Prescription for Romance / Love and the Single Dad

“And?” Ramona prodded.

The woman actually looked interested, Paul mused. “She delivered just before midnight.”

Her eyes held his. “Everything went all right?” she wanted to know.

He laughed shortly. “Other than the fact that the babies arrived six weeks prematurely and that Marc McGee fainted at the first sign of blood, everything went just fine.”

“Babies?” she echoed. One of the allegations making the rounds against the Armstrong Fertility Institute was that there were entirely too many embryos being implanted at one time, resulting in multiple births. “How many babies?”

Was that interest, or suspicion, he heard in her voice? He wasn’t sure. “She had twins. Two boys. I think she was hoping for one of each, but the last few hours, she was just hoping they’d be alive and well—and out of her.”

Her mouth curved warmly. “So you delivered them and then came in here to catnap?”

Paul shrugged dismissively. “Something like that.”

He still looked tired, Ramona thought. She wasn’t going to ingratiate herself to him if he felt that he had to drag her around when he was half-asleep.

“Look, if you’d like to postpone my orientation and go home to catch up on your sleep, I understand completely. We can do this tomorrow,” she told him cheerfully.

Paul rotated his shoulders, trying to get the kink out. The sofa had definitely not been constructed with napping in mind. Still, though she’d given him an out, he didn’t want to postpone the tour. He’d already postponed it once when he shifted it from yesterday to today.

“Tomorrow,” he told her, “has a habit of never coming.”

Tongue in cheek, she pretended to take this as a revelation. “You know something that the newscasters don’t?”

He wasn’t sure if she was kidding or not. “I just meant that life has a habit of interfering with things. If we postpone this now, who knows what might come up tomorrow? For all I know, there might be a bigger fire to deal with.” He stretched, feeling several muscles line up in protest as he did so. “Just give me a couple of minutes to pull myself together.”

She was more than willing to be cooperative. “No problem. I can wait in my office if you like. And, better still,” she volunteered, “I can get you a cup of coffee.”

The offer out of left field surprised him. “I thought that women didn’t do that anymore, get coffee for their boss.”

Were her eyes smiling or laughing when she looked at him? He couldn’t tell. “Women don’t like being told to get coffee. Volunteering to do it is a whole different story.” She leaned in closer to him for a moment. Close enough for him to get a heady whiff of her perfume. Something remote stirred for a second, then faded. “And in case you didn’t notice, I was volunteering. You take it black, don’t you?”

“Is that a guess,” he wanted to know, “or are you clairvoyant, too?”

“Just a guess,” she assured him cheerfully. “The percentages were in my favor,” she confided. “You don’t strike me as the latte type, or even the cream-and-sugar type.”

“I strike you as the black-coffee type,” he said and she couldn’t tell if she’d affronted him, or if he was just trying to figure out what that actually meant. He seemed to be the kind of person who needed to have everything in black and white. He was, she silently promised him, in for a surprise. But for the time being, she’d play things his way.

Ramona nodded. “Basic. Good, rich, no frills.”

He realized that for a second, his breath had backed up into his lungs. That did it, no more sleeping on the office sofa.

“Are you describing the coffee or me?” He didn’t realize until he heard the words that he had said them out loud.

She smiled in response and for a second, he didn’t think she was going to answer. But then she grinned impishly and said, “Both,” just before she left the office.

Paul sat there for a long moment, staring at the closed door. He needed to get his day going, he reminded himself, not try to figure out the puzzles that hid behind Ramona’s sparkling eyes and long, shapely legs.

Crossing to the door, he locked it and then went to change into the spare suit he kept on hand.

A shower would have been nice, as well, but that was a luxury he couldn’t afford right now. He had a full schedule today, which was why he’d suggested doing the orientation so early. These days, he thought as he swiftly changed clothes, he always felt as if he was half a league behind in his life.

Someday, he promised himself, he was going to catch up.

Ramona was just looking at her watch for a second time, wondering if Paul Armstrong had decided to postpone her orientation tour after all when she heard the light rap on her door.

Rather than bidding him to come in, she opened the door, thinking that was the friendlier path to take. She was trying everything in her power to build a bond between them. If she was going to get anywhere, she knew she needed to erase that suspicious glint that came into his eyes whenever he looked at her.

Her immediate goal was to put him at ease and get him to trust her. If she could accomplish that, everything else would fall into place, both her primary reason for being here and the one she’d given her editor, Walter Jessup, so that she’d have his blessing and backing to be here.

“Hi,” she greeted Armstrong brightly as she opened the door. “I thought maybe you’d changed your mind or forgotten about me.”

“Not much chance of that,” he said, commenting on the last phrase.

Paul sincerely doubted that anyone could forget about Ramona Tate once they met her. She wasn’t the kind of woman who, left unseen, would just fade into some nether field. She had the kind of face that lingered on a man’s mind long after she’d walked away. Long after.

Closing the door again, Ramona produced a tall container of coffee, strong and hot, and held it out to him.

“Coffee, as promised,” she said.

It smelled rich and delicious. He was willing to bet any amount of money that this coffee had definitely not emerged out of any of the vending machines located on the first floor. Or any of the other institute floors for that matter.

Tempted, he took a sip and savored the outstanding brew for a moment. “Where did you get this?”

Ramona gestured toward the machine. “I brought my own coffeemaker to work.” The machine, which first ground whole beans and then brewed the results, was sitting on a file cabinet that, when the last occupant worked out of this office, had housed countless piles of books and papers. “This way, I don’t have to drop everything to go find Starbucks.”

That sounded incredibly dedicated.

“I’m sure that when he hired you, my brother didn’t intend for you to be chained to your desk for hours at a time.”

Ramona didn’t respond to his statement. Instead, she seemed to be watching him intently as he paused to take another sip.

“So,” she asked, her voice a tad lower and more melodic, “is it the way you like it?”

Jarred, Paul blinked and stared at her. He must have heard wrong. “Excuse me?”

“The coffee.” She nodded at the container he held in his hand. “Is it the way you like it?”

“Oh.” For a minute, he thought she was asking him if he—

Unconsciously shaking his head, Paul banished the thought that had popped unwittingly into his head.

“You didn’t like it?” Ramona asked, trying to make sense out of the way he was reacting.

She looked disappointed. Was she that sensitive? Or was this all an act for some reason he couldn’t quite fathom yet?

“No. I mean yes, I did. And no, that wasn’t why I was shaking my head.” It felt as if his thoughts were all scrambled and it was only partially due to his waking up so abruptly. “I’m just trying to get the last of the cobwebs out of my brain.”

She smiled and indicated the container with her eyes. “If you finish the coffee, I think the cobwebs will self-destruct on their own. Oh.” She said the words as if she suddenly remembered something. Before he could ask if she had, she answered his question. “I brought pastries.” She flashed a grin and a little ray of sunshine entered the room. It was becoming a given. “In case you wanted something sweet to go along with your coffee.”

The sweet thing that he found himself wanting to go along with his coffee hadn’t come from any oven, but because he was hungry, he forced his thoughts to zero in on the practical.

Ramona was taking the box she’d brought out of the double drawer where she’d put it. Placing it on her desk, she took off the lid and pushed the box closer toward Paul. He took one small muffin and sat down in the chair facing her desk.

She took a seat, as well. “I’m guessing this sort of thing happens to you on a regular basis. Spending the night here,” she added when Armstrong looked at her quizzically.

She was right, but he had no idea where she’d gotten her conclusion from. He doubted that very many people here took note of the fact that sometimes his hours threaded themselves well into the night if the situation called for it.

“What makes you say that?” he wanted to know.

“Your clothes. You changed,” she pointed out when he looked down at what he was wearing. “You keep a change of clothing in your office or locker or whatever. That means you’ve slept in your office.”

He saw no harm in admitting to her that she’d deduced correctly. “It’s happened a few times,” he acknowledged.

Armstrong seemed almost modest. She prided herself on being able to spot a phony. Could he actually be the genuine article?

“You must be very dedicated,” she observed with what she felt was just the right touch of awe.

He didn’t know if he’d call it dedicated. He did feel a sense of responsibility toward the people who came to his father’s institute.

“The people who come here looking for help are desperate,” he told her without any fanfare. “We’re their last hope. You tend to feel responsible for them as well as to them. If I’m only available to them on a strict schedule or when it’s convenient for me, then I have no business working in medicine. Punching a time clock is for people who work on an assembly line. I’m in a different line of work,” he concluded quietly.

She studied him for a moment. “You do extraordinary things here, Paul. You help people conceive babies. Some would say that’s God’s line of work.” She smiled warmly, keeping her tone nonjudgmental. “I guess what I’m wondering is if you sometimes feel, well, godlike.” Her eyes raised to his and pressed innocently. “Well, do you?”

The whole idea was completely absurd.

“Never once,” he informed her firmly. Finishing the pastry, he wiped his fingers on the napkin she’d supplied and finished the last of his coffee, dusted off a crumb from his jacket and then looked at her. “Are you ready to take that tour of the institute now?”

She was on her feet immediately, closing the lid on the pastry box and abandoning her own coffee. She raised her face to his and told him, “I was born ready.”

Paul had no idea why he felt she wasn’t really referring to the tour, but was, instead, putting him on some kind of notice.

But he did.

A warmth, joining forces with anticipation, washed over him. He banked it down, but his pulse continued marking time at a heightened beat that only seemed to increase the closer he walked beside Ramona.

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