He leaned across the console and kissed me. “I don’t care a lot about the house. What it looks like. The layout. Any of it. But I have one thing that I want.”
“Go on,” I said. “What do you want?”
“I don’t want to be able to hear any traffic.”
I smiled slightly. “City life taking its toll on you?”
“That’s putting it mildly. I want space. I want sky. I need to feel like…”
“Like you’re on the open road even though you’re not.”
He paused. “You get me.”
“Yeah, I get you.”
We drove home in companionable silence. Every now and I again, I’d look over at him, lost in thought.
How did I get so lucky?
Chapter44
“Will Mia be annoyed?”I asked as we walked through the front door.
“Annoyed? About what?” He set the keys down on the small table by the door.
I stripped off my jacket and hung it in the front closet. My shoes came next. Slash still hadn’t managed the art of the untidy tidiness. Where the house looked lived in but wasn’t a mess.
“Annoyed that we basically moved in for a hot minute and then we’ll be moving out,” I said.
“That won’t annoy her. No skin off her back.”
“Does the house just stay empty until someone close to the Blue Angels needs it?”
“Pretty much,” he said. He sat on the couch and groaned. “Fuck, I’m tired.”
“Me too.” I took the spot next to him and leaned into his shoulder.
“No wise cracks about me being old?”
“If I joke about you being old because you’re exhausted, then I’m basically calling myself old for being exhausted.”
“You’re growing a baby.” His hand slid into the waist band of my pants and rested on my lower belly. “You have a reason to be tired. Not to mention the last week and a half of insane work you just put in.”
“I loved every minute of being back in a commercial kitchen,” I said with a happy smile. “I can’t wait until I have my bakery back. I can’t wait to open to the public again.”
“You’ll be doing that?” Slash asked.
“What’s that mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. I just assumed you’d have your hands full with the catering business. On top of running a bakery…that’s a lot on your plate.”
“I can afford to hire patisserie chefs to oversee the bakery. Imogene’s wedding changed everything. Jazz and Brielle can handle the planning, organizing and customer relations. I didn’t think I’d enjoy creating and making wedding cakes, but I actually love it. So, I’m just going to do more of what I love and let other people handle the rest.”
“You’re sexy when you’re in boss mode.”
For the next couple of hours, I sat next to Slash on the couch as I went through my email. We had so many catering requests, I knew I’d have to sit down with Brielle and Jazz in person to handle them and choose which jobs we wanted to take on. The three of us hadn’t ironed out a permanent work schedule yet. Instead, we’d been flying by the seat of our pants just trying to plug holes and get Imogene’s wedding done without anything going wrong.
But now there were things we had to deal with while trying to juggle our personal lives. Jazz’s mother was unwell, and she needed time to sort that out. My pregnancy was in full swing, and I wanted to expand the business in a way that allowed me to grow it without compromising the vision of creativity and quality.