliveries. The young man had been offered an internship with a large floral company in the city where he had chosen to attend the university. It was quite an honor for they not only produced the generic seeds that most people planted in their gardens but gathered rare seeds avidly sought by skilled experts.

  Feeling a bit jealous, Poppy knew that he could not turn down this opportunity. Tonight would be his last day to deliver flowers for her. Poppy had given him his final paycheck in cash as she’d wished him well.

  She had decided to stay open one more week to create arrangements with the flowers that she had in the back. Poppy couldn’t just let the cut flowers die unappreciated. At the end of the week, she planned to deliver small bouquets to the other business owners around her as a thank you for all their help and support while she’d been in business before she closed her store for the last time.

  One special order had been placed tonight. She would make that arrangement in two parts. Mr. Palermo had passed away at the local hospital two days ago. His daughter had found her card in the pocket of his coat and had called to order a funeral arrangement. Poppy had assured her that she would create something special and deliver it to the funeral home before the service in two days.

  Poppy wiped a tear from her cheek as she disconnected the call. The Palermos were back together again. The love he had felt for his wife and his loneliness without her had been so obvious to the kind-hearted Little. Poppy double-checked that the map Mr. Palermo had written was still tucked under the till in her cash registe
r. She knew the family would understand when a ring of flowers that decorated the funeral would perfectly encircle the smaller circlet of blossoms that she planned to deliver personally to the cemetery.

  Now sitting in the car next to the man who was so important to her, Poppy smiled at him. She’d been reminded that it was important to celebrate life while you were together. She put her fingers into her mouth and blew a low wolf whistle, drawing his startled gaze. “You are so good-looking, Daddy. I’m a very lucky Little. Thank you for caring for me.” Poppy’s lips curved into a soft smile. He really was the handsome daddy she had always dreamed of having.

  His answering brilliant smile made Poppy’s heart feel better than it had all day long. It was going to be okay. She had her daddy, and he had promised to help her find a space to experiment with flowers. She knew that her life would be extremely happy as long as she had his love.

  Tyler covered his little girl’s knee with a large hand. “What brought all this on?” he asked with a wink.

  “I’m buttering you up in case you forgot that I get my reward today,” she joked.

  “I haven’t forgotten, blossom,” he said as he turned into the drive leading to the heavy gate that cut off SANCTUM from the rest of the world.

  Looking around, Poppy wondered why everything seemed so quiet. As they approached the site where their house would be located. Her eyes grew large, and she glanced at the man next to her. “Look how much they have done!” The walls had all been roughed in, and the trusses to support the roof were almost all in place. “It looks like a house,” she enthused.

  “Hey, some lights are shining in the back of the house,” she cried excitedly. “They look like fairy lights. Do you think fairies are working on our house at night?” Laughing at the absurd thought, she grinned at her daddy.