Dear God, I’ve broken a virgin. I might have impregnated her into the bargain.
She held him inescapably, her arms and legs woven around him, as they slowly regained their breath and their senses. He remained lodged deep in her body. He did not attempt to breach the embrace.
“Why?” he breathed at last.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“But how?”
“How not?” she replied.
“Kate—”
“Time enough in the morning, Allan.”
With a twist of her hips, she rolled him onto his back and settled herself upon him. Arms around one another, still locked tightly together, they slept.
* * *
As usual, she was up before him, but this time he found her in the kitchen, coffee made and mugs steaming at their respective places. She looked up as he entered and smiled.
It was the radiant smile of the morning before, when she’d shown him the first visible sign of the life she’d nurtured, but it was more. It compounded discovery, triumph, love, and peace into a single visible expression of joy. He could hardly believe he was its object.
He sat at his place and stretched out his hands. She took them in hers.
“What now?” he murmured.
She shrugged. “Breakfast, a quick shower, then I guess I’ll weed and water.”
“Come on!”
She leered. “Got something else in mind?”
“Kate!”
“From where I’m sitting, everything’s great, Allan. What’s got you so wound up?”
“I might have impregnated you last night!”
“You think I’m not aware of that? Farm girl, remember? Oh, excuse me, farm woman. I know what semen is for, Allan. I’ve inseminated cows.” She looked off briefly. “Now that’s really grotty. The bull semen comes in this turkey baster thing. You have to wear these long lubricated gloves, because one hand goes all the way up the cow’s—”
“Kate!”
She giggled little-girl naughtily.
He was unable to speak, barely able to form a coherent thought. She grinned and chafed his hands.
“God gave women wombs for the same reason He gave us the land: to grow something. To make life. I want your baby inside me. If I didn’t catch last night, maybe I’ll get lucky tonight. Or tomorrow, or the next night. Think you’re up to the job?”
Her expression turned serious, and she leaned forward. “Or is it that you don’t want a baby?”
“Kate,” he faltered, “the only thing I want more than a child of my own is you to love and raise it with. I just can’t quite believe it’s all coming true. Why?”
She scowled. “Told you last night. I love you.”
“I guess,” he said slowly, “that’s the part I still don’t get. How am I...how did I earn that?”
Her smile returned. “By being who you are. By opening your home to me, giving me everything you have, and telling me it’s mine to use as I please. By looking after me and treating me like your beloved long before you even knew what I’m good for.” Her brow wrinkled. “What I don’t get is my good luck. Why hasn’t some other woman snapped you up?”
“At my age?”
“Seems like you’re doing okay to me. You’re a classic. You haven’t rusted or weathered. You’re still state of the art. They don’t make ’em like you any more. Like Nellie. How old are you, fifty or so?”
“Fifty-two. Kate, that’s another thing. You’re what, twenty-two or twenty-three?”
“Twenty-three in October.” She grinned. “Lots of farm kids are born in October.”
“Uh, yeah. So I’ve got thirty years on you. Just how long do you think I’m going to last? You could be alone again before you hit fifty.”
She peered at him in disbelief. “I’m supposed to toss away the man I love because I can’t have the whole of his adult life for my own? Okay, so I got here late. My bad. But what you have left is priceless, and I want to share it with you, and with your children born from my body. If you’ll let me.”
He fell silent.
Presently she squeezed his hands, rose and went to peer out the window at the field she’d labored over.
“I can’t abide waste, Allan. Farm people are like that.” She gestured at her tillings. “When you first showed me that field, and all the stuff in your barn, I knew I had to make use of it. You could have tried to send me down the road, but I think I’d have fought you even that very first day. And after you showed me yourself, I wasn’t about to let you go to waste either.”
He shook his head. “So what have you been doing these past six weeks? Working up the nerve?”