He sounded teasing.

And patronizing.

I snapped my eyes to him and narrowed them.

He gave me an easy grin before he gave me a quick kiss.

I was still glaring at him when he finished, which set him to chuckling.

“Heard through the grapevine he had somethin’ up his sleeve,” Bobby whispered as Whitfield kept talking and both Mickey and I looked to him to see him again turned to us. “Good news, that’s done. Better news,” he smiled, “task force of the county councilmembers have full hiring authority when it comes to the fire chief. Nothin’ comes to a vote. And they do this volunteer themselves so they aren’t gonna spend months goin’ through some hiring process, which will end with them goin’ for whoever I recommend in the first place. This means, when I put you forward, you’re in, son.”

“Yeah, Bobby, that is good news,” Mickey replied.

Bobby slid his eyes to me. “You seriously dated Stone?”

“No. It was only one date. And I did it before Mickey and I were together because I was angry at Mickey who was, at the time, being annoyingly bossy,” I shared.

“Seems good reason,” he uttered these words as the obvious lie they were.

“I’ll have you over for dinner, explain the entire thing to your wife, then let her explain it to you,” I stated.

His eyes twinkled and he murmured, “Ah.”

“That’s done, Bob, gotta feed my family,” Mickey put in, already shifting like he was going to exit the bench.

“Right,” Bobby said to Mickey then looked back to me. “Nice meetin’ you, Amy. Lookin’ forward to that dinner invitation and my brownies.”

Staring into his kind eyes, I was looking forward to dinner too.

“We’ll plan through Mickey,” I said, shifting after Mickey.

“Right. Later, sweetheart.”

“Later, Bobby,” I replied.

Bobby looked to Cillian who was moving down the bench behind me. “Boy,” he greeted.

“Uncle Bobby,” Cillian replied, giving Bobby a high five when Bobby raised his hand.

Next came Ash. “You walked by me once without givin’ your Uncle Bobby a kiss, pretty girl. Don’t do it again.”

“Uncle Bobby,” she muttered, bending in to give him a quick kiss then moving fast to follow us.

Together, we walked down the aisle, out of the room, out of the Town Hall and Mickey stopped us on the sidewalk.

I looked up at him. “Happy?”

He smiled down at me. “Oh yeah.”

“So cool, Dad! You’re gonna be fire chief!” Cillian shouted, jumping at his dad, and Mickey caught his boy in his arms, giving him a squeeze Cillian gave back.

“Totally cool, Dad. Happy for you,” Aisling mumbled when Cillian moved away. She slunk in, ducked her head but gave her dad a sideways hug that was genuine.