The Way Home by Jean Brashear Read Free Book Online Page B

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    “James?” She sat up hastily, threw off the afghan she’d knitted in cloud-soft pastels, the one meant for the first baby, back when they were full of innocence and faith. “I didn’t realize what time—”
    He settled onto the mattress beside her. “Come here.” He drew her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured into her hair.
    “It doesn’t matter.” A shudder went through her, and she gripped his suit coat in both hands.
    “It does, sweetheart. It hurts you every time.”
    “You think I should quit trying.” Her voice was muffled by his shoulder.
    Yes. No. His eyes burned. He’d wanted to make babies with Bella, to mingle their blood as they’d united their hearts and lives. To raise a big family in a house filled with their love.
    They conceived babies, one after another. He and Bella were very fertile, the bounty of their bond expressing itself in creation again and again.
    But the tiny lives could never hold on.
    And Bella refused to give up on bearing him the heirs she knew he wanted. That she wanted just as much, for different reasons.
    Because Bella was all about creation. She gardened, she sewed, she knitted. Painted and played guitar and cooked like a dream. She was the perfect homemaker, in the best sense of that word. Wherever Bella was became a nest, a refuge, a world of color and light and joy.
    It was the cruelest of ironies that a woman so clearly meant to have a family and share her abundant love would be denied the chance to do exactly that. There had never been a more natural mother born, he was convinced.
    So, heartache after heartache, she continued. And because he could deny her nothing, he went along, each time summoning the strength to help her through at the end.
    Because he loved her more than life. Because he would concede her anything.
    But maybe love required something different from him now.
    “Yes,” he said, though the pain of that finality was a sword slicing through his chest. Eyes closed, he held her more tightly. “We don’t have to have children for our life to be good, sweetheart. Or—” He watched the dream die, admitting to himself just how much a child of his blood and hers had mattered. How deep in the bone that urge was bred. “We could adopt.”
    She recoiled, her eyes dark and haunted. “That’s not what you want.”
    He could lie to her, but she’d know. “I’ve changed my mind.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you mean more.”
    “But—”
    He pressed his fingers over her lips and shook his head. “No buts, honey. This is killing you, and if I lose you, I lose everything.”
    Her eyes flooded with tears. “James, I’m so sorry. I don’t understand why I can’t—”
    He hushed her with a kiss. “Neither do I, love, but I won’t let you torture yourself over it anymore.” For a moment, he embraced her, inhaling the scents that clung to her, rosemary and sunshine, honeysuckle and the tang of tomatoes…aromas of earth and sky and this bounteous woman who deserved so much better than he could ever provide her.
    She clung to him just as fiercely. “What would I do without you?” she whispered.
    “You’ll never have to find out.” He gripped her, then forced himself to let go. He leaned away and tipped her face to his. “The world is full of children who would bloom under the hands of the best gardener I know. Where shall we start looking?”
    The hope that flared was all the answer he needed to be certain he was doing the right thing.
    Her fingers stroked the afghan. The sorrow hadn’t completely fled her gaze, but her face began to light with the excitement that was, always and ever, the essence of Bella.
    Beneath it was a trace of fear. “The agencies will see that we’d make some child happy, won’t they, James?”
    He defied anyone to do otherwise. He’d fight to his last breath to make certain. “How could they not? No one—” His voice was rough and fierce as he embraced her again.