Tempted by Her Innocent Kiss (Pregnancy & Passion #3)(15)

“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. “I was hoping you’d say that. I mean about wanting children. It’s not that I have to have them right away. A small part of me realizes it would probably be better to wait but I’ve always wanted a large family and I don’t want to be old when they’re graduating high school.”

“You realize we’ve done nothing to prevent pregnancy so far,” he said in a low voice.

“Do you mind?” she asked anxiously. “I mean would you be upset if I was actually pregnant before we got married?”

He chuckled. “It would be the height of hypocrisy for me to be upset over something I could have very well prevented.”

“I just want to be sure. I don’t want us to have a bad start. I want everything to be…perfect.”

He touched her nose and then traced a path underneath her eye and down the side of her face. “Do you suspect that you’re already pregnant, Ash? Is that why you’re bringing this up tonight? I don’t want you to be afraid to tell me anything. I’d never be angry with you for something that is equally my responsibility, if not more so. You were an innocent when I made love to you. Birth control absolutely should have been my responsibility.”