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 voice.
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.”