Undeniably Yours by Becky Wade Page B

three times in burning hot water. I’m surprised there’s still skin on them.”
    â€œAm I going to have to pay for therapy and worker’s comp?” Meg accepted Jayden from Bo with a smile.
    â€œYes, and the bill’s going to be more than you can afford.”
    â€œI don’t know about that.”
    The two of them took Jayden upstairs for his bath. They hadn’t yet started to undress him when he went through the whole grunting, straining, stinky thing again.
    â€œNo way,” Bo said. “Not possible.”
    But it was.
    Bo looked Meg straight in the eyes. “Two horseback riding lessons,” he growled.
    â€œTwo lessons,” she agreed.
    He toted the boy into the bedroom Jayden shared with Amber. A few moments went by. “There’s only one wipe left!” Panic and revulsion tinged his voice. “Gee, thanks, Amber.”
    Meg hurried in, trying to ignore both the stench and the sight of Bo holding Jayden’s legs in the air while the kid did his best to perform a twist. She opened drawers until she located a fresh supply of wipes, tore some free, and placed them where Bo could reach them. Fighting not to burst into impolite laughter, she fled the room.
    Once Bo had cleaned Jayden up, Meg plopped him in the tub and Bo made his second trip to the outside trash. It turned outthat the bath contained Jayden and made him happy, so Meg and Bo let him play in the sudsy water until he finally grew irritable.
    â€œI better start rounding up all of his bedtime stuff,” Bo said.
    â€œSounds good. I’ll get him dressed.”
    Toweling him off proved to be no problem, but forcing him into his jammies carried a medium-high level of difficulty. Meg kept trying to capture squirming limbs, and Jayden kept trying to roll off the top of the chest of drawers, which was serving as a temporary changing table.
    When she finally succeeded, sweating, she checked her watch. Was it really possible for time to move so slowly? She felt like they’d been taking care of Jayden for decades, but they still had thirty minutes before the bedtime Amber had suggested. He seemed sleepy, though, and Bo had already warmed up a sippy cup of milk for him. So Meg decided to send up a hope and prayer and attempt to put Jayden down anyway.
    â€œYou got this?” Bo asked her.
    â€œI think so. Did we do everything Amber said?”
    â€œYep, I put the sound machine on ‘waterfall,’ pulled the curtains, turned on the night-light, and checked to make sure his monitor was working. Just to be on the safe side.”
    â€œThen I should be good.”
    He stepped out, closing the door to Amber’s room behind him. She clicked off the overhead fixture, then settled them both into the rocking chair Lynn had found in the big house’s attic.
    Amber had written on her page of instructions that Meg was now supposed to sing.
    Single adult women weren’t typically lullaby specialists.
    She handed Jayden his green frog and his sippy cup, then rocked, searching her memory for anything that might suffice.
    â€œHush little baby,” she sang softly, “don’t say a word. Meggie’sgonna buy you a mockingbird. If that mockingbird don’t sing, Meggie’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. If that diamond ring don’t fit, Meggie’s gonna buy you . . .” She couldn’t remember any more of the lyrics, so she made something up. “A catcher’s mitt. If that catcher’s mitt don’t catch, Meggie’s gonna buy you a . . . doorway latch.” She racked her brain for more rhymes. “If that doorway latch don’t hold, Meggie’s gonna buy you some ice cream cold. If that ice cream don’t taste sweet, Meggie’s gonna buy you a phone that tweets.”
    Fresh out of creativity, she stopped singing and simply hummed the melody. She gazed down into Jayden’s little face, and he gazed up at her in the