Page 52 of Moon Tamed

“I don’t even know.”

I laughed, closed the door behind me, and replied, “I had to wait for your dad to stop checking outside to sneak over. Did he think we were just going to run off somewhere?”

“Absolutely. We are children who have been cooped up in quarantine for weeks. He’s expecting everyone in the city to be mad with the need to go out and do things. I think he’s forgotten we’ve been going out and doing things all day today.”

No kidding. “Do you need help?”

Calden regarded the pile of parts with a frown. “Apparently, if I want my bunnies in the sunroom sometime tonight, I’m going to need a lot of help.”

“Let’s measure out the space you want for the bunnies, then we will mark out where their play pen will be installed and where the hutch will go. Then we’ll set up the hutch and install the pen. If we’re working together, we can have it built in an hour. We’ll tag team dinner, else we won’t eat tonight.”

“That sounds like a plan, although I will owe you an evening in front of the fireplace while I cook you a feast.”

“Another night. We must get the bunnies settled. There’s always tomorrow for the reading and the feasting.”

“As usual, you are right. Let’s get this show on the road.”

After dinner and some reading in front of Calden’s fireplace, we tiptoed to my townhouse, filled a box each, and tiptoed back to his place. He showed me to his guest bedroom, and I laughed when I noticed Mr. Wolfston on the pillow. “When did you get your hands on that?”

“I may have stolen it the last time I was over so he could be here for you. Your mother had mentioned you have one for when you’re home and one when you’re elsewhere.”

I laughed, as I’d packed my second Mr. Wolfston in my box. “It’s true. That was really sweet of you, Calden. Thank you.”

“If you think this is overboard, my father went to several stores until he found another one, and he is keeping it at his place. It is Mr. Wolfcamperston, as he decided you would not risk either of your Mr. Wolfstons to the wilds. Or his slobber.”

I refused to question it, and I struggled to keep from laughing. “Please thank him for me if I forget by the time we go camping. I really appreciate it.”

“I have a teddy bear,” he confessed. “He is a brown one with white ears and tail. I have four of them, and let’s just say the camping one has seen better days. Dad just hugs a pillow, although I’m not convinced he isn’t hiding something in his pillow, probably a cat of some sort. He has issues with cats.”

The temptation proved to be too much for me. “We should investigate his hugging pillow and discover if he has any stuffed animal secrets. He has dirt against us, so we need to get some dirt against him.”

“Whomever gains access to, photographs, and reveals the contents of his hugging pillow wins. May you be swift and cunning, for I will have zero mercy.”

“What are we wagering for?”

“Dinners, and we shall number the dinners based on the general difficulty of our mission. For every week we fail to gain access to the pillow, another dinner is added to the wager. If we fail to gain access to his pillow by the end of a month, we will owe him dinner.”

“Are we letting him know we’re out for his pillow?”

“If we let him know, not only will we never live it down, but he will also turn it into a faction-wide game. He must not know we are investigating his pillow,” Calden announced.

“This is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever done,” I admitted, laughing at the absurdity of it all. “Why are we doing this?”

“It seems like fun. Why not? Give me a few more minutes if you want any other reasons.”

“I think those two reasons are sufficient. What happens if we’re caught trying to check out his pillow?”

“A dinner is owed to the other party, of course. While I’m sure my father will make some form of comment if he catches us, we’ll use the honor system.” Calden smirked. “Obviously, we should use a point system to determine who is the best at infiltrating my father’s defenses.”

“To learn any secrets about his pillow?”

“Our other option is to steal his recipe book and get his recipes out of his stingy hands. The pillow is easier.”

“He has a recipe book?”

“He absolutely does. When he isn’t trying to kill me with broccoli, he’s quite good at cooking.”

I could use more recipes. “Same rules? If we’re caught, we have to dish out a dinner? And we can only steal one recipe at a time. We’ll make binders of the recipes we’ve gotten out of him, and the person with the most points wins. We lose a point every time we’re caught in addition to having to pay out a dinner,” I suggested.

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