Page 113 of Culinary Chaos

Eva wrinkled her nose and then stepped to put her hand on Angelica’s. “Can you help me with my math homework?”

Angelica paused. She really didn’t have the time that day to help a six-year-old with her math. Then again, it couldn’t be hard math, could it?

“I can probably find some time today.”

“Yes!” Eva threw her hands up in the air, made fists, and pumped them again.

“Eva, you don’t need to bother Ms. Shields?—”

“She saidyes, Mom.”

Oh that attitude was adorable on her, and Angelica was pretty damn sure that Eva was fully aware of that fact. Hope instead turned to Angelica. “If you don’t want to help her, don’t worry about it. I know how busy your schedule is.”

Angelica raised her eyebrows. She didn’t go back on promises, and she was fully prepared to help Eva that day. Barring any major emergencies that took all of her time. Instead, she turned to Eva after checking her schedule on her iPad.

“Come find me after lunch. I might have thirty minutes then.”

“Really?” Excitement was written all over her face. She did a little dance before crawling back up into her mom’s lap to give her a hug. “She said yes!”

“She did.” Though Hope didn’t sound as convinced by that as Eva did.

Oh well. Angelica made a promise, and she was going to keep it. Ansel finished Hope’s hair quickly and moved into her makeup, dodging around Eva as she moved on Hope’s lap. He was actually quite talented at that. How many times had he done it since they started filming? Hope left as soon as she was able, Eva’s hand firmly in hers, with only one backward glance at Angelica.

Angelica lost herself in work for the morning, running through the opening of the show with Hope by her side as they explained to those who would be watching exactly the mess they were walking into—or at least as much of it as they knew and were willing to share.

To, you know, amp up the drama more.

Angelica was starting to loathe that word. She finally made it to the room she’d claimed as her office and set her iPad down in favor of the one for the show. She had just finished lunch and was ready to dive into some of the training issues she’d already discovered and knew she needed to fix first. And she needed to put some policy into place that Conrad could follow when it came to actual consequences and corrections on their work.

“Can you help me with my math now?” Eva’s small voice reached her ears, startling her.

Angelica looked up, finding Eva standing by the door with notebooks in her hands and her nanny behind her.

“I tried to tell her you were busy, but she insisted that you told her she could come up here.”

“I did,” Angelica said on a sigh. She held her hand out to the table. “I can help for a little bit.”

Eva grinned at her as she sat at the table and laid out all of the notebooks and papers that she’d brought with her. Angelica closed down her iPad and sat next to Eva, shifting the notebook over so she could see exactly what Eva was working on.

They sat together for way longer than the thirty minutes that Angelica had, but the break was so nice. It wasn’t until Hope interrupted them with Rex right behind her that Angelica stopped.

“We need to get back on schedule,” Rex said.

“Yeah, right.” Angelica gave Eva a sad smile. “We’ll have to work on it some more later.”

“Really?” Eva’s face lit up.

“Yeah, but not tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.” Eva closed up her notebooks and hopped off the chair. She left the room without a fuss, and her nanny immediately took her hand.

Hope sat next to her in Eva’s vacant seat. “We’re supposed to talk about planning for the upcoming fix.”

“I suppose we are.” Angelica rolled her shoulders and got up to get her iPad again. There was never an end in sight, was there?

While Rex and his crew set up, she started to pull up what she needed to discuss with Hope. This conversation would at least be one of their calmer ones—based on how the past episodes went. And she was looking forward to it.

“She feels safe with you, you know,” Hope said quietly, relaxing back in her seat.