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He smiled at her enthusiasm as she rushed over and grabbed his hand. “Come to the claw machines with me?”
I’ll follow you anywhere.
Fuck. Now he was turning into a sap.
“All right. But no more running. And you need to be careful which machines you use, that they don’t jolt you around.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course. Sorry.” Her face dropped and he immediately felt like a jerk. “You said something about claw machines?”
She gave him a small smile. “I’m so bad at them.”
The three of them followed her over to a big machine that had the saddest-looking soft toys he’d ever seen.
“Um, what about this machine? These toys look nicer,” he suggested, pointing to another machine.
“No. I need to try to rescue one of these ones. Everyone goes for the nice, new toys. Look at these. They look so sad. They’re trapped. I need to rescue them all.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Jack told her. “We’ll rescue every one of them.”
She grinned up at Jack like he’d hung the moon just for her. “I can’t do that. It costs like a dollar a go. Rescuing one will be enough.”
Were these toys even worth a dollar?
She had three goes, all of them dreadful. Shoulders slumping, she turned away. “I guess they’ll stay trapped.” Her lower lip trembled.
“Put that away.” Jameson tapped her lower lip and she gaped at him in shock.
He could feel Ian and Jack staring at him as well.
Bollocks. He needed to chill until he spoke to them. He didn’t want them to think that he was trying to steal her away from them.
“I’ll win you the toy,” he told her.
“You will?” She gave him a skeptical look. “Have you ever played one of these before?”
“No. I haven’t. But it can’t be that hard. I have excellent hand-eye co-ordination.
Fifteen tries later, he held up the toy in triumph. “Here it is!”
All three of them gaped at him.
“What?” he asked.
“I love it! Thank you!” She took the toy and held it tight. “She’s gorgeous. I’m going to name her Princess Pretty.”
She was the ugliest toy he’d ever seen in his life. But he refrained from pointing that out.
“Princess Pretty?” Ian asked. “Really? She’s missing an eye.”
“So? You can still be pretty even if you have one eye.”
“Sure you can,” Jack told her, placing his arm over her shoulders. “Do you feel like shooting something?”
“Yep!”
Ian eyed Jameson. “You realize that you just paid fifteen dollars for a toy that was probably headed to the rubbish?”
“Yeah, I know. She seems to like the ugly thing, though.”
