Chapter 1
I just wanted to let you know, since I’ve started working here, my soul has died. You might be able to bring it back to life if you’d let us sip a little whiskey between clients.
-Mia’s secret note to her boss
One month later
Mia
“Listen, Chuck, I’ll be there as soon as I can. I just have to run over to the fire station and drop something off. Once I’m done, I’ll be there. I’m not even late yet,” I said for the hundredth time. “Gotta go now, bye.”
I was a language specialist, as well as a nurse.
The only reason Chuck wanted me there half the time was to translate; and, although I was happy to do it when I was there, I wasn’t happy to do it when I wasn’t.
Especially when I didn’t have to be there for another forty-five minutes.
I looked at the fire station in front of me, stomach churning, at what I had no choice but to do.
What I had already done.
It’d been thirty kinds of illegal, and most likely, I would lose my job if anyone found out…but I just couldn’t not do it.
Not if it meant Colt’s life.
I looked over at Colt’s sleeping face in the picture that was pinned to the sun visor in my car, and I squared my shoulders in determination, preparing myself for what I was about to do.
I could do this.
For Colt.
For my beautiful eight-month-old baby that deserved to live a full life.
I got out of the car with a new purpose and determination in my step, and rounded the front bumper to where I kept Colt’s car seat.
Then cursed when I realized that Colt wasn’t with me.
Colt wouldn’t be with me for at least another week while they monitored him for complications after his first chemo treatment.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
I looked up to find a young woman around my age staring at me from where she was washing the ambulance.
“Umm,” I said. “Yes. I’m looking for Taima.”
Her brows rose.
“He’s in the back. Do you want to come with me, and I’ll take you to him?” She asked.
I nodded. “That would be great, thank you.”
The woman smiled, her blonde hair whipping around her face as the breeze from the cool October day blew.
“What’s your name?” The woman asked as I hurried to catch up to her.
“Mia. Amelia Sheridan,” I said.
The woman grinned.
“My name is Baylee Mackenzie. So, what do you want with Tai?” She asked, holding open a door.
“Umm,” I hesitated.
I couldn’t really tell her that I wanted Tai’s sperm, could I?
“I’m here to ask him something…a favor,” I settled on.
Baylee nodded.
“Tai’s right through here,” she said, pushing open one more door.
It led to a weight room, of all places, and Tai, whomever he was, wasn’t alone.
“Tai!” Baylee called.
A man across the room on a bench press machine looked up.
He had quite a bit of weight on the bar he was bench pressing, and I bit my lip as he pushed it back up and racked it once again.
“Yeah?” He asked, his eyes flicking to me.
“You got a visitor,” Baylee said before leaving me behind with a room full of men staring at me in surprise.
“What’cha need, sweetheart?” One man asked from a treadmill. “I can give you anything you need. Tai, there, is a commitment-phobe. He’d do nothing for you.”
Tai snorted as he stood, and I got my first good look at his body.
He was tall, much taller than my five foot three inches.
I would guess he was closer to six foot two, at the least.
He had wild, messy hair. It probably was styled when he’d begun working out, but now it was a spiky, sweaty mess. It was black with a smattering of gray at the edges near his ears and a lone streak down the middle of his head that was pure white.
His eyes were a translucent green that were nearly hypnotic. His muscles were not overly large, but defined and honed to precision. And I had an irrational urge to run my hands over his chest to see if it was as hard as it looked.
The man that’d offered himself to me earlier, when Baylee had left stepped up to my side, was smiling at me.
“What’s your name, darlin’?” He asked.
I turned more fully to the man as I watched Tai get up and start walking towards me.
“Mia,” I said. “And you, sir?”
The man grinned.
“My mama named me PD, but you can call me honey…or sweetie. Whichever you prefer,” he offered.
I snorted.
“That’s lovely,” I said, smiling for the first time in at least a week. “But I came here to see Taima.”
Taima, or Tai as Baylee had called him, finally reached my side.
“What can I do for you?” He asked.
No bullshitting for him.
He was all business.
“I was hoping I could talk to you…privately,” I said, glancing around at the full room.
He nodded and walked out the door, and I noticed his grey shirt was nearly completely covered with sweat on his back.
He led me out the main door once again, until we came to a stop next to the huge, red fire truck.
He looked around the bay to make sure we were completely alone, then offered me a seat on the big chrome bumper of the fire truck.
I took it, glancing around nervously.
“I have a son. His name is Colt. He's sick. He has leukemia. He had his first chemotherapy treatment two days ago. He needs stem cells for a transplant. Our first option is to hope he finds a donor. As a backup I was going to have a child just in case they needed to harvest the stem cells from his cord blood,” I blurted. “But the match has to be perfect. You were a perfect match. But then you withdrew your specimen…and now, well, I’m here to beg you to rethink it.”
He frowned and took a seat on the massive bumper on the front of the fire truck.
“What was so special about me?” He asked.
“Your blood type. Your health status. Your heritage. You were the closest I could come to actually getting his biological father, which is something I can no longer do since he’s already refused,” I told him bluntly. “And I have to have the best possible match, because I need this to work. I need this…for Colt. Just in case the bone marrow transplant doesn’t work or another donor isn’t found.”
“How much time does he have?” Tai asked.
I looked down at my hands that were fisted between my knees.
“I don’t know. It’s very advanced,” I said, looking up at him. “He started chemotherapy two days ago. Right now they’re watching to see how he responds to it. Then, once they get those results, which we should have in about two weeks or so, we can move on from there. However, the doctor is fairly positive that he’s going to need the stem cell transplant due to the advanced stage of the disease.”
Tai look tortured.
“What if I tested my bone marrow? What if we held a rally, and we got a lot of people to get tested?” He offered hopefully. “What if we do that, first, and then we go from there?”
I thought about that for a moment.
What if?
Could that work?
Could that possibly help Colt?
The longer I thought about it, the more I realized that it really was a good idea.
If a match was found faster, then the transplant could be done sooner and then that would be better for Colt, right?
And we could always explore the stem cell option later, if it was needed.
Which it might not be.
Right?
“Okay,” I said once I’d thought his suggestion through. “We can try that. Can I…will you take my number? Maybe give me a call, and I can tell you where to go and what to do?”
He nodded.
“I can do that. I’ll give you mine, too,” he said, fishing his phone out of his pocket and handing it over to me. “Put your digits in there and call yourself so you’ll have my number.”
I did as he asked and quickly typed in the numbers.
My phone didn’t ring because it was on vibrate, but I heard it buzzing from the bottom of my purse.
When I handed it back, he looked at me for a long moment.
“We do visits at the hospital…does Colt like firefighters? I’m sure I can convince the boys to make a run by there later on,” he offered.
I smiled.
“I think he’ll like that,” I said softly. “Right now he’s in the children’s wing at Good Shepherd Medical Center in Longview. But you’ll have to do it soon, because by this time next week, he won’t be able to have any visitors, except me and my mother, due to his compromised immune system.”
Tai frowned.
“How does Friday work for you?”