Page 14 of Bobby

I should say no, but the sight of several pastries and coffee spread across the table we used last time has my stomach taking notice. It growls loudly, and he chuckles.

“Please, help yourself. I wasn’t able to get breakfast before coming into the office, and Marco tends to over-order. I suspect it’s because he wants the leftovers. Please join me.”

Again, I should decline, but Marco didn’t tell me I had time to change shoes, and for that alone, I want to take his food. Well, some of it. Breakfast this morning for the girls and me was cereal. And while we were able to get milk on Sunday, I never find a single bowl of cereal to be that filling. It’s great for a five- and seven-year-old. But a twenty-nine-year-old? One bowl doesn’t cut it anymore.

“Thank you.” I set my laptop down on his desk, the only free place to do so, and walk to the table. There isn’t space for it over here unless I move a pastry. Something I’ll do after I’ve had just a little.

“Will you pour us a cup of coffee?”

I’m a little thrown by his question but reel it in enough to nod. If he were going to fire me, I don’t think he’d ask me to make his coffee. I actually don’t think I’ve ever had a man ask that of me. Not even my ex-husband. But he also believed caffeine was for the weak and chose protein shakes of all shapes and sizes. Green grass is yuck for me.

“How do you take it?” I ask as I pour each of us a cup from the pot.

“Black and cream enough to change the color.”

I smile at his description as I focus on my task. I take it that way as well, though with sugar. No sugar in coffee just seems silly to me. The point is to enjoy it, not muddle through it.

“Here you go, sir.” I hold out his cup to him, and he holds out a plate to me.

“And here you are.” He’s loaded it up high with more food than I was thinking of taking. But it matches his own, and I’m grateful he’s kept me from the debate I would have had with myself on whether I should take something or not.

“Thank you.”

He grins and sits. I follow suit and start eating as he does, taking dainty bites like a young lady should and not tearing half of something off in one go like I want. “Lady lessons” I taught the girls play in my mind on repeat, and I almost miss him speaking again.

“And it’s Bobby, if you recall. We’re friends, after all, aren’t we?”

The twinkle in his eyes has my breath catching as I hold the piece of muffin just inches from entering my mouth and dip my chin in slow agreement.

Suddenly, “friends” seems like the least safe thing to be where he’s concerned. Somehow, I think his idea of friendship and mine are completely different.

And I’m just not sure whether I want his version or mine.

If it keeps me from being fired, I’ll take all the friendship I can get.

Chapter 6—Bobby

Having her in my space again feels right. A complication I wasn’t expecting, especially with the life I lead. Yesterday, something felt like it was missing. And now I know exactly what it was.

Her.

One chance meeting, and I feel something I don’t recognize.

She and her girls drifted through my brain all of yesterday. I thought of them longer than I should have allowed. Really, if we were playing the should game, I shouldn’t have stayed for dinner. I shouldn’t have taken her home. I shouldn’t have had a full report drawn up on her. And I definitely shouldn’t have read it twice, reviewing it enough to have memorized her life.

She isn’t a native New Yorker. She only came here when her ex-husband’s job moved them here, two weeks after she gave birth to Lily. It was only two years later that she filed for divorce once she learned he was sleeping with someone from the office. Cliché in all the wrong ways.

Her parents died when she was nineteen, and other than some ailing grandparents, she has no one to go home to. So she stayed and made a life for herself and the girls. The custody is mostly in her favor, and I half expect he set it up that way so she’d come crawling back when things got hard. I had a full write-up done on him as well.

Some guy she met while earning her CPA license. They dated for a short time before she got pregnant, and they chose marriage. Something I suspect she doesn’t regret, since it gave her the girls. She seems the type to take the good with the bad, based on what I saw of her place on Saturday.

I find her determination to make her way in the world endearing. Her life isn’t easy, and instead of relying on help, she carries it all herself. She even takes more buses than the average New Yorker and gets from point A to point B with little fuss. Except today.

When she wasn’t at her desk, I might have gone harder on Spencer than necessary. If Marco hadn’t texted me that he saw she’d arrived at her desk when he had Spencer escorted out of the building, I was already considering tasking one of Danny’s guys with tracking her down. Would it be excessive to scour the city for a single woman? Guess we’ll never know.

“How was the rest of your weekend? Was Ivy able to get her project finished?”

Ivy had spent most of dinner explaining to me all about her jerboa class project while Lily tried to entertain me and her mom.