Frozen Holidays 1& 2 Eudorus and Zelus (3 page)

She pulled away her tears under control.
Danny was done eating and he went to get a coloring book and a big
box of crayons. Ros started to clear the table. “Oh, no you don’t.
You cooked, I’ll do the dishes.”

“How about I help so we can play a game with
Danny when we’re done?”

“I want to play a game, Mama!” Danny said
right away.

Jen shot Ros a look of disapproval but he had
won the right to help with the dishes. He was learning how to get
around her a little at a time and Danny was a great partner to do
it with. She was a little irritated at him but by the time they
were done and they sat down to play
Go Fish,
she was over
it. Ros lost and Jen won, but Danny didn’t seem to mind.

“Mama and me take turns winning. Don’t worry
Ros, you’ll get better,” Danny said comfortingly as he patted Ros’s
arm. Ros didn’t mind losing, it wasn’t like he had ever played that
game before. He was enjoying himself, win or lose.

Jen suggested they go to the park so Danny
could have fun on the playground. He and Jen took turns pushing him
on the swing and catching him at the bottom of the slide. He
carried a tired Danny home and wondered if Jen usually had to carry
him like that. She was too little and too pregnant to be doing
that. She might hurt herself. He needed to find out more about what
was going on at Jen’s office so he could finish this mission and
talk her into going to Olympus with him.

The more time he spent with her, the more
they bonded. He already knew there was no way he could leave her
behind. He carried Danny in and laid him on the bed. He took off
his shoes and socks so he’d be comfortable and wouldn’t get the bed
dirty. He wanted to tuck Jen into bed too or maybe just go to bed
with her. The desire for her as a female was there too and her
condition didn’t dampen it any. He knew it was too soon, so he
would wait, but he wouldn’t like it. She walked him to the door and
he stole a kiss. She looked shocked but didn’t protest.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he whispered. She
just nodded, that was good enough for him.

Chapter 3

New Beginnings

Raker liked the set up at New Beginnings. He
had planned out everything himself and that made it safer and more
productive than it had been at Origins. He knew what he was doing
so even with less money than they had ever had before, he was
making things work. He had a few naïve females like that one, …oh
yeah, her name was Jen or something like that. She worked for
peanuts and actually did a good job. She was doing more of a job
than she knew by carrying their latest baby god. Raker had knocked
her out with a simple poke. The drug had been fast acting and the
procedure went without a hitch. Now the baby she carried was
growing at a rapid rate.

When she was ready to give birth, the baby
would be theirs. They would simply tell her it had died at birth
and she would never know otherwise. He had up to four breeders at
each facility thankful for the prenatal and birth benefits their
jobs gave them. He was thankful for gullible women. By letting them
work for him but taking care of themselves, he was getting free
brood mares. He chuckled gleefully to himself. He really was a
criminal mastermind even if he went largely unappreciated. That was
another stroke of genius, they all thought he was just a doctor but
he actually ran the whole company through his personal
assistant.

Dorito or whatever her name was, she was set
up to take the fall if they were ever caught. Poor stupid girl was
so grateful that he let her work from home so she could stay with
her terminal mother. It saved her having someone stay with her
mother and as long as she did everything he needed, he didn’t care
where the bitch was anyway. Even he had to admit she was the best
personal assistant he had ever had. She worked around the clock,
holidays, weekends, whatever it took so she could work from home.
He took advantage of her and she was so grateful.

The average person was a fool and just there
for people like him to manipulate and use. She was probably some
cross-eyed, bucktoothed, fat girl with a wart on the end of her
nose. He’d never met her and had no need to as long as she did what
she was told and kept his operation going. The dishonest and
illegal stuff, he did himself over the phone or personally. It was
a good thing most of the business was legitimate or wrapped in a
pretty bow as a charity that no one would look at twice. As if he
would ever do charity. The world was there to serve him, not the
other way around.

Dorita, or Dori, as she was called by family
and friends, sat at her mom’s bedside wondering for the hundredth
time if today would be the last one. Her mother’s sweet face was
wracked with pain and her breath rattled in her chest. She felt
guilty, eaten up with guilt even, for wishing her mom would find
peace. First it had been cancer that had taken its toll on her
normally strong mother, now it was the infections that the cancer
and the treatment had loosed on her. With all her power used up in
the fight against the cancer, the other things were eating her up
alive. Now pneumonia was ravaging her and the doctor held out
little hope. Dr. Marcose had said that a swift end would be a
mercy. He said many people didn’t live to be seventy-five.

Dori was only twenty three, a late in life
gift to her parents. They had given up on ever having a child, but
her mother had always claimed to be grateful she had come along.
Her dad had died four years ago. He’d been eighty one and ten years
older than her mom. She suspected her mom wanted nothing more than
to join him and only hung on because Dori wouldn’t let her go. It
was because she couldn’t let her go. Without her mom, she would be
completely alone in life. She had no relatives, at least none that
she knew of, and since she had been her mother’s caretaker since
she’d gotten her associate degree in business, she had no
friends.

It had been three years where her mother had
gone downhill, rebounded slightly, then continued downhill. Her mom
looked old and tired. The will to go on had long since left but she
knew Dori needed her and she just waited for a sign that she could
move on. Dori just couldn’t give her the permission she sought. She
wanted to, but the thought of being alone in life was
terrifying.

The life they had might not seem like much
but they did the best they could. Her boss, Raker, must be bipolar,
Dori was sure of it. He was hateful, critical, demanding, and self
serving to an extreme. A terrible person, or so it seemed but then
he would give employees prenatal care and delivery. He allowed one
of the secretaries to keep her child with her at work when he
wasn’t in school and he allowed Dori to work from home so she could
take care of her mom. The man was full of contrasts and surprises.
Dori shivered as she thought of what must be going on in that man’s
mind.

She made a call to try to get Jen Jones some
of the benefits she was entitled to as a widow. Raker had called
her concerned that Jen might lose her baby due to lack of
nourishment. Those people at the veteran’s benefits could be hard
to deal with. Maybe it came from dealing with nothing but people
who were enduring loss and change in their lives. Thankfully, she
got a good one this time and Jen would now have someone looking out
for her. Dori couldn’t imagine being a widow with a small child and
a baby on the way. Maybe sometimes it was better to be alone. She
wondered how things were going for Jen and her boy right now.

Jen held Danny in a tight hug even as he
wriggled trying to get loose. It made no sense but when Ros had
left, she had felt so alone. She hardly knew him but she had grown
close to him at an alarming rate and she noticed Danny had as well.
Ros was likeable, friendly, sweet, gorgeous-oh, no, where had that
come from? He was the kind of person that would make a great best
friend. Or a lover, what! Oh, no, where the hell had these naughty
thoughts come from?

Best not to think, because every time she
did, she thought of his lips, his broad chest, and his big
bulge-shit, that was something else not to think about! Today was
when she and Danny spent time together. They usually cooked some
things from scratch like cupcakes. As soon as he woke up from his
nap, she pulled him into the kitchen. They would cook and have fun
so hopefully her lips would stop tingling from that innocent kiss
that Ros had given her as he left.

She woke up completely as the alarm went off,
perfect timing. Maybe today would be a good day. She woke up Danny
and sent him to the bathroom to get ready. She went to the kitchen
where she heated up some leftovers from yesterday’s big breakfast.
Ros had brought so much food but he’d refused to take any back with
him. He had said keep it or throw it out. There was no choice
there, she would use it to feed them for a week. It still didn’t
stop her from feeling guilty but she had to admit that dizzy spells
had eased now that she was eating regularly and Danny’s tummy
didn’t rumble any more. It was a relief not to choose between
feeding Danny or eating herself because of the baby.

Once they were ready and she got Danny on the
bus, she would go right by Ros on her way to work. She was both
nervous and excited about seeing him. She went passed the corner
Ros usually hung out at, but another guy was standing there in the
big red suit. Had he left them? Well, not them, but the job? She
nearly cried to think he’d left without saying goodbye. Especially
to Danny, he’d gotten attached to Ros in the last few days. It
wouldn’t matter to her except she wanted to thank him. That was
all. She went on to work but the light had gone out of her day.

She was still friendly and efficient, but she
didn’t have the same enthusiasm she usually projected to the
patients she dealt with. “What’s wrong, Jen?” Mrs. Newman asked.
She was one of the older patients giving it one last shot to become
pregnant. “You seem rather down.”

“I’m fine, just a little tired,” she said
with a well faked smile.

“If you say so, Dear,” she replied but she
didn’t look convinced.

Mrs. Newman wasn’t the only one to ask her or
to look at her thoughtfully. It seemed she wore her emotions where
they were easy to see. She’d only known the man a few days, how had
he become so important to her? She left at lunch time like she
always did and went to get Danny. When she walked by, no one was at
the corner Ros usually stood at. She walked to the bus stop and
waited for Danny. His bus was running late and she wouldn’t have
time to go home to get a bite of lunch. Good thing she had had a
bigger than usual breakfast. She walked by the corner and her heart
stood still. Ros was there and he turned seeing her. A charming
smile came to his lips. Those were the lips that had brushed
against hers causing all her confusion.

“Jen, Danny. How are you two today?” Ros
looked at her waiting for her to respond.

She blushed when she thought of how she had
reacted when she thought he had left her. She was happy he was
back, but maybe too happy. She needed to remember he was hers, no
wasn’
t hers and never would be.

“Ros!” Danny screamed as he ran and threw
himself into Ros’s waiting arms.

Jen realized she wanted to be there too. She
had to fight her need to be hugged in his big arms. She stepped
forward but managed to stop herself. It would be so easy to forget
her responsibilities and just throw herself at Ros. He would reject
her, of course. She was sure he would do it in a nice way. What did
a young man with his whole life ahead of him want with a woman with
a child and one on the way. It would be different if either child
was his, but they weren’t. Their father was dead and resting in
peace in a military grave. She was all they had and she would try
to be strong for them.

“We’re just fine,” she answered when she
realized he had been watching her. He set Danny down and came over
to her.

“I think someone needs a hug from Santa,
today,” he whispered as he pulled her in against him.

“No, I’m…,” she stopped talking as his scent
wrapped around her and the heat from his body started to seep into
her. She looked up at him, her eyes glazed and her mind confused.
She just watched as his lips came closer and closer until they
landed on hers. She was frozen like a deer caught in headlights and
worse, she didn’t really want to move away.

His lips were warm and tempting as they
lightly brushed against hers. He came back to nibble playfully on
her lower lip making her gasp at the pleasurable feeling. Sex with
her husband had always been good, but it had been more comfortable
than explosive. She was unprepared for the feelings that Ros was
evoking in her. She felt guilty to feel so needy and to want Ros in
such a carnal way, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Ros’s tongue
slipped into her mouth and he stroked her tongue. He tempted her
tongue into his mouth where he sucked it in and she felt a rush of
desire shoot straight through her. It took a moment for her to
realize someone was tugging on her coat.
Oh, my God it was
Danny
. What was he thinking?

“Mama, I’m down here,” he said as he looked
up at her. She looked at him and blinked trying to make sense of it
all. “Why were you kissing?”

Ros answered saving her because nothing came
to mind. “Your mama was thanking me for cooking yesterday,” he said
with a smile proud of his answer. The little boy seemed to accept
this.

“We’d better go, I have to get to work and
I’m running late.” Jen’s face was still flushed a pretty pink from
embarrassment or passion. It was hard to say which.

“Will I see you later?” Ros asked
hopefully.

“We’ll pass right by here when I’m through
with work,” she said but she didn’t indicate whether that made her
happy or not.