Seduced by the Sea Lord

Chapter 12

The warrior she was coming dangerously close to loving tilted his head in confusion

Lucy sucked in a breath and fought the tingling of tears. She had dreaded this moment from the instant he'd begged her to mother his children on the Cancun marina. Now it was here, and she felt horrible.

"You do not wish for young fry?" he asked, cautiously frowning.

"I can't have them," she repeated. "It's biological. I can't have them, you know, inside me."

"You do not wish for young fry inside you?"

"No. I want them, but they won't..." Her throat closed. Why wasn't she over this already? She cleared her throat and tried again. "They won't grow."

"Young fry do not grow inside you because we have not joined together."

"No! Because I can't have kids."

"Not until we have joined."

"Even after! There's something wrong. It's impossible for me."

He frowned harder. "It is very possible for you. After we join, you will carry a young fry. That is how it happens."

"Not for everyone."

"Yes, Lucy. I will teach—"

"Torun!" Clearly, infertility was entirely new to his tribe. Lucy gripped her needle-scarred belly in her fists. "There's something wrong with me. My ex-husband and I tried for kids a thousand times."

His brows lightened. "With me, it will be different."

"With you, it won't be different. There was nothing wrong with him."

"Lucy, a husband whose memory dims your light as his does is abnormal. He must have had something wrong with him."

Well, okay. Fair enough. She appreciated Torun for saying so.

But that was beside the point.

"He could not possibly give you a young fry," Torun continued. "I brighten your light, and so I will help you experience this gift."

If only that were true.

She'd cried buckets of tears, and each one started with the fervent wish, if only.

Torun didn't understand. He stood there as if waiting for his pronouncement to ease her sadness.

She took a deep breath and tried again to explain.

"I went to doctors. I got injections. I spent all my savings, credit cards, money I didn't have. All to prove I don't have 'a conducive uterine environment for ovum implantation.'"

Her hands shook, and a helpless tear from her memories leaked out.

Sitting in the exam room with her hospital gown tied up in the back, kicking her socked feet and trying on names—Willow? Scarlet? Blake Junior?—with her hands resting on her still-flat belly. The nurse coming in. The sympathy on her lined face not matching the happy news she was supposed to be giving Lucy. "We reviewed your test results. It's not a baby."

Two years later, trudging to open the mail in the front hallway, accidentally kicking over a potted cactus and being too exhausted to pick it up. Exhausted from treatments, exhausted from life. The top letter was the final decision from the insurance company to discontinue coverage on account of Lucy's change in employment status. The bottom letter was a notification of divorce proceedings from Blake's attorney.

But the thing that really made her cry that day was the cactus. She'd given it to Blake for their first anniversary because it was supposed to be unkillable. She hadn't notice until she leaned over to pick it up, but the cactus had fallen out of its pot because there was nothing inside. It was a husk rather than a plant. Perhaps it had never been alive.