Him working for the Five Points was nerve-racking enough as it was without me making it worse.
“Of course,” I told him. “I figure the mornings will be the busiest.” My thumb rubbed my chin. “But we’ll be serving fresh bread until two. After that, I’m going to stop baking and the store will stay open, but I’ll go home unless there’s a rush.”
“That’s still a ten-hour day, Aoife, if you work from four until two. That’s too much.”
I shrugged. “Not to start with. If things take off like I hope they will, I’ll hire more staff.”
“Hire whatever you need. Most businesses make a loss their first year, but that doesn’t matter for us.”
“No way. I’m doing this on my own! You’ve helped me enough by taking the rent out of the equation, so the rest is on me.”
I refused to be a drain on him. I wanted to be a productive member of our household, and when/if we had kids, I wanted them to see that their mom was more than just something to prop up their father’s arm.
And even as that thought raced through me, I gaped at him.
“What is it?” he demanded, striding away from the wall he’d been leaning against to reach me. “Are you hurting?”
I batted at his hands when he tried to hug me—honestly, the man’s hugs were delicious but they weren’t exactly a dose of Ibuprofen. “Finn,” I whispered, my revelation still powering through me.
“What is it?”
“I just thought of myself as a mother.”
He snickered. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. Seriously. I don’t even like kids,” I wailed. “Jesus.” I slapped my forehead with the back of my hand. “This is your fault.”
“You want my babies,” he teased, grabbing my hips and rubbing our lower halves together.
Shit. I did.
The thought staggered me.
On the few occasions my mom had raised the topic of grandkids, I’d always rolled my eyes at her. And when he’d mentioned my not taking the pill? Yeah, that had been like a knock to the head.
But I could easily see it now. Even in this place. I could imagine having a nursery or something so the baby could be with me while I worked, and I could nurse—
Fuck. This was getting freaky now.
“Hey,” Finn murmured, reaching up to cup my chin. “It’s okay. No rush, remember?”
I nodded at him, but it was the way I’d gone from never wanting kids, to Magdalena pissing me off by trying to pressure me into having them, and then ontothis.
He rubbed my bottom lip with his thumb, and urged, “Go on. You were telling me your plans.”
I released a sharp breath. “I figure if I’m home by two, then I have a little time to myself. I can make us dinner and then when you’re home, we can do… whatever.”
If my cheeks burned at that, well, that was because it was still pretty difficult for me to go from New York’s oldest virgin to talking about getting hot and heavy with my husband on the regular. Well, outside of the bedroom. In it, my skills with dirty talk were improving.
He laughed, not upset by the notion. “I like the idea of… whatever.”
“Hoped you might,” I mumbled, then staring at him, I asked, “Is it really over, Finn?”
“What? With the Colombians?” He cocked a brow at me when I nodded. “You think I’d have let you off the compound if it wasn’t? We have a new ally. That will keep us safe until the next round of bullshit.”
It was that ‘next round of BS’ that concerned me.
He seemed to sense that though, and whispered, “Aidan’s scared of no one, and he respects the Russians, Aoife. There’s a reason for that. We’ll be tied to them soon enough.”