filing system that bordered on compulsively organized. As a rule she made it a point to visit rather than have people come to her, but scheduling-wise, having Raoul stop by had made the most sense.
Of course that had been before she’d found out she’d been left three very frozen potential children.
She crossed to the small refrigerator in the corner. “I have diet soda and water.” She glanced over her shoulder. “You’re not the diet type.”
One dark eyebrow rose. “Are you asking or telling?”
She smiled. “Am I wrong?”
“Water’s fine.”
“I knew it.”
She collected a bottle and a can, then returned to her desk. After handing him the bottle, she took a seat and stared at the yellow pad in front of her. There was writing on it, very possibly in English. She could sort of make out individual letters but not words and certainly not sentences.
They were supposed to have a meeting about something. That much was clear. She handled the city festivals in town. There were over a dozen civic events that she ran every year. But her mind didn’t go any further than that. When she tried to remember why Raoul was here, she went blank. Her brain was filled with other things.
Babies. Crystal had left her babies. Okay, embryos, but the implication was clear. Crystal wanted her children to be born. Which meant someone was going to have to get them implanted, grow them and later give birth. Although that was terrifying enough, there was also the further horror of raising them.
Children weren’t like cats. She knew that much. They would need more than dry food, a bowl of water and a clean litter box. A lot more.
“Oh, God, I can’t do this,” she whispered.
Raoul frowned. “I don’t understand. Do you want to reschedule the meeting?”
Meeting? Oh, right. He was here for something. His camp and he wanted her to…
Her mind went blank, again. Right after the merciful emptiness, there was panic. Deep to the bone, intestine-wrenching panic.
She stood and wrapped her arms around her midsection, breathing hard and fast.
“I can’t do this. It’s impossible. What was she thinking? She had to know better.”
“Pia?”
Her visitor rose. She turned to tell him that rescheduling was probably a good idea when the room began to spin. It turned and turned, darkening on the edges.
The next thing she knew, she was in her chair, bent over at the waist, her head between her knees with something pressing down on the back of her neck.
“This is uncomfortable,” she said.
“Keep breathing.”
“Easier said than done. Let go.”
“A couple more breaths.”
The pressure on the back of her neck lessened. Slowly, she straightened and blinked.
Raoul Moreno was crouched next to her, his dark eyes cloudy with concern. She took another breath and realized he smelled really good. Clean, but with a hint of something else.
“You all right?” he asked.
“What happened?”
“You started to faint.” Raoul met her gaze as her eyes widened, and, despite the bigger things crowding her thoughts, she couldn’t miss the zing of interest.
She blinked, and shook her head. “I don’t faint. I never faint. I—” Her memory returned. “Oh, crap.” She covered her face with her hands. “I’m so not ready to be a mother.”
Raoul moved with a speed that was a credit to his physical conditioning and nearly comical at the same time.
“Man trouble?” he asked cautiously from a safer few inches away.
“What?” She lowered her hands. “No. I’m not pregnant. That would require sex. Or not. Actually it wouldn’t, would it? This is so not happening.”
“Okay.” He sounded nervous. “Should I call a doctor?”
“No, but you can go if you want. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
Now it was her turn to raise her eyebrows. “Are you commenting on my appearance?”
He grinned. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“That sounded almost critical.”
“You know what I meant.”
She did. “I’m okay. I’ve had a bit of a shock. A friend of mine died recently. She was married to a guy in the army. Before he was shipped off to Iraq, they decided to do in vitro, just in case something happened to him. So she could have his kids.”
“Sad, but it makes sense.”
She nodded. “He was killed a couple of years ago. She took it really hard, but after a while, she decided she would have the babies. At least a part of him would live on, right?”
Pia rose and paced the length of the office. Moving seemed to help. She took a couple of cautious breaths, to make sure she was going to stay conscious. Fainting? Impossible. Yet the world really had started to blur.
She forced herself back to the topic at hand.
“She went to the doctor for a routine physical,” she continued. “They discovered she had lymphoma. And not the good kind.”
“There’s a good kind?”
She shrugged. “There’s a kind that can usually be cured. She didn’t have that one. And then she was gone. I have her cat. I thought I’d be keeping him. We have a relationship. Sort of. It’s hard to tell with a cat.”
“They keep to themselves.”
There was something about the way he spoke. She glared at him. “Are you making fun of me?”
“No.”
She saw the corner of his mouth twitch. “Don’t mess with me,” she told him. “Or I’ll talk about my feelings.”
“Anything but that.”
She returned to her desk and sank into the chair. “She didn’t leave me the cat. She left me the embryos. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what she was thinking. Babies. God—anyone but me. And I can’t ignore it. Them. That’s what the attorney hinted at. That I could let it go for a while because the ‘fees’ are paid for three years.” She looked at him. “I guess that’s the frozen part. Maybe I should go see them.”
“They’re embryos. What’s there to see?”
“I
