She turned on her heel and marched down the hall before he could even respond.
When her footsteps disappeared, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
He felt a little bad about losing his temper, but what kind of maniac fed children chocolate cake for dinner?
Though the kitchen did smell incredible…
He noticed her recipe still floating over the kitchen disc and moved to turn it off, when he saw her substitution notes.
There were vegetables in this recipe, and protein powder. And she had halved the sugar and added berries.
He was shocked to see that her cupcakes were actually a pretty sound dinner plan. And something about the final nutritional information looked familiar.
He grabbed his own dinner container out of the sink and held it up to the recipe. The nutritional information was virtually identical.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
She hadn’t taken any shortcuts. As a matter of fact, she had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure the children ate something healthy and delicious.
Things had been going really well for the kids tonight - better than they had in a long time.
And he had wrecked it with his hot temper.
He looked around, wishing he could rewind the last ten minutes. But it was too late, the damage was done.
He grabbed the plate of cupcakes, planning to put them in a container in the fridge.
But the delicious scent wafting off them was too seductive. He grabbed one and removed the wrapper, then took a bite.
He was expecting it to taste like zucchini and malaberries, with a bitter echo of protein additive.
Instead, it tasted like heaven, sweet and wholesome, richly chocolatey with a tang of orange to cover the protein.
And it was still warm.
He savored the rest of it before wrapping up the others and stowing them in the fridge. Their dark, delicious color made the pale mush in the other containers look less appetizing than before.
No one should have to eat a box of sludge for their dinner every night. Not even you.
He felt another pang of guilt, and began gathering up the plates and throwing away the cupcake wrappers to distract himself.
But when he got the plates to the sink, he was still feeling restless and frustrated, so he decided to wash the dishes, too.
Half an hour later the kitchen was sparkling. Ra’as was amazed to feel satisfaction in completing the kind of menial task he had been happy to leave behind when he made it big.
But that bad feeling still had him wanting to pace like a caged animal.
Treat others the way you want to be treated, his mother’s words echoed in his head.
The trouble was that in his experience, when you were soft on your employees, they were soft on themselves.
But this was different. He was in the wrong.
A man takes responsibility for his actions.
He sighed and hit the light sensor before heading upstairs.