Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 56653 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56653 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Leandro blinked.
The door opened again a second later. “Sorry. I forgot you were supposed to come in.”
She had forgotten he was supposed to come in? What else was he supposed to do when he was here to visit Bobby?
“Close the door for me, will you? I need to get back to the kids.” She hurried away and disappeared around the corner. There was a lot of wailing and Leandro winced at the sound, knowing that whatever had caused Bobby to take a rain check on their date, it was surely of critical proportions.
Walking down the hallway, he stopped on the last door to his left and knocked.
“Come in.”
Bobby also sounded distracted, and when he entered her office, she looked up with a frustrated face that Leandro found surprisingly...cute.
“I’m sorry again about our...”
“Date?” He kept his voice bland, but his eyes laughed at her.
She grimaced. “That.”
Sensing how nervous she was, he casually took out his fake glasses from his pocket and put it on, taking his time to adjust them on his nose. When he looked back at Bobby, Leandro knew that he had been right to put on his disguise.
She was smiling now, obviously more relaxed. “You look so different when you have glasses,” she told him.
“Different in what way?”
Bobby seriously mulled it over. “Well, I guess it makes you more...human? Imperfect?”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“It makes me less self-conscious around you,” she explained. “That’s all.” She gave him a sweet smile – something Leandro doubted Bobby would do if he didn’t have his glasses on. “I’m really sorry about this. We took in several new charges just yesterday and all of them fell sick within a few hours. The doctor told us it was chicken pox.” She let out a big sigh. “Unfortunately, we’re also understaffed right now, with one of the caregivers on leave and another down with the flu.”
“So you need to be here just in case they need an extra hand?”
She nodded, adding, “And to keep things calm and make them think they have a leader here.”
He told her bluntly, “You are their leader and from what I can see, you’re doing more than well, championing this foundation’s cause.”
She flushed with pleasure at his words. “Thank you for saying that. It’s...high praise, coming from you.” She bit her lip, wishing she could say all the other things she wanted to say to him but felt so stupidly shy to do so.
“Shall we, umm, have dinner then?” Bobby gestured towards the mini dining room in her office. It basically served as her studio apartment since the office also had a mini kitchen and a sofa bed.
“I’d love to.”
He followed her to the table, taking a seat at her request. He offered to help her prepare the food but she waved the suggestion away, telling him that guests were never to be made to serve.
She served them pasta and salad, Mediterranean style, she had told him proudly. When he took a bite, he grimaced and slowly reached for his glass of water. Someone had to tell Bobby that Mediterranean was more salty or spicy than sweet.
“So...how did this start?”
The question was something frequently asked of her, and Bobby was used to answering it. More than that, she actually enjoyed answering such questions, and so she happily took her time telling Leandro about Voiceless Haven, which operated as an orphanage for children with hearing impairment.
“I was sixteen when my parents made me a part of the committee, and believe me, the older ladies didn’t want me. They did everything they could to block my membership, thinking that I’m the poster child for New Jersey Shore.”
He said straight-faced, “I think its name is Jersey Shore.”
Bobby smacked her forehead. “Oh yeah. I keep forgetting that. But you get what I mean, right? Well, the first day I came here and I was dressed like this, one of the board members mistook me as one of the help and got me to help the milkman carry boxes of milk into the kitchen. They were horrified when they found out what happened, but I thought it was hilarious. Five months after that, they gave me this office,” she said proudly. “I want to be really hands-on and stay as close to the kids as possible.”
“And the kids? How do you find them?” He was genuinely interested to hear what she had to say, but more than that, he wanted to watch Bobby’s expressive face as she talked about the foundation. She was so passionate about it, and she was only eighteen years old.
“The usual. The government sends them our way, but we’ve also put the word out of the street and because of that, we have a higher walk-in rate than usual.”
His eyebrow raised at that. “Do you mean the children come in here on their own?”