“Oh!”Livy exclaimed and then started to laugh.“I wasn’t expecting that.”
A little boy, maybe about seven-years-old ran up to Livy.His cheeks were flushed pink, and his hat was askew.Livy fixed it instinctively.
“You promised me you’d go sledding with me,” he said to her.
“I did promise,” Livy said with a wide smile at him.“Trav, this is Wyn and Archer.”
“Hello,” he said absently in our direction.
“My son will not be taking no for an answer,” she said with a shake of her head.“Lead the way, Trav.But you’re hauling the sled up the hill.”
Livy smiled a goodbye at us and then followed her son up the mountain.
“Stand down, Tiger,” Archer quipped.
“What?”I demanded, absently rubbing the top of Mildred’s head while I searched for Lenni in the sea of sledding children.
“I thought you were going to go right for her jugular,” Archer teased.
“I was not.”
“No?You looked a little ...”
“A little what?”
“Jealous,” he supplied.“You looked—and sounded—jealous.Territorial, too.”
“You’re deluded.”
“Hmm.Yeah, I don’t think so, Wynelope.”
“Get over yourself, Archie.”
He stepped closer and pitched his voice low.“Or,youcould get under me.Seems like that’d be a great way to work out the jealousy problem you have.”
“I don’t have a jealousy problem.”
Did my voice sound breathless?
“You’rethe one with a jealousy problem,” I retorted.
“How do you figure?”
“You were nearly apoplectic when you heard that Garrett and I were talking.”
“He picked you up andtwirledyou.Not the same thing as what Livy and I were doing.Talking.And you were here the whole time,” he pointed out.“Lenni didn’t tell me Livy had a kid.”
“Maybe she didn’t know,” I pointed out.“Teachers aren’t real people until you see them outside the classroom.”
I finally caught sight of Lenni.She was at the top of the hill, and she was talking to another child.Lenni got onto her sled and the other kid gave her a push.
She wasn’t too great at directing the sled, letting it just zoom down the packed trail of snow.But her shrieks of laughter echoed off the mountain side and warned those in her path.
Archer grasped my arm and hauled me out of the way before Lenni came to a stop mere inches from where I’d been standing.
“Yeehaw!”Lenni cried.“I’m doing that again!”
“Okay, now it’s your turn,” Lenni said to me.
