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Camilla gave a start. “What?” She blinked as everything swam back into focus. “God, no. Your food is divine, as if you need me to keep saying that.”
Katherine pretended to brush lint off her shirt. “It can never hurt to hear that, but then why do you look like you swallowed something bitter?”
Abigail interrupted. “Daddy, who’s that pretty lady?”
She was pointing at Camilla with a big smile on her face. Camilla flushed as she bent down, so that she was at eye level with Abigail. “Hi, I’m Camilla, but you can call me, Cam, what’s your name?”
“Abigail,” she said shyly as she gazed up at her with deep brown eyes.
“That’s a lovely name, can I call you Aby?”
Abigail nodded enthusiastically as she ran off to Leroy.
She couldn’t tell them that she was trying to remember what Katherine said, so she took her time standing back up. “I was just thinking that the sight of Leroy in a tutu will probably leave me scarred for life.”
Leroy was busy doing ballerina poses with Abigail. “You’re just jealous that you can’t rock this tutu like I can.”
“Yeah, sure, that’s what bothers me.”
Leroy spun on his heels and stopped directly in front of Camilla and began clucking. “Sexism is an ugly color on you, Sis.”
Camilla laughed. “It’s not sexism to say that it doesn’t suit you, at all.”
Leroy picked Abigail up and tucked her under his arm while she squirmed and giggled. “Is too, now I’m taking Aby, and we’re going to go play in the living room where your negative comments cannot penetrate our Disney bubble.”
He made airplane noises as he dramatically swung Abigail out of the kitchen, the sound of their laughter following in their wake.
Katherine, Jayden and Camilla all watched with identical expressions of joy on their faces.
“She seems like a really sweet kid,” Camilla offered as Jayden and Katherine resumed cooking. Jayden was dicing up mushrooms and without looking up, he said. “She really is. I’m lucky she’s so even tempered. She keeps me calm, most of the time.”
Camilla leaned her hip against the counter as she tried not to be too obvious about watching him. “I can see that.”
Katherine set the timer and poked her head inside the oven for a quick look. “Dinner should be ready in about thirty minutes. Jayden, do you mind finishing up here? Cam can give you a hand, I’m going to go see what the sparkly princess and my niece are up too.”
Jayden and Camilla laughed as Katherine grabbed her glass of wine, took a sip and made her way out to the living room.
Camilla moved into the kitchen and rolled up her sleeves. “What do you want me to help you with, Chef?”
“Can you hand me the bowl on the top right shelf?”
Camilla stood on her tiptoes and reached for the bowl and placed it beside him. “Now what?”
“Can you wash the lettuce?”
Camilla nodded as she turned on the faucet, waited for the water to warm up then proceeded to wash the lettuce. “There you go.”
She wiped her hands on her jeans as she watched him work.
“Want to hear a funny story about Aby?”
Camilla leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms over her chest. “Sure, go ahead.”
“I was helping her with her math homework the other day, and there was a particularly difficult problem that she was struggling with, so after I explained it to her, and I was checking to make sure she didn’t miss anything, she suddenly says ‘Daddy if I had Facebook I know what I’d write’, so when I ask her what it was, she says ‘I’d write #I’msoconfused.”
Camilla burst out laughing. “No way. She actually said that.”
Jayden paused, took a sip of his beer and turned around to face Camilla with a grin. “I kid you not. She actually said that. When I expressed surprise over the fact that she knew what a hashtag was, she kind of gave me this pointed look and said. ‘Daddy of course I know what a hashtag is’ then she flounced away to continue playing as if she hadn’t just said that.”
