“Steady there, girl! Let me dish them up first.”
As she transferred muffins onto a plate, Liam strode in, looking characteristically gruff in a worn Kansas City Coyotes T-shirt and athletic shorts. Sunny noticed his thick, muscled legs and quickly averted her gaze.
“Everything okay?” he grunted.
“Just another fun-filled morning!” Sunny replied brightly.
Liam shook his head slowly, grabbed the morning paper and a mug of coffee, then disappeared again without another word.
Sunny forced herself not to feel deflated. Baby steps.
Getting two energetic kids dressed, fed, and ready for the day tooknearly an hour and every last bit of Sunny’s bubbly energy. By the time she finished, she felt drained.
As if on cue, Beth, the cleaner, popped her head into the room, amusement dancing in her eyes. Although she didn’t live in the household, she came almost every day for a few hours to help dust and clean the sprawling house. In her sixties, Beth had the sprightly energy of someone much younger. Her dark brown hair was streaked with white, but her face glowed, remarkably free of lines and wrinkles.
“Rough morning?” she asked.
“Just a moderate disaster today!” Sunny shot back with a wink.
Beth joined her at the kitchen counter. As the two women laughed over the children’s wild antics, Liam reappeared, looking as surly as ever.
“Everything okay with the girls? They seemed… riled up,” he remarked, staring pointedly at the whipped cream hand prints on the kitchen island.
“Just high spirits!” Sunny said breezily. “Maddie was a trooper putting away the breakfast things, and Hailey barely cried when her muffin ended up on the floor. All in all, I’ll take that as a win.”
Liam appeared nonplussed as he observed Sunny’s cheerful demeanor. With a grunt, he brushed past them toward the hall, only to halt abruptly at a deafening crash from an adjacent room.
The three adults hurried into the dining room just in time to see Hailey standing frozen, panic etched across her face. At her feet lay the shattered remnants of what had once been a decorative vase, with wildflowers scattered across the hardwood floor. Maddie had backed into the corner of the room, attempting to blend into the wall.
“Hailey Grace Anderson!” Liam bellowed, causing them all to jump. “What did you do?”
The little girl’s eyes widened with fear as she shrank back against the large mahogany dining table in the center of the room.
“I…I didn’t mean to, Daddy! I was just trying to…”
“That was your mother’s favorite vase,” Liam spat, his voice dangerously low. He raked a hand through his unkempt hair, emanating a menacing energy.
Alarm pulsed through Sunny. She felt unnerved by Liam’s severe expression, sensing that his thoughts were consumed by more than just the broken vase.
Hailey had gone pale, looking down and folding into herself as if expecting to be struck. Surely, he had never hit the child?
Summoning every ounce of her courage, Sunny stepped between the two Andersons, hands raised in a placating gesture.
“Hey now,” she said, turning to Liam. “Accidents happen, especially in a busy home with little ones.” She flashed her most disarming smile. “Why don’t I clean this up, and we can do something fun with the girls?”
Liam’s chest heaved as if he’d run a marathon, the words seemingly bouncing off him. Hailey whimpered quietly behind Sunny.
Time for drastic measures.
With a dramatic flourish, Sunny executed a perfect cartwheel across an undisturbed patch of floor.
“Look at me, I’m a ballerina! It’ll be a miracle if I don’t break everything in this room!” she exclaimed in an exaggerated French accent, her arms flailing at her sides.
A high-pitched giggle escaped Hailey’s lips. Beth shot Sunny an amused look. Liam glowered at them for a moment before snatching up pieces of the broken vase from the floor.
Sunny’s tactic appeared to have worked. Her seemingly bizarre action broke the tension and shifted the focus away from poor little Hailey. Although Liam remained sullen, his attention was no longeron reprimanding his daughter.
“I’ll handle this. You keep an eye on the girls,” he instructed Sunny before striding out of the room, still clutching the shards.
