“I’m on it,” he says gruffly, stopping on his way to lift Rue and squeeze her until she squeals with laughter and demands to be put down. “No more climbing in the kitchen.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
While he opens the cupboard, we take the butter, syrup and silverware out onto the balcony, where Rue has informed me we’ll be eating. “This is a great place for breakfast.”
“I know,” Rue says with a charming, absentminded confidence. “The water makes it pretty. I have napkins.”
She untucks the folded squares from under her arm and places one in front of each of the stools surrounding the table. Her movements are careful, her little tongue sticking out in concentration as she completes her task.
“Have you’ve done this before?”
She nods, her eyes focusing on her work. “Mommy said I could help her do it. I can’t make them birds yet. Maybe when I’m older.”
Birds out of napkins? “She worked at a restaurant?”
“Yeah.” Rue bites her lip and looks up at me, her eyes big and solemn. “We went every day. I stayed in the back with Chef Lisa after we made the tables. Sometimes she let me stir stuff.”
Her voice is wobbly and I drop to my knees beside her, pleased when she instinctively leans against me for comfort. “It sounds like you did a lot of work. Did you like hanging out with Chef Lisa?”
Rue sniffles. Just once. “She was nice unless an order was bad. She hugged Mommy all the time. I bet she misses us. I helped a lot.”
Elliot said she hadn’t spent much time socializing with other children, but he didn’t tell me it was because she’d gone to work with her mother. It’s clear a large portion of her self-esteem comes from contributing. Helping her mother and Chef Lisa, the hugger.
“I think she’d be impressed with what you and your dad did this morning, don’t you?”
She nods. “Mommy never said he could flip pancakes so high.”
I’m guessing she didn’t know. “I’m sorry I missed that. Do you think you can help us eat them before they get too cold?”
She looks toward me and I feel an answering tug in my heart. I love kids. All of them. But this one is already getting to me. I’m apparently a sucker for a Ransom.
“Because you need calories?” she asks.
“So many calories. I think we both could use some.”
“Can we sing after? Daddy says you like our song.”
“We can sing anytime you want. After breakfast, because singing with food in your mouth is really gross.”
She snorts, looking behind me and stepping back to make room for her father. When I reach for the plates he’s holding in one hand, our fingers brush.
“Thanks,” he says abruptly enough for me to look up at him.
Did something about our conversation upset him?
“She’s fine,” I murmur while she does one last fluttery circuit of the table, straightening our forks. “Didn’t even stub her toe.”
“Thanks to you.”
With that, he helps Rue onto her stool and sits down beside her, leaving me to follow. I can barely see the top of Rue’s head over the stack in the center of the table. Elliot wasn’t exaggerating.
“This definitely looks like a cajillion,” I say, and her corresponding giggle is made of pure happiness. Kids are amazingly resilient. “I should have brought my phone so I could take a picture to show Princess Tani.”
Before Rue can convince me to do just that, Elliot slips his own phone out of his pocket to take a picture, then picks up her plate and gives her two pancakes to start, despite her insistence that she needs more calories.
She’ll find a way to insert that word into the conversation all day.
You’re welcome.
When he goes for my plate, I stare at him in disbelief as he doles out five and sets the stack down in front of me. “Thanks.”
Elliot Ransom made my plate. I try to think back to dinner dates and post-hook-up breakfasts, and I can’t remember any man that bothered to pass me the salt without being asked. He did it without thinking, giving me more than I would have given myself.
It feels intimate and familiar. Like we always have breakfast together. Like he’s going to reach under the table and squeeze my knee as he asks Rue to eat with her mouth closed. Like we’re a family.
Nope. Not going there. I managed to get over a quick, groping kiss in the moonlight, but this is different. If I fool myself into thinking I could ever have this or anything like it, that would really do a number on me.
“Thanks, Dad,” I joke to jostle myself out of the fantasy, batting my eyelashes in what his daughter perceives as the height of comedy.
All I get from him is a raised eyebrow. No words.
You may or may not know this, but I’m not really that good with silence. No one in my family is. Except Stewart, because unless trees can talk, I’m assuming his downtime isn’t filled with scintillating conversation. Which could be the reason his book devotes an entire chapter to the many uses of urine. If he’d had someone to bounce that idea off of, they would have said no, and he’d have been spared years of grief from his nine immature brothers.