Page 53 of Challenged By You
For now. The thought works itself insidiously inside my head, but I shove it aside when I answer shakily, “All right.”
A flash of something I can’t name crosses his face. Instead of commenting, he arches a brow. “Let’s see how you handle breakfast one arm down.”
Grateful for the reprieve, I flippantly say, “If your snack was any demonstration, better than you could with two, I imagine.”
As I turn into my kitchen with Annie still buried against me, Jonas’s laughter follows me. “I have no doubt. Do I get to custom order my eggs?”
Deadpan, I say, “Absolutely,” as I reach into the refrigerator for eggs, milk, and butter. Placing Annie in the high chair she and Chris share, I murmur softly in her ear when she begins to protest, “Eggs,” and she begins to squeal in glee.
“I’ll take mine…” Jonas begins just as I start cracking eggs into a bowl.
“Your choices are with or without cheese.” As a piece of shell lands in the bowl, I frown before using a larger piece like a magnet to attract the smaller piece out. I smile beatifically. “Also, with or without shells.”
Jonas bursts into laughter, and I’m thrown off kilter at how easily we’ve found that balance between us that comes so rarely between two people. Even though he’s irritated with me, now’s not the time for us; it’s the time where my children come first. Before last night, I might not have understood why he’d so easily have understood that. Now that I do, I lean over and nuzzle my nose against his and whisper, “I might be convinced to make something different since watching you—”
“Yes?” he encourages.
“—act as a living high chair does something for me,” I conclude before brushing my lips against his cheek. “They absorb everything like little parrots, and I love how you understand. Thank you.” I get close to his ear before taking a small nip. I’m thrilled when it causes a visible tremble.
To entertain us all while I cook, and to prove a point to Jonas, I pull up the music on my phone. Alessia begins to sing out. Annie and Chris babble in beat with the word “stay” coming out exactly when the young singer emphasizes it during the song. Jonas gapes, “No freaking way.”
“Told you.” I chuckle. As the man I’ve become more intimate with in the last few weeks than I was with my children’s father props his chin in his hand and becomes absorbed in their every nuance, I quickly scramble up eggs and toast up some bread.
By the time the song has played for the third time, breakfast is ready. I leave mine in a pan as I reach for Chris, but Jonas holds him back. “Will he eat all of it?” Jonas asks, reaching for the bowl I’m filling for my son, even as I’m handing him his plate.
“Yes, but you shouldn’t have to…” I’m cut off by the very male, arrogant look I get from two sets of eyes.
“You worry about Annie, Trina. I’ve got Chris handled. Right, buddy?” Jonas jiggles my boy, who responds, “Nono!” in glee.
“That’s if it’s okay with you?” A note of uncertainty fills his voice.
Quickly I fill my plate and sit down next to Annie, who’s banging her hands on the high chair tray demandingly. “Sit, please. I’m sorry. I think everything’s just catching up with me.”
Relief crosses his face. Arranging himself with Chris on his lap, he watches me feed Annie with tiny bites before he does the same with my baby boy. And with each bite, I want the world to stop. I want the simple meal—a ridiculous one to be feeding food critic Jonas Rice, I realize belatedly—to go on forever.
Because there’s no way any of this is happening to me. Jonas let my daughter use his face for a teether the morning after he made love to me and is sitting in my microscopic kitchen feeding my son. Somewhere a clock is ticking to rush me back to my reality—a reality where I’m not falling for him. God, just don’t let it be right now, I plead.
In between feeding Annie, I shove in a few bites. I only raise my brows when Jonas says, “I have the perfect solution for your babysitting dilemma.”
I chew. I was trying to not think of it just yet because I didn’t want my anxiety to communicate itself to my children. Swallowing, I manage, “Oh?”
Thank God I got the food down because I immediately begin coughing when Jonas announces, “I don’t see why you can’t utilize the firm we have at work to find a new sitter.”
My “Excuse me?” must be deafening, because Annie yells, “Mama! Loud!” before slapping her food-ridden hands on top of her ears. Chris quickly follows, meaning I’ll have to give both kids a bath.
My head falls forward. “No. Just no.”
And of course both kids chant, “Nono!”
Jonas, the bastard, laughs. “See? The kids agree. It’s settled.”
I turn my head and manage to land my ponytail in the remainder of my own eggs. “It so is not,” I hiss.
His smile is slow and filled with heat. “Is that another challenge? Look how the last one turned out for us.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Sure it is.”
