Daddy! Come Home for Dinner!

"If anything comes up, go straight to Xiao Ruofeng. Don’t worry about putting him on the spot," Zhao Gushen said.

"He’s very capable. There’s pretty much nothing he can’t handle," Zhao Gushen went on. "Anything you feel is tricky, hand it over to Xiao Ruofeng—once it’s in his hands, it might not be a problem at all."

"Okay." Ye Fei nodded, showing she’d taken it to heart.

"If you get bored at home, take Xiao Mo and go stay at the old house," Zhao Gushen added. "Honestly, if you two are living there, I’ll feel even more at ease."

"You’re treating me like a kid. As soon as the parents leave, they have to hand us off to another set of parents," Ye Fei said with a laugh. "The two elders must think I’m useless."

Was Zhao Gushen marrying a wife, or raising a daughter?

"How could they?" Zhao Gushen knew them well. "If I’m not home, the two elders will definitely be worried you’ll get bullied."

"Especially with your parents and Ye Ning still in B City, and Ye Ning now hanging all over Zhao Guqing. If she takes advantage of me not being here to come make trouble for you, I’m too far away to keep an eye on everything," Zhao Gushen said.

"Even though I’ll have people around you to protect you, if I’m not by your side, I just can’t fully relax," Zhao Gushen said. "Just think of it as reassuring me, so I’m not all the way over there still constantly worrying about you."

"Alright." That finally convinced Ye Fei.

Even if it was just so Zhao Gushen could focus on his work, and not have to be distracted over her and the little one from so far away, Ye Fei felt she ought to set his mind at ease.

"But even if Xiao Mo and I don’t make you worry, you still have to think about us," Ye Fei added.

"Isn’t that a given?" Zhao Gushen chuckled and lightly scraped Ye Fei’s nose.

She actually needed to spell that out.

Just then, Li Xiaoyun’s call came in.

"It’s Xiao Yun," Ye Fei said excitedly.

"It’s Li Xiaoyun, why are you so excited?" Zhao Gushen asked, amused. "Don’t you two talk all the time?"

"No, it’s that now whenever I see Xiao Yun, the first person I think of is Fourth Uncle," Ye Fei said. "I wonder if Fourth Uncle has gone to see Xiao Yun yet."

After saying that to Zhao Gushen, Ye Fei quickly picked up Li Xiaoyun’s call. "Xiao Yun, what’s up?"

Li Xiaoyun glanced awkwardly at Zhao Dingli, then hurried into the kitchen.

Lowering her voice, she said to Ye Fei, "SOS from the jianghu here—teach me a few dishes that are easy to pick up and hard to mess up."

Ye Fei said in surprise, "What’s with you today? Suddenly so diligent, actually willing to cook for yourself?"

"Zhao..." Li Xiaoyun originally wanted to say "Fourth Uncle Zhao."

After all, she was talking to Ye Fei, so using Ye Fei’s generational title made it easier to chat.

But for some reason, right now she just couldn’t bring herself to say that "Fourth Uncle."

"Zhao Dingli is here at my place," Li Xiaoyun whispered.

"What’s going on with you two?" Ye Fei hurriedly asked.

Previously, when Zhao Dingli had come to her place, after Ye Fei had said her piece to him, she hadn’t seen any follow-up moves from Zhao Dingli.

Ye Fei figured Zhao Dingli must have wavered, so he’d stopped approaching Li Xiaoyun.

And now he’d gone straight to Li Xiaoyun’s home!

"It’s just that he helped me out a lot today, so I have to show my gratitude somehow," Li Xiaoyun said. "You know me, I’m very proper about etiquette."

Up to that point, Ye Fei thought it all sounded perfectly normal.

But when she heard that last line from Li Xiaoyun—

There was definitely a bit of "the more you explain, the more suspicious it sounds" to it.

If Li Xiaoyun hadn’t tacked that sentence on, Ye Fei really wouldn’t have thought much of it.

Precisely because Li Xiaoyun added that line, Ye Fei smelled a whiff of gossip.

"What did he help you with?" Ye Fei asked.

"Kind of a work thing, but not entirely," Li Xiaoyun felt it was a bit complicated to explain.

Right now Zhao Dingli’s still sitting there hungry.

It didn’t seem appropriate to go into a long explanation with Ye Fei at this moment.

So she said to Ye Fei, "I’ll tell you the full story when we have time later."

"Anyway, today he really helped me with a big thing," Li Xiaoyun said.

"So I want to cook him a meal," Li Xiaoyun said.

She didn’t mention that it was actually Zhao Dingli who wanted her to cook him a meal.

Ye Fei was genuinely shocked.

Zhao Dingli actually managed to get Li Xiaoyun to proactively cook for him?

"You give me a recipe and I’ll shop according to it," Li Xiaoyun said. "You know I don’t usually cook, so I don’t have any ingredients stocked at home."

Ye Fei thought back to the few times she’d met Zhao Dingli and felt he didn’t really have anything he particularly refused to eat.

"Here’s what we’ll do. I just happen to be getting dinner ready too. I’ll send you the menu I’m planning for tonight. Ask Fourth Uncle what he doesn’t like, and take those off the list. There are only two of you eating, you definitely won’t be making as much as we are. Cutting one or two dishes shouldn’t be a problem," Ye Fei said.

"Then we’ll video call later. I’ll cook here while teaching you at the same time, and you just follow along with me," Ye Fei said.

"Okay, okay, that’s perfect," Li Xiaoyun said, hanging up.

She came out and said to Zhao Dingli, "I’ve cleared it with Ye Fei. She’ll teach me, but you’ll have to wait a bit."

"That’s no problem," Zhao Dingli said. "Are you hungry?"

"I’m not hungry. I ate tons of snacks at your place this afternoon," Li Xiaoyun replied.

This afternoon, Zhao Dingli had bought not only her favorite peach drink and peach oolong tea, but also a whole bunch of snacks for her.

So by now, Li Xiaoyun really wasn’t hungry at all.

"What about you?" Li Xiaoyun asked Zhao Dingli.

"I’m not hungry either," Zhao Dingli said with a smile. "So you don’t need to rush, just take your time. We can eat whenever tonight. It could even be a midnight snack."

Far from worrying she’d be slow, Zhao Dingli was hoping Li Xiaoyun would take her time so they’d eat later.

If he could have his way, they’d be eating at midnight.

Just then, the men’s slippers Li Xiaoyun had ordered earlier were delivered.

One look and Zhao Dingli saw they weren’t the same style as Li Xiaoyun’s.

She’d just randomly picked a pair.

To Zhao Dingli, it felt terribly unharmonious.

Matching styles would look better.

But for now, he could only make do and wear them.

Right after that, Li Xiaoyun received Ye Fei’s WeChat message.

It was Ye Fei’s dinner menu for the evening.

Li Xiaoyun immediately showed it to Zhao Dingli and asked if there was anything he didn’t like.

"I’m not picky. These all look great," he said, seeing there were quite a lot of dishes.

For a kitchen newbie like Li Xiaoyun, this was going to take a long time to prep.

Zhao Dingli felt he could safely stay here very late.

"Okay." Li Xiaoyun didn’t think much of it.

Anyway, when hosting a guest, you need to make plenty of dishes.

Better to have the guest unable to finish and have leftovers than to make just enough and have it look like they barely had enough to eat.

Whenever Mrs. Li hosts guests, she’s always like that. It might be a bit wasteful, but she’s afraid that if she cooks too little, guests won’t feel comfortable eating their fill.