Heartbeat by Danielle Steel Page A

even if we did have to make sacrifices, Steven, wouldn't it be worth it?” He didn't answer her, but his eyes said it all. They said clearly that to him it wouldn't. “And in any case, we're not talking about planning to have kids at some future date. We're talking about a baby that's already here. That's very different.” To her it was, anyway, but not to him. That much was clear.
    “We are not talking about a baby. We are talking about a nothing. A spot of sperm that touched an egg the size of a microscopic dot, and that dot is a microscopic possibility of nothing. It's a question mark, a maybe, a possibility and nothing more, and it's a possibility we don't want. That's all you have to think about. All you have to do is go to your doctor and tell him you don't want it.”
    “And then what?” She felt anger boiling up inside of her as she listened to him. “Then what, Steven? He just says, Okay Adrian, you don't want the baby, no problem and he checks it off in the 'no' box on a little list? Not exactly. He pulls it out of me with a suction machine and scrapes my uterus with a scalpel, and he kills our baby. That's what he does, Steven. That's what 'tell him you don't want it' means. And the thing is, I do want it, and you need to think of that too. This isn't just your baby, it's mine too, it's our baby, whether you want it or not. And I'm not going to just get rid of it because you say so.” She had started sobbing as she spoke to him, but Steven acted as though he didn't hear her. He was so terrified that all he could do was act like an ice man. He was frozen with terror. And Adrian was overwhelmed with anguish.
    “I see,” he said icily as he looked at her with fresh distance. “Are you telling me you won't get rid of it?”
    “I'm not telling you anything yet. I'm just asking you to think about it, and I'm telling you that I'd like to keep it.” She had surprised herself by admitting that she wanted it. And asking him to keep it made it sound as though they were talking about a puppy and not their child, and it horrified her.
    Steven nodded miserably, and took her hand and pulled her down on the bed next to him, and suddenly she could no longer control herself as he put his arms around her, and she went on sobbing.
    All the shock and fear and tension and excitement of it bubbled up inside of her and exploded over the sides until she couldn't stop crying anymore, and she lay in his arms and sobbed as he held her.
    “I'm sorry, baby …I'm sorry this happened to us …it'll be all right …you'll see …I'm sorry …” She wasn't even sure what he was saying to her, but she was glad he was holding her, and maybe he would change his mind after he thought about it for a little longer. She thought that he probably would, but it was so emotionally draining dealing with this resistance.
    “I'm sorry too,” she said finally, and he wiped the tears from her eyes and kissed her. He began to stroke her hair then, and kissed the tears on her eyelashes and cheeks, and then slowly he undid her blouse, and slid her shorts and her underwear down past her ankles. She lay naked beside him and he lay admiring her. She had a beautiful body, and in his opinion defiling it with a baby would have been a crime. She would never have been the same again and he knew it.
    “I love you, Adrian,” he said gently. He loved her too much to let her do something so desperately foolish. And he loved himself, and their life, and everything they had striven for and accomplished and acquired, and no one was ever going to jeopardize that, certainly not a baby.
    He kissed her longingly, and she kissed him in return, thinking that he understood how she felt finally, and they made love to each other, quietly and gently. It was a time of feeling close to each other and putting their argument aside, as each one hoped that the other would come to understand their side, and afterward they lay in each other's arms and kissed again, feeling much