Moonlight Road (Virgin River #11)(75)

Jack chuckled. Newborns had a tendency to be very quiet, just eat and sleep the first few days, and then bam! They let you know they’re a member of the family, with needs.

“When I was delivering the baby I had a thought. I wondered if our surrogate would be open to the idea of me delivering our baby.”

Jack’s chin dropped. He put down his fork.

“Okay, that was pretty obvious,” Mel said to him. “What’s your problem?”

He lifted his gaze. “My first problem is that I don’t want to spoil the only dinner we’ve had together in almost a week….”

“And your second problem?”

“I don’t want to do the surrogate thing.” There. He’d said it. Not exactly as he was committed to saying it—that it was off the table. He hadn’t said he refused. God, he hoped she’d hear him this time.

But she slowly and carefully cut off a slice of meat—Preacher’s outstanding pork roast in dark gravy—and lifted it in a leisurely fashion to her mouth. She chewed. She swallowed. “I understand that some men have a real resistance to the process, which is why I wanted you to discuss it with John Stone. He’s familiar and comfortable with the whole thing. It’s pretty routine.”

“Not for me,” he said. “I don’t want to.”

“For God’s sake, Jack. Just have a conversation with John about—”

“I did,” he said. “I had a long talk with John. I told him how I was feeling about it and he wasn’t much help. Except to say that I needed to be a little more direct with you and give you the bottom line—I’m not doing it. I don’t want a woman I don’t know having a baby for us. Not under our circumstances.”

Her expression was at first shocked, but then it melted into some kind of softness, like understanding. “Believe me, by the time the baby is ready to arrive, we’ll know her very well.”

He shook his head. “Listen, will you listen? I’m almost insanely happy that we accidentally had these two kids…you and the kids are my world. My whole world. Before you came into my life I had accepted that I wouldn’t have kids. I didn’t like that I had to accept being alone my whole life, but I had accepted it. Then you came along and rocked my world. If you’d come to me infertile and told me it meant everything to you to have one of our own—our DNA that will pee on a tree in the middle of a public picnic—I’d do this thing. Mel, I would if it were the only way.”

“Don’t look now, Jack. It is the only way.”

“The only way to have a third child. But we already have a couple of kids. I’m satisfied with that.”

“And I’m not!” she said sharply.

“Why not?” he asked. “Is it because your uterus was stolen during an emergency? We never talked about a lot of kids. The first one scared you to death and you complained about getting caught with the second one.”

“Pregnant emotions,” she said, waving him off, looking away.

“We never talked much about the hysterectomy, either. I don’t know,” he said. “I think we’re dealing with something else here and you’re not coming clean with me, which is totally unlike you, Melinda. You’re so goddamn honest with me it stings sometimes. But not about this. You’re trying to push me into something I don’t want. And I don’t think you want a baby that bad. I think you want a uterus again.”

She stared at him in utter disbelief. “That’s perfectly ridiculous,” she said. “If I had needed to talk about that, I would have.”

“But we had a new baby, we had a forest fire, Doc died, we had Rick in Iraq and then home trying to adjust to a disability. Hardly small distractions. This is the first quiet spell we’ve had in a couple of years, Mel. If you need to talk about this now—”

She slammed her fork down on the table. “Are you out of your mind? Haven’t you been listening?”

“No, I am not out of my mind and yes, I have heard every word. Mel. Having a third party have a baby for us is going to be painful, difficult, expensive and full of potential problems. I get that in some circumstances it’s well worth it. We don’t have those circumstances.”

“I do! I do have those circumstances!”

He fixed his gaze on hers. Damn, she was some fireball. She was a fighter and when her mind was made up there was almost nothing that could pull her off the target. He just looked at her until he sensed she had simmered down a little bit. “Baby, something else is going on here. Talk to me about it. Please.”

“I did talk to you! And I expected you to keep an open mind and research it a little bit! Jesus,” she said, standing from the table. “When do I ask anything of you?”

She walked away from their dining room table and to her back he said, “Every day. Every night.”

She turned back and stared at him.

“We do this together, Mel. It’s not that easy sometimes. I keep the kids while you see patients, while you go out on calls. I cook and take them on errands and tend bar and do inventory with kids in backpacks and playpens. You take the kids to work with you and manage the house while I work early and late at the bar. We both have real long days and nights. We manage, but it’s not easy. I do as much as you do and you’re still tired.”