“I think I’m confused and…” I shot him a look. “I’m going back home. I’m taking the rest of the week off and I’m spending time with my wife.”
Aidan shrugged. “Whatever you need. Was going to suggest it to be honest. You two didn’t even get a honeymoon, and these past few months, you and Conor have been running around like flies on shit getting us the financing for the shipments. Both of you deserve a break.”
Without waiting, he opened the door. The chill from the early morning sank in and he swiveled on his seat.
Before he could get out, I asked, “You never said. The lump…”
His shoulders stiffened then relaxed. “Benign.”
A relieved breath escaped me, and the joke slipped past my lips before I could contain it, “Only the good die young.”
As he climbed out of the car, he leaned over to grin at me. “I’ll still be around when I’m a hundred.” He straightened then, after shutting the door, tapped the roof, and I immediately started the engine and drove back up to the gatehouse.
Whatever I’d expected this morning, it hadn’t been any of that.
I’d come here wanting to find answers, and instead, I had more questions than I could ever have anticipated.
***
Aoife
The bed dippedand though it disturbed my sleep, I wasn’t about to complain. Not when Finn carefully wrapped himself around me.
When his hand came to rest over my lower belly, he murmured, “I know you’re awake.”
There was amusement in his voice, and my mouth curved of its own volition. “Not awake,” I mumbled sleepily.
“No? You’re doing a good impression of it, then.”
When he pressed his lips to my shoulder, I released a deep breath and snuggled back into him. “You smell good.” Jesus, he really did. Like sex and sin all wrapped together with chocolate—was there a better package?
“I try,” he joked, then he fell quiet. Not plunging us into an awkward silence, just into a relaxed one. Where neither of us had to speak. Neither of us had to utter a word. We were in a little bubble, a cocoon of our making, and we were content.
His thumb stroked the seam where my hip met my thigh. It wasn’t a sensual touch, just one that sought a connection between us. I loved it. It was intimate and raw, and though he could happily have turned things sexy, he didn’t. He just lay there, his eyes closed—I knew because his eyelashes weren’t fluttering against my skin.
He lay there so quietly and for so long, I started to realize it wasoverlylong.
Finn was usually restless. Incapable of resting or taking a breather. But these past few months had been different. He’d done something to take out the threat from the Colombians, and this was our first morning together in our place, our bed, where he could touch me without me screaming if he accidentally jostled me.
This was, pretty much, our first morning as man and wife in our marriage bed. But he was still. Silent.
“I learned something this morning.”
His tone was curiously blank, enough to raise several questions in my head. Was it about my mom?
Clearing my throat as my heartbeat sped up, I asked, “How early was this morning because from the light over the city, it’s barely nine now.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted. “Got an email and had to deal with it straight away.”
“What was it?”
He cleared his throat. “Nothing serious but…”
“Finn? What is it?” I asked when he fell silent again.
He burrowed his face into my hair and I stiffened, and then immediately released any tension in my body lest he pull away because I could feel his tears.
Finn was crying?