Page 47 of The Princess & the Prospect

Chapter 17

Ihanded our last customer her package of photos before she walked out the door, all smiles. It actually lifted my spirits to work here for that reason. Making people happy was a joy of mine, and seeing them leave the studio with looking pleased as punch always brightened my days. Not that my days weren’t already bright. Evan and I had spent the past week watching movies, cooking together, and simply existing in one another’s space with no pressure or expectations and it had been divine. I’d also supervised when he started putting together the crib, changing table, and had a glider rocker put in the spare room. The bed in there was now pushed as far up against the wall, beside the door to get into the room, as it could go.

Evan talked about just putting a twin size bed in there and taking the full-size one out so there was more room, but I didn’t think he’d fit well enough on a twin considering his size. I had nearly invited him to just come sleep in the master bedroom’s king-size be with me, but I didn’t think I could handle the rejection if he told me no. I knew his reasoning, but my heart wouldn’t hear reason. It would simply hear the no, so I had kept my mouth shut. The tinkling of the bell as my customer made her way out the door and to her car pulled me back to the task at hand. I started going through appointments to see what we would have to handle tomorrow and, just as I was about to let Beth know we didn’t have anything on the books until after noon tomorrow, a white-hot pain shot through my back and wrapped around my hips, before dipping low into my belly as if I’d been whipped from the inside out and back to front.

“Ouch,” I murmured as I leaned forward on the counter and tried to catch my breath. I had just managed to get myself under control when Beth stuck her head out of the back room where she took a lot of her in-studio photos.

“We don’t have anyone else in the book for today, do we?” She asked.

“No, we don’t and Candace just left. She was thrilled with her photos.”

“Good! I’m so happy to hear that. I don’t suppose you’d like to come back and sit for some pregnancy photos, would you?”

“Really?” Excitement coursed through me at the prospect. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of doing any maternity photos before, especially considering where I worked, but now I wanted to jump for joy at the prospect. “I’d love to!”

“Great! Flip the sign to closed, lock the door, and waddle your butt back here then.”

“I’m not a penguin!” I shouted at her as I turned the sign and locked the front door.

“Could have fooled me,” she shouted.

I did exactly as she asked and waddled my ever-growing behind into the back studio space where she already had a pretty little garden scene drawn down. I stood in front of it and allowed her to position me just so before she moved back behind her camera. “Say fuzzy pickles!”

I scrunched my nose up at the thought of fuzzy pickles just as Beth clicked. She giggled. “Okay, well that one works with the kids. I’ll have to remember the adult reaction is to be grossed out.”

“Where in the world did you even come up with that?” Beth just shrugged. “And what in the world is a fuzzy pickle? I just thought about a moldy dog turd and now I’m kind of glad I haven’t felt like eating lunch yet.”

Beth laughed as she changed some setting or other on her camera. I doubled over a little, again feeling that pain wrap around my mid-section from back to front. Beth thought I was just pretending to be sick. I didn’t correct her, though I was beginning to worry a bit. Something didn’t feel right.

“Okay, here’s a stool, I want you to just sit on it and frame your hands on your belly like this,” Beth moved my hands so that my fingers were forming a little heart over my belly.

“Aw, that’s sweet,” I told her as I also noticed the heart background she had queued up for this shot.

“Isn’t it?” She snapped a couple shots and then asked me to stand.

“Okay for this one, I want to get a picture of you facing out into the next scene and…”

“You’re taking a picture of my giant rear end?” I asked aghast at my friend and employer for suggesting such a thing.

“It’ll probably get cropped from the waist up with you looking back at me over your shoulder,” she suggested. “It’s just something I’ve been wanting to test out.”

“Fine, but if I see you using my butt as target practice in here one day I’m not going to be happy.” Beth laughed at that because before I started working here, she and Gretchen used to print out a picture of their worst clients and use them for target practice on a dart board.

“Okay, stand just like that while I raise the heart backdrop. The one I want to use is underneath of it,” Beth was saying as she clicked a button and the motor started whirring as the backdrop began to roll back up. Beth had moved to a camera that was located off to the side of me, which was weird.

“I thought you were testing a shot from the back, there’s no…” I stopped mid-sentence as a pair of jeans came into view, along with a singular motorcycle boot. Singular because these particular denim-clad legs were on bended knee in front of me. “Oh my word,” I whispered through my hands that had automatically gone to my face to hide my surprise. As the backdrop continued up, the rest of Evan came into view. He was grinning up at me from where he had bent a knee and held a small, white jewelry box out. His hazel-green eyes glittered like jewels in the lighting Beth had set up, and his smile both asked the question for him and left him looking sheepish all at once. He wasn’t sure how I would react to what he was doing, that was for sure.

“What are you doing?” I asked stupidly.

“Asking you to marry me.” His answer was so simple, and yet it was wildly unexpected.

“We’re already married.”

“Nah, we signed a contract. Right now, I’m trying to put a ring on your finger, and asking you to be mine forever because I’m so in love with you, beautiful. I don’t want to spend another day without you. You may already be my wife legally, but I want you to be my wife in all the other ways too.”

“Evan,” I managed to puff out on another whisper. There was no way this whole scene was real. I was about to ask if he was serious when another pain ripped through my abdomen and had me bending in two to catch my breath. I barely managed to bite back the yelp of pain that threatened to let loose, but the whimper that came after made its way out to the ears of the people in the room anyway.

“Anna, are you okay?” He started to get to his feet, but I put out my arm to touch his shoulders and hold him in place. “I’m fine. I don’t think a ring will fit on my puffy fingers right now though.”

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