her ass and looked past her at the dangling shoestrings, several branches up. “You get to him first, since you’re part chimpanzee, and then I can carry him down on my back.”
“Okay, let’s hope this works—commence Operation No Tree Pee,” she said, then worked her way up, limb by limb.
It didn’t take them long to get to the boy.
“Are you ready, Toby? I’m going to carry you down,” he said.
“What if I pee?” the child squealed, clenching every muscle in his little body.
Good question. The last thing he wanted was to be covered in piss.
“See that bush,” he said, pointing toward the ground. “Once we get down, we’ll race over, and you can pee there.”
“Okay,” the boy replied, scrunching up his face.
Natalie climbed onto Toby’s branch and took his hand. “You can make it, honey. I know you can.”
“Are you going to go fast, Uncle Jake?”
“Like a tree ninja, dude,” he replied, not sure what a tree ninja was, but it sounded a hell of a lot cooler than a potty porter.
The boy cracked a smile then grimaced. “If I laugh, I’ll pee.”
“No funny business,” Natalie ordered, clearly holding back a grin.
He bit back a smile of his own. “Got it. Commencing Operation No Tree Pee.”
Natalie’s eyes sparkled as she shook her head, swallowing back a laugh. “All right, Toby, I’m going to help you get down to Jake.”
The boy released the tree trunk and, with Natalie’s help, lowered himself down.
“Climb onto my back,” he said, helping the boy get into place.
He started the decent as the children below began chanting.
“Hold it! Hold it! Hold it!”
“I can’t hold it!” Toby yelled.
Jake quickened his pace. “You’ve got to hold it, Toby!”
“I’m trying, but it’s like a giant lake is inside of me.”
Jake glanced down. They were so close. “Ten seconds, Toby. You’ve got this.”
He climbed down the tree, navigating the branches and trying like hell not to bounce too much.
“I can’t hold it,” the boy wailed.
“Five seconds,” he called, nearly at the bottom. “Count it down, Toby!”
“Five,” the boy yelled along with the other children.
He cleared the last branch and carefully lowered himself and the child to the ground.
“Four!”
He swung Toby around and held the kid out in front of him like a brick of dynamite, ready to blow.
“Three!”
“The bush, Jake! Get him to the bush!” Natalie called.
“Two.”
Kicking up bits of dirt and pine needles, he sprinted to the cluster of wild blackberry bushes and set the boy down.
“All you, Toby,” he called over his shoulder, scrambling away to avoid a direct hit.
“I can’t get my shorts undone,” the kid whined.
Jesus Christ on a Cracker!
He spun around and went back. Operation No Tree Pee could not fail. As quickly as possible, he assessed the situation.
“Toby, it looks like the standard button zipper combo.”
The boy looked at him with desperation in his eyes. “But, my underwear is stuck in the zipper.”
Dammit!
“I’m going to talk you through it. Undo the button, and then you’re going to pull the zipper as hard as you can.”
Toby had gone beet-red from clenching. “Okay, here goes.”
With a growl, Toby yanked the zipper, and his shorts fell past his knobby knees to his ankles. Without a second to lose—because he didn’t want to get squirted with pee—Jake leaped over the bush, limbs waving wildly as he made a mad dash back to the group.
Natalie pressed her hand to her heart. “Were you hit?”
He caught his breath and dusted a few errant pine needles from his clothing. “No, I’m good. I made it out just in time,” he answered before realizing that she was messing with him.
“See, you’re good with kids,” she replied with that glint in her eyes.
He pulled a bit of tree bark from her hair. “Just the ones bursting with urine.”
“Pretty good teamwork back there, don’t you think?” she asked as his hand lingered in her hair.
He stared into her eyes. His kiss keeper’s eyes. He’d always wondered what color they were. But his imagination couldn’t hold a candle to what it was like to gaze into the real deal.
“Please, tell us you’re not going to kiss her, Uncle Jake!” Tucker said.
He and Natalie glanced at the kids and found all but one child covering their eyes.
“We’re absolutely not going to kiss,” Natalie answered, but she didn’t pull away.
“You look like you’re going to kiss,” cooed Annabelle, who happened to be the only child who didn’t look totally freaked out.
“Kissing must be so gross, right, Uncle Jake?” Finn added with his hands covering his eyes.
He shared