Top Floor (Rendezvous #1)

Chapter 23

Claire was waiting outside of the hotel today—not because of anything business-like. It was because of Mai and her two kids. That morning, Claire hadn’t seen Mai come into the hotel like usual, and she became worried so she called to see what was going on.

It turned out that Mai ended up oversleeping. The alarm clock didn’t work for some reason and now Mai was running late, very late, with her schedule. So Claire volunteered for her to simply drop the kids off at the front entrance of Bishop Lodgings and Claire would make sure they get checked in to the daycare.

Mai had been late before, so Claire wasn’t worried much.

After waiting a few more minutes, Mai’s car pulled up and Claire quickly worked to get the kids out of the car before Mai quickly thanked her and sped off.

Claire held onto her niece’s and nephew’s hands as she led them into the hotel.

“Why were we late?” Belle asked.

Claire chuckled to herself. “Oh, mommy just had a small accident. But you’re here now. And that’s all that matters.”

After arriving in the daycare, Claire checked them in and wrote down the letters AG for Belle and AH for Clay on stickers. Then she stuck them on the back of their shirts. Claire put Belle’s sticker on her first, and she immediately ran off to go play.

Clay stopped Claire from putting the sticker on him though, and he stared at the letters with scrunched eyebrows.

“H?” he said with confusion.

Claire smiled. Clay and Belle were usually the first kids to arrive at the daycare, so they usually got the earlier letters, such as A, B, C, or D. But since they were late, they received later letters. Claire was amused that her little nephew had actually noticed and cared. She didn’t even know he knew the alphabet past the letter D.

“You were late, so you get H after the A.” she explained. The letters were assigned on time arrival, but Claire doubted that Clay would understand.

Her little nephew still had the confused look on his face, but he finally allowed her to stick the sticker to the back of his shirt. He soon forgot about the situation though since he spotted a pile of toys to play with.

He ran off as well and Claire placed their bag on the shelf before she was approached by Elli.

“I was wondering where those two were.” She said, observing Clay and Belle. “What happened to Mai?”

“Her alarm didn’t go off and she was running late.” Claire said, but her eyes caught sight of the daycare entrance. Standing there was Julia, and Claire saw that she was staring at her niece and nephew with a curious look.

Déjà vu hit Claire and she wondered if bosses were always curious about their general managers and their nieces and nephews.

Claire said a quick farewell to Elli before she made her way to her temporary boss. “Good morning, Julia.” She greeted.