Her mother seemed to chew on that before her gaze drifted downward. “Did you go and see Denise?”
“Who?”
“Denise, you know, my personal shopper and bra-fitter at Saks?” her mother explained.
Georgie glanced at her husband, who shrugged.
“Why would you ask that, Mom?”
“Your breasts, Georgiana.”
Her mother’s expression lost the psychic guru air and morphed into drinks-at-the-club Denver socialite, Mrs. Lorraine Vanderdinkle.
“My breasts?” Georgie threw back.
“Yes, they look amazing. For the first time in years, they’re quite perky. You hide your lovely figure in all those ill-fitting cardigans. Oh, and you should have Denise suggest some other pieces! A woman’s wardrobe isn’t complete without at least one Hermes scarf, a few Ferragamo wrap dresses, and, of course, a chic Chanel blazer to tie it together. You know, Denise was the one who suggested I send you that darling romper.”
The room went topsy-turvy. She’d grown used to the psychically empowered version of her mother. This whack in the face of the full-throttle socialite Lorraine was not what she was expecting to encounter. She swallowed hard, her mouth going dry, then reached for her glass of pineapple juice and took a swig.
“Pumpkin! No!” her mother cried, mortification written all over her face.
Georgie looked around the room wildly. “Is something wrong?”
Her mom stared at her, wide-eyed. “You drank from Jordan’s glass of urine.”
“I did?” she replied, giving her husband SOS eyes.
The man swooped into the camera frame. “The nice thing about urine is that it’s sterile, so your daughter should be fine. But we need to go. There’s an urgent…blogging event we need to attend to,” he added, solidifying his title as the world’s worst liar.
“Wait! One more thing!” her mother chimed, not letting them off the call yet. “Have you been in contact with Nicolette?”
Georgie nodded, then positioned the cursor over the end call icon. “Yes, we sure have. We’re going to MC a literacy fundraiser in April for you.”
“Did they decide on the theme?” her mother asked.
“Western,” Jordan answered.
The woman toyed with one of the crystals around her neck. “I love a good Western-themed gala,” she replied on a heavy sigh.
Was her mother homesick?
Georgie glanced at the clock. Their FBI activity was set to start in one minute.
“Jordan?” her mother called.
“Yes, Lorraine.”
A crease Georgie had never seen appeared on her mother’s forehead.
“Why are you holding a doll?” the woman asked, cocking her head to the side.
Georgie glanced at Faby, tucked under her husband’s arm. That darn fake baby had become such a part of their lives, she’d forgotten to tell him or at least gesture for him to keep the plastic infant out of the camera’s view.
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?”