Cam snickered.
Devon yanked his phone out of his pocket to see Ashley’s name on the LCD. He nearly groaned aloud.
“Excuse me a moment,” he said as he rose. “I’ll take this outside.”
He hurried out the door, irritated by Cam’s look of amusement. He knew damn well who was calling Devon.
As soon as he was outside the conference room he punched the answer button and brought the phone to his ear. “Carter,” he said tersely.
Ashley wasn’t even remotely put off by his greeting. Or lack of one.
“Oh, hi, Dev! How’s your day going?”
“Uh, it’s good. Look, was there something you needed? I’m kind of in the middle of something here.”
“Oh, nothing important,” she said cheerfully. “I just wanted to call and tell you I love you.”
An uncomfortable knot formed in his stomach. What was he supposed to say to that? He cleared his throat. “Ash, did you change the ring tone on my phone?”
“Oh, yeah. I did. I downloaded one so you’d know when I’m calling. Neat, huh?”
Devon closed his eyes. The cheerful cascade of noise that sounded like a cross between Tinker Bell sneezing fairy dust and a waltz at some damn princess ball would make him the laughingstock of the office in short order. Not to mention that Cam would never, ever let him live this down.
“Neat,” he lamely agreed. “Look, I’ll see you tonight, okay? We still on for dinner at nine?”
“Yes, that’s perfect. I’m at the shelter until eight so if it’s okay I’ll just meet you at the restaurant.”
He frowned. “Do you have a ride?”
“I’ll get a cab.”
He shook his head. “I’ll send a car for you. Stay put at the shelter until it arrives. I’ll arrange it for eight.”
She sighed but didn’t argue further. “Have a good day, Dev. Can’t wait until tonight!”
“Thanks. You, too,” Devon said but she’d already hung up.
He stared at his phone for a long moment and then punched a series of buttons. How did you even change the ring tone? He’d never designated a special ring tone for a person. His phone rang, the contact showed up, and if he wanted to answer he did. If he didn’t, he let it go to voice mail. No way he wanted sparkly Tinker Bell music to play every time Ashley called him. What if she made a regular habit of it?
To his never-ending grief, she called him every single day. It baffled him that her timing was utterly impeccable. She always managed to catch him right in the middle of a meeting or when he was with a group of people.
After the second instance, he began silencing his phone and putting it on vibrate, but on two occasions, he simply forgot and his entire meeting was treated to Tinker Bell on crack.
After two weeks, he began to get amused, indulgent looks from some. Sympathy from others. Delighted grins from the women personnel. And Cam laughed his fool head off.
Ashley simply called whenever the mood struck, and unfortunately for him, he could never be sure when she would be moved to call him. Sometimes she wanted advice on wedding details. Like flowers. How the hell did he know what the difference between a tulip and a gardenia was? And invitations. Elopement to Vegas had never looked so enticing as it did right now.
Rafael and Ryan hadn’t gone through all of this for their weddings. They’d both had exceedingly simple affairs. Devon was in hell. A wedding that was being planned by the entire Copeland clan.
He was ready to throw his cell in the Hudson.
Six
“Dev?”
Devon stuck his head out of the bathroom then proceeded toward the bed, rubbing his hair with a towel. She was laying stomach down on the bed, feet dangling in the air as her jaw rested in her palm.
There was a slight frown marring her delicate features, which told him she was thinking about something. He almost didn’t want to ask because he’d quickly learned that Ashley’s thoughts ran the gamut.
He sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his hand over her back. “What’s up?”
She turned slightly so she could stare up at him. “Where are we going to live? I mean after we get married. We haven’t really talked about it.”
“I assumed we’d live here.”
Her lips turned down just a bit and her brow wrinkled. “Oh.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good ‘oh.’ Do you not like the apartment? It’s bigger than yours so I naturally thought it would accommodate us better.”
She scrambled up and sat cross-legged beside him. “I do like it. This is a great apartment. It’s a little manly-looking. More like a bachelor pad. It’s not really appropriate for children or pets.”
“Pets?” he croaked out. “Uh, Ash, I don’t know about pets.”
Her frown deepened, which he found distressing. Ashley rarely pouted about anything, which was good, because it was damn hard to resist her when she looked unhappy. Maybe it was because she was rarely ever anything but happy.
“I’ve always wanted a house in the country. A place for kids and pets to run and play. The city isn’t a good place to raise a family.”
“Lots of people raise families here,” Devon pointed out. “You were raised here.”
She shook her head. “Not always, no. We didn’t move to the city until I was ten. Before that we lived on this really great farm. Or at least it was a farm before my father bought it. It was such a beautiful place to live.”
The wistful note in her voice was a shot to the gut.
“It’s something we can discuss when the time comes,” Devon said by way of appeasement. “Right now, my focus is on making you my wife, having a week of uninterrupted time with you on our honeymoon and getting you permanently moved into my apartment.”
She smiled and leaned up to brush her lips across his jaw. “I love it when you talk like that.”
He raised a brow as she drew back. “Like what?”
“Like you can’t wait for us to be together.”
She snuggled against him and wrapped her arms around his waist. And again he was assailed by an unfamiliar nagging sensation in his chest. It wasn’t comfortable. He wasn’t sure he liked it even as he didn’t want it to go away.
“It won’t be long now,” he said. And then some strange urge to continue on and at least make a token effort to lift her spirits pushed stubbornly at him. He stroked a hand over her silky hair and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “We can always revisit the issue of where to live later. Right now, though, I want our concentration to be on each other.”
She squeezed him tighter and then pulled away as she’d done before to stare up at him, her blue eyes shining. “Can we talk about one other thing?”
“Of course.”
“When you say you want our concentration to be on each other, does that mean you’d prefer to wait to start a family? We’ve talked casually about children. I’ve made it no secret that I’d love to become pregnant right away but you haven’t said what you want in that regard.”
A sudden picture of her swollen with his child and her radiant, beautiful smile flashed through his mind. It shocked him just how gratifying the image was. He was assailed by a surge of longing and possessiveness that baffled him.
He’d always viewed marriage, a wife and eventual children with clinical detachment. Almost as if they were components of a to do list. And maybe they had been. Right underneath his goals of business success.
Now that he was suddenly faced with all of the above, he had a hard time thinking rationally about what he wanted. It was a very damn good question.
At some point he’d stopped looking at marriage to Ashley as the chore it had begun as. He’d resigned himself to the inevitability and honestly, he could do so much worse. She was intelligent, good to her core, sweet, affectionate and tender-hearted. She’d make a perfect mother. Much better than his own had ever been. But would he make a good father?
“Dev?”
He glanced down to see her staring at him with worry in her eyes. It was instinctual to want to immediately soothe the concern away. He kissed her brow. “I was just thinking.”
“If it’s too soon to be having this conversation, I’m sorry. Daddy always says I get too far ahead of myself. I just can’t help it. I get excited about something and I just want to reach out and grab it.”
He couldn’t help but smile. It was such an apt description of her. She embraced life wholeheartedly. And she didn’t seem to much care if she stumbled along the way. He wondered if anything ever got her down at all. People like her were a puzzle to him. He didn’t understand them. Couldn’t relate to them.
He pulled her onto his lap until she was astride him. “What I think is that you’ll be a perfect mother. I was just imagining you pregnant with my child and decided I quite liked the image. I also had the thought that I’ve never used protection, which is hugely irresponsible of me even given the fact that we both have clean histories and are safe, which makes me wonder if subconsciously I was hoping to get you pregnant all along.”
She sighed and went soft, melting into his chest as she leaned toward him.