I don't own this .
Chapter One
April 11, San Francisco, California
With an anxious glance at the clock on her dashboard, Kurenai Yuuhi pulled into the San Francisco airport short-term parking garage. She was more thsn an hour late, her margin for safety eaten up by a flat tire and the bumbling Good Samaritan who had stopped to "help" her.
As if she couldn't change her own tire.
The first empty parking spot she found was four flights up and towards the back. She was out of the car in a flash, hair, jeans and leather flight jacket damp from her adventure beside the freeway. Straightening the white wool scarf around her neck and slinging her huge shoulder bag over her arm, she hurried toward the elevator, heart pounding in anticipation.
Once aboard the elevator, she slid to the side and took her cell phone from her coat pocket, punching in the lawyer's number. As before, she was directed to leave a message but this time she didn't bother.
She should have given herself more time for potential problems. As an airport pilot, who knew better than she the inevitable last-minute crisis that threw the best-laid plans awry? But she'd been rushing around this Saturday morning like nobody's business, buying baby furniture and diapers, a car seat and special shampoo. Even the stuffed blue elephant she'd left on the passenger seat of the car still sported tags dangling from one floppy ear.
The elevator made the ground floor in seconds. As she made her way through the crowd wqaiting to get on the elevator, she spied several families with small children and her heart lurched. One woman with deep-set eyes and long, black hair clutched a blanketed baby to her chest while a tall man in a raincoat put a protective arm around her shoulders.
Kurenai was riddled with self-doubt. Without a husband, could she really make a family for Taro? Would she be enough?
The twinge in her heart was replaced by a vow: she would be all the family little Taro ever needed.
She'd spoken to the lawyer two or three times in the week since Nisey's death, each time struggling to understand the lawyer's thick French-Canadian accent. He'd emigrated from Quebec to Seattle years earlier, he'd explained, but the accent was part of him and he couldn't seem to shake it. He'd told her she would recognize him by his dark mustache and bald head.