He slipped his own boots on, and then I got started on the littlest mister.
I dressed him in what I wanted—a Christmas onesie, a fluffy hat, and pants that covered those fat, chubby little legs.
I also got him into his car seat and then got started on all the dishes.
Kent helped me toward the end, and we put everything away just as Searcy was coming out of her room fully dressed.
Posy didn’t follow her, likely about to catch a few hours of sleep after working.
“Feel better?” I asked.
She smiled. “Yep.”
“Do you even care that it hasn’t been six weeks yet since you had Dalton?”
“Nope.”
I rolled my eyes and placed the last dish in the cabinet before saying, “I’m dropping Kent’s bike off at my place. You can pick me up there and we’ll go.”
She clapped. “I love you.”
The drive to my place took all of ten minutes—that’d been one of the selling points, it being so close to Searcy.
I pulled up in my drive and glared at my neighbor’s house.
“I swear to God,” Kent said as he eyed both of our houses in disgust. “Y’all have so many Christmas decorations up that it’s gaudy.”
“It’s his fault,” I grumbled. “I just wanted to win the neighborhood contest. But he saw me doing it, and then tried to one-up me. At this point, I’ve run out of space for blow ups in my yard. I could always move to the roof, though.”
It was two weeks until Christmas, and I was going into debt buying Christmas decorations for my place. Oh, and let’s not mention the fact that I had absolutely nowhere to put these decorations once I was done with them.
I’d have to rent a storage locker or something.
All of it was because Jasper had decided to put his hat in the ring for best holiday decorations once he’d seen me enter.
It’d all started as good fun, but now it was getting to the point where I was buying a damn computer so I could build a light show that would far exceed anything that Jasper could provide.
There was a reason I’d graduated with my associate’s degree when I’d graduated high school. Then graduated with my mechanical engineering degree at twenty and a half. I never gave up.
I would win this ‘friendly’ competition, even if it killed me.
“Whatever you say,” Kent got out and went to the back of my truck to get the ramps out. “Can you help me?”
“I guess,” I said as I grabbed another ramp and started to drag it out of the back of the truck.
“He only needs one, Callie. Bikes technically only have one wheel since they are in alignment.”
I gritted my teeth, both at the nickname and the condescension, and said, “I know that.”
I did.
I just hadn’t been thinking.
“Sure,” Jasper drawled. “Move. I’ll help.”
I moved.
I wasn’t too prideful to admit when a man’s strength was superior in certain situations.
