Page 42 of Craving You

Max didn’t have time to give her full name much thought because Kevin and Bridget Donovan were storming toward them.

Okay. Here we go…

Chapter Seven

Sloane ran out from behind their parents and hissed, “I’ve been texting you since yesterday morning! I tried to warn you!”

“Thanks,” she murmured. “I wasn’t ready to…”

“Young lady, what in the world is going on?” her mother demanded as she came to a stop in front of her. “You leave town and then turn off your phone and disappear? Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been? We’ve been calling every one of your cousins, and no one knows anything except how you showed up in Sweetbriar Ridge and then disappeared the next day!”

“I’m sorry that you were worried, Mom,” Hailey began, “but we texted Marcus and Billie to let them know where we were. So if you called them, they probably told you.”

“We did,” Billie said wearily, pinching the bridge of her nose for a moment. “I’m sorry, Hales. I explained everything repeatedly how you and Max were taking some time away to figure stuff out and that you’d be back today and…”

“Of course your cousin was going to make it sound like it was completely normal,” her mother went on. “This…this Max person is her brother-in-law! She’s not being objective! For all we knew, she was protecting him, and you were really lying in a ditch somewhere! We had to know for ourselves.”

“Mom, don’t you think you’re being dramatic? Billie wouldn’t lie to you! No one in this family would lie to you!” She sighed loudly. “Can we please just…take a step back so I can get more than three feet into the house?”

“That attitude is not helping anything, Hailey Shae!” her father angrily chimed in before turning his sights on Max. “And you! Are you the reason our daughter left town and made us all a bundle of nerves? What did you do to her? Why couldn’t you talk to her here, where there was family present?”

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Max’s eyes go wide. “Um…”

“Okay, that’s enough,” she commanded loudly, and the room went so silent you could hear a pin drop. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough of a deterrent to stop the interrogation.

Her father took another menacing step forward. “You knock up my little girl and then steal her away for days on end and make her cut all ties with her family? Do you have any idea how offensive that is?” Then he looked at Hailey. “And you! You were not raised to go sleeping around with a man you don’t even know! What were you thinking?”

Now probably wasn’t the time to say she thought that he was an incredibly sexy man who kissed like a dream and turned her on more than any man ever had in her life.

Yeah, I better keep that to myself…

“Dad, I’m not going to stand here and try to defend myself. The fact is that Max and I are having a baby. All the yelling and carrying on isn’t going to change that,” she said firmly, and was a little impressed with herself when her father looked slightly contrite. “I get that you’re disappointed, but you know what? It’s still not going to change anything! So you can stand here and lecture us all you want, but you’ll just be wasting your breath!”

“Hailey,” her mother began tearfully. “You have to understand how devastated we are! This is all so completely out of character for you! I’ve been picturing your wedding since the day you were born! After having three boys, I had finally had my little girl who was someday going to have a wedding fit for a princess!”

“Um…I’m still here,” Sloane interjected, slowly raising her hand. “You know, I can be a princess too. Just saying.”

Unfortunately, no one was really paying attention.

“Look, this wasn’t the way I thought things would go either,” Hailey went on, “but this is the way things are. You know I haven’t been happy living in Florida for a while, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m going to move to Sweetbriar Ridge so I can be with Max.”

Both parents went to comment, but she held up a hand to stop them.

“I get that you’re freaking out, but I am going to be surrounded by family. Besides all my cousins, Uncle Ronan lives here too. It’s not like I’m moving somewhere all by myself, okay? So you both need to relax. This is my life and…” Pausing, she sighed, “This wasn’t planned, but I don’t regret it. Max is a great guy and if you would both just take some time and calm down and get to know him, you’ll see it for yourself.”

Her mother slowly turned and sat down at the kitchen table and promptly stared at them. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this one bit. You’re acting like a rebellious teenager instead of a responsible woman. Getting pregnant out of wedlock! What am I supposed to say to people?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed how everyone kept looking back and forth between them like they were watching a tennis match. She’d laugh if she wasn’t so annoyed.

“You might remind them how Ben was an eleven-pound preemie or how he then had a ‘preemie’ of his own with a woman he picked up in an airport bar who walked away as soon as the baby was born!”

“Who…?” Max quietly asked.

“One of my brothers,” she murmured over her shoulder.

“Oh, damn!” Sloane said with a laugh. “You went there! Nice!”

“That’s different,” her father said. “Boys…”

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