Hayden pushed Joseph into the kitchen despite the rejection on his face.
“You should spend more time accompanying Noah too. You can see how happy he is when he is
playing with Stella. I also heard from the servants in your house who take care of him that Noah had
never been so happy before. I thought it was an exaggeration.”
Joseph listened to what Hayden said and felt a bit guilty. While he was lost in thought, an apron was
put in his hand, “Put this on so that the flour won’t get your clothes dirty.”
Watching the pink apron in his hand, Joseph twitched his eye corner. When he was about to say
something, Hayden rushed him,
“Why are you still standing still. Go wash your hands. It’s five o’clock already. If we don’t hurry up, the
two children will be starving.”
Out of no reason, Joseph followed her leads. He put on the apron and washed his hands. He listened
to Hayden’s instructions and began kneading dough as she did.
“Normally when we make cookies, we can randomly choose a simple shape, such as round or square.
But actually children don’t pay much attention to the taster They prefer better-looking cookies than tasty
ones. So when we make cookies for children, we can use mould or our hands to shape them into
various little animals.”
Hayden demonstrated to Joseph and squeezed dough onto the baking paper.
“See, this is the shape of little duck. Don’t squeeze too much dough to make a single cookie, it will
expand by itself after being put into the oven.”
When making demonstration, Hayden was quite serious. Her eyes were fixated on the baking paper
and soon all kinds of little animals appeared on it.
Standing beside her, Joseph stared at her side-face with a strange feeling rising up in his heart.
At this moment, he thought she was so interesting, much more interesting than all the women he had
seen before.
She was not a vain or phony woman. She was good at her work as well as her life. She was kind,
brave, frank and simple. Besides, she was very patient with children.
“Mister, do you want to consider about having my mummy become your wife?”
The sentence which was taken as a joke by him suddenly popped up in his mind. His hands trembled
and too much dough was squeezed out. A dough ball which couldn’t be depicted by words ended up on
the baking paper.
Hayden laughed and remarked frankly, “Mr. Beckham, luckily the dough is beige. If we are making
chocolate cookies, I don’t think someone will have a cookie which looks like a piece of shit.”
Joseph’s face froze. Looking at his work, indeed he felt embarrassed. So, he dropped the thing in his
hand impatiently and said, “You can do it yourself.”
“Someone is angry.” Hayden raised her eyebrows towards him. She looked like she was taking
pleasure in his misfortune, “Fine, it can still be saved. I can rescue it.”
While talking, she reached her hand into the bag with cranberries and chose two tiny cranberries. She
put them on the shit-like cookie and used a toothpick to draw the “tail” longer.
“See. In this way, it will be a little snake.”
Joseph looked at the “little snake” which used to be a piece of shit. With the cranberries as eyes, the
“little snake” looked cute and naughty. Its curly body laid idly on the baking paper with its long and thin
tail dragging behind.
Joseph watched the little snake for a while, and then his eyes were uncontrollably moved from it to
Hayden’s face. Looking at her proud little face, Joseph felt strangely pleased and comfortable.
At dinner, Noah appeared much happier than he normally did. He even ate food by himself, which
shocked Joseph. The conundrum of Noah’s not eating by himself had always plagued Joseph. If no
one fed him, Noah would rather not eat anything. Even if someone fed him, Noah would only eat a little
bit. He was five years old now, but he looked thinner and weaker than other children of the same age.
“Noah, you can eat by yourself?”
Joseph couldn’t help but ask.
“He is five years old. What are you talking about?” Hayden exaggerated on purpose, “Our Noah is
capable of many things else, right?”
With that, Noah nodded and even glanced at Joseph with disdain as if he was just hiding his skills
before.
What Noah did made Joseph both angry and amused. But at the end, he could only compromise and
use chopsticks to put some vegetables into Noah’s bowl. He said gently,
“It’s my bad. I didn’t pay enough attention to you before. Have some more.”
After dinner, Hayden planned to leave because it was late now. But Stella didn’t want to leave and kept
saying she wanted them to play games together.
There was a huge LCD TV in the living room of Joseph’s house. The TV had game mode. There was a
game named Tank Battle, which could be played by four of them at the same time with each one
holding a joystick.
In the first round, Joseph took over the territories of three of them in less than five minutes. Game over.
Hayden was a bit upset, “It’s unfair. This is in your house. You must have played for a thousand times.
We are all newbies. It’s unfair.”
“This is my first time too.” Joseph said plainly, “Don’t seek excuse for your failure.”
Hearing this, Noah suddenly kicked Joseph to show his discontent. He stood up and made many
gestures. Nobody knew what he wanted to express, so he grabbed the drawing board and wrote down
something.
“Daddy is mean.”
Joseph could neither cry nor laugh. He patted Noah’s head and asked in reply,
“You thought I was mean just because I won? Noah, you shouldn’t think like this. Even if you lose, you
should maintain your good manners.”
Noah’s unhappiness was all over his face. He pushed Joseph’s hand away and crossed his arms
before his chest. Then he sat cross-legged on the ground and seethed silently.
Joseph didn’t know what to do and could only say they should play once more.
In this round, Joseph carefully accompanied them for almost half an hour and dared not to win. At the
last moment, when he was about to strike them out all at once, Noah kicked away the joystick in his
hand. At this moment, Hayden rode in a tank and entered Joseph’s camp. She razed his camp to the
ground.
“Wow. We won! We won!”
Stella stood up and cheered with her mummy. She tore off a piece of paper and stuck it on Joseph’s
forehead, “Punishment!”
Joseph questioned,
“You lost before too. Why weren’t you punished?”
“We were just running a test. We had to try the game first, right? So it didn’t come with punishment.
This round was a literal start.”
Hayden thought her explanation was 100% right.
Joseph looked at his own son. Noah nodded too. Clearly he stood at Hayden’s side.
Joseph didn’t know what to say. He seemed to have invited a wolf into his own house. There was going
to be a rebellion.
Then they played many more rounds. Joseph wanted to win, but he couldn’t stop the two little ones
from making troubles for him. So his face was all covered with paper at the end. When he breathed, the
paper danced around. His face could hardly be seen. Hayden laughed with her hands covering her
belly. She laughed so hard that she laid on the mattress, crying, “We can’t play this game anymore.
Your face doesn’t have any more room for paper.”
With that, two little ones clapped their hands and kept jumping around on the sofa. Stella laughed as
loud as her mummy.
“Okay, okay. It’s late now. We should go.” After all the laughing, Hayden clutched on to the sofa for
support and stood up. She reached her hand to Stella,
“Come on, Stella. It’s almost 10 o’clock. If we don’t go back now, it will be too late.”
With that, the smile on Stella’s face suddenly disappeared. She pursed her lips,
“No! Mummy, it’s so late now. How about we stay here tonight?”
Hayden’s face changed.
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