The Child They Didn't Expect

When she’d discovered she couldn’t bear children of her own, she’d imagined that she and her husband would adopt, but he’d been opposed to the idea. She had thought he just needed a while to adjust to the idea of their dreams taking a different shape. She’d tried to give him space and time—space and time he’d used to go behind her back and fall in love with the woman he’d left her for. His lover had represented a new start for Richard, a second chance on the path to the life he’d planned...while Ali was clearly nothing more to him than a dead end.

It had been a painfully hard lesson to learn. Never in their years of courtship, or their marriage, had he even intimated that his love for her was contingent on her ability to produce and raise a family with him. That knowledge had been even more hurtful than the news that she was infertile.

Infertility was something they should have been able to deal with together. Thousands of couples the world over did every day. While she’d railed against the unfairness of it all—especially when faced consistently with evidence of her three sisters’ abundant fertility and happy marriages—it had been her husband’s rejection of her, and his twisted belief that it somehow reflected on him as a man, that had been her undoing. Those scars still ran deep—still made her feel vulnerable and inclined to withdraw from placing herself in that position a second time.

She reminded herself she was not, and probably never would be, ready to put herself out there again. There was no way she would run the risk of being rejected again. Hadn’t she learned her lesson? She’d already felt dreadful when Ronin had seemingly abandoned her after their night together. What if they did get together and he did let her down again?

“Talk about getting ahead of yourself,” she muttered to the empty space around her. “Very shortly he’s going to be incredibly busy raising a child. He certainly won’t have time for you. Nothing’s happened and nothing will happen.”

But there was a piece of her that wanted something to happen, that wanted Ronin Marshall with an ache that went deep down to her core.

* * *

Ali busied herself over the next few hours unpacking the boxes that had been stowed in the foyer. Some of the items needed assembly, so she retrieved her tool kit from her car before kicking off her heels and starting to put together the change station and the crib. After a short time, even without all the finishing touches, the nursery began to look like a baby’s room. Just doing this, creating a safe and loving haven for someone else’s unknown child, filled the echoing hollow inside her. Even if only briefly. It was why she loved doing what she did.

A sound at the door made her look up from where she was kneeling on the floor, reading the final instructions on the change station. Heat flushed her skin when she saw Ronin. She scrambled to her stocking feet, only to feel at a disadvantage as he towered over her.

“Is everything going okay here?” he asked, his eyes scanning the room.