Page 38 of Margo

Margo rocked back on her heels and waited as she watched to see how this would unfold.

“When you see how much we’ve already gotten done,” Mariah answered innocently, gesturing toward the stack of games as Jilly added the last one to the pile. “Look, all the games are done!”

“That’s great. Good progress. After lunch you can start on the puzzle pieces.”

Mariah’s eyes met Margo’s for only a fraction of a second, but Margo knew what was coming.

“Crap on a cracker!” Mariah said. “That’s gonna suck!”

Margo gasped. She hadn’t even told the other girls that Knox also didn’t like the word suck. She hadn’t been able to come up with a way to tell them without saying the word and it hadn’t seemed important. She turned her head to gauge Knox’s reaction.

There was none. Not really. His eyebrows rose a smidge and the corners of his mouth turned into a slight frown, but other than that he didn’t react, and if Margo had blinked she wouldn’t have seen it.

“It won’t be easy,” Knox agreed. “But it would be easier than explaining to Baze that you’ve destroyed all the nice puzzles he bought you.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Mariah agreed. “Crap on a cracker.”

Ignoring her addition, Knox turned to Margo. “Come on, little one. It’s time to make lunch. No hot stoves or sharp knives involved today, so I’ll be needing lots of help.”

“What are we making?” Margo asked as she pushed to her feet.

“Peanut butter and jelly with grapes.” He winked. “No vegetables for this meal either. But you know what that means, don’t you?”

“No. What?”

“You’re gonna have to have lots of them with dinner.” He took Margo’s hand and led her out of the room.

“Crap on a cracker,” Tessa whispered from behind them as they left the room hand in hand.

On the elevator, Knox turned to her. “Have you been a good little girl since I saw you last? Have you minded your manners and watched your mouth?”

“Yes, Daddy.” Margo held her breath, waiting for him to say more, or bring up her friends’ antics but he didn’t say a word about it.

Knox

Malicious Compliance. In the hands of workers dealing with an asshole boss, it could be a fun and useful tool. Knox had even used it himself a time or two in his younger days. But in the hands of Littles to a bossy type with a boundary, it was getting old fast.

Knox couldn’t even count the number of times he’d heard someone say crap on a cracker during lunch. When Mariah spilled her water. When Tessa dropped a grape. When a big squirt of jelly fell out of Jilly’s sandwich and onto her shirt. When the conversation turned to how to best sort out puzzle pieces. When Knox reminded them that they had no free time until clean-up was finished, no matter how long it took. And so on and so forth. He’d done his best to ignore it the first dozen times but now it was clear that it was no coincidence, and instead, another one of their shenanigans.

He’d managed so far to bite his tongue as they weren’t his Littles and they didn’t have that rule, but it had become very obvious that they knew that Margo did and were saying it simply because she couldn’t. She was the only one who hadn’t used the forbidden phrase as of yet.

He tried to change the subject, hoping that a new conversation topic would give them something other to focus on.

“It might be easier if you sort the puzzle pieces by size first. Figure out how many wooden puzzles you have, then do the ones with the bigger cardboard pieces, and then the ones with really small pieces last,” he offered.

Six pairs of eyes stared at him.

“Crap on a cracker!” Mariah exclaimed. “Why didn’t we think of that?”

Drawing in a deep breath, Knox tossed his napkin on the table. “Okay, that’s enough. I know exactly what you are doing, and I’ve had enough. I get it. You think it’s dumb that there are certain non-curse words and phrases that I don’t want Margo to use. You don’t have that rule, so now you’ve decided to use those phrases in excess. It was cute and funny at first, and slightly amusing, but it’s gotten less so.” He looked at Mariah first, then around the table at each of them.

“I suggest you stop, unless you want to be subjected to the same punishment Margo has been threatened with.”

Jade gaped at him, narrowing her eyes. “You aren’t the boss of us. You can’t make us have new rules!”

“I’m not making a rule. I’m setting a boundary. I don’t like to be around Little girls who talk like that. Since you aren’t mine, and I don’t make your rules, I can overlook these things when they are happening on occasion and by accident. But that is clearly no longer the case. Is it?”

They all looked down at the tabletop, their expressions guilty. “No, Mister Knox.”