Chapter 44



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Hayden pushed Joseph into the kitchen despite the rejection on his face.

“You should spend more time keeping Noah company. You can see how happy he is when he’s playing with Stella. I’ve also heard the servants say that Noah has never been happier. I thought that was an exaggeration.”

Joseph heard what Hayden said and felt a little guilty. While he was engrossed, an apron was placed in his hand, “Put this on so the flour doesn’t get your clothes dirty.”

Staring at the pink apron in his hand, Joseph narrowed his eyes. As he was about to say something, Hayden pounced on him, “Why are you still standing still? Go wash your hands. It’s already five o’clock, if we don’t hurry, the two children will starve to death.”

For no reason, Joseph followed her instructions. He put on his apron and washed his hands. He listened to Hayden’s instructions and began to knead as she did.

“Normally, when we make cookies, we might randomly choose a simple shape, like round or square. But actually, kids don’t pay much attention to the taste, they prefer prettier cookies rather than tasty ones. So when we make cookies for kids, we can use molds or our hands to shape them into various little animals.”

Hayden demonstrated to Joseph and rolled out the dough on the baking paper. “See, this is the shape of a duckling. Don’t squeeze too much dough to make a single cookie, it will expand on its own after you put it in the oven.”

As she demonstrated, Hayden was quite serious. Her eyes were fixed on the baking paper and soon all sorts of little animals appeared on it.

Standing next to her, Joseph glanced sideways at her with a strange feeling rising in his heart. At that moment she seemed very interesting to him, much more so than all the women he had seen before. She was not a vain or false woman. She was good both in her work and in her life. She was kind, courageous, frank and simple. She was also very patient with children.

‘Sir, would you like to consider the possibility of my mommy becoming your wife?’ The phrase he joked suddenly popped into his mind. His hands shook and he pulled out too much dough, a ball of dough that couldn’t be described in words ended up on the baking paper.

Hayden laughed and commented frankly, “Mr. Beckham, luckily the dough is beige. If we were making chocolate chip cookies, I don’t think anyone would like a cookie that looks like poop.”

Joseph’s face froze. Looking at his work, he actually felt embarrassed. So he eagerly let go of what was in his hand and said, “You can do it yourself.”

“Someone’s angry.” Hayden raised his eyebrows at him. He looked like he was enjoying his misfortune, “Well, it can still be saved. I can rescue him.”

As he spoke, he reached into the bag with blueberries and picked out two tiny blueberries. He placed them on top of the shit-shaped cracker and used a toothpick to elongate the ‘tail’.

“See, this way it will be a little snake.”

Joseph looked at the ‘little snake’ that was once a piece of poop. With blueberries for eyes, it looked cute and mischievous. Its curly body lay idly on the baking paper with its long, thin tail trailing behind it.

Joseph watched the little snake for a while, and then his eyes moved uncontrollably from her to Hayden’s face. Looking at her proud face, Joseph felt strangely pleased and comfortable.

During dinner, Noah seemed much happier than usual. He even ate alone, which surprised Joseph very much. The conundrum of Noah not eating alone had always tormented Joseph, if no one fed him, Noah preferred not to eat at all. Even if someone did feed him, Noah would only eat a little. He was already five years old, but he looked thinner and weaker than other children his age.

“Noah, can you eat by yourself?” Joseph couldn’t help but ask.

“He’s five. What are you talking about?”. Hayden purposely exaggerated, “Our Noah is capable of a lot more, isn’t he?”

With that, Noah nodded and even looked at Joseph with disdain, as if he was hiding his abilities before.

What Noah did both angered and amused Joseph. But in the end, he could only ignore him and use the chopsticks to put some vegetables in Noah’s bowl. Speaking softly he said, “It’s my fault, I didn’t pay enough attention to you before. Eat some more.”

After dinner, Hayden planned to leave because it was already late. But Stella didn’t want to leave and kept saying she wanted them to play together.

There was a huge LCD television in the living room of Joseph’s house. The TV had game mode, there was a game called Tank Battle, which the four of them could play at the same time, each with a controller in hand.

In the first round, Joseph took over the territories of three of them in less than five minutes. Game over.

Hayden got a little angry: “It’s unfair. This is in your house, you must have played a thousand times. We’re all rookies, it’s unfair.”

“It’s my first time too.” Joseph said plainly, “Don’t make excuses for your failure.”

Hearing this, Noah suddenly kicked Joseph to show his discontent. He stood up and made many gestures. No one knew what he wanted to express, so he took the drawing board and wrote something.

“[Daddy is bad].”

Joseph could neither cry nor laugh. He patted Noah’s head and asked in response, “Did you think he was bad just because he won? Noah, you shouldn’t think that way. Even if you lose, you should keep your good manners.”

Noah’s unhappiness showed on his face. He pushed Joseph’s hand away, crossed his arms in front of his chest. Then he sat down on the floor with his legs crossed and groaned silently.

Joseph didn’t know what to do and could only say that they should play one more time.

In this round, Joseph carefully accompanied them for almost half an hour and did not dare to win. At the last moment, when he was about to eliminate them all at once, Noah kicked away the control he held in his hand. But at that moment, Hayden mounted a tank and rode into Joseph’s camp. He razed their camp.

“We won! We’ve won!”

Stella stood up and cheered with her mom. She tore off a piece of paper and stuck it to Joseph’s forehead, “Punishment!”.

Joseph asked, “You lost before too, why didn’t you get punished?”.

“We were just doing a test. We had to test the game first, didn’t we? So it didn’t come with punishment, this round was a literal start.”

Hayden thought his explanation was 100% correct.

Joseph looked at his own son. Noah nodded as well. He was clearly on Hayden’s side. Joseph didn’t know what to say, he seemed to have invited a wolf into his own home. There was going to be a rebellion.

Then they played many more rounds. Joseph wanted to win, but he couldn’t stop the two little guys from making trouble for him. So in the end he had his face all covered with paper. When he breathed, the paper danced around him, you could barely see his face.

Hayden laughed with his hands covering his belly. He laughed so hard he lay down on the couch crying, “We can’t play this game anymore. Your face doesn’t fit any more paper.”

With that, two little ones clapped their hands and kept jumping on the couch. Stella laughed just as loudly as her mom.

“All right, all right. It’s late now, we should go.” After all that laughing, Hayden grabbed the couch for support and stood up. He held out his hand to Stella saying, “Come on, Stella. It’s almost ten o’clock, if we don’t get back now, it’ll be too late.”

With that, the smile on Stella’s face suddenly disappeared. She pursed her lips, “No! Mom, it’s too late now, how about we stay here tonight?”

Hayden’s face changed.

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