The Claiming (31 page)

And she’d realized that it was never too late as long as there was love, that it was worth whatever struggle it took to have it. “Why?” she asked at last.

He looked down at his hands. Jana saw that they trembled slightly. “I can’t let you go through that. I was … angry with you because you didn’t want to, but I was wrong. I can’t expect you to go through something like that.”

“Why?” Jana asked again, moving slowly toward him.

He didn’t look at her. “I couldn’t live with myself if anything … went wrong. If anything happened to you.”

Jana had reached him by then. She took his hands, lifting his arms away, then climbed onto his lap, settling his arms around her. He looked startled. She smiled faintly. “Why?”

“Because….”

“Because?” she prompted.

He glared at her. “I love you, damn it!”

Jana laughed. He looked affronted. “That’s what I thought,” she said with satisfaction, reaching up to caress his cheek.

“I fail to see anything humorous about … what I said,” he said tightly.

Jana shook her head, but smiled.

“Why are you smiling then?” he asked irritably.

“Because I just realized something.”

“What?”

She took his hand and placed it palm down on the swell of her belly. “I’m having your baby.”

He looked down at his hand, and then up at her face in consternation. “Jana … You’ve known that. We both have.”

Jana couldn’t help but chuckle. He was looking at her worriedly, as if he thought she’d loss her mind, but she sobered almost at once. “I just realized that you gave me the baby because you love me. That it’s part of being loved by you and that I should feel fortunate that I was born a woman and have the gift of being able to carry your baby.”

He looked more confused instead of less. “You’re not afraid now? After you saw that?”

“I’m not as afraid,” she corrected. “But it’s not altogether because I saw Val-risa having her baby. It’s because I realized how much I love you.”

He stared at her blankly a moment, but a smile began to tug at his lips. “You love me?”

She snuggled against him and sighed deeply. “Yes!”

The End