"He’s educating me well enough," Aoife countered.
Camille arched a brow at me. "I guess I should be jealous seeing as we’re talking about my man too."
I hitched a shoulder. "I was and probably still am concussed so you can’t hit an injured woman."
Her laughter boomed from her, which told me I’d really tickled her and, like moths to a flame, her amusement drew Inessa, then finally Aela over. Aela was dipping her fingers in a jar of—
I blinked. "You’re eating Nutella."
"Yeah. Pregnancy craving."
"From the jar," I finished.
"That’s not a craving," Aoife scoffed. "How is that a craving? It’s just regular food."
Aela flipped her a distinctly chocolate brown-covered bird. "Fuck off. If my kid wants chocolate and hazelnuts, I’m not going to waste time by not giving her Nutella."
"I really hope it’s a girl," Lena murmured, bringing herself over to the table too with a coffee cup in hand. "I’m not sure Declan would survive, but him and Brennan would make good daddies to baby girls."
"Hey!" Aoife complained. "Finn would so rock that too."
"And Eoghan," Inessa groused.
"Why are you bitching?" Camille retorted. "You don’t want kids yet."
"I’m not even twenty. Why the hell would I want a kid now?" Inessa blew out a breath that had a piece of golden hair flopping on her forehead. I almost heard Seamus sob into whatever it was he was making for his Grandmother General.
"You girls are lucky you had a choice," Lena intoned, then she cast a gimlet glance my way. "How old are you, Savannah?"
"I still have functioning eggs," I argued, immediately knowing where she was taking this and not about to deal with that particular bullshit. "Mom had my youngest siblings in her late thirties, and she was a late baby as well for her parents."
Lena harrumphed. "Better to have them when you’re younger."
"Respectfully, that option isn’t open to me unless you know of a portal that cuts through time and space?" I shrugged. "My career was important to me."
"Still is," Jen insisted. "And why shouldn’t it be? You’re rocking the shit out of it too." She heaved a sigh. "I wish I were. I swear I do half the work for my boss and he gets all the credit and the directors just look down my blouse while I tell them that."
"Maybe you should start wearing blouses with a high neckline?" Aoife drawled, earning an elbow in the side from Jen.
I grinned at my friend when she winked at me, thankful she’d changed the subject because I wasn’t about to throw down with Aidan’s mom on this matter.
Seriously though, what did she want me to do? Apologize for being in my thirties? Aidan wasn’t exactly young, either. Damn nerve.
"If I wore a high neckline, then my boss would realize that I’ve got a high IQ." She blew a raspberry. "This way, I’m learning as much as I can so when I strike out on my own, I have alllll the information at my fingertips. I can count on you as my first client, right, Savannah?"
I grinned at her. "I wouldn’t dare stick with Crawford, Lewis and Jones over you."
"That’s a wise choice." She wagged her finger. "I’d have to put Ex-Lax in your coffee until you agreed."
"With friends like that, who needs enemies?"
That deep voice had me wishing that were Aidan, but when we all turned around and saw guys coming in through the kitchen door, I didn’t see him, but was instantly reminded of why fangirling was a problem.
Oy vey.
The interesting thing was, of course, I didn’t want them. I was even disappointed when Aidan wasn’t one of the men walking into the kitchen, but that didn’t mean I didn’t salivate over all of them.
The O’Donnellys were rarely photographed out of suits, so to see them, en masse, dressed in sweaters and jeans just had my teenaged self fanning her face.
Plus, Eoghan was carrying a baby that looked like he was dressed for Antarctica. How fucking cute was that?
Although, I had to admit, their comfortably casual clothes did make me question why Aidan had dressed so formally. Not that I should complain. He looked like sin itself in a suit.
"So, you’re the guest Aidan mentioned."
I peered up at the guy who was purposely looming over me.
Okay, so that was one way to cut down on my fangirling.
I scowled at Brennan. "Yeah. You got a problem with that?"
Brennan smirked as he encouraged Camille to get off her seat then to slip onto his lap. "I ain’t got no problem so long as you’re not dicking my brother around."
My scowl deepened, but Camille elbowed him in the stomach. "Hey, leave her alone, Brennan. She’s cool."
"She is, huh? You ladies bonded over crumb cake and Beef Wellington?"
Camille nodded. "We did. So be nice."
Brennan stopped trying to stare me down and shot his wife a look.
As he did, I’d admit to melting a little, and when I looked at all the women who were accompanied by their men, most of them now sitting on their laps, well, hell, my fangirling eased some more.
My crushes of old were married now. Happily. Even though they were all murdering monster mobsters, I was happy for them.
Yes, weird.
I knew that already.
I was weird by nature. But, I realized, I was supposed to be that way. I was supposed to think these guys, who were the villains in anyone’s story, were actually heroes because Aidan was mine.
And I was his.
A belief that sank into my bones, resonating on a deeper level than I’d ever experienced before.
So, sure, our time together could be quantified in hours and minutes, but that didn’t matter when the universe had decided thousands of millennia ago that we were destined to be a pair.
Which, to me, was pretty fucking awesome.
Of course, the second I came to that decision was when we all heard it. Like a punctuation mark in my thoughts, it shot everything into high relief. Slashing through the room with all the power of a chainsaw.
The roar of pain. The roar of agony. The smashing of glass and what felt like the trembling of the earth as one man’s fury seemed capable of making the tectonic plates beneath us vibrate alongside him. That was the power of this family. That was the magnitude of a man like Aidan O’Donnelly Sr.’s wrath.
As one, we all looked at each other, silence falling where, moments before, there’d been festive joy, and the craziest thing happened.
Once the roars died and the smashing stopped, everything went back to normal.
Everything.
But while they appeared to be able to switch off that side of their brains, not digging into business they didn’t consider their own, reverting to peeling carrots and whipping mashed potatoes, turning back to the gravy they were sweating over and the cakes they were praying didn’t sink as they baked in the oven, I didn’t work that way.
Aidan Sr., I knew, had just learned about his son’s child abuse, and I had a feeling in my bones about what that meant for the holiday period.
No one was safe in New York City tonight.
Thirty-Four