Page 47 of Bobby

“Mr. Bobby said we could stay here,” Ivy says with a nod.

“He did?” This is from Tommy, with a raised eyebrow at me.

“Yup. He’s Mommy’s boss, and he likes to have dinner with us. He also has—”

Ivy covers Lily’s mouth with her hand and hushes her.

Payton and Tommy look at me, and I just shrug. I might be their mama, but even I don’t understand them all the time.

“How do you know my brother?” Tommy asks with a tilt of his head, and I totally see it now.

“I work at Leone Holdings as a financial analyst. Mr. Leone has been working on a project recently that’s requiring a lot of our time. Because of that, he found out about the fire and offered us a place to stay until we get settled.”

There. That sounded almost diplomatic. No way they can tell that Bobby came to my rescue after learning about the fire. Or that he gave us this place to stay, along with buying everything in it, and said it was ours for the foreseeable future.

But the twitch in Tommy’s lip makes me think he knows all that and more.

“So, you’re the numbers girl, huh?”

My eyes widen. Was Bobby talking about me? Or did his other brother, who I saw in the elevator that one day, say something?

And why do I like knowing that his family knows about me?

“Babe, why don’t you stay with Willow and the girls? You guys can catch up while Bobby and I talk business.” Tommy leans in and kisses Payton’s forehead before pushing the elevator button.

“Sounds good.”

“You’re staying?” Ivy asks with more glee than I can describe. I didn’t know how much they missed their babysitter until now. Makes me think I need to contact Mrs. Carlton and look in on her too. The last few weeks have been so busy that I haven’t had the time to make sure she’s okay after the fire. Even though it didn’t touch her building, it would still be good of us to talk with her.

“Only if I can have a donut too. And maybe some Halloween candy if you have any left over.”

“We have tons,” Ivy replies as she pulls Payton into our home. “We went down each floor, and everyone had something to give. Come see.”

Payton doesn’t look back as the girls drag her through the apartment, leaving me with Bobby’s brother as he waits for the elevator.

I’m not sure if I should stay or not. But it feels weird to just let him stand here on his own for some reason. He’s a grown man; he can wait for an elevator. But he’s also Bobby’s brother and part of the family. The family. I almost feel obligated to see he’s safely inside the elevator before going into my home.

“Don’t worry, Ms. Frazzer. Bobby has everything in hand. With the fire and with your girls.”

He nods and walks into the elevator as it stops on our floor.

He knows my last name. Yeah, I didn’t tell him that part. Or anything else, for that matter. But he knows. He knows it all.

Bobby is definitely talking about me.

I can’t hold back my giggle as I walk into the kitchen with the donuts.

The weekend went by quicker than I expected. After the surprise visit from Payton, the girls and I decided to just have fun. We did that by exploring the building, which took the whole weekend. Not that we went floor by floor, but there was just so much we didn’t know about. I suspected they had a pool, which I was right about. But had no clue it would have a water slide that the girls were obsessed with, along with a special kids’ splash zone. I enjoyed the hot tub, and they were ecstatic about all the water sprays in the inside pool area. That was Saturday. On Sunday, we went to the spa. An actual spa. I’m talking massages, fancy robes, and we even got our hair and nails done. It was amazing.

Though Lily said she didn’t like how they kept tickling her feet with all the brushes when they painted her toes, and that she would only let me do her toes at our spa nights going forward.

I wasn’t going to complain. I kind of like that she prefers my “spa” over the fancy one. The one that should have probably cost a ton of money but was surprisingly just “part of living here,” or so I was told when I called down that morning to see if I could book something for the three of us.

At first, I was thinking of just a regular manicure. Just a little nail polish that would last longer than the cheap kind we had. But when they said that we could get the exclusive package for living on-site, I said yes, not knowing what it entailed until we were down there. We even had a tea party of sorts. No tea, but finger sandwiches and milk. It was exactly what we needed.

That night, I didn’t know how to tell Bobby thank you once more. Even if I hadn’t seen him since we hugged on Friday night, and it was only for a brief moment before I tucked tail and ran back to the girls, I thought of him often.

So I sent him a picture of us cheering over cucumber triangle sandwiches with fancy hair, polished pink nails, and comfy robes on. His response was a heart to the image. That heart made my heart pound so hard when I saw it. I might have looked at it a few times. Including right now as I sit in the back seat with the girls as we make our way to their school.