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Ivy bounced on the mattress again. “Soooooo. What was the rest of last night like? I didn’t hear you come in. You must have stayed at Bowie’s till closing.”
“I did.” Hope sighed. Best get it over with. “Itwas good.” She took another long swallow from her cup. “Gabe offered me a job,” she finally admitted.
“No shit! At the bar?”
Shoving the covers and Ivy aside, Hope jumped out of bed and rummaged in her closet for workout gear. “No, as a nanny.” She dug out her black Lululemon running pants. “For his daughter.”
Hope turned around and met Ivy’s dropped jaw. She would have laughed if she didn’t empathize with her friend’s total shock. She swapped her pajama pants for her leggings. “I know. I was shocked to learn he had a daughter, too.”
Ivy’s mouth snapped shut, then opened, then shut again. After her impression of a guppy fish, she blinked a few times.
“Hope, it’s not that. Iknewhe had a daughter, but he guards Ruby like she’s the long-lost Russian princess. He doesn’t talk about her, doesn’t parade her around. In fact, most people don’t even know she exists.”
Ivy moved to Hope’s dresser, found a bright-pink workout top, and tossed it at her.
“Why would he hide her? She’s the sweetest little thing. And watching them together, I could tell they have a close relationship.”
Ivy waved her hands erratically. “Oh my God! Oh. My. God. Youmether!” She grabbed Hope’s shoulders. “Hope, it took me a whole year before he let me see her. And another year before he’d let me babysit her. Even now, I only get to watch her when he is one hundred and ten percent desperate—which he has been more lately since his sitters have all been unreliable flakes.”
“So, why did you never mention her?”
Ivy shrugged and headed to the bedroom door. “It never came up.” She sauntered out and down the hall toward her own room.
“Oh no,” Hope called after her. “You don’t get to walk off all cryptic.”
Ivy stopped and turned to Hope with a serious look. “If Gabe is introducing you to Rubyandhiring you to watch her after this short of a time, then he’s telling you he trusts you—in a big way. To him, you’re clearly different from the rest of us. I’m not interfering with this.”
Hope snorted. “Now you don’t interfere? When I actually want you to?”
“Ruby is Gabe’s story to tell. Not mine.”
Hope said nothing to that, since she knew Ivy had a story of her own that Hope had kept quiet for three long years. She was well aware of the importance of allowing people the freedom to narrate their own stories. Or not.
Returning to her room to finish getting dressed, Hope wondered how and if she’d find the courage to tell her own.
Half an hour later, procrastinating about going for a run, Hope decided to check her financials. Taking out her laptop, she figured that she’d rather do some banking now so she could burn off the stress of it on her run after.
Pulling up her bank information, she braced herself for an all-time low, but her stomach dropped when she saw an unfamiliar number, one with several zeros after it, pop up in her checking account.
Hope pressed a few buttons to backtrack her account activities and froze when she saw that last night a large sum had been transferred into her account. Before she could even log out, she tossed her laptop to one side, her fingers hitting speed dial on her phone.
Joel answered after one ring.
“Get rid of it,” she ordered before he could even say hello.
“Well, good morning to you too, sweet sister.” The velvety voice that could make women the world over drop to their knees lazily rolled through the phone line.
But this woman paid no heed to it. Hope adored her brother, had even idolized him as a child, but she never fell to his feet for anything. If anyone did the bidding in their sibling relationship, it was Joel who did hers.
She couldn’t remember a time when he’d refused her anything. And although they had had typical sibling squabbles, he’d only ever been there for her, which was why she called him.
“So help me God, Joel, if you don’t get rid of it in the next half hour, I am going to lose my colossal shit. And you know how ugly that is.”
“Whoa, can you chill for one minute and tell me what you’re even talking about?”
Hope took a deep, shaky breath and tried to rein in the uncharacteristic fury that was reverberating through her.
Teeth gritted, temper rising, she explained. “I checked my bank account this morning. There’s money in it. Lots of money. Money I haven’t earned, seeing as up until last night I’ve been unemployed.”
