them, he leaned a hip against the sink facing Athena.
Liam happily munched at the table, so he figured it wasn’t like they needed to be in a huge rush to get started on his math work.
“Yesterday when Deacon was in town, he told me that his brother Loyal was installing an electronic monitoring system for the maternity stalls in his horse barn.”
Her head swiveled to him. “That’s the kind of business that your dad’s in, isn’t it?”
“Do you want to hear about my day, or do you want to ask me twenty questions?”
His eyes twinkled at her, and he was gratified when she grinned, ducking her head, and said, “Go on.”
She understood he was goofing with her.
Some women would have gotten offended at that and wouldn’t have understood that he was just picking on her from the conversation they’d been having.
It was always nice to be with someone who understood you.
Of course, he thought unexpectedly, that went both ways.
He needed to understand her and not just be happy about the fact that she understood him.
The snacks on the table were probably for Liam, but maybe she knew he’d be hungry too.
She knew there needed to be supper, so she did it. Whether or not she was doing it for him, since her patient would be eating too, he couldn’t say for sure, but still, he appreciated it.
How did that happen? How did someone become a person who knew what other people wanted and had it ready for them so that it was there when they thought about it?
Definitely not a question he’d ever thought about before.
“So I went out there today and did some measuring, did some figuring, and, after I talked to Loyal about it, placed an order for the things that I’ll need, which should be here the day after tomorrow. In the meantime, Madeline, his wife, ordered takeout for lunch, because she can’t cook.”
Athena laughed. “I think she can make bologna sandwiches. At least, once when she came to visit Mr. Hudson, she and I sat in the kitchen for a little bit, and she made her kids bologna sandwiches, anyway. They ate them and they didn’t die, so I thought that maybe she’s learned a little bit since she got married.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty amazing. I think they’re leaving in a few weeks to go tape another episode of their cooking show. Loyal is looking for someone to do his spring field work, since production got pushed back because of some scheduling conflicts with the studio. They were supposed to be filming it in January.”
“You know Madeline is one of the only people I know who has a personality that could pull off having a world-famous cooking show, lines of cookbooks, and a whole empire built on food, when a bologna sandwich is the best she can do in the kitchen.”
“I guess we all have our talents.”
Athena scraped the potatoes off the board and into a pan on the stove and nodded without looking at him.
He wanted to know what she was thinking, why that comment would have made her go quiet. But he figured it was more than time for him to get started on this math stuff.
He turned toward the table, where Liam was happily squeezing two crackers together over cheese and meat that was at least two inches thick as he opened his mouth and tried to fit the entire cracker tower in it in one bite.
“If you ever had any doubts about that kid being yours, watching him do that should reassure you,” Athena said, her voice coming from behind his shoulder.
“You said that like I do that every day.”
“If I hadn’t said something, I guarantee you two minutes from now, you’d be doing the exact same thing, only your cracker pile would be twice as big, and you’d probably have instigated a competition with Liam as to who could fit the tallest sandwich in their mouth.”
“You spent way too much time with your brother and me growing up.”
“I know. And Shane wasn’t any better.”
He froze.
Her eyes looked at him steadily, almost a challenge in them, as though she knew talking about Shane was his weakness. And she hit it on purpose.
But, knowing Athena, and watching her now, she hadn’t done it on purpose to hurt him, she’d done it on purpose to show him that it was okay to talk about him.
One part of him resented that. He was an adult. He could decide when he was ready to talk about Shane