“McKenzie broke—”
“I was just—”
“I told her to wait, but she—”
“McKenzie never listens,” Kayla proclaimed dolefully.
Connor held up a hand. “Pipe down, girls. Let me look at it.”
“McKenzie wanted to put a new game disk in and she knocked it off the stand,” Kayla reported while Alexis buried her head in Mia’s leg with a despairing sob.
“I put it back,” McKenzie said defensively. “It’s not broken or anything. See?”
“But it won’t work now,” Alexis complained. “See? It doesn’t do anything when I push the buttons on my controller.”
Connor was kneeling in front of the game, doing something with the wires that connected it to the television. “Okay, try it now.”
Her breath hitching, Alexis pressed a button. The game
played a funny, blooping sound and cartoon characters appeared on the television screen, ready for action.
“One of the wires came out of its socket,” he said, straightening with a smile. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not broken?” Alexis asked for confirmation.
“No, it’s not broken,” he assured her. “So there’s no reason for anyone to be mad. It was just an accident.”
Alexis looked somberly at her friends. “Okay.”
Still somewhat crestfallen, McKenzie glanced sideways up at Connor. “I didn’t mean to.”
He patted her red head. “I know you didn’t. Don’t worry about it. What were you girls playing?”
“We were playing the Barbie game, but we wanted to do the bowling game,” Kayla replied.
“I told McKenzie that Mia would change the disk for us, but she had to try to do it herself,” Alexis murmured.
Mia touched Alexis’s shoulder. “Be a gracious hostess,” she murmured, just for Alexis’s ears. “Don’t make McKenzie feel worse, okay?”
Alexis bit her lip, looking on the verge of tears again and making Mia realize just how rare it was that she had to correct the child’s behavior.
“I’ll put the bowling game in for you,” Connor offered quickly.
“I don’t know how to play,” Kayla said.
“I’ll show you. Want me to play a couple of games with you?”
McKenzie’s face brightened. “That would be fun.”
Alexis looked up at Mia. “Will you play, too?”
“I need to clean the kitchen. Play with your friends and your daddy, and then we’ll all have a cupcake, okay?”
Nodding, Alexis rejoined the others. Giving Connor an encouraging smile over the three little heads, Mia turned back to the kitchen.
An hour later, Connor was closed in his room and the girls sat around the kitchen table, eating the cupcakes they had decorated. Mia had provided pink frosting and assorted candies and sprinkles, and the girls had applied them liberally. Wreathed in smiles again, their little faces were amusingly smeared with the results of their culinary artwork.
Connor had snagged one of the cakes, along with a cup of coffee, to munch while he studied. Mia hadn’t been able to resist smiling when he’d studied the assortment of cakes with their thickly applied frosting, mounds of sprinkles and crookedly stuck-on candy hearts. He’d carefully selected one that Alexis had decorated, though he assured her friends that theirs were just as appealing.