Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel (25 page)

A
t the cake tasting
, I dismissed my nausea as an overload of sugar. How many tiny tartlets of cheesecake and cream cheese icing and black cherry and whipped cream could a woman take before she started to get the spins? Maybe my partying days really were behind me, babysitter or no. Then, when I went to the fitting of my gown (white satin with a sweetheart neckline which was then altered to a strapless, in spite of Mom’s protests—to show off my new tattoo ... an inside joke: a thick old tree emblazoned with our initials—because some fights are just worth winning), I noticed the midsection was a little more snug than I’d remembered, and I would need to have the material let out by an inch.

“No big deal,” the seamstress promised me, smiling reassuringly. “A lot of brides gain an inch, or lose one, you know? They’re either starving themselves to look like the brides in the magazine, or they’re happy with their hubby, and not so worried about impressing anyone anymore.” The seamstress winked at me conspiratorially. “I’d say it’s better to be one of the latter, wouldn’t you?”

I should’ve known. It shouldn’t have taken me by surprise. But we were so busy with the wedding plans, and Ash was even talking about getting a new place next year…

We’d renewed the lease on the rental, but he wanted somewhere with a big, private yard, for when Savannah Jade started running around. “And rent is so expensive on a nice place,” he confided in me one night. “What if we just—invested all that into a down payment on a house?”

I propped myself up on my elbow and cocked my head at him. “Has my dad been talking to you?” I demanded. “Did he put you up to this?”

Ash frowned back at me. “No,” he insisted, half-laughing. “No, Izz ... I thought of this all by myself. Your dad isn’t the only one who worries about the future, you know.”

I smiled softly. It was oddly reassuring to know that Ash worried about the future. I swallowed and nodded to him. “A down payment on a house is reasonable,” I allowed, trying not to get too excited at the idea. Both of us could get ahead of ourselves and rush into things without thinking carefully enough. Then again—sometimes that really paid off.

We decided to contact an agent and take a look at some houses later in the year, after all the hubbub of the wedding passed, and let ourselves become embroiled in other things. Salmon or chicken for the caterer menu. Inside or outside. What about a gazebo in a vineyard? Open bar?

“NO,” Ash insisted emphatically to that one. “You do not want the Hell’s Ransom brothers at an open bar for our wedding day. TRUST me.”

Ash got a job interview with a local club. I rolled my eyes, imagining him coming home reeking of smoke. I hadn’t minded the smell when we’d first been together; hell, I’d smoked, too. But now we had a baby to think about. You grow up. Things change. And he’d be out until two and three in the morning...

“You’ve got it all wrong,” Ash promised me tenderly. “Jade set it up. They’re one of her social media clients, and they’re looking for a head of security. I wouldn’t be busting kids at the bar and breaking up brawls. I’d be supervising from a little room with lots of cameras. And—babe—this isn’t really that kind of club. It’s called The White Room, and—”

My jaw dropped. “Head of security at The White Room?” I shrilled. “Ash! That’s huge news!” I flew into his arms for a tight hug.

The White Room wasn’t just a club; it was a posh country club where Colorado elite, business owners and investors, came to relax, enjoy champagne, get a massage, swing a golf club. It was ... NOTHING like I had been imagining. And it was nothing like Ash. They’d be closed by nine pm, and the only thing Ash of which would come home reeking would be—well—money.

I pulled away from him and furrowed my brow. “It might get boring,” I informed him. He’d be going to work in some kind of uniform, probably a polo and khakis. I couldn’t even process the image, it was so foreign.

But Ash smiled gently. “Izz ... we have a daughter. I can’t be leaving you at home with her while I’m running around, getting into trouble, doing what I used to do. No way. That’s how I ended up in jail last time, remember?”

“But innocent,” I interjected.

Ash nodded. “Even as an innocent man, there was a reason I ended up in that jail cell, and I can’t go back to that kind of life,” he told me. “I can’t have business with killers and drug dealers and God knows who else, in whatever Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon way. Not now that I have so much to lose. And look at us. This little apartment... .”

“It’s cute,” I told him defensively ... though I, too, had lamented its square footage (silently) from time to time, when I was feeling particularly entitled.

“Yeah, it’s cute—for now—but I want more.” A slight tinge of blush rose to his cheeks. “And that’s what a job is, isn’t it? It’s something that you hate, that you do for your kids and your wife, to give them what no one gets for free. Right?”

“I guess,” I agreed haltingly. But I was worried about him beginning to resent me, while he was forcing his legs into pressed khakis every day, and all I was doing was lazing around—well—taking care of an infant. You definitely couldn’t call that “lazing around,” but, to the untrained eye, my hair was a wreck because I couldn’t be bothered to brush it, and not because a certain someone kept plunging her sticky fingers into it and yanking with all her adorable might, shrieking with laughter.

I learned after only a few weeks that my fears were unfounded—when Ash came home with an exuberant glow and a black eye.

Some things never change, and some things hesitate to do so.

“Ash!” I shrilled—in a stage whisper, because Savannah Jade was asleep—and vaulted off the couch, where I had just finally settled down to allow myself half an hour of a beloved, but long forgotten, sit com. “Oh my god!” I braced his face with my fingers, taking inventory of the damage. He had a split lip, too! “What happened?” I begged.

But that jackal beamed.

“Fight broke out in the men’s room between these three coked up mama’s boys,” he announced. “I got to break it up. Just goes to show you, you can slap a tie on anything. Doesn’t change what it is.”

“I thought this kind of thing wasn’t going to be happening at The White Room,” I pouted, imagining him rolling in the door on a gurney next time.

“Baby, you’ve got to know that violence isn’t exclusive to the riff-raff,” Ash reminded me, chucking tenderly beneath my chin. I smiled softly. I loved when he did that, and he knew it, and he abused his power. “Trust me; this is good. Just when I think that I’ve updated the security system one too many times, and I’m about to snap—hurrah, I get to put some obnoxious frat boy in a sleeper hold. It’s my dream job.”

I pursed my lips. I still wasn’t sure. I felt so useless, staying at home, just raising our daughter. “Well ... let me get you an ice pack,” I said, drifting off to the freezer.

Later, while he lounged in my lap and I applied some ointment to the cut on his lower lip, I floated the idea of going back into the workforce, too. “I’ve been thinking,” I said, “maybe—when Savannah Jade is a little older—I could go back to school ... and get my degree as a veterinary technician. Then I could go back to work, too, and not just for Mom and Dad, but—I don’t know—I could add at least another thirty percent to our income.”

“Baby,” Ash said, taking my hand and lacing his fingers through it, “I love what you’re doing right now, for Savannah Jade. She needs that kind of tender attention, so that she grows up, being really smart, and disciplined, yet kind and appreciative ... she takes care of us when we’re freaking decrepit and can hardly lift our own toothbrush anymore.”

“Sweetie, that’s never going to happen,” I assured him smilingly. “By the time we’re that old, we’ll be cleaning our teeth by leaving them in a cup of water overnight.”

“Aaargh.” Ash sagged back and closed his eyes. “We’re also saving a bundle on childcare, you know.”

I grimaced. “I know. That’s true. I just feel like I could be doing more.”

Ash squeezed the hand he was still holding. “You couldn’t,” he whispered, bringing my knuckles to his lips for a kiss. “You really couldn’t.”

B
etween work
, and the house, and the baby, life started moving really fast—faster than I remember it moving before, even when I was embroiled in the criminal element during my teen years. It turns out that the shady creepers of my youth don’t hold anything over parents. We both know about the intense suspense of crawling through a room without triggering an alarm—or stepping on a toy and startling an infant from her nap. We both know about the tedium of scrubbing away at stains, whether they be blood on linoleum, or spit-up on a white tunic. We both know how it feels to never sleep through the night, and to find yourself lapsing off on the couch in broad daylight instead.

My point is, time flies when you’re living the never-say-die truth of a stay-at-home mom. And, if there was a spare moment, Ash filled it. The wedding converged on us at the last minute, just like everything else (bills, appointments, even date night), and left us scrambling to get all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed. We played eenie-meenie-miney-moe to pick between the two cakes to whom we had narrowed it down. We guesstimated the guest list. The dress came in, and it was STILL a little tight, but I said it would be fine. I’d wear double Spanx.

And then, suddenly, the big day came. It went from being a looming event on the horizon to being Saturday. And, to tell the truth, I was still trying to check over everything and make little changes, when I should’ve been all tied up with cold feet and the spins.

“Do you think it’s all too much green?” I wondered nervously, catching Mom on the outskirts of the reception hall. “I don’t want our wedding to look ... seasick.” I touched my forehead lightly, checking for sweat. It was a good thing I’d bought deodorant meant for athletes, I’ll just say that.

Mom smiled with a mild chagrin, but indulged me by turning to examine the reception hall through a narrow window in the lobby door. “It’s beautiful,” she said simply, turning back to me. “It’s springy.”

I sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Thank God,” I groaned. “That’s what I was going for. Springy. Not nauseated.” Like me—I’d already thrown up twice, but I wasn’t going around bragging to everybody about it. I wasn’t nervous, not about the wedding anyway (or rather, not about the marriage itself) ... I knew Ash was the man with whom I would spend the rest of my life, the man with whom I would one day die. But I had been having this spell I couldn’t shake. I kept chalking it up to nerves about the guests, which is funny, because I didn’t know I cared that much—

“Honey, what’s going on?” Ash demanded, charging toward us from one of the two adjoining halls. “I’ve been trying to find you for twenty minutes. We’ve got to—”

“Bad luck!” Mom cried, covering her own eyes and swinging her arm at Ash defensively. He raised one arm in front of his face to fend off her feeble semi-attacks. “It’s bad luck for a groom to see a bride in her gown before the wedding!”

I blushed and opened my mouth. “Mom,” I said, uncertain of exactly how to tell her. “He was with me when we bought it.” And he’s seen a lot more than that, I added silently.

“And as far as good luck goes,” Ash added, smiling at me impishly from the underside of his arm, “I think we maxed our limit out last year. Probably going to be paying interest on it for the rest of our lives.”

Mom sagged, disappointed. “You two,” she chastised glumly. “Nothing is traditional with you. When Bill and I were courting—”

“He had to club a dinosaur and bring it to Sunday dinner before you’d ever consider wearing his loincloth,” Ash finished for her.

Mom scowled. “Isabelle!” she hissed.

“What?” I yelped.

“Put a leash on that husband of yours.”

“I still have some time to return him to the pound,” I noted thoughtfully. “But hey, his dedication to historical accuracy is admirable.”

Mom scowled at me next, but I grinned. It was good to see that she liked Ash enough to react normally to his jests about her age. Last year, she just would have stiffened up, cleared her throat, and attempted to smile, or worse yet, glared at him openly, which Bill would have taken as an invitation to snap at him ... The two had been like guard dogs at one point, but Ash had proven them wrong over time. You can’t always be sure that, when a man you love gets you pregnant, he’ll actually make the long haul. But they had warmed immensely after the ring was introduced to the equation. Mom was right—they were old-fashioned. Traditional, as she put it.

“We’ve got to get to that church now, damn it.” Dad’s voice came barking down the same adjoining hallway from which Ash had emerged.

“Damn it!” the butterball infant in his arms parroted gleefully.

“Just like her daddy,” I chirped lightly, floating toward our daughter with all the natural pull of a magnet to metal. “Look at little Savannah Jade,” I cooed, scooping her easily out of his arms. She was dressed to kill, literally; there was so much taffeta exploding from her pink “ballerina” skirt, Savannah Jade had become a choking hazard in and of herself. But God, she was cute. “Who’s my little princess pretty girl? Are you my little princess pretty girl?” Even when I was feeling as sick as a dog, I had to love on our baby. “Who’s so precious and fat?” I pinched at her plump pink cheek. “Are you precious and fat, little Savannah Jade?”

A wicked little part of me had wondered if I would struggle to connect to our daughter, since I hadn’t found my own mother until I was already almost a legal adult—but my fears were unfounded. If anything, I gravitated to her more strongly, hoping to show her everything that I had never had. And Ash, having come from a big family, was an old hand at handling children. His own came to him second nature now. When she came down with colic, he swung her around and helped her to get out all her gas from whatever orifice it would come, and the pains subsided within minutes. It was kind of amazing.

I tickled under Savannah Jade’s chin and she writhed in my arms, kicking her impossibly rotund thighs. It was hard to imagine that one day she’d whittle down and become a talkative kid—even a mouthy one. Oh, God—and then she’d sprout breasts and start raving about boys ... and I’d wrinkle up and get a gym membership with Ash, but we’d never actually go, and slowly sink into middle-aged bod—

“Isabelle Turner!” Dad barked. “Can you hear me? You’re going to be late for your own wedding.”

Ash cleared his throat pointedly, and Dad glanced at him as if he was an afterthought.

“What is it?”

“Carter,” Ash reminded him sheepishly. “When you yell at her. You’re going to have to call her Isabelle Turner Carter.”

I shook my head softly. “I sound like a pair of sunglasses. How did I never hear it before?”

Ash cocked his head to one side and smiled, bemused. “Honeymoon over?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Our honeymoon was in Mexico, almost two years ago,” I said. “Come on, Dad is right.” I groaned and rubbed at my temples. “We’re going to be late. Let’s do this. People are probably already starting to show up.”

“But they know us!” Ash cried as Mom and Dad climbed into their truck, and I busied myself fastening Savannah Jade into her car seat. “They know that we have no idea which way is up!”

“And they’ve suffered enough for it,” I said, collapsing next into the passenger side of Ash’s car. “Let’s go, babe!” On the ride to the church, I cracked the window and let the wind roll over my face. That was better. I hadn’t even known I was this nervous until now. And Ash was right—since when had I cared so much about whether or not a dozen Hell’s Ransom brothers and even fewer friends of mine had to sit and wait on us? It was just going to be a handful of people, anyway ...