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Marlowe patted her own hair in a hint that Willow might need to check hers. She could only imagine what her mouth looked like when her lips tingled, having been thoroughly kissed.
“How long have you two been out here?” Asher wanted to know.
“Long enough to go to the safe and bring back this.” Genevieve held out a tiny jewelry box.
Willow didn’t even want to think about what else her future in-laws had overheard.
“Great-grandma Mays’s ring?” He tilted his head to the side. “Wait. You never gave that to me when I asked...”
He didn’t mention Nora’s name, but his mother still shook her head.
“She wasn’t The One.”
Asher rolled his lips inward and nodded before crossing to his mother, leaning over to accept the box from her hand and kiss her cheek. Then he carried it back to Willow but didn’t open it.
“My mother’s parents weren’t wealthy, but since I’m Mom’s oldest son, the ring was supposed to come to me. You don’t have to wear this if you don’t want to, though. We can ride downtown and pick out a different stone for you. As big as you want.” He made as if to put the box in his jeans pocket.
“Am I going to get to see it?”
“Oh. Right.”
He held the box out to her and flipped it open. A small solitaire diamond in a white-gold setting with tiny twin baguettes on either side stared up at her.
“It’s perfect.”
Asher grinned, his cheeks filling with color, as he withdrew the slim ring from the box. “If it doesn’t fit or you don’t like it when you have it on—”
“Asher, can we try it already?”
He nodded and held it to the tip of her finger. “Last chance. Still want to marry me?”
“Absolutely. Now put it on me before you try to take back your offer again.”
He slid it over her knuckle, and both were surprised to find that it fit perfectly. She stared down at her hand.
“I love it.”
Asher put his arm around her and faced his mother, sister and the two infants. “I would like to present my fiancée, Willow Merrill.”
The two women clapped, and to everyone’s surprise, Luna clapped twice, as well. Harper looked over at the infant who was soon to be her sister, and she mimicked her action, touching her hands together three times.
Asher and Willow stared at each other.
“Guess all that practice with patty-cake paid off,” he said. “Those two will probably always be competing to see who reaches each milestone first.”
Genevieve stood up from the sofa and carried Luna over to them. “That will be a lot of fun for the both of you when these beautiful girls of yours want to start dating.”
Asher’s hands immediately went to his head. “Oh. Don’t tell me that.”
The women on the porch got a laugh out of that one at his expense. The two babies, who’d just learned a new skill, laughed, too, and kept right on clapping. Their mom and dad were going to make them a family, after all.
Chapter 28
Asher couldn’t stop smiling as he forked an ear of corn on the cob at his family’s picnic beneath the retractable awning on the mansion’s deck. He passed the tray to Willow. His fiancée. He liked the sound of that. Behind his left shoulder and behind Willow’s right one at the long wood table, they’d parked high chairs where Luna and Harper sat pushing Os cereal around on the trays. Their daughters. He liked the sound of
that, too.
Ainsley stood and lifted her wineglass. “Here’s to these soon-to-be Coltons, Willow and Luna.”
