Brenda Harlen – Building The Perfect Daddy (страница 7)
“Actually, I don’t have plans,” he told her.
“You have dinner wif us?” she asked again.
His gaze shifted from the little girl to her mother. “What are you cooking?”
“Meat loaf,” she told him, taking the already prepared pan from the refrigerator and sliding it into the oven. “With a side of mac and cheese and salad.”
She hadn’t planned on adding macaroni and cheese to the meal, but she wasn’t sure that the meat loaf and salad would stretch far enough to feed all of them if he decided to stay.
“Sounds good,” he decided.
She eyed him skeptically. “Really?”
He smiled, and she felt an unexpected warmth spread through her veins. “Well, it sounds a lot better than the pizza I probably would have ordered at home.”
“I like pizza,” Kylie told him.
“So do I,” he admitted. “But it gets kind of monotonous when you eat it four or five times a week.”
“What’s mon-tin-us?”
“Monotonous,” he said again, enunciating clearly. “And it means boring.”
Lauryn took a pot out of the cupboard and filled it with water, then set it on the stove to boil.
Although she would have been able to get two meals out of the meat loaf if she was only feeding herself and the kids, she was glad he was staying. She’d had a really crappy day and while she certainly wouldn’t have sought out any company, she was grateful for the distraction. Because as long as Ryder was there, she didn’t have to think about how spectacularly she’d screwed up her life or try to figure out how she was supposed to put all of the broken pieces back together again. As an added bonus, he was great with her kids—and, she admitted to herself, really nice to look at.
“Can I help with anything?” Ryder offered.
She shook her head. “The salad is in the fridge, the meat loaf is in the oven, and the mac and cheese will only take ten minutes after the water boils. But if you’ll excuse me for a minute, I’m just going to run upstairs to change into something more forgiving of sticky fingers.”
Ryder nodded.
She was gone less than three minutes, exchanging her dry-clean-only business attire for a comfortable pair of faded jeans and a peasant-style blouse. When she returned to the kitchen, he was refilling his mug of coffee from the pot.
She picked up her own abandoned cup and sat down across from him.
Ryder ran his fingers over the surface of the table. He had really great hands—a workman’s hands—strong and capable. “I noticed you’ve got a lot of quality furniture inside this house with the leaky roof, falling-down porch and ugly kitchen.”
“I took advantage of the employee discount at Garrett Furniture,” she told him.
He lifted a brow. “Not the family discount?”
“I didn’t think it would take you too long to figure it out after Kylie mentioned Justin and Avery’s wedding.”
“Did you want it to remain a secret?” he asked.
She sipped her coffee. “No. But I don’t want the Garrett name used on the show.”
“Why not?”
Because she was embarrassed enough about her financial situation, and the last thing she wanted was to cause embarrassment to her family. She knew it wasn’t easy for her parents to overlook all of the work that needed to be done in her home. More than once, her father had offered to call a handyman friend to fix the leaky plumbing in the kitchen, to replace some questionable boards in the front porch, to secure the wobbly ceiling fan in the master bedroom. Every time, Lauryn had refused because her husband had promised to take care of the problems.
It was harder to turn away her cousins when they showed up at the door, as Andrew and Nathan had done a few times. It was thanks to them that she had a secure handrail leading to the laundry room in the basement and shelves in the nursery. And the new locks on the doors were courtesy of Daniel, who had installed them within hours of learning that Rob had walked out on his family. Not that she intended to admit any of that to the man seated across the table from her now.
“Can’t you just respect my wishes on this?” she finally said.
He considered for a minute, then nodded. “Okay.”
“Well, that was easy,” she said both grateful and a little dubious.
“Did you expect me to be difficult?”
“You weren’t nearly as agreeable when I asked you to get off my property this morning,” she reminded him.
“I know you’re not thrilled about being part of the show, but everything will go much more smoothly if you accept that we’re on the same team,” he told her.
“Are we?”
“Why do you doubt it?”
She shrugged. “A lot of so-called reality TV shows are all about the conflict and drama.”
“Maybe you should watch a few episodes of Ryder to the Rescue before you sign the contract,” he advised.
“Maybe I will,” she agreed.
“In the meantime—” he nodded toward the stove “—your water is boiling.”
She hurried to open the window above the sink, to let the steamy air escape, because the range fan didn’t work. Then she opened the box of macaroni and dumped the noodles into the pot.
Ryder found plates and cutlery and set the table. She started to tell him that she would do it, because she was accustomed to doing everything on her own, then she decided that it was nice—at least this once—to have some help. Besides, while she finished the preparations for dinner, she was able to watch him move around her kitchen—and she really liked watching him move.
After making the pasta sauce, she called Kylie for dinner, then dished up her food while the little girl was washing up. She cut up some meat for Zachary and added a spoonful of macaroni, then slid his plate into the freezer while she settled him into his high chair and buckled the belt around his middle. Kylie had already climbed into her booster seat and was shoveling spoonfuls of macaroni and cheese into her mouth.
“Ketchup, please.”
Lauryn grabbed the bottle of ketchup from the fridge, shook it up and squirted a dollop onto her daughter’s plate—close to but not touching the meat—then set the bottle on the table.
“Umm umm,” Zachary was making his hungry noises and reaching toward his sister’s plate.
“Yours is just cooling off,” Lauryn promised, offering a sippy cup of milk to tide him over.
He immediately put the spout in his mouth, took a drink, then tossed the cup aside. “Umm umm,” he demanded.
Holding back a sigh, she bent to retrieve it, but Ryder had already scooped it off the floor and set it on the table. It was then she noticed that his fork was still beside his plate, his food untouched.
“Please don’t wait for me,” Lauryn told him. “Your dinner will get cold if you do.”
“No colder than yours,” he pointed out.
She opened the door of the freezer to check on Zachary’s meal. “I’m used to it. Sometimes the kids are finished before I get a chance to start.”
Satisfied with the temperature of the baby’s food, she set the plate in front of him. Zachary, like his sister, did not stand on ceremony but immediately shoved a hand into the macaroni.
Lauryn uncurled his fingers and wrapped them around the handle of the spoon she’d given to him. He held on to the utensil, then used the other hand to pick up a piece of meat. Shaking her head, she sat down at her plate and wiped her fingers on a napkin.
Only when she was seated did Ryder pick up his own fork. Not even her husband had ever waited for her to sit down before digging into his own meal, but she pushed that memory aside.
She’d taken the first bite of her dinner when the sky suddenly grew dark and she heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. But it was distant—far, far away, she assured herself, stabbing her fork into a piece of meat just as the skies opened up and rain poured down.
She pushed the meat around until Ryder reached across the table and put his hand over hers. She jolted at the unexpected contact, her fork slipping from her fingers and clattering against the edge of her plate, but he didn’t pull his hand away.
“The tarps will hold,” he told her.
She nodded, grateful for his reassurance and a little unnerved that this man, whom she’d met only hours earlier, had so easily followed the direction of her thoughts. Even more unnerving was the way her skin had warmed and her pulse had leaped in response to his touch.
She slowly drew her hand away. “Did you want more meat loaf?”
“I wouldn’t mind another slice.”
She pushed away from the table and reached for his plate.
“I can get it,” he told her.
“More milk, please,” Kylie said, lifting up her empty cup.
“I can get that, too,” Ryder said, when she started to rise again.