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She winced at the words. “She was only ten.”
“Ten is old enough to know better. You don’t need to defend her.”
Yeah, she guessed it was. Maggie didn’t know why she defended her. Maybe because that was what she’d always done. It was what she knew.
Wanting to distract herself, she turned and looked around. Her jaw dropped open.
“What is this place?”
What it looked like was the most magical place in the world! There was an enormous bouncy slide that she immediately wanted to go down. As well as that, there were several large bouncy pillows set into the floor.
And there was even a castle! She almost swooned. A castle with slides.
Could there be anything more amazing?
A ball pit was in the very middle of the room. She wanted to dive in. And, most marvelous of all, no one else was in the room. She started to run. She was going to head for the ball pit first. No, the castle! The big slide!
Oh, it was way too hard to decide.
Before she could move more than two steps, she was brought up short. She looked behind her to find that Jack had hold of the back of her jeans.
“Jack! Let go! I want to play!” Whoa. Was that a whine in her voice?
Where had that come from?
Jack’s eyebrows rose. Had he noticed?
“You want to play?”
“Uh-huh. Let me go!”
“Don’t you think you need to know the rules first?”
“Rules-schmules.”
Monkeyballs. What was she doing? He seemed to know she was a Little, though. And he was the one who had brought her here. To a toy store and the most magical, amazing place in the world!
“There can’t be any rules in a place like this!” she protested.
“I’m afraid there are.”
Maggie crossed her arms over her chest with a huff. “I thought you were the fun one.”
“Am I?” He grinned. “What does that make Ian then?”
“The grumpy one, of course. You don’t want to be the grumpy one, do you? Because I’m sure the fun one doesn’t make rules.”
“I can be fun and still enforce rules.” Reaching out with his other hand, he tapped her lower lip. “And that doesn’t work on me.”
Bummer.
“All right, what are these silly rules?”
“No shoes on the bouncy material.”
Oh. That actually wasn’t a silly rule at all. Now she felt bad. He let go of her jeans and she slid off her shoes, spotting cubby holes to put them in.
“Where is everyone else? Are other people going to come here?” She wasn’t sure if she could let go and have fun if people were watching.
