He crossed his arms, and she had no idea how he’d kept the white button-down clean throughout the entire day, but he had. At this point, with the number of kids coming to the house, he was really just testing the fates.
“I don’t order in.” Some things were just too complicated. “We do cold cereal or sandwiches or sometimes I can do gluten-free spaghetti in a quick pinch.”
“I bet I could make cereal,” he suggested, the edges of his lips twitching. “Unless I burn it in your fast-cooking slow cooker.”
Look at him being adorably domestic.
She held up the spatula. “Don’t mock my slow cooker. It’s the closest thing I’ve had to a relationship in a year.”
Well, that sounded a helluva lot sadder than she’d intended.
“It’ll be sandwiches for dinner.” She set down the spatula and began pulling the gluten-free bread and the dairy-free cheese from the refrigerator. “Sandwiches are easy.”
Jack moved alongside her, opening the cupboard where she kept the trash bags. Then to the cupboard where she kept her pens and paper.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Plates,” he said.
He was really helping. Huh. It’d been a long time since she’d had a man’s help getting dinner together.
Toward the end there, Kent had really checked out—even before she’d ever noticed.
She pointed to the cabinet to the left of the sink. “There.”
He nodded. “On it.”
While April layered cheese and turkey breast together on the bread, Rohan took that moment to hop into the room. He looked straight at April and said, “Banana.”
April’s pulse skipped. She dropped the cheese. Then she recovered quickly and picked the cheese back up. But that was his first non-ribbit at home since…
She couldn’t really say when.
He didn’t ribbit at school—he never could pass kindergarten if he spent all day ribbiting. But whenever he wasn’t in the classroom, he always reverted to his amphibious protective instincts.
And, unless she was mistaken—and she wasn’t mistaken—frogs didn’t say banana.
“Banana,” he said again, with moreoomph, giving Jack a pointed look before licking the side of the wall.
“You know that talk we had about wall germs?” Jack asked, now done separating the plates. “Still applies when you say banana.” He moved to Rohan and lifted him from his squat near the wall.
Rohan nodded, looping his arms around Jack’s neck.
April would not let her heart get in the middle of this mess. Absolutely not.
Rohan looked at her and flicked his tongue over his lips.
“Do you want a banana?” April asked, because while she couldn’t give him a frog—or rather, she could but had decided months ago that the only inside pet she really wanted was of the Mayonnaise variety—she could give him a banana.
Rohan shook his head. “Banana.”
Okay, what?
Jack smiled. “I taught the kids banana language while you were making your posts.”
“Do I want to know?” April asked.
“Banana,” Rohan said in a tone that somehow sounded like,probably not.
