Page 48 of His Relentless Angel

“The better question is, why didn’t either of you tell me?” Dad looks genuinely hurt as the molten in his eyes cools. “I kept waiting. Gave you plenty of opportunities to come clean, and still, y’all kept lying right to my face. Feeding me bullshit after bullshit as if I was dumb enough to believe you weren’t sneaking around.”

Every funny look he gave us and all the leading questions he asked flit through my mind. We missed all his cues because we were trying so hard to avoid this very conversation, thinking the worst of him and his reaction. So far, all he’s done is raise his voice. He hasn’t tried murdering anyone, and now my fears seem so ridiculous. Childish even.

Dad looks straight at Isaiah with hurt in his voice, and I wonder if this will be the night their friendship ends. It’ll be because of our lies—not because we’re together. “Why didn’t you come to me, man to man, friend to friend, and tell me about you and Bailey?”

Isaiah eases me off his lap, and I twist my hands as I pace a few steps away. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and holds Dad’s stare. “Because I failed when you told me to ‘do the right thing’,” he says solemnly. “I tried. Believe me, I tried to do the right thing and leave after dinner at the hotel. But I couldn’t, man. I love her. I’ve always loved her.” Isaiah reaches for my hand, drawing me back to his side.

Dad gives him a sharp look, and Isaiah quickly rushes to amend his statement. “Not in the same way. Not when she was younger. I cared for her then, even though she drove me insane. But now, as a woman…I love her, and I couldn’t stay away. We haven’t spent a night apart since Austin,” he confesses. “I wanted to tell you right away, but a huge part of me also didn’t, because I knew you wouldn’t approve.”

Dad slaps the table, making the polyhedral dice bounce on the game board, and I jump out of my skin. Isaiah, Martin, and James all lean back in their chairs. “You big dummy,” he says with aggravation. “I was telling you to ‘do the right thing’ by going after her instead of continuing to break my daughter’s heart!” He rubs his chest. “Pissed me off the way you kept staring at her, making her think she had a shot with you, but then kept avoiding her.” He snaps, “Jesus, you’re just as clueless as James, and I’ve had about all I can handle. Lord help me when it’s Autumn’s turn.”

Isaiah and James both gape at him and Martin laughs. “You’ve sure got your hands full with these two,” Martin says, pointing his thumbs at James and Isaiah, cutting the tension in the air little by little.

“Just you wait for your girls to grow up,” Dad says with a warning. “If two of mine can do me in like this, imagine what your three will do to you.”

“Ah, shit,” Martin says, shaking his head and long mane of curly hair with genuine fear on his face. “Don’t jinx me like that.”

“Too late,” Isaiah and I say at the same time.

Dad turns a smirk toward James. “I hope your three girls give you hell, too.”

James looks just as fearful as Martin.

“So.” Dad slaps the table again, though not as hard. “When’s the wedding?” The whole table is back to gaping. “I assume there’s going to be a wedding.” He grumbles when no one says anything.

My heart is pounding, and the hand Isaiah is holding tingles. It just so happens to be my unadorned left hand.

“There’d better be a wedding,” he says with another warning, dropping his gaze to my middle, “if that reaction to a sip of alcohol is any indication of the state of things.”

Isaiah pulls me back onto his lap and fingers the delicate chain around my neck to draw my necklace out from under my T-shirt.

“About that, Daddy,” I say, palming my lower belly. Isaiah unclasps my necklace, slides my engagement ring off the chain and onto my left ring finger, and then holds my hand up in the air. “There’s most definitely going to be a wedding.”

“Good,” Dad says harshly, then breaks out into a huge grin. “It would have been real hard pretending I didn’t know what the hell was going on while walking you down the aisle.”

Chapter 20

Bailey

Traveling to Houston, where Isaiah’s parents moved to after he graduated from UT, I have to breathe through the nausea that I wish was due to morning sickness. Telling Isaiah’s parents about us is just as nerve-wracking as telling Dad. Maybe even more so since they haven’t seen us all these weeks circling each other, as Dad says. It will be a shock, and I don’t know how they’ll react.

Driving through his parents’ newly built subdivision on the city’s outskirts with young pink and white crepe myrtles trees lining the medians, we pass a family out for a walk in the sunshine. A dad is walking behind his small child on a balance bike beside a mother walking their German Shepherd.

I point to the family. “I’ve never had a dog,” I tell Isaiah wistfully. “Think we should get one? It could grow up with the baby. Be best friends.”

Isaiah grins. “So a pool and a dog. Anything else you’d like to add?”

I grin right back. “Definitely a hot tub. And maybe a trampoline and a basketball hoop above the garage for all the nieces and nephews. And also a grill and fire pit, and—” I ramble on.

Isaiah squeezes my left thigh where he’s had his hand for the whole drive. “Nervous?”

“Ugh, yes. Aren’t you?”

Isaiah shifts in his seat and puts his blinker on, turning left onto his parents’ narrow street. Slowly snaking around cars parked along the curb, he pulls in front of his parents’ two-story white brick home with a double-gabled black roof.

“Looks like they all came into town,” he says, nodding to the three cars in the driveway, including one with rental tags.

“Why would they do that?” My nerves triple. I didn’t imagine we’d have to tell his whole family all at once.

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