knocked at her door, which she answered quickly, Lila on her hip. That one look confirmed what he’d hoped for—she was made to be a mom. There was no doubt in his mind about that. He kissed his two favorite people in the world, once again reminding himself to take a deep breath, to let things happen. If she was going to move forward with her apartment, they could always turn around and sell it once he proposed. If she said yes. The most important thing here was that he didn’t repeat his past mistakes. He wouldn’t push her into what she didn’t want.
“Come on,” Ashley said. “The thing I want to show you is in the bedroom.”
You mean the place you’ll be sleeping without me? “I thought your bedroom was done.” He came to a dead stop outside her room. He couldn’t take another step. He didn’t want to face what she was about to say. “If you’re going to hurt me, Ashley, just do it now. It just feels like you’re throwing your future in my face. This future you’re building for yourself, one that only includes me and Lila on the periphery. It’s not fair to us. And frankly, I don’t think it’s fair to you, either, because the truth is that we belong together. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my entire life.”
Ashley stood there, staring at him. “So now you tell me your opinion? Finally?” Lila was still in Ashley’s arms, playing with her hair.
“Yes. I tried to keep my opinion to myself and let you make your decision without any involvement from me, but I can’t do it. I could give you five hundred reasons why we shouldn’t be having this discussion, why you shouldn’t be telling me whatever fabulous idea you have for redoing your apartment.”
“And let me give you one reason why we should.” She curled her finger and bounced Lila on her hip, looking at his little girl. “Don’t you think Daddy should stop being such a grump and come with us into the bedroom?”
“Da,” Lila said, melting his heart. It really did kill him to see how adorable Ashley and Lila were together. If he was already going to be dead, whatever Ashley was about to tell him couldn’t kill him any more.
“Okay. Fine.” What had Ashley told him hundreds of times? To relax and enjoy himself? He failed to see where the enjoyable part was in this exercise, but he’d go.
“So, here’s what I talked about with the builder.” She marched to the far corner of her bedroom and smacked the wall. “We start here and we knock down the whole thing, all the way to the other side.”
He sputtered. “Ashley. My bedroom is on the other side of that wall. Where exactly would you presume I sleep during this phase of construction? And why in the world do you want to do that, anyway?”
“It would connect our two apartments. We’d use my bedroom and half of your bedroom and make a larger master bedroom. Then we could enlarge Lila’s room. She’s going to need more space than she has right now.”
His brain sputtered, stopping and starting. Once again, she managed to pull a scenario out of thin air. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? You want to do this?”
“I do. I was standing here with the contractor after I’d put Lila down for a nap. I heard her on the baby monitor, and it felt like my heart was being torn out. I couldn’t listen to it for even a minute. The thing that had once seemed more important than anything was far less important than taking care of Lila.”
“I’m very familiar with that feeling. It’s heartbreaking and wonderful at the same time.”
“So I went and got her and changed her diaper. I think that was my mistake. I didn’t change her before I put her down for a nap.”
“You’ll learn these things. All new parents do.”
“I’m figuring that out.” She smiled, stepping toe-to-toe with him. “You know, I don’t like to do things I’m not sure I can be good at. But I realized that this is one thing that nobody ever gets perfect at. I made a mistake, but she was still fine. And she seems perfectly happy.”
“I’m looking at her face, and I can tell you that she’s more than perfectly happy.” He pulled them both into his arms, the two women he couldn’t live for even a day without. Ashley hadn’t left. She hadn’t tried to find a way to slow things down, even though that was her normal inclination. Instead, she’d pushed through it and found a new plan, a perfect plan. A perfect future.
Koch Construction wasted no time once the building board approved the project. Three weeks after Ashley and Marcus had their meeting of the minds in her apartment, the wall between their bedrooms was officially down. She couldn’t really believe that Marcus had agreed to something so drastic so quickly, let alone acquiesced to living in a construction zone. When Ashley had asked him about it, he’d said it was all because of love.
“Our bedroom is going to be huge.” Marcus shook his head, stepping over the imaginary dividing line between their apartments, a line that was now gone. He smiled, even though the subtext was that he’d bought into one of Ashley’s crazy ideas. She could live with that. Plus, he was super sexy in his Saturday attire of jeans and a T-shirt. And to think, they had the entire weekend to look forward to. The three of them.
“A good chunk of it will go to expanding Lila’s room. Good thing we have enough space to move everyone around during construction. I really hope my parents will be able to visit once it’s all done.”
“If they aren’t able to come because of your father’s health, the three of us will have to make the trip down to South Carolina. It will be good for all of us to get out of the city, and Lila and I haven’t seen nearly enough of the US.”
Forget impressing her parents with something as frivolous as an apartment. She could show them how well she’d done for herself by introducing them to the stunning, sweet and generous man she’d fallen in love with, and the cutest little girl in creation to boot. “Fresh air. Shrimp and grits,” she said.
“Coconut cake?”
“Always.”
“Perfect.” He put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “After that, it’ll be your turn to make a trip and come to the UK. Meet my parents. Take a few days away from London and visit the summer house. Rolling green countryside. We can walk to the village every day. It’s lovely.”
“It sounds it.” Really, she couldn’t imagine anything better than the grand adventure they had ahead of them. The best part of it was that he was genuinely excited by their future. He seemed to be healing from the pain of the last several years. Grumpy Marcus was behind him, although he did get touchy about sharing the remote control, especially when Manhattan Matchmaker was on. He insisted they watch it every week.
“Maybe by then we’ll be engaged,” he said, cocking an eyebrow.
She pursed her lips. This was their one sticking point—or, more precisely, it was Ashley’s sticking point. Things were happening so fast, and she’d said yes to it all. She’d added to her plate. Heck, she’d gone back for seconds, and it still didn’t seem to be enough for Marcus. They couldn’t do everything important at one time, could they? “Marcus, you’re talking about expanding the distillery.”
“We have to up production now that the Hilltop Hotels contract
