Her use of one of my mother’s very Northern sayings makes me laugh.
“I have a bit of a hangover, little love, but I’ll be okay.”
“I’ll get you some fizzy drops. Is that everything that’s wrong?”
I touch my forehead to hers and sigh. “I can’t find your collar and lock. I know I put them together in the box I bought for them. I know I put them in that top drawer. I don’t know where they could have gone.”
She strokes my cheeks. “I’ll help you find them, Daddy.”
“Okay, my baby. Thank you.”
I’m not the only one nursing a hangover this morning and we leave a subdued group at breakfast to return to our room.
Emmy fetches me a glass of fizzing water and whether it’s the medicine or breakfast, the hangover begins to recede. But the box doesn’t appear and seeing Emily sink down onto the edge of the bed, her hands twisting together, makes my gut churn worse than any excess of alcohol.
I kneel in front of her and take her hands in mine. “I promise I will find it.”
Emily nods. “It’s a little hard to have a collaring ceremony without a collar, Daddy.”
“I know, my baby. I’ll sort something out.”
“Maybe—do you think it’s possible Molly took it?”
“Oh, baby doll, no. Molly’s a kind spirit. She wouldn’t take your collar.”
“But Teddy never came back to her. Maybe she wants my collar for herself.” She blinks tears out of those huge, hazel eyes.
I lean in and kiss her forehead. “I can’t believe she’d do that. Please, Emmy, don’t be sad on your special day. I swear I’ll find your collar.”
A knock on the door has us both looking up.
“Come in,” I call.
Niall opens the door and as soon as he does, Vashi pushes past him, slides onto the bed beside Emily, and puts her arm around her shoulders. “Has it not been found?”
Emily shakes her head sorrowfully.
I glanced at Niall and shake my head. He rubs his hand over his face. “When’d yeh last see it?”
“Yesterday morning when I took the collar off Emily. I put it straight into the box with the lock. I’ve been through this already. It’s not here. I think I should have a word with Martyn.”
Niall nods. “I’ll come with yeh.”
I give Emily another kiss on the forehead before I rise.
Martyn, for once, proves unhelpful. “I’m so sorry, Logan. As you might have noticed, I was so busy yesterday that I didn’t have a chance to clean the rooms beyond making the beds and setting out fresh towels. Do you want me to help you look?”
I can see he’s going six ways at once. He’s even got ketchup or something tomato-y smeared on his apron and I haven’t seen him in anything that isn’t spotless. “No, no, I’ll keep looking.”
Niall trails me up the stairs back into the bedroom, where I find a group of submissives clustered around Emily. If a group of bunnies is a fluffle, what’s a group of submissives? A bratting? A sammying? I shake off those fanciful thoughts and focus on the practicality of not having a collar and lock for a collaring ceremony that’s supposed to take place in less than three hours. Returning to the dresser, I check the drawer for the thousandth time. Still empty.
With half an ear as I go through the rest of the dresser, then the closet, then our luggage, I listen to the submissives’ conversation. They go from reassuring Emmy that the collar and lock will turn up, to consoling her that it’s the ceremony that means everything, not the physical symbol of collar and lock, to suggesting making a temporary collar out of wire and flowers. That finally perks up my little girl and after asking permission to leave, a gesture that stabs me right through the chest given how I may have failed her by misplacing this damn box, she runs off, hand-in-hand with Vashi and Laurel and trailed by Aggie, Austin, and Cappa, to find wire and flowers.
I sit down on the spot she’s vacated, feeling her body’s warmth on the comforter through my pants, and cup my tender forehead in my hands.
“Yeh think someone took it?” Niall asks.
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine anyone would. Everyone here loves Emily. I can’t see Martyn stealing it, either.”
Niall scoops an armful of stuffies out of a chair and sits, rubbing his temples. He was doing whiskey shots right along with me, so I suspect he has a little snarling and rumbling going on this morning, too. Serves the bastard right.
“Have yeh taken anything outta the room?” Niall asks, speaking to his knees as he hunkers in the chair, rubbing his head. “What about those bags we used in the scene?”
I point to the corner where the bags, considerately reloaded with hoods by Martyn, are sitting under a chair.
“Fuck,” Niall groans. “Anything else?”
“Not that I can think off.” With an echoing groan, I drag myself up and begin to tear apart the bed. Knowing I’ll have to remake it when I’m done almost drives me to my knees. While I find a handcuff key that’s fallen down between the mattress and frame, no box or collar or lock appears.
As I’m contemplating the pile of sheets and blankets on the floor, Mac appears in the open doorway.
“Emmy’s collar really missing?” he asks.
I nod morosely.
“You know there’s a clowder of littles sitting in the remains of the blanket fort, watching some cartoon movie and weaving a collar with florists’ wire?”
“A clowder?”
Mac shrugs. “Group of kittens is called a clowder. I figured it fit them.”
Remembering my own thoughts on the subject, I chuckle. “I was calling it a bratting of submissives.”
That draws laughs out of both men.
“I’m glad they’re keeping Emily occupied.” Will I collar her without the platinum chain and lock?
