AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But I was destined to fall anyway.
The buzzer saved me.
I was on the brink of striding over there and hauling her over my goddamn shoulder and getting her back into bed but she muttered, “That’ll be Louise.”
“Why the fuck are you doing the accounts, anyway?” I snapped. “Hire an accountant.”
She snarled, “Because it’s my business, and I like doing it. It’s relaxing.”
“You’ll be missing out on a shit ton of tax breaks. I set you up with Jenkins, didn’t I?”
“I chose not to use him.”
Jenkins, the guy I’d used for a long time for my own personal accounts, would be hearing from me about that.
“Why would you choose not to use him?”
“Because I wanted to know that I’d done this on my own, so I get Jen to do most of the filing and sort out the rest.” Her chin tipped up. “She supervises things, don’t worry. This way, though, I know that the bakery is where it is because of me.”
“It would have been that anyway. The place is nothing without your recipes.” I narrowed my eyes at her, well aware that she didn’t go in as often as she used to because of... well, being pregnant. “You’d better not even think about going into the bakery until the doctor says you’re ready.”
She sniffed. “Why do you think Louise is here? I’m not an idiot, Finn. I know not to push until I’m ready, but that doesn’t mean I can laze about in bed all day and night. I’ll go crazy.
“When are you going to get Jake anyway? I miss him.”
“Eoghan’s bringing him tonight.”
“Eoghan?”
“I’m not leaving you.” I pursed my lips before I growled, “Good thing seeing as I’d come back and you’d probably have headed into the bakery for the first shift.”
She slammed the flour jar on the counter. “I lost Imogen, Finn, not my brain.”
“You’re grieving.”
“So? Aren’t you?”
“Yeah, another reason why I’m not hard at work in my office, dammit. You think I can focus—” My voice cracked at that, and she stopped slamming more shit on the counters to turn and face me.
Aoife and Jake and our family were the only source of normalcy in my life. When there was chaos here, it triggered a butterfly effect.
Naturally, her grief was more detrimental than mine, and she was the one who needed looking after, but she wasn’t alone in her suffering.
Her lips quivered as she looked at me, seeming to see that she wasn’t the only one drowning, and she whispered, “Oh, Finn—”
I swallowed down her pity and stepped back and away, not able to deal with what was happening right now. I heard her call out my name, but I ignored her and headed to the elevator when it buzzed again like the annoyance it was.
If she were anyone else, if it were Billy, for example, I’d have let Louise come up to the penthouse. I didn’t like her though. Aoife trusted her, but that didn’t mean I had to.
Pressing my back to the wall, I stared at my reflection as I descended to the lobby.
“When did you start looking so fucking old?” I rasped under my breath.
“Do you want a statistical analysis on that?”
“What the fuck?” I growled, peering up at the elevator ceiling as I straightened. “Conor? Is that you?”
“Yup, it’s me. I can run your pictures through a program and give you a time lapse if you want.”
