refused to meet his eyes. He could feel her body turning more rigid. “It can’t be true,” she said. “We can’t do anything. For lots of reasons. For one, you—you’re supposed to—to refrain from ejaculation for now.”
She’d done it to him again. He was stunned. He could only stare at her, uncomprehending. “I’m what?”
She raised her face to his, her face defensive but stubborn. “Refrain. At the lab they’ll need to test your semen. They’ll want a good sample. And I’ll be taking fertility drugs. I have to. I have to—to give them multiple eggs.”
“Multiple eggs? You make yourself sound like the Easter rabbit.”
“Don’t laugh,” she warned. “I’m serious. We can’t make love. It’s what the lab ordered. We go Monday.”
His groin ached, and his head was beginning to hurt. “What about afterward?”
“No. I told you. I’ll be taking hormones. Something might go wrong. I won’t chance an accidental pregnancy.”
“I thought the point of me being here was that we have another child.”
Her chin quivered. “The point is that we have a healthy child.”
A slow resentment was rising in him. “You must have been damn sure I’d go along with doing it your way.”
“No. I wasn’t sure. I just prayed you would.”
“And what if I said let’s not do the bit with the lab and the mad scientists. Let’s have a kid the old-fashioned way.”
To his consternation, her eyes filled with tears. “I couldn’t stand to take the chance. I couldn’t stand to have another child at risk the way she is. I’d rather die. You can call me a coward, but I c-couldn’t.”
She began to cry, and she was a woman who cried so rarely that the sight half-killed him. He understood her torment and hated himself for fueling it. “You’re not a coward,” he said. “Not you. Never you.”
He folded her into his arms, gently this time, making no erotic demand, only holding her and letting her weep. “We’ll do it your way,” he said. “You’re right. The baby will be safe. Shh. Our baby will be strong and healthy and fine.”
Our baby, he thought with a conflict of emotion that half-dazed him. We won’t make love. But we’ll have a baby.
At last her tears slowed, then stopped. She stepped back from him, shamefaced, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Maybe you needed to do it.”
“I’ll try not to do it again.”
He looked at her streaked face. “In all my life I’ve only seen two woman who could cry and still be beautiful. Ingrid Bergman—and you.”
She gave him a weak smile that made his heart twist in his chest. His desire for her hadn’t vanished. It intensified so keenly that it hurt.
“I should go.” He said it abruptly, but she didn’t look surprised.
She seemed to understand and nodded. “I’ll get you the keys.” She went to the kitchen counter, where her handbag lay.
To have something to say, he asked, “Did my package for Nealie come?”
She opened her bag, took out the keys. “Yes. I put it away for Valentine’s Day, like you asked. She doesn’t know it’s here.”
“Maybe I should give it to her tomorrow,” he said. “I didn’t have time to buy her much in Moscow. I’ll get her something else for Valentine’s.”
She came to him, dropped the keys into his outstretched hand. “Whatever you want,” she said.
He knew he needed to leave before the urge to take her in his arms again grew irresistible. He fingered the keys. “I’ll leave. For now.”
“Yes,” she said. “There’s more to talk about, of course.”
“Of course. What we tell Nealie about this. About the baby.”
“Yes. That’s the hardest part. But it’s late. And you’ve had a long trip.”
“Yeah.” At this point it seemed a thousand years long.
She walked him to the door. He wanted to kiss her goodbye. He confined himself to the lightest brushing of his lips against her cheek. She did not return the caress. She only gave him a small, pensive smile.
“So I guess it’s good-night,” he said.
“I guess it is.”
She opened the door for him. He paused halfway through it and turned to her again. “Call me as soon as Nealie wakes up.”
“I will,” she said. “Get rested. Do you remember the way to the motel?”
“I think so,” he said. He remembered. He had been back to it in his memory too many times to forget.
He closed the door and walked alone into the night.
BRIANA HEARD HIM drive off. Then she sat in the silence, rotating the stem of her wineglass and staring at the dancing flames in the fireplace.
She had not been surprised by the fervor of Josh’s embrace or the hunger of his kiss. Her eager response didn’t shock her. Perhaps it should have shamed her, but it did not.
In spite of everything, they still desired each other. And they both loved Nealie. Those two things would never change. Perhaps loving Nealie made them want each other more—pain sometimes needed the narcotic of touch, fear needed the consolation of nearness.
Briana put her hand to her temple, for it ached. She considered herself a simple woman whose life had become too complex. Josh was a wonderful man and a devoted father. She loved him, and he loved her in return, but they could not live together.
She loved this place, this farm, this work, and she could not leave it. It was her home, and her father needed her. The business could not survive without her. Her father could not survive without her. He was an unhealthy, absentminded man who, left to his own devices, forgot to take his pills or eat right or do his exercises.
No, Briana belonged to this place as surely as if she were one of the plants rooted here.
But Josh belonged nowhere, or else he belonged everywhere. The far places on the map called him, the siren stories chanted out for him come and help tell their tales, and he always went.
For five months he’d tried to stay on the farm, pretending to be a steady man committed to a steady place. He worked to learn a business foreign in every way to his nature. What he learned was to hate compost and pruning and predatory insects.
Then his agent had phoned with the irresistible offer to cover the trouble in Albania, and Josh had wanted to go. He wanted Briana to go and wait for him in Italy. Briana thought it all sounded too unsafe, especially with a baby on the way.
