Derek groaned. “God, Krissa. What the hell do you think? I was just told I’ll never father a child.” He covered his eyes with one hand.

“There are other ways to father a child,” she said quietly.

He didn’t move, didn’t say a word for a long moment heavy with tension.

“Not for me.”

She blinked, sat up straight. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to adopt. I know we talked about the possibility, but the truth is…I don’t want to raise someone else’s child.”

“But…if we adopted a baby…it would be ours. You’d love it as much as if it were our own.”

“No.” He lowered his hand and met her eyes. “I don’t think I would.” He paused as if searching for words. “I don’t think I could.”

Krissa’s heart contracted painfully. How could he say that? They’d talked about adopting and he’d sounded as if he was open to it. She rolled her lips in to keep them from quivering.

“Then we can try artificial insemination.”

Derek’s head moved slowly from side to side. “No. I don’t want to do that either.”

“What!” She jumped out of the chair and stood there, hands clasped tightly, staring at him. “But Derek…that’s our last hope.”

“It’d be the same thing…I’d be raising someone else’s child.”

“It would be my child! You’re my husband, so it would be your child. I don’t understand.” Thoughts skipped frantically around in her head. “Derek, we can pick the donor based on physical characteristics. We can choose someone who’s tall and blond and brown eyed, like you.”

His face tightened and his gaze slid away from her. “It would be someone else’s sperm. A stranger. His genes, not mine. I’m sorry, Krissa.” His voice cracked. “I just can’t do it.”

“But…that means…” She couldn’t get the words past the aching constriction in her throat. She squeezed her hands into fists at her side. “Derek.” Hot liquid slid down her cheeks.

“I know.” Agony tore at his voice. “I know, Krissa. But I’m being honest here. I’d rather have no children than adopt or use a stranger’s sperm.”

She gazed at him, his face wavering in her tear-filled vision. He couldn’t be serious. This couldn’t be the end. They still had options.

She could convince him. She moved across to him on stiff legs, sat beside him and put her hand on his bare knee. “Derek,” she whispered. “Don’t do this.”

“Christ, Krissa, you always have to make things so complicated. Don’t make this worse than it is.”

She flinched, looked down at her hand on his knee and drew it away.

“This has been hard enough,” Derek snapped. “All these years of trying…of failing…and now knowing I’m the cause.”

Krissa pulled in a long breath, sat with her head bowed. It was him. She had to think of him. She lifted her head, pushed her hair back and put a hand on his cheek. He covered it with his own, held it there, closed his eyes. “I just want this to be over,” he whispered raggedly.

She swallowed. “But I don’t.”

He opened his eyes and they shared a long look. She saw her pain mirrored in his dark eyes, etched on his face in the grooves beside his mouth.

“I need to have a baby,” she choked out. “It’s all I want, Derek.”

“More than you want me?”

Her eyes widened. “Are you…saying I have to choose?”

Krissa pushed a shaky hand through her hair. This could not be happening. What had happened to their perfect life? Their marriage, their friendship…their love.

“I don’t want you to,” he said, voice low and husky. “I love you, Krissa. I want you. But I want this done with. Let’s just get on with our lives.”

But…it was a choice. If he hadn’t said it, she would have thought it. She was thinking it now.

She stood. She stared out the window at the mountains, crisply outlined against the blue evening sky by the setting sun. “I…” She shook her head, turned and walked across the room in jerky steps. “I need to think.”

“Krissa.”

She couldn’t look at him, waved a hand, her throat clogged with tears and sorrow. She opened the door. “Go. With Nate.” It hurt when she swallowed.

She walked down the hall blindly, past the family room where Nate sat, saw him look at her and start to rise from the couch. She shook her head and kept going, through the sliding doors and out onto the deck.

She stood at the railing, the wood rough beneath her palms, the breeze off the ocean stroking her hair back from her face and cooling her wet cheeks. She closed her eyes, and turned her face up. Scalding tears dripped and she let them, made no effort to stop them, sobbed out her pain toward the ocean waves booming onto the sand.

Damn him. Damn him to hell. He didn’t get to make choices like that for her. This was her life, too. Helplessness and rage rolled through her.

She heard the sliding door open. Without turning around, not caring who it was, she said, “Go away.” Her voice sounded thick.

“Are you okay?” It was Nate.

“Do I look okay?” She turned to face him, knowing she looked like hell and not caring one bit. Her nose was running, her face was wet and her eyes had to be red and swollen. Even her lips felt swollen. She swiped her palms down each cheek.

“Can I do anything?”

“No. Just go away. You and Derek go and have your beer and have fun.”

His mouth turned down, and although his eyes were hidden behind the dark glasses, she sensed his discomfort. “I’m all right,” she assured him, choking on the words. “Don’t worry. Just go.”

He hovered there a moment, then did as she asked, sliding the door closed behind him. She stood alone on the deck again. She rubbed her bare arms. She wanted to walk down to the water. She loved the ocean. It was vast and mysterious—even scary. Deep. Unfathomable. But beautiful and wild.

She descended the wooden stairs to the beach, picked her way across the rocks dotting the sand, shivering in the cooling evening air.

Did she have to decide? Did she have to choose between having Derek and having a child? How much did she want a child?

She ached for a child. More than one child, but she wouldn’t get greedy. She wanted a family. She wanted to be a mother, more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. Every nurturing, loving instinct in her ached to hold an infant in her arms, to know what it was like to have a baby feed from her breast, to guide and shape a little life into the best person he or she could be. It was the most important thing you could do.

She was never going to have a high-powered career. She’d changed jobs nine times in her life until she started this consulting business. She’d never quite found the right thing for her. And yeah, now she was doing well, but she just didn’t care that much. Well, she did care—she worked hard, did her best for her clients. Okay, she was even passionate about the issues she helped companies with. But that couldn’t compare to being a mother.

Oh, God. She sat down on a large flat rock, her favorite place to sit and stare out to sea. Wispy clouds hugged the horizon where ocean met sky, blurring the line. She bent her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs. The wind carried the briny scent of the ocean and the rhythmic whoosh of waves onto sand.

The tears had slowed, and she wiped one last one away, sniffled.

How much did she love Derek?

How bad was it that she even asked herself that question?

She closed her eyes, tipped her face up to the sky as if looking for divine guidance from above.

Perhaps the question should be, how much did Derek love her? If he wouldn’t even consider other ways for them to be parents, perhaps it was his love that was lacking.

Pain stabbed through her, physical, visceral.

She was never going to be a mother.

It was hard to talk in a place this loud. Nate wished they’d gone somewhere quieter because he was damn well going to find out what was going on with Derek and Krissa.