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“Are you worried I’ll fall out of bed?” he teased.

“I’m sorry.” She snatched her hand back.

“I was joking.” But she was an orphan with so few roots, she had been talked into marrying a stranger by a friend, to ensure care for her elderly foster mother. She was literally reaching out for connection.

“Do you want children?” he asked, turning his head on the pillow, barely able to see her outline beside him, still curled on her side to face him.

The silence that answered him made him think she had fallen asleep as quickly as a stone sank in a pond.

“I do,” she finally said, wistful tone floating across the empty space between them. “One of our neighbors has four grown children who all moved away, but they often bring their children to visit. I’ve always wanted that—a life in some exciting place like Athens or London, then a place to come home to. A grandmother for my children. But I call her Yaya because she was sixty when she took me in. Even if I had a baby now, she barely remembers me. She wouldn’t even know…”

Her sigh was heavy and shaken. She rolled onto her back, speaking to the ceiling as she continued.

“I used to think about letting myself get pregnant by some rando, but it was already hard to run the pension and take care of her. I couldn’t see bringing a baby into the mix. How would I support all of us? How would I care for the baby after she was gone, when I didn’t even own the place?”

“A rando?” he repeated with a spike of jealousy. “Really?”

“Well, I’d rather be in love with my child’s father, obviously, but expecting my soul mate to show up in our village felt even more impossible than making a baby with a horny tourist so…”

“Do you really believe in those?”

“Horny tourists? They’re hard to miss.”

“Soul mates.” He smirked at her joke, though.

“No,” she dismissed, then added more thoughtfully, “It’s too much to expect of one person, for them to be all things for someone else. I like to believe there’s someone out there who could love me despite all the messy bits, though. I think I just want to know I’m…” She swallowed. “Accepted as I am.”

Because she felt rejected.

“Babies love you no matter what, but I don’t think it’s fair to put it on a baby to complete me, either,” she mused softly. “I like the idea of being a mother, though. Of having a link to someone that lasts the rest of my life. Of watching someone grow up and being there for them through thick and thin, the way Yaya might have been for me if… Maybe I’m just a codependent person,” she said wryly. “I’ll go to sleep now.”

She rolled away.

Don’t say it, he told himself.

That sadness in her, though. The yearning. It got to him in a way that it shouldn’t. He saw a way to give her something she wanted, something that might actually mend the fractures in her heart. There were advantages for him, too. He wasn’t being completely magnanimous.

“I’ll do it.” He rolled toward her, aware that the words coming out of his mouth were more than a commitment to a life partner. It was a split in the road, one that would take his life in a new, maybe even dangerous direction. “I’ll make a baby with you.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Alia’s heart nearly came out her mouth. She spun to stare at him through the dark.

“Now?”

He choked out a laugh. “Anytime between now and whenever we decide this marriage has run its course.”

“So…” She tried to take in what he was saying, half believing she had fallen asleep and was dreaming this. “You’re saying we would stay married until we have a baby and then…divorce?” Her heart was thudding so loudly she could hardly hear him. “How does that make sense?”

“We don’t have to divorce. We could see how things go. Perhaps we’ll stay married, but many divorced couples raise children together. I’m sure we could do it with civility and our child’s best interest at heart.”

“Are you being serious right now?” She couldn’t fathom that he was. “Because it’s really mean to tease me about something like this.”

“I’m not teasing you. I’m seeing the advantage in having an heir and I don’t see a reason to wait. People already presume you’re pregnant.”

“That is the stupidest reason to get pregnant that I’ve ever heard.” She turned her back on him.

“I’m only saying that’s why sooner than later is good timing. You don’t have to decide right this second. Consider it, though.”