She stared at her mother, who’d raised a suspicious eyebrow. A few months without Botox had allowed the woman’s expression to shine through.
“Well, Mom, look at the time. You keep channeling those good vibrations. We’ve got it all taken care of here in Denver. Love to Howard. Kiss, kiss!” she said, stealing a line from her mother’s playbook before signing off and closing her laptop.
She collapsed forward and rested her head on the desk.
“I feel like I just ran a marathon. Do you think my mom’s on to us?”
Jordan rubbed the tense muscles between her shoulder blades. “I don’t know, babe,” he answered as someone knocked on the door.
“It’s time for your special story time activity,” Talya called from the other side.
“Give us a minute,” Jordan replied.
“I don’t think you have a minute,” Talya answered with a note of concern in her usually cheery voice.
Jordan frowned. “Why not?”
“The toddlers are here for story time. Simon’s trying to corral them now, but they’re getting restless. Really restless,” she finished with a thread of terror woven into the last two words.
“Toddlers?” Georgie exclaimed, then met her husband’s gaze as absolute horror flashed in his eyes.
11
Jordan
“Toddlers,” Jordan whispered on a shaky exhale.
Memories of the baby doc’s waiting room flashed through his mind. He raised his hand and pressed his fingers to his cheek, remembering the toddler’s cherub-like face right before the little devil clocked him below the eye.
“We need to hide all the board books,” he said, trailing behind Georgie and Talya as they passed row after row of books, then descended upon the children’s area, and he froze.
A handful of years ago, when Maureen’s twins were around five or six years old, she’d asked if he could help her out and pick the girls up from a birthday party. The request seemed simple enough, and he was always happy to help. So, of course, he’d said yes.
What Maureen hadn’t mentioned when she’d given him the address of the party was that it was being held at a children’s pizza and arcade venue.
Noise didn’t usually bother him. The gym he’d worked at during that time always had loud music playing, and he’d often have his headphones on, blaring his own tunes. But not even that had prepared him for sound and the fury he’d encountered when he entered the pepperoni scented pandemonium.
Strobe lights flashed wild shades of color while children’s music and the maddening hum of video games pulsed as if he’d entered an underground rave. It damn near made him want to scream and run out the door. It was purely dumb luck that the twins had been banging away on a Whack-a-Mole near the entrance when he’d arrived. He was there only for a minute, possibly two, before he’d extricated the children and freed himself from that house of horrors.
But even that nightmare hadn’t prepared him for the mayhem that played out before his eyes inside his wife’s bookshop.
Unlike the doctor’s waiting area, with a sprinkling of noisy and somewhat dangerous tiny humans, the story time area was chock-full of toddlers. He blinked again. Maybe there weren’t as many as he thought, but they zoomed around the story time area like bees, massing around a cluster of flowers in a frenzy of motion.
Talya’s gaze bounced between them and a gaggle of children climbing on top of Simon, presumably for horse rides—or perhaps that’s how the tiny beasts overpowered adults.
“They’re kind of riled up,” Talya said with a cringe.
“Kind of?” he repeated, then glanced at his wife, whose jaw had nearly hit the floor.
“Where are their parents?” Georgie asked, scanning the space.
“They said they got an email from some guys named Lenny and Stu, telling them that this was a parents’ afternoon off activity and that they could leave their toddlers here for a thirty-minute story time. You’d mentioned that babies were coming, but Simon and I figured you guys changed the plans,” Talya replied.
Georgie pushed up onto her tiptoes and stared past the rows of books. “Their parents are gone? They’re not even in the shop?”
Talya shook her head. “No, they said they wanted to do a little shopping on Tennyson Street. They seemed epically excited to leave their kids here,” the teen added with another cringe.
He was sure they were!
He looked around as a trio of pint-sized boys played tug of war with a bean bag chair while a little girl removed her shoes and proceeded to suck on her big toe.
This was not what Lenny and Stu had said would happen. From their last email, the plan was to have a few parents bring their babies in for a thirty-minute music and movement story time. He’d envisioned gentle cooing as four or five human versions of Faby sat on their parents’ laps, listening to Georgie read a book and then him, leading the group in some infant-appropriate exercise—not this melee of two-year-olds, ransacking the place like a bunch of bloodthirsty pint-sized Vikings.
His phone buzzed, and he pulled it out to find a text from Stu.
We mixed up your baby story time with a parents’ afternoon out event. We know this toddler activity isn’t the facilitated baby intervention we talked about, but Lenny and I agree, it’s still a good learning experience. Have fun!
“Who’s the text from?” Georgie asked.
“Stu.”
“And? Are they coming? Did you tell them what’s going on?” Georgie asked with a hopeful lilt.
He shook his head. “Stu said it’s a mix-up. They sent the wrong group here. But we still have to go with it.”
A crash caught their attention as a pair of little girls with pink bows in their hair pushed over a child-sized table.
“It’s getting rough in here,” she said, wide-eyed.
“We wish that we could stay and help, but Simon and I have to attend a lecture at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for school. It starts in fifteen minutes,” Talya said apologetically as Simon army-crawled his way out from under the children.
“We’re epically sorry,” Simon added with a slash of purple marker across his cheek.
Georgie pasted on a grin. “Don’t worry. Jordan and I will be fine. But you two need to get moving to make it to the museum in time for the lecture.”
He nodded as a puppet soared through the air, followed by a tiny shoe. “Yes, we’ve got this. You guys better head out.”
“Do you want me to get Becca? She’s up at the register talking to—” Talya began when a cluster of heat-seeking crayons rained down on them.
“Go! Get out while you can! Things are about to get way past epic,” he ordered, using their epic teen verbiage to convey the urgency of the situation.
Not waiting to be told twice, Talya and Simon grabbed their backpacks and made a mad dash for the front of the store.
“At least we got them out relatively unscathed,” Georgie said, watching the teens disappear.
He checked his watch. Twenty-four minutes left before the parents would return to claim their hellions. The miniature masters of destruction had already ransacked the art area and the puppet theater. But he could not allow them to discover what was in the far corner. If that area was breached, there was no telling the level of destruction.
“We can’t let them open the LEGO bins,” Georgie said, reading his mind.
Three large bins teeming with the plastic building materials sat untouched. They couldn’t allow them to get scattered all over the floor. If even one of those tubs got tipped over, they’d spend the next decade finding the tiny blocks. And, there was nothing worse than stepping on a LEGO.
But these little humans could smell their fear, and, like a pack of wild dogs, three of them broke off from a group who were pulverizing crayons and headed for the bins.
“I think it’s too late,” Georgie said as a roaring sound rose from behind them.
“Show me how you move like a tiger!” came a man’s pseudo-surfer growly v
oice.
The toddlers, who were headed for the bins, stopped in their tracks and turned. It was like in those sci-fi movies where evil robots are about to ravage a city, and then, suddenly, the hero intervenes, and their beady robot eyes change from evil red to passive green, halting the destruction that had once seemed imminent.
Jordan turned, ready to greet this toddler whisperer and saw…
“Brice Casey?” he exclaimed.
“Hey, dude!” the man answered with Becca by his side.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m pretending to be a tiger,” the guy answered, crawling into the center of the room as the children gathered around and joined in, all roaring and clawing at the air.
Georgie gasped. “He’s like the Pied Piper of Toddlerville.”
“How did you know what to do with them?” Jordan called.
“Casey Pest control has contracts with a bunch of different childcare locations. Sometimes, they invite me to play along. These little dudes are awesome.”
Georgie lowered her voice. “Becca, why is Brice here? Is there a pest control emergency? Oh, my God! We don’t have spiders, do we?” Georgie finished, going pale.
“No, he’s not here for a pest control appointment,” the woman answered, then glanced at Brice, who had sucked in his cheeks, pretending to be a fish while a school of toddlers copied him.
Jordan looked between Becca and the toddler wrangler. “Are you and Brice dating?”
“Yep,” Brice answered, able to both entertain toddlers and engage in conversation, which he’d never realized was such a huge accomplishment until today.
Georgie turned to Becca and lowered her voice. “You guys are together?”
“Since we hooked up at your wedding,” the man answered before Becca had a chance.
Becca blushed, but she didn’t deny it. Unfortunately, Georgie had cocked her head and crossed her arms, going into surrogate big sister mode.
“You guys hooked up at our wedding, and now you’re together?” his wife whispered-shouted as if she were cross-examining the woman.
“I didn’t know how to tell you or my sister,” Becca replied, her cheeks holding the blush.
Back in October, after Brice had picked them up off the side of the road and driven them to their wedding in his pest control van, they’d insisted he stay for the festivities. The event had been a whirlwind. Georgie’s mother had invited half of Denver, and his focus hadn’t been on keeping an eye on Becca or Brice. No, every time he thought of their wedding day, all he saw was Georgiana—the snarky, beautiful book nerd who had turned his world upside-down.
And he had Brice to thank for it.
Had Georgie not gone on a date with the man years ago and had the guy not acted like such a grade A douche canoe during their brief encounter, she wouldn’t have been inspired to start her Own the Eights blog. Would the universe have found another way for their lives to literally collide? Possibly. But, like it or not, Brice Casey was the catalyst for everything that had happened from the moment his wife called him an asshat.
“Why are you smiling like that?” Georgie asked.
He met his wife’s gaze. “I think it’s great.”
“What’s great?” she pressed.
He glanced at the man surrounded by kids, prostrate on the ground, and inch-worming-it across the children’s area.
“I think it’s great that Becca and Brice are a couple.”
“You do?” Becca replied.
He nodded. “If it wasn’t for Brice, there might not be an us,” he said to his wife and watched her features soften.
“That’s true,” Georgie answered.
He looked down at the plastic Faby in his arms. “Now, if Brice could help Georgie and I get our hands on a real baby to get some actual infant-care experience, I’d call him the perfect boyfriend.”
“Dude,” Brice called from the carpet, having switched to lying on his back and thrashing his limbs like a flipped turtle.
“Yeah.”
“I can be your perfect boyfriend,” Brice called, springing to his feet and leading the children in a toddler conga line.
Jordan sucked a breath of air in through his teeth. “Yeah, I’m all good on that front, buddy. I’ve got Georgie.”
“No, dude! What I mean is that I can totally hook you up with a real baby.”
“You can?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
Brice grinned. “Today!”
“Are you nervous?” he asked his wife, who was fiddling with the strap of her purse.
“Why? Are you?” she threw back.
He blew out a slow breath.
Never in a million years did he think he’d be driving to Brice Casey’s sister’s house. Honestly, he’d never wondered if the guy had a sister, a brother, a dog, or even a stamp collection. He’d never thought that much about the man, besides being grateful that he’d been an asshat to Georgie, which he knew would sound worse if he said that out loud. So, he’d decided to keep that little nugget to himself. But here they were—driving through Denver and headed to the home of the sibling of a guy he’d never expected to like.
“Brice seems to have come a long way,” Georgie said.
“Yeah, he has.”
“And, Becca’s a smart woman. She wouldn’t put up with any asshattery,” his wife added with a teasing twinkle in her eyes.
He chuckled, thinking of Becca, the ballbuster. “No, I don’t believe she would.”
After the toddler story time, Georgie and Becca had a little heart-to-heart talk, looping in Irene on a video call. And from what he could hear, between the women giggling and talking over each other, it sounded like Brice was a decent guy. Yes, after several glasses of champagne, they’d hooked up at the wedding. But when Brice had asked to see her again, Becca had laid down an ultimatum. She told the pest control prince she’d only go out with him if he’d read every single Own the Eights blog post. Turns out, he did. She’d even quizzed him on it—and had the emails to prove it.
See…a real ballbuster.
A playful smirk pulled at the corners of his wife’s mouth. “And Brice does have awfully good hair.”
He laughed. “It’s undeniable. Even after playing with the toddlers, not a hair was out of place.”
Hey, it was the truth. The guy was blessed with a mop of shiny, shampoo-commercial-ready hair.
But, good hair aside, Brice had come through for them. And as long as he was good to Becca, he wouldn’t have to pound the guy into next week.
After Brice had put the toddlers through the make-believe animal paces, he’d led them to the story time carpet. Georgie had read to the brood, and then he’d stepped in and led them in a rousing round of “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” which was pretty damn fun.
It wasn’t the FBI experience they were expecting, but they’d pulled it off.
When the moms and dads arrived to collect their children, it looked like a scene from Mary Poppins. The parents gave them a round of applause as they finished off the activity with a little “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” complete with rowing actions.
“Do you remember how old Brice said his nephew was?” Georgie asked.
“Five months. He also mentioned that his sister just went back to work a few weeks ago.”
Georgie took out her phone.
“What are you doing?” he asked, stopping at a red light.
“Scouring the web for some info on five-month-old babies.”
“Smart! Get in a little research,” he said, then raised his hand, and she gave him a high five.
“Okay. Here we go,” Georgie began, gaze glued to her cell. “At five months, the baby is starting to sit up for longer periods of time but may need to be propped up to remain upright.”
“Faby’s got sitting down pat. Who knew Faby was so advanced,” he said, glancing down at the baby doll sitting comfortably next to Georgie’s feet.
“They’re also starting to roll over at
this age,” Georgie continued.
“Ahh! Sorry, Faby! The real baby has got you there.”
“Jordan, stop! You don’t want to hurt Faby’s feelings,” Georgie mock-chided, biting back a grin.
“You’re right. Don’t feel bad, Faby. You’ll always be the best fake baby,” he said, reassuring a mannequin infant.
Georgie patted the doll’s head. “Faby says thank you and wanted to let you know that you will always be the best Emperor of Asshattery.”
He shrugged. “Thanks, Faby. It never hurts to be the best at something.”
“And they like peek-a-boo,” Georgie added.
He frowned. “Asshats like peek-a-boo?”
“No, silly! Five-month-old babies like peek-a-boo.”
He turned down a street lined with tall oaks. “We can totally do peek-a-boo.”
Georgie turned toward him, covered her face with her hands, then rocked a peek-a-boo like she was born to do it.
He shook his head and chuckled.
“I guess they do,” she said to herself.
“What are you talking about, messy bun girl?”
“Asshats. They also find peek-a-boo amusing.”
He parked the car in front of Brice’s sister’s house, then met his wife’s lively gaze. “This peek-a-boo loving asshat sure loves you.”
“I should hope so. I’m having this asshat’s baby,” she purred.
“And you have never been more beautiful or sexier,” he said, lowering his voice.
She leaned across the console. “You like a little padding around the middle?”
He cupped her face in his hand, then stroked her cheek with his thumb. “You know, I do. Especially when you put on those cowgirl boots,” he whispered against her lips before capturing her mouth in a slow kiss.
Georgie twisted her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. He would never tire of kissing this woman. He tilted her head, ready to deepen their kiss when a knock on the passenger side window had them pulling apart as if they were teens caught necking after curfew.
Own the Eights Maybe Baby Page 15
