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“I was talking to the counselor.” She shoved the tissue under her nose. Her mood seemed heavy. Her hair was loose, she wore no lipstick, and her sundress was a simple thing with spaghetti straps and a flecked print of yellow on green. She was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“About the baby?” he asked, bracing himself.
“About...” She sighed and said, “There’s usually a breeze out at the gazebo by this time of day. Can you walk that far?”
The path was hard-packed gravel so he easily managed it.
“Another week and I should have a walking cast,” he said when they arrived in the shaded octagon where there was, in fact, a very nice breeze. There was also a pair of daybeds. The table between held a stack of paperback romances, sunscreen, a hair tie, and the start of some knitting in a buttery yellow yarn.
He leaned on a post so he could study Sasha’s profile while she stood at the rail, facing the sea.
“How are things here?”
“Good.” She brightened. “Molly felt the baby move. I didn’t yet, but we keep trying.”
A pang went through him, partly made up of that sense of threat he experienced when she was close with their surrogate, but the anticipation in her face was such a relief, he could only be pleased by this development.
“You’re feeling good about the baby?” he prompted. “Less worried?”
“A little.” She immediately plunged back to pensive, chewing the corner of her mouth.
“Do you want to tell me about the counselor?” he asked.
“There’s a lot to unpack, but the biggest issue is...” Her brow wrinkled with real distress. “I don’t know how to make this marriage work if you don’t...” Her voice withered.
Don’t love me?
Everything in him became gripped with tension. Was he incapable of love? Or merely afraid of it? Maybe if they had weathered the infertility storm without it causing such a rift between them, he might have allowed himself to be more vulnerable with her, but the more she had distanced herself, the less able he’d been to bridge that gap. He was beginning to see that now. Once Molly had come into the picture, he had put up even more walls.
“If you don’t know who I really am,” she finished in a shaken voice.
It took him a moment for his brain to catch up. Her words pulled him out of his introspection into seeing an easy fix. “I don’t blame you for not knowing who you are. I’m enjoying getting to know you. Sasha.”
Her gaze flashed to his. “That’s the first time you’ve called me that.”
“Do you mind?”
“No.” Her voice thickened. “I like hearing it in your voice.”
That hit him like such a heart punch he couldn’t breathe. Then he noticed her mouth was quivering as though she was on the verge of tears again.
“What’s wrong?”
She looked at her hands. “I wish everything could be...where it needs to be, between us. That we didn’t have to go through fire to get there. I don’t know if we’ll survive it.”
“Hey.” He leaned out and grazed her hand with his fingertips. “Come here.”
She warily placed her fingers into his palm, allowing him to tug her closer.
“We have time. Even once the baby is here, we can take as long as you need.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckle. “Time is being forced upon us, actually.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have some leads in Asia and Australia. Gio is stonewalling. He hasn’t dissolved the deal, but he won’t finalize it, either. I have to put contingency plans in place, so I’m leaving for a few weeks. I was going to ask you to come with me, but I can see how important it is for you to be here. That it’s helping you feel closer to our baby.”
“It is, but...” Her fingers clenched onto his and her mouth seemed to search for words.
He wished he could see the beckoning blue of her eyes.
