Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel (26 page)

“
I
t looks
like a lot of people, doesn’t it?” I hissed at Mom and Dad nervously. “I don’t think we invited that many people. I think we’ve got some crashers. Or am I just seeing double, you think? What if we’re at the wrong venue?”

“No, there’s a lady in the front row with her face about pierced shut,” Dad whispered back. “This is the right chapel. Hope and I know the place like the backs of our hands. You’re just nervous.”

“I am not nervous,” I insisted, straightening up from the window to glare at him. “We already have a daughter together. She’s going to be walking before we even have our first anniversary. We already live together. What’s the big deal? It’s no big deal.” I wanted to play with my hair, but it was all bound up and styled with salon products.

“But it is a big deal,” Mom reminded me gently. “You know it is, or you wouldn’t have cried when he asked.”

I swallowed. “I’m just an emotional person.”

Mom slanted a critical glance in my direction. “Sure,” she murmured. “Sure you are. You know what would have helped?”

“What’s that?” I asked, only half-listening.

“If you had bothered to eat some of that gigantic breakfast I made this morning. Then you’d feel great.”

“Maybe even a little sleepy!” Dad agreed.

I sighed. Mom’s masterful spread this morning had been the first thing to send me vaulting to the toilet, actually, but I hadn’t wanted to tell her. She’d have probably taken it all the wrong way.

“I know,” I said instead. “I just wasn’t feeling that well.”

Piano music filled the chapel. We were within seconds of my grand entrance, and the slow walk, and then, it would all be over—or just beginning, depending on how you looked at it.

“You’ve been complaining about not feeling well quite a bit the past few days,” Dad said, looking at me more closely. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? Because, you know, if you don’t—”

“Dad!” I hissed. “Is this really the time?”

“You know we love Ash, Isabelle,” Mom chimed in, “but if you’re feeling sick with worry and nerves, maybe—”

The chapel doors opened in front of us, and suddenly, we were standing in front of an entire sanctuary of people, all standing, all staring at us with expectant smiles. Dad was looking at me with that same closeness, as if waiting for the word, either way. The yes or the no. What he and Mom didn’t understand, what they didn’t believe, was that my nausea had nothing to do with my emotions.

I began my slow and steady walk down the aisle, anchored to Dad’s extended arm.

I was beginning to doubt that this was just nerves.

The preacher smiled expectantly at Dad and me as we approached. I hoped the nausea had subsided for the duration of the ceremony. What if I threw up right on the aisle? Right on Ash?

As we came to a halt alongside Ash and his string of dashing, suited best men—all members of the Hell’s Ransom, with the exception of Xander—and my maid of honor, Jade Rodriguez, who was also dashing in a petite and tailored emerald suit, her faux hawk dyed to match and a rhinestone stud in her nostril—I couldn’t help but wonder if the church was aware of just who Bill and Hope’s daughter was marrying.

What if Mom was right? What if this was a bigger step than I realized?

I was hardly listening to the preacher as he talked. I felt a little dizzy. It wasn’t until Ash’s vows that I really started to focus again.

“Isabelle Turner,” he said simply. But his voice wasn’t quite commanding. It was soft—almost uncertain. Not the cocky, flippant man I’d found so intriguing two years ago. But it hadn’t been the cocky and flippant side I’d fallen in love with, anyway. It had been this side. The soft side. The uncertain side. The side that should have done the logical thing and abandoned me at any motel, any rest stop, but just couldn’t manage it. “I want you to know that I know ... some people have had their doubts about me before.”

His mouth tightened up and he glanced away from me, casting his eyes across the congregation.

“And, hell, they were right. I was—impulsive. And—self-destructive. And—and I was hard-headed, and hard-hearted, and damn near reckless. It was like I was trying to kill myself.” He laughed with chagrin and then focused on me again. “But now I’m standing here, in this sweaty tux ... with our daughter’s spit-up expertly cleaned from one shoulder ... and—I can’t imagine ever letting myself screw this up. I never thought I’d be that guy, you know? I never thought I was going to consider turning in my bike for a more sensible vehicle.” Someone cried out their dissent from the crowd, and I shot them a dirty look, but Ash, of course, grinned, and responded with good-natured candor, as if this was a bar, not our wedding. “Something with room for a car seat or two! Something with room for a tricycle, ya’ll, so I can bring up the next generation in the ways of the hog, you hear me?”

I cleared my throat and Ash jolted, swiveling to attend to me again.

“Sorry,” he said. “Where was I? Okay, okay, okay ... what I’m trying to say is that I’m going to be one of those guys, and I’m happy to be one. I’m going to treasure my nine-to-five, because it puts bread on your table, Isabelle. I’m going to treasure my spare tire, because I’ll get it by sleeping in with you. The bags under my eyes will be from staying up late with you. My wrinkles will be badges of honor, because I’ll get them from worrying about you. So, Isabelle Turner, I’m glad to grow old. I’m glad to start—argh—budgeting! Because it’s with you.”

I took a deep breath as the congregation turned its attention toward me.

“Ash,” I said, “I used to listen to country songs and wonder what they were about. I used to watch romantic comedies—not by choice, of course—and ... I would think about how unrealistically STUPID all the heroine’s choices were. I was a stranger to love. But I knew, deep down, that it was out there in the universe, the same way I know Mars is out there in the universe. I caught fleeting glimpses of it, from time to time, when I’d look out into the night sky—love, that is—because I’d think about how beautiful the moon was, or whatever, and I’d wish someone was there to see it with me. And now—Ash—now I have you. Now I understand what the country songs are about. Now, whenever the moon outside is really big and bright, I don’t have to look up at it and wonder if anyone else is out there, looking up at it too. Because I can just look over my shoulder, and say, ‘Hey, honey, come look at the moon. It’s beautiful tonight.’” I still don’t know how I managed to finish my vows without outright sobbing.

We went through the rest of the ceremony without hugging each other, although I felt really driven to embrace with him, and when it was time for us to kiss, we let the audience have it full-force. No passes, no censorship. When we came up for air, I felt elated, glowing, like I had when we’d first been together. We rushed down the aisle to the surging cheers of our friends and family. Mom and Dad, who had Savannah Jade with them, took her to the reception hall with the car seat in their truck. When we arrived at the reception, just a few minutes from the chapel, there were already at least a dozen guests in attendance. I wanted to greet them, to thank them, to be the perfect bride, but I was sweltering, and I glommed onto the first fan that I saw and reveled in the manufactured breeze whipping out of its blades.

“Izz ... what are you doing?” Ash wondered, coming up behind me. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yeah, babe,” I sighed. “I just don’t feel too good.”

“That’s what you said this morning, too,” Ash said. “Honey—maybe we should get you to a doctor. Do you want to? Do you want to go home? Or to the hospital?”

“It’s no big deal.” I took a deep breath. “I just get my morning sickness in the evenings ... and in the morning.”

Ash half-laughed, and then paused and cocked his head. “Are you—are you being serious?” he asked.

“Ah, shit,” I groaned. “I didn’t mean to tell you like that. I was just trying to be funny.”

“Don’t mess with me about this,” Ash warned, though his voice had shifted, becoming excited and bright. “Are you ...?”

I looked up at him and smiled helplessly. “I think I am,” I said. “All the signs are there. I haven’t taken a test yet, but. I’m moody. And nauseated. And my period math has always sucked. And we haven’t exactly been careful. And I’m gaining weight, even though I haven’t exactly been eating that much—”

Ash, thank God, grinned. “Oh my God,” he said. “This really is going to be the best day of my life. Woo. I think I need to sit down.”

The doors to the reception area swung open and a deluge of guests entered, including Ash’s brothers, my parents, and Jade. They all paused and seemed disoriented by how bedraggled we, the young, joyous couple, happened to be just now.

“Everything all right?” Jade asked, still cheerful.

“Better,” Ash replied, though he sounded like he’d just been socked in the gut. “Can I tell them? Can I be the one?”

I nodded and gestured forward. “Be my guest,” I said. “I got to have all the fun last time.”

“We’re pregnant!” he cried, and the crowd drew back into a stunned silence, then crashed forward with cheers, congratulations, and clapping hands.

Someone hugged me, I’m not even sure who. Someone kissed me on the cheek. But the only person on whom I could really focus was Ash. Everything else was a blur. It wasn’t that I wasn’t ready—it was just all so much. Cake, and music, and hugs, and jokes ... it was all so much, and it didn’t finally start to tamp down until an hour or two had passed, and at last, like the victims from some kind of natural disaster, Ash and I found ourselves together again, holding hands on the precipice of all the noise and motion that was our reception. I was so tired, I didn’t think we could even manage to have any sex tonight, on our own wedding night. But we’d had enough to make up for it by now, I was somehow sure. All I wanted to do on this particular night was strip off my control top panty hose and collapse into a grateful puddle with Ashton Carter.

“There’s something I need to say to you, Izz,” Ash told me softly.

I glanced over at him. I could tell that he was barely able to restrain his smile. “Okay,” I said. “Shoot.”

“I got another call from that agent we talked to.”

I smiled softly. “You mean the one we said we weren’t going to talk to until we were sure what we wanted?”

Now Ash twisted to face me. “But we are sure, aren’t we?” he whispered. “A fenced backyard, at least an acre of land. Mulberry trees. A porch with a screen, a den with a real fireplace. A balcony off the master bedroom, and two other bedrooms. And a home office—that might be converted to another bedroom later.”

I grinned. “What did that realtor get you to do?”

“Nothing!” Ash insisted. “Except to agree to a viewing when we get back from our honeymoon.”

“Honey—?” I frowned at him. “Honeymoon? I didn’t think we were having a honeymoon. I didn’t think we had the money! And here you are, meeting with realtors and—and secretly—”

“Bill and Hope gave us a generous contribution,” Ash explained, nodding toward Mom and Dad in the crowd. I looked in their direction and saw that they were smiling at each other, laughing at some joke, but when they noticed our eyes on them, both raised their glasses. “And my brothers helped too,” Ash went on. “Think about it, Izz. A real place. Just for us. And—it’s just a viewing, okay? No commitment. You and me, looking, right after our honeymoon. I wasn’t kidding about turning in my bike for that mini-van.”

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head at him. “We’re going to want to go on rides when the kids are away at summer camp, and what will we do when they’re gone and we’re retired? Take up gardening?”

Ash shrugged. “We can talk about it again when we get back from that honeymoon. Let’s just put all our thoughts on hold until then. We’ve got enough on our minds without adding any kindling.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Where are we going to go?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Ash confessed. “I figured we’d do it the same way we do everything else. Suddenly, and all at once, and with very little forethought, but then, it falls into place.”

I sidled up to Ash and gave him a chaste kiss on the very corner of his mouth. “Perfect,” I whispered. He wiggled his eyebrows at me, and I thought that maybe we could manage to pencil in that romp later tonight after all. My hand slithered down into his and gave it a squeeze. “How do you feel about Mexico?”

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