Star of His Heart - Brenda Jackson [63]
He reached out and gently traced his finger along her cheek. “The man who loves you.”
Netherland sucked in a gulp of air, and tears immediately came into her eyes. “Not if you can’t accept my deficiencies.”
“I could if there were any. If you couldn’t have my child I would adopt in a heartbeat. Your inability, if there was one, to have children would not keep me from loving you or having you in my life forever.”
“If that’s true, then why can’t you accept what I’m trying to tell you?” she asked, placing the glass of water on the nightstand next to the bed.
“And why can’t you accept what I’m trying to tell you? What are you afraid of? That I may be right?”
“No,” she said quietly. “That you might think you’re right but in reality you’re dead wrong. I had a severe case of the mumps at eight, Ashton. The doctors told my parents then that it had left me unable to conceive. I went to a doctor again myself at eighteen who, after examining me, verified what my parents had been told ten years before.” She looked down at her hands that were folded in her lap before looking back at him. “Don’t you think I want to be able to conceive a child? But I’ve accepted that it won’t happen and have gotten on with my life. I’m not alone in this. About six million women in the United States can’t conceive or have difficulty conceiving, so I don’t feel like the isolated case Erik made me out to be.”
“Erik?”
“Yes, my ex-husband. Since he’d always wanted a big family, he didn’t take the news of my infertility too well. That’s the reason he divorced me.”
Ashton’s gaze narrowed. “The man was a fool. There were other alternatives. The two of you could have adopted.”
“Yes, but he didn’t want that.”
Ashton reached out and took her hand in his, feeling the need to touch her. “What exactly did the doctor claim was wrong with you?”
Netherland released a pent-up breath before saying, “The problem is with my fallopian tubes. There’s some sort of an obstruction that can’t be surgically corrected. My chances of ever conceiving are less than twenty-five percent. So what does that tell you?”
“That there is a twenty-five percent possibility.”
Netherland shook her head, pained at the thought that he still didn’t want to accept what she was telling him. “Perfect!” she snapped, almost at her wits’ end. “I just told you I had less than a twenty-five percent chance of getting pregnant, and you still want to play the part of the optimist?”
“When we make love, I will get you pregnant, Netherland.”
Despairing anguish touched Netherland’s heart because all it took was a look in Ashton’s eyes to know he believed that. He actually looked confident. “And what do you have, Ashton? Super sperm or something?”
He shrugged. “No. As far as I know, they’re the regular kind,” he said calmly.
Netherland’s chest expanded as she inhaled a deep breath. Never had she encountered a man who was so stubborn. “Well, it wouldn’t matter if they were super sperm; they couldn’t get past my blocked tubes.”
Ashton stood. “Want to bet?”
Netherland frowned at him in sheer frustration before rolling out of bed. “And just how are they going to do that?”
“There are ways. I can show you better than I can tell you, Netherland. And it’s all about love, faith and the gift of fertility that will be given to us when the time comes. The Cherokee people strongly believe in the power of loving, faith and healing. As my intended mate you have to believe in your heart that things will work out. Since you believe you have a medical condition that’s keeping you from conceiving, what do you have to lose for me to prove otherwise?”
“You can’t prove otherwise, Ashton. There are too many factors involved that may not work, one of which is the timing.”
“The time is right.”
Wariness reflected in Netherland’s face. “How do you know?”
“A man knows when his mate’s body is ready to conceive. Let me prove to you that I know what I’m talking about.”
The eyes looking down at Netherland were deep, dark and compelling as they tried to rid her of