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Author's Chapter Notes:
btw, writer's block sucks...but dont' worry you all have a few more chapters before my block starts
Chapter 14

William was cordial to Buffy during the following weeks, but avoided any physical contact with her. He was hoping the ostrich approach—basically pretending he had no feelings for her and the avoiding her on top of it would cure him. But apparently the saying was true. Absence did make the heart grow fonder and he was falling even deeper in love with her by the time their Friday cooking lessons rolled around.

And now it was time to integrate Sam into the lessons and the change could not have been more welcome. To him at least, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to spend any more time alone with Buffy without doing something that would constitute “sexual harassment” or at the very least “adultery’ on her part.

But despite loving her so much, or maybe ‘because he loved her so much’ was more accurate…either way, he wasn’t going to put her in a position to have to deal with that from him.

He was going to teach her and Sam how to cook something today and then he’d finish the school day with Sam and go home. It was necessarily playing it safe, but there wasn’t a way to play it safe and keep his job. So he’d do the best he could with the circumstances.

“William, when are we going to have our cooking time?” Sam asked anxiously.

“Soon, cookie, soon, you finish that though,” he said pointing to the writing she had yet to complete.

“Okay.” Sam diligently went to work on her writing and finished it within five minutes. “Can we have cooking time now?” she begged, “I finished my writing.”

“I don’t know, maybe we should wait until next week there are some other things I’d wanted to get done….” William teased.

“No!” Sam, pleaded, “Please, please, please…I promise I’ll be good and have fun. And I’ll listen to everything you say. I promise, please.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Sam said politely, hoping he would stick with the original plan.

“Then I guess we should get going, don’t want to be late for the cooking lesson do we?” When she didn’t immediately follow him, William asked Sam, “Well are you coming?”

“Yes!” Sam said as she ran up to William, “Let’s go!” She said as she began to drag him into the kitchen by his hand.

“Anyone ever say you and your mum are a lot alike?” William asked, remembering when Buffy had pulled him to the kitchen in much the same manner.

“Daddy says it sometimes.” William couldn’t tell if she was meaning it as a good thing or a bad thing; she didn’t seem to happy about it.

“Being like your mum is a great thing, Sam, she’s a wonderful woman.” He knew he probably shouldn’t be praising Buffy so openly, but he couldn’t bear to think that Sam didn’t find being similar to her mother a good thing. “You should be proud of being compared to her.”

“But daddy only says it when he gets mad at me for not doing exactly what he says,” Sam said quietly.

“I’m sure that’s just when he realizes it, but you really are a lot like her all of the time. All in good ways too, if you have to be like anyone, your mum is definitely the one.” William chose to ignore just how much he saw Buffy as the one.

For that moment anyway.

“I wanna be like you,” Sam said, breaking William from his thoughts…or un-thoughts as the case was.

“What?” William sputtered, “Like me? But why?”

“Cause I like you,” Sam explained innocently. “And you’re nice and you’re smart and you’re funny and you like my pictures. And mommy likes you too,” she added simply. “Don’t you mommy?” Sam asked Buffy when she spotted her mother in the kitchen.

”Don’t I what?” Buffy asked Sam.

“Don’t you like William?”

“I..um…” Buffy faltered, before looking at her daughter’s hopeful expression, deciding to be a grown up about it (she was after all a parent), she said, “Of course I like William.”

“See I told you!” Sam cried triumphantly, looking at William. Not wasting a minute, she continued on, oblivious to the discomfort of the rooms other occupants, “What are we going to cook?”

“We’re going to be making honey mustard chicken, bit.”

“Then I don’t think I should help,” She tried to sound like she meant it because really she did, but she didn’t want to mean it.

“Why shouldn’t you help?” Buffy asked her daughter, “You have to help, this lesson is for you. You have to help, sweetie.”

“But you have to cook chicken and Rose Marie told me I was too little to help with cooking things, she said I’d just ruin them and get hurt. I don’t want to ruin anything,” Sam said, nearly crying at the though of not being able to participate.

“Sam, sweetheart,” William said, getting onto his knees in front of her, “You can help. Your mum and I are going to be real careful that you don’t get hurt and you won’t mess anything up, I promise. And even if you do we can fix it. That’s why this is a lesson, so you can learn how to cook.”

“Why’d she say it then?” Sam asked, still near crying.

“I don’t know. Maybe she just didn’t want to watch out for you. It doesn’t matter though because she’s not the one here now, your mum and I are. So, you going to help?”

“I really can?” Sam asked, sniffling.

“You’d better,” William replied with a grin. The only response he got was an overjoyed six-year-old throwing herself into his arms. “Big on hugs you girls are,” William said, causing Buffy to blush and Sam to giggle.

“So, should we get started?” Buffy asked after several seconds.

“S’pose so,” William said as he got up. “Alright, so Sam you can help me mix together the sauce while your mum defrosts and cleans the chicken, okay?” William asked, looking first to Sam and then to Buffy.

“Sure leave me with the icky job!” Buffy grumbled. When William just gave her a look, she amended her statement, “Yay! I get the icky job!?”

“That’s better, ‘sides I think Sam can better help me with making the sauce and it’ll help her with her numbers.”

“Fine, be all logical about it if you must.” Buffy said, slightly embarrassed that she’d been acting immature about it while William had a good reason for asking her to do the ‘icky’ job, as she so eloquently described it.

As Buffy defrosted the chicken and thoroughly cleaned it, something she still found ‘icky’, Sam and William worked on measuring out the proper amounts of the ingredients for the sauce.

“Now you need to be very careful with the honey, Sam, it can make a really big mess,” William explained carefully. “What I want you to do is hold it just like this,” he demonstrated holding the bottle above the measuring cup, “And give it little squeezes until I tell you to stop. See this line,” he pointed, “We’re trying to get the honey to go right to it, so you can help me watch okay, but make sure the honey only goes in the cup. Think you can do that?”

“I think so,” Sam said as she carefully took the bottle from William and started squeezing, looking alternately between where the honey was going and just how much was in the measuring cup. “Is that good?” she asked after a bit.

“Almost there. Maybe just two more squeezes, pixie.” He waited while she put just a little more honey into the cup, “Right there! Good job,” he smiled at Sam and she smiled back, glad to have done it right. “Now what we have to do is mix these two together,” he pointed to the honey and the mustard.” They carefully mixed them together, Sam fascinated at how the honey looked when they added it to the mustard and then they added the rest of the ingredients.

“Okay, so now we need to soak the chicken in this, once your mum puts the chicken in the pan, we can take the sauce over there and pour it over the chicken.” He checked with Buffy to and when he saw that she’d already put the chicken in the pan and was waiting on him. “Okay, Sam you bring the sauce, careful not to spill it now.”

Sam carefully brought the sauce over in the measuring cup and sat it down next to the dish that Buffy had put the chicken in. “So just out it over the chicken then?”

”Make sure you get all of the chicken covered and don’t spill any,” he warned.

“I know, I know,” Sam said sillily. Carefully she poured the sauce over the chicken, taking great care to get all of the chicken covered with sauce. “Is that good?” she asked William when there was no more sauce left in the measuring cup.

“That’s great, chickpea. Now let’s let your mum turn them over so that they’re coated pretty well, don’t want her feeling left out now doe we?”

“Why thank you.” Buffy said sarcastically.

Buffy made sure that the chicken was well coated with the honey-mustard sauce before looking to William for further instruction.

“Okay, now we’ll put it in the oven at 375 degrees for about an hour. Then when it’s done, Sam, we’ll let your mum take it out, so that you don’t burn yourself and then it will be all done and we can eat it. Sound good to you?”

“Very good,” Sam said, “Can I have some when it’s done, please, please, please?”

“We’ll have to see where you are in school stuff and if what your mum thinks.” William didn’t’ want to tell Sam she could do something that Buffy didn’t agree with.

“It’s fine with me if she has some,” Buffy said, as long as it’s not interrupting anything in school. School really does come first, sweetheart,” Buffy told her daughter.

Sam and William went back to their school work, until Buffy carefully came in and informed William that the chicken was ready, if they wanted any.

Sam of course wanted some, it being the first thing that she’d ‘cooked’ and tore into the kitchen.

“Ummmm, it really is good,” she said after she’d tasted some. “And I made it, mommy and you helped,” she said to William, “But I did too. Isn’t it cool?”

“The coolest,” Buffy said as she tried some fore herself.

William just sat quietly and watched his two girls.

*(*(*(*I*)*)*)*

TBC……….






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