One Moment Please (Wait With Me #3) - Amy Daws Page 0,65

wine frozen in front of his lips as he seems almost amused by my discomfort.

I take a deep breath in and state as calmly as I can, “We’re having a baby.”

The table goes completely silent.

The quiet goes on and on. Wait—am I in the middle of a horrible nightmare? Maybe I’m about to wake up.

Reality pummels its way back in when my mother weeps noisily.

“There, there, Sue,” my dad says, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “It’s alright.”

“Guess you’re an idiot about more than just home renovations.” Harvey lets out a laugh as he takes a drink of his wine. Lana elbows him in the ribs. “It’s just a joke.”

Lana turns her wide eyes to me as she glances down. “How…far along are you?”

I touch my belly, and reply, “Twenty weeks.”

She smiles. “Do you know if it’s a boy or girl?”

My mother’s head shoots up from my father’s shoulder as she waits for my reply.

I smile and look at Josh. “We decided we wanted to be surprised.”

“Like you haven’t had enough surprises!” my mother cries, a sob bubbling up her throat. “Honestly, Lynsey…how could you have relations before marriage?”

I close my eyes and shake my head. “Mom, I’m twenty-seven. You can’t honestly be surprised.”

“I honestly can!” She looks at my dad. “Can you believe what our daughter is out there doing, Darren? This is why we should have made her move in with us while she went back to school. She had it too easy in Mom’s townhouse. No sense of responsibility. No sense of morals.”

“It’s okay,” my dad says, rubbing her arm gently.

“Well, I for one think this baby is a miracle,” Lana says, turning everyone’s attention away from my mother’s hysteria. She looks at Josh, and her eyes well with tears. “After what happened in Baltimore…I just…I never expected you to be a father.”

I frown at Josh. “Baltimore?”

Josh face pales, all humor draining from his face, sharply replaced by anger. “That’s enough, Mother.”

She turns back to me, her eyes blinking with tears. “It’s a miracle. You’re a miracle.”

“I’m not—”

“Of course, it’s a miracle. Every baby is a gift from God,” my mother blubbers, pulling a tissue from her sleeve and dabbing her nose. “But Lynsey, if you’re not in love with this man, why are you living with him?”

Lana’s eyes widen, clearly unaware that I was living here. I look over at Josh, who looks like he’s perfectly content to let me suffer through this interrogation alone. I clear my throat. “Well, as you know, the lease on Gran’s townhouse was up, and I still hadn’t found a job, and well…Josh kind of insisted I move in because it just made sense.”

“Josh insisted?” Lana repeats, getting that hopeful tone in her voice again.

“But I have a job now,” I blurt quickly. I must look like a gold digger to his parents. “And I have my master’s in psychology, so I have career goals and every intention of getting out of here and finding a place of my own very soon.”

Josh’s face hardens as he narrows his eyes and says through clenched teeth, “We’ll have to discuss that, of course.”

I frown and nod. “Yeah, sure.”

Lana gapes back and forth between us with a look of bewilderment when suddenly, the fire alarm goes off.

“My chicken!” I cry and shoot up from the table, tipping over the chair behind me as I make a mad dash for the kitchen.

“No, no, no, no!” I open the oven and horribly smelling black smoke billows out. I grab a pot holder to pull the pan out and accidentally bump the top of my hand on the top burner of the oven. “Shit!” I exclaim, dropping the chicken and yanking my burned hand back.

Suddenly, two arms are around me.

Josh turns me to face him, holding me close as he growls, “Fucking hell, Lynsey.” He holds my hand up to inspect it, a look of absolute panic all over his face. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I was trying to save dinner,” I croak, a knot forming in my throat as I wince at the red blister forming over the top of my hand.

“I need to treat this.” He grabs my good hand and yanks me down the hallway at Mach 10 speed. “Mother, take care of the mess, please.”

“Okay, Joshy,” she calls back.

He leads me through his bedroom and into his master bath before slamming the door shut behind us. His hands are on my waist as he lifts me onto the counter. He digs