“I didn’t think it would be that hard.”
“How were you carrying the bag from the pantry to the counter? Upside down? And why is none of it on you?!”
“Daddy!” she wheedled, but she made my heart soar regardless. I was mostly “Dad” now. Whenever “Daddy” came out, it always put a smile on my face. “Why do they make bags that big anyway?”
“I’m asking myself that question too.” I nudged her with my elbow. “Okay, so what’s on the docket?”
“Sugar cookies.”
“Fine. You have a recipe?”
“I asked Aunt Aoife.”
I grabbed the printout that she handed me and read the instructions. “We can do this.”
“You sure?”
“Well, no. But you’re in AP Physics and U.S. History and are designing a cantilever bridge for fun. As for me, I have the intelligence to keep up with your mother. We got this.”
I glanced over the ingredients she’d set on the counter, took note of the offending bag of exploding flour, and set out bowls to weigh individual ingredients into. We began with sugar.
“Dad?”
I shot her a look as she grabbed a teaspoon and shoveled granules into the dish once we neared the right amount. “Yes?”
She kept her gaze angled away from me. “Shay and I aren’t related, are we?”
Pondering the best way to answer that, I snagged the bag of sugar and fastened it with one of the clips Star insisted we use. The last time I hadn’t, she’d left the clips all over my desk for amonth. By the end, we’d had to dedicate a whole cupboard in the kitchen to bag clips.
“Well, youare. You’re family. But genetically speaking?—”
“Because cousins shouldn’t intermarry,” she prompted, and I thanked God she brought this to me and hadn’t discussed this with her friends at school.
Again.
“—correct. You’re not.”
“So, it wouldn’t be weird for me to have a crush on him?”
I blinked at her.
Why was she talking tomeabout this?!
I pondered calling in Star. Then, when she blinked back at me, I swallowed again.
Had the females in my family collectively decided to torture me today?
Hell, couldn’t she have asked her sister about this? Alessa never even twitched at the random madness Kat spewed.
If my voice sounded strangled, so be it. “No, cupcake. It wouldn’t be weird for you to have a crush on him. I think Freud said there was a phase in every child’s development where they had a crush on their parents, so a non-blood-related cousin isn’t strange at all within those parameters.”
Her aghast expression had me sniggering. “You made that up!”
“Nope. Look online.”
“This is why those shows exist. That Maury dude.”
“I’m surprised you know about him.”
