Did he? But she was suggesting such crazy things. It felt like she was setting him up.
“But get this,” she said, “—the winners of the races get to settle on a wildlife preserve.”
“Where the wolves can have a go at them, and then we eat the losers?” She made being contrary too easy. “You’re savage, Eva.”
She whipped her hair behind her shoulder to peer back at him from the slide. “You’re playing with me now.”
A grumbled laugh escaped him, despite his best intentions to stay cool in the face of her obnoxious enthusiasm. “A little bit, yeah.”
“We’ll catapult pumpkins!” That came out a little breathless as she reached the top of the slide where the tube was. “Thenwe can see how far they’ll go. Everyone chooses their prized pumpkin to be their champion at the catapult.”
The girl was chugging out ideas faster than he could shoot them down. “And you’re going to want me to make this catapult?” he asked.
“How hard can it be? We’ll Rumble it!”
“Rumble it?” What was she talking about?
“We’ll just find a video that’ll show us how to make it online,” she translated. “It’ll be easy.”
There was thatWebusiness again.
She’d stopped at the top of the slide where it met the tube, looking stumped on how to proceed. Taking a deep breath, she pushed up into the tube head first. His mouth opened and his warning died on his lips. She’d accuse him again of being the guy who said “no” if he tried to make her see caution. And still, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Watch out for… small furry animals.”
“Oh, you mean cute, furry animals that are more afraid of me than I am of them?” Her stubbornly cheerful voice echoed through the tube.
Exactly. He winced as she wriggled her way up. She wasn’t doing so bad, but honestly, the thought of spiders and other angry animals would’ve stoppedhim… maybe the danger of getting caught in narrow spaces, too.
Yeah, hewasa pearl clutcher! Just like she said, and still he’d rather die than go through that chute after years of rodent and spider web accumulation.
An instant later, she let out a grunt and then a shout. She kicked her legs. “Cole!” Her voice sounded like it was caught in a kettle drum. “Um… come here for a second.”
She was stuck, wasn’t she?
He shoved her phone into his pocket and made his reluctant way over to where she struggled to free herself. He strangled back the laugh that tried to escape his throat. “What’s the problem?”
“Um, well, my hips.”
Yeah, he’d thought those would be the culprit. With difficulty, he kept himself from staring, even though he definitely couldn’t stop from laughing. “So why can’t you just slide back down?” he asked.
“It’s not funny! I don’t know whatyoudid with this tube, but my jacket got caught on a nail.”
“A nail?” He felt like a parrot repeating her dumbly like this, but he was about to be forced on a rescue mission that he didn’t want to carry through, and if he could get out of it, he would. He took a deep breath to stop laughing enough to direct her on how to untangle herself while still keeping a safe distance from below. “Can’t you reach it?”
“No, I’m all twisted around. I can’t move my arms.”
“Can you get out of the jacket?”
She grunted and wriggled around and finally gave up with a shout. “Cole! I’m starting to freak out here. Get up here! Do you want me haunting you for the rest of your living days? Save me!”
Suddenly she screamed.
He stiffened in sudden worry. “What?”
“I’m just thinking of those cute furry animals!” She let out another shriek.
Grumbling and snickering all at once, he jumped on the slide, feeling strangely like a kid again as he inched his way up the metal to the tube where she kicked those incredibly long legs of hers.
Why’d she have to wear those shorts?