might be deceiving him.
Eddie was right. He needed to let it go.
When he returned to the kitchen after washing his hands, Rachel was setting dinner on the table: shrimp scampi over linguine, sautéed zucchini, and garlic bread. Coco followed at her heels, waiting for a morsel to drop.
“Need any help?” he asked.
“You could turn on some music, light a few candles.”
“Special occasion?”
“Maybe.”
He turned on the satellite radio system and tuned it to one of their favorite R&B channels. Then he got two candles out of a cabinet, placed them inside the frosted glass hurricane lamps on the table, and carefully lit them.
They often drank wine with dinner. But after Rachel dimmed the recessed lights, she took a bottle of sparkling white grape juice out of the refrigerator.
“You mind doing the honors?” She handed the bottle to him. “I would’ve gotten champagne, but…”
“We are celebrating something.” Sitting, he twisted off the cap and filled the two wine goblets on the table.
“We’re celebrating us,” she said.
“Us?”
“Us finding each other. Falling in love. Getting married. Being happy. Do we need a special occasion to celebrate those things?”
“Not at all.”
They bowed their heads and said grace. Then they heaped their plates with food and began to eat.
“This looks delicious.” He spun linguine around his fork and speared a shrimp. “My mom’s a good cook, but she can’t touch you.”
“Please, don’t ever say that around her. She hates me enough as it is.”
He winced. His mom had been nasty toward Rachel from the beginning, considered her a corrupting influence on him. He had never understood why his mother felt that way toward her, but there was much that he would never understand about his mom.
“Hate is a pretty strong word,” he said.
“How about ‘intense dislike’? She has an intense dislike for me. She thinks I stole her precious little baby away from her, to corrupt him.”
“She’s a little overly protective, that’s all.”
“A little?”
He laughed. “Okay, she gets out of control, sometimes, I admit. But she means well. She’ll grow to love you in time.”
“I’m not holding my breath.” She chewed a piece of garlic toast. “But maybe she was right about the corrupting part. If she only knew what we did in the bedroom…”
He felt her foot slide under the cuff of his jeans and tease his calf. A warm, delicious rush of desire spread through his center.
“You must not want me to finish dinner,” he said.
“Sorry, I’m a bad girl.” She pulled her foot away, winked. “That’s how we messed around and got the first one.”
He was bringing the fork to his lips, but her remark made him pause.
“The first one?” he asked.
“When I said we were celebrating us, I meant it.” She set down her fork, drew in a deep breath. She blinked, and he saw tears welling in her eyes.
His heart whammed.
“Are you about to tell me…”
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
“Pregnant?”
“Yes, pregnant.” She was nodding, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I took an early pregnancy test this morning—twice to be sure—and it was positive. I’m pregnant with our baby, Josh. You’re going to be a daddy.”
10
Rachel’s announcement left Joshua buzzing for the rest of the evening. She was pregnant. Pregnant. He was going to be a father. A father.
They had not exactly been trying to conceive, but they hadn’t been trying to prevent it, either. Their attitude was that when the time was right, the baby would come. A child was a blessing from God. No one could entirely control the granting of a blessing.
He had an almost irrepressible urge to call everyone he knew and share the good news, but Rachel promised him to silence. She wanted to visit her OB-GYN and confirm the pregnancy with another test, to be absolutely sure. She also advised him that until she passed the first trimester, it would be unwise to tell the whole world about the baby, because in the early stages there was always the possibility of a miscarriage.
In the meantime, she wanted him to keep the news under wraps. He reluctantly agreed to her request, though walking around with the secret was going to drive him nuts. There was so much to think about, so much to plan…he felt as if he were going to pop like a balloon.
I’m going to be a dad. I can’t believe it.
Although he and Eddie had talked about fatherhood often, it seemed incredible that he would soon join the club. He still felt like a big kid himself. To imagine being responsible for a child’s welfare, offering guidance, serving as an example of manhood. It was impossible to wrap his mind around the thought.
He had assumed he would be awake all night, riding high on excitement, but he wound up falling asleep shortly before midnight, exhausted, like a kid who’d eaten too much candy crashing after the sugar rush faded. Rachel climbed in bed, found a comfortable spot in his arms, and drifted asleep, too.
When he awoke sometime later that night, she was gone.
He glanced toward the bathroom. The door was shut, but blackness framed the doorway. She wasn’t in there.
He thought about the nightmare she’d had last night. What if she was sleepwalking this time, fleeing her mysterious dream villain?
It was a melodramatic idea—Rachel might have padded downstairs only to get a glass of water—but he couldn’t discount it. With her announcement of her pregnancy, he felt an instinctual drive to protect her from all harm. That included Rachel accidentally hurting herself while in the throes of a bad dream.
He put on his glasses. The clock read a quarter past three.
He shuffled into the hallway. It was dark. No light filtered up there from downstairs, which it would have if she were in the kitchen.
He was about to call her name, when he heard a clicking sound coming from the room at the end of the hallway. Rachel’s office.
Quietly, he moved down the hall. The door was cracked open about an inch, giving him a narrow view.
Rachel sat before her desk, typing on her laptop. The
