The woman waved at the twins.Noel smiled and waved back.“We buy cookies,” Noel said with a nod.
Cookies werenoton the list.
The woman leaned in, her face inches from Leon’s.“Cookies are good, aren’t they?”
Leon turned to Annie, his lips pressed into a firm frown.He was not a fan of strangers.Or of being asked questions.
“Oh yes, they both love cookies,” Annie said, sweeping him into her arms before the tears erupted.
The cheap sauce would do.She grabbed it and threw it into the cart, then pulled her phone from her back pocket.
The recipe had loaded.Thank goodness.Beans, and a can of crushed tomatoes with chiles.She never would’ve remembered that.
The woman let out a tsk.“You need to let him speak for himself or he’ll never find his voice.”
A crimson heat crept onto Annie’s neck.Her eyes flicked up at the woman, then back down at the recipe.
Two pounds of chicken thighs.Totally forgot that, too.
“Mhm,” Annie said, as evenly as she could, before pushing the cart off and away.
Leon, recovering with the offending woman was out of sight, wiggled out of Annie’s grasp and got his feet onto the ground.
There was no use fighting him back into the cart.They only needed a few things.
“You have to hold my hand,” Annie said, straining to push the cart with one arm.Her wrist cracked in protest.
No time to slow down.She pushed onward, using her body weight to keep the cart from going sideways into a display.
She rushed, throwing things into the cart, and due to a momentary lapse in judgement, Annie let go of Leon’s hand in the dairy section.He made a beeline for a display of cookies, toddler legs pounding furiously away.
“No!”Annie cried out, lunging to grab him.
It was too late.The small round table crashed to the ground, plastic clam shells of cookies exploding open and cascading across the floor.
Her mouth dropped open.“I am so sorry,” she said to no one in particular.
“It’s only a few boxes,” a man’s voice responded.“I’ve got it.”
Annie was already on the floor, trying to gather the cookies up with one hand while holding onto Leon’s arm with the other.Leon was undeterred, trying to shove a cookie into his mouth.
“Ginger snap,” the man’s voice said.“No one will miss them.”
Annie glanced at him and her heart sank.All she could see was a head of thick dark hair, and a pair of broad shoulders.He was working steadily, his movements far less frantic than Annie’s.
He looked up at her, his brown eyes framed with impossibly dark lashes, a sympathetic smile on his lips.Her heart leapt and she forced her gaze down back to the crumbs in her hand.
Was it her low blood sugar, or was she dizzy from looking at him?Maybe it was the act of being down on the ground.
Annie shot up to her feet.She couldn’t crawl around on the ground for so long.Noel could fall out of the shopping cart.
Thankfully, she hadn’t done so yet.She’d just watched the scene with her mouth open.
Leon had taken one bite of the cookie and thrown it to the ground.Annie stooped to pick it up just as an employee arrived with a broom and dustpan.
“I’m really sorry,” she said, cheeks burning.
“It’s okay,” the woman said with a shrug.
