Wish 01 - A Secret Wish by Barbara Freethy Page B

to be sure they’re taken care of. I need to think about the best thing to do.”
    “You need to think about a lot of things, like why you blew off your own birthday party, why you can’t be happy in a marriage with just the two of us, and why you think you can somehow take two kids off the street and become an instant mother.”
    “It’s been a bad night,” she said quietly, realizing that his frustration had to do with more than just Laurel and Kimmie’s arrival. “I’m sorry that I ran out on the party. And while I want to say I could be happy in a marriage without children, I don’t think I can. I love you, Colin. It’s not that you’re not enough – it’s that I’m not enough. Something is missing inside of me. I ache. And I don’t think that feeling is going to go away. I need to be a mother.”
    He sat back down on the ottoman, his eyes bleak. “I don’t know what to say. I understand, but I can’t give you a miracle, and that’s what it might take for you to have a baby. I also can’t keep having this conversation with you. I can’t face the disappointment that seems inevitable every time we try to make a baby. Do you know that in the last three years, I actually knew exactly when your period was going to come? Do you know that I dreaded coming home those days, knowing that I’d find you in tears? Every single month, you cried.”
    “I’m sorry. It was hard to hold in the pain.”
    “And it was hard for me to see it, to know that I couldn’t give you what you wanted. Now you want to start again. And all the schedules, treatments and clinical dissection of our reproductive challenges are too much for me. I want to talk about other things. I want to have a life that’s happy and just not so damn stressful. I love you, too, Angela, but I don’t know where we go from here.”
    Her heart sank with his words. “I don’t want to lose you, Colin.”
    “Maybe you do.”
    She was shocked by his stark response and immediately shook her head. “No, I don’t. How can you say that?”
    “Another man might be able to give you a baby.”
    “It’s more my problem than yours.”
    “No, it’s both of us, but with one of us out of the equation…”
    A wave of nausea ran through her. “Colin, I don’t want another man.”
    “Even if it meant you could have a baby?”
    “I want you and a baby. Why is that so wrong? It’s what everyone else has.”
    “It’s not wrong. It’s just what it is.”
    She stared back at him, suddenly realizing that the scenario he’d suggested a few minutes earlier worked the other way, too. “Maybe you want another woman.”
    “I don’t. I married you, Angie, for better or worse, but I can’t make the impossible happen. And even if I agreed to try another fertility treatment, there’s no guarantee of a better outcome. Then what? Another try and another? When will it be enough?”
    “I don’t know, but I’m thirty-five, and right now I have a little window of time to make something happen.” She drew in a deep breath, feeling like they were going around in circles, which was what they’d been doing the last few years. She understood Colin’s weariness. She felt it, too. She just wasn’t ready to admit defeat. “We can talk about this tomorrow. I want to get the girls settled in for the night.”
    “You have to call the police in the morning, Angie.”
    “I know. But tonight I’m going to make sure the girls are fed and washed and have a nice bed to sleep in. It’s not a lot to offer them, but it’s something.”
    “You have a big heart.” He paused. "You would make an incredible mother." He got up and walked over to her, pulling her to her feet. He kissed her tenderly on the mouth. “I do love you. No matter what happens, never doubt that.”
    Her eyes blurred with tears. Even when Colin was angry, he was always kind. He would make a great father. “Why does this have to be so hard?” she murmured.
    “I don’t know. But what I do know is that