A/N: Finally … they meet …

Chapter 10

Port Charles

Emily walked into Kelly's and looked around. Spotting her mother and Brenda, she hurried over to their table and sat down.

"Emily, I'm so glad you could come!" Brenda exclaimed.

Emily laughed and said, "Like you would have let me refuse! You've been asking every day for the last week!" She turned to Monica, leaning over to kiss her cheek. "Hi, Mom."

"Hi, Em. I'm glad you could get away." Monica had gotten Jason's message okaying their plan, and had immediately called Emily. Then she had decided she might as well have Brenda come, too; that way, they could both tell Em about Jason's situation and they could get to work right away when Emily agreed to help, as Monica was sure she would. It had taken several days before Emily could clear her busy schedule, however. "Where are the kids?"

"I actually dropped them off to visit Grandfather, since it sounded like you really wanted to make sure he didn't horn in on our meeting. I told him I had a lot of errands to run, so we can take as long as we need to." She paused. "So, Mom, all you said on the phone was that Jason needed help with a project, and that I wasn't to tell anyone, especially the rest of the family. What's going on?"

Monica looked at Brenda, not sure where to begin. Penny approached, and the women ordered quickly before returning to their conversation.

As soon as Penny was out of earshot, Emily repeated her question. "Mom? What's going on with Jason? Is he okay?" After a moment, when it became clear that Monica wasn't prepared to respond, Brenda said, just loud enough for Emily to hear, "We need to organize a drive to have as many people as possible get tested as potential bone marrow donors."

"What? Why?" Emily asked, alarmed. "Is Jason sick or something?"

"He's fine," Monica assured her, having finally found her voice, to ease Emily's worry. "It's just …" she trailed off, and Brenda once again picked up the slack.

"Before the accident, when he lived in LA, Jason was selling his sperm to a sperm bank to finance his lifestyle," Brenda said abruptly.

Emily gasped, stunned. "You're kidding!"

"She's not kidding," Monica assured her. "And he just found out he has a biological child who needs a bone marrow transplant."

"And he wants the family to get tested, but he doesn't want them to know why, so we thought if we organized a huge drive, we could convince them to get tested, but they wouldn't need to know the real reason," Brenda explained.

"Okay. Where do I come in?" Emily asked, intrigued.

"Well," Brenda began, "Jason's gonna get Spinelli to identify a local child who needs a transplant –" she waved a preemptive hand when Emily looked like she wanted to say something, and continued in a rush, "Don't ask how – you don't wanna know. And then you're gonna coincidentally meet the kid's parents, and when you hear about their need, you'll have the bright idea to do a drive."

"How am I gonna meet them?" Emily asked curiously.

"Well, we thought you might decide to spend some time in the pediatric oncology ward, maybe bringing toys or games or something…" Brenda said. "That's the least of our worries – we can hammer out those details later." Emily nodded thoughtfully, considering the idea.

"And then," Monica added, "you'll persuade your father to present the idea to the hospital board, and you'll convince Edward to have ELQ underwrite the cost." Emily smiled at Monica, realizing why she had been invited to participate. Since her own cancer scare, neither man had refused her much of anything, to the point where she sometimes felt guilty at how they spoiled her.

"So, are you in?" Brenda asked, although her gaze was fixed on something happening by the door. "That's odd," she said, almost to herself.

Emily frowned, perplexed, and when Brenda said no more, she voiced the question on her mother's face as well as her own. "What's odd?"

She started to turn and look, but Brenda whispered sharply, "No! Don't look! Don't let on that you saw her!"

"Saw who?" Emily persisted, but she kept her voice low.

Monica, who unlike Emily didn't have her back to the door, added quietly, "Do you mean Courtney? Why? What's she doing?" She frowned, perplexed. "Was that AJ with her?" She caught just a glimpse of her son's back as he said something to Courtney and left. She thought curiously that he looked irritated. As Brenda had said, that seemed odd, since as far as she knew, Courtney and AJ didn't even know each other. But based on how irritated AJ had seemed, they must know each other pretty well … Monica barely heard Brenda's next words as she considered whether and how Courtney and AJ might have met, and what, if anything, that might mean.

"Shhhhhhhh! They'll hear you!" Brenda whispered insistently. "Don't worry about it." She watched Courtney leave, then resumed a normal tone and asked again, "Emily, are you on board with our plan or not?"

She realized the question was unnecessary when Emily gave her a testy look.

"Well, of course I'm in! You knew I would be, so why are you even asking?"

"Sorry," Brenda responded, smiling apologetically at Emily after sparing one last glance at the now-empty doorway. "I just wanted to be sure. So, let's get started." The women spent the remainder of their lunch quietly working out the details of their plan.

Seattle

Jason sat alone in Joe's Diner, sipping his coffee slowly as he pretended to read the newspaper. He was feeling fortunate that the diner was right across the street from their next target.

As he had for the past three days, Spinelli would take the night shift. He preferred to do his hacking at night anyway, and so far, he had been able to make notes on the clinic's security while sitting in the diner and hacking into the records of every hospital, clinic, and private gynecologist in a two hundred mile radius around Port Charles.

Spinelli had started by searching General Hospital's records for an appropriate candidate to be the poster child for the bone marrow drive that Emily, Monica, and Brenda were organizing. He had found an eight year-old boy with aplastic anemia, and once Jason had the name, he had called Emily with it. While Spinelli was in General Hospital's mainframe, he had also changed their receiving records to show that they had taken delivery of the 14 vials of genetic material that Jason had destroyed. Spinelli's pride, apparently, required that he at least make it difficult for anyone questioning the transaction to determine where it had gone wrong.

Jason had rolled his eyes at that, concluding that Spinelli was bored and needed another task to keep him busy. So he had asked if Spinelli might also be able to get into Courtney's records in the GH mainframe, and find out if she was really pregnant. Upon realizing that Jason suspected he was being set up, Spinelli had decided it wasn't enough to get GH's records, or even to limit his hacking to Courtney's name. He had muttered something about search parameters, asking for Courtney's age, and whether Jason knew her blood type. When Jason admitted he had no idea on either count, Spinelli had decided that Courtney's GH file would be a reliable source for the information he needed for his extensive search. Which explained why even now, the medical records of thirty-two 25-year-old women, with type O negative blood, sat on the table in front of Jason. And Spinelli said he was currently only about half done.

And in addition to all that, Spinelli had been finding some alarming information about Ms. Samantha McCall of West Palm Beach, who appeared to be some sort of con artist with an eye on trapping Jasper Jax, multi-millionaire businessman, into unholy matrimony. Spinelli had further reported that someone else was also interested in Ms. McCall's background, and Spinelli was even now trying to find out who, and why. Jason called Bernie and had him hire a private investigator in West Palm Beach to follow the woman. He had a feeling he would need all the information he could get.

Now, at nine-fifty in the morning, Jason sat alone in the diner, discreetly watching the building across the street. As he took a sip of his coffee, the bell above the door jingled, and Jason felt himself relax ever so slightly as a gorgeous young woman rushed in. "Am I late?" she called to the woman behind the counter.

"No, honey, you're right on time, as always," the older woman smiled.

"Oh, good. I was worried because my watch battery died and it seemed like there was more traffic than usual, so I thought maybe the bus was late." The newcomer bustled into the back as she spoke, coming back moments later without her jacket, tying an apron around her waist.

As he had for the past three days, he watched her from behind his newspaper, wondering why he found her so … interesting. Intriguing, even.

Certainly, she was beautiful, with big blue eyes and curly dark hair that was forever escaping from the loose ponytail she always wore to work, making him itch to slide it behind her ear for her. And she was smiling and laughing all the time, no matter how busy it got. The regular customers, young and old alike, seemed to love her, teasing her and flirting with her until her laughter bubbled across the room, lightening even the most dour expression in the room. Even Jason himself couldn't keep his smile contained at the sound of her laughter. He thought idly that Spinelli's nickname for him was completely inaccurate when this particular brunette was around.

Jason marveled at how anyone could be so seemingly happy with her life and everyone in it. He wished he could capture just a small fraction of that happiness, wanted to bottle it and carry it with him forever. Then he could take it out and relive it, just a little, anytime he wanted. But Jason knew it couldn't be bottled, and even if it could, he had seen and done too much in his life; his darkness would eventually burn out her light.

In any event, every now and then, he wondered if she was quite as happy as she looked. Occasionally, even as she smiled her usual smile, he thought he caught a glimpse of something wistful, maybe even sad, in her eyes, and he found himself wishing he could arrange it so she would never be anything but happy.

She approached him now, asking with a captivating smile, "More coffee?"

He nodded, saying, "Thanks." He was tempted to say more, to try to start a conversation with her, but he reminded himself that he needed to focus on the task at hand, so he just smiled back and said nothing else. He returned his gaze to the newspaper, keeping one eye on happenings across the street.

She returned several times over the next few hours, topping off his coffee, bringing him the sandwich he ordered, asking if she could get him anything else. She never made him feel like he was overstaying his welcome. Even on the first day, before she knew he would insist on giving her a hundred dollar tip, she had made it seem like it was fine with her if he sat there all day.

He knew her schedule by now, was aware that sometime around two, she would disappear into the back and return without the apron, zipping her jacket and calling her goodbyes. Then she would go outside, walk half a block to the bus stop, and, presumably, go home.

He tried not to wonder about her life outside of here. He knew she was married. She wore a wedding ring, and occasionally when a customer got a little too aggressive in his flirtation, she would hold up her left hand and wiggle her fingers, smiling infectiously as she said, "Sorry, I'm married." And that was that, even though the rejection always seemed to make the customer fall even deeper under her spell.

Today, however, when she came out of the back with her jacket on, instead of heading right out as she usually did, she paused to answer her cell phone. For the first time in the three days he had been watching her, she wasn't smiling. She looked – and sounded – nervous. Maybe even scared. Jason found that seeing her that way really annoyed him. He continued to watch her, straining to catch her words, although he had no idea what he thought he would do if he did manage to figure out what – or who -- had her so upset.

"Lucky," she was saying, her tone pleading, "please try to calm down. I'll be home soon and I'll take care of it the minute I get there." Pausing to let him respond, she held the phone away from her, and Jason could hear the shouting coming out of it from where he sat, halfway across the room. She worried at her lower lip with her teeth, and when the shouting paused, she tried again.

"Lucky, if you would just stop yelling at me, I would tell you --" She held the phone away again as the yelling resumed. Jason was glad he couldn't make out the words, because the tone alone was making him want to track down this Lucky whoever-he-was and beat some manners into him. What kind of stupid-ass name is Lucky, anyway? he wondered irritably. He was sorely tempted to walk over to her, take the phone out of her hand, and smash it. He restrained himself, however, knowing that while it might make him feel better for a little while, it would more than likely make things worse for her.

So he just sat there, watching from behind his newspaper, wishing there was something he could do to help her.

Until, without even the slightest warning, she got angry herself. One minute she was practically cowering away from the phone; the next, he was flabbergasted when she suddenly put two fingers to her mouth and whistled loudly into the receiver. Later, Jason would realize that was the moment she went from being merely "interesting," flew right past "intriguing," and wound up all the way at "irresistible."

For now, he noticed that the shouting had stopped, and before it could resume, she yelled into the phone herself. "Lucky, just shut up and listen to me." Jason could almost feel the man's shock coming through the suddenly-silent phone. Elizabeth continued in a more moderate tone. "I'm at the clinic. The test this morning was positive and I know how much you want a baby, so I came over right away for the procedure. Now, they're calling me, so I have to go."

She hung up, not giving him a chance to respond. Suddenly remembering where she was, she looked around, turning bright red as she realized that all eyes were either on her or studiously avoiding her. She met Jason's stunned gaze briefly, before hers skittered away. She looked over the heads of the assorted diners, forced a carefree smile to her lips, and announced gamely, "Okay, show's over for today. I hope you all enjoyed it. Have a lovely day."

And with that, she turned and marched out, head held high. He barely resisted the most extraordinary and uncharacteristic urge to stand and applaud.

XXXXXXXXX

Elizabeth sighed with relief as she flopped into an empty seat near the front of the bus. She couldn't believe she had just yelled at Lucky over the phone in front of a room full of people.

She would be embarrassed to go back tomorrow, but she would do it anyway, because she was running out of time to save enough money to leave before Lucky found out about the baby. She wondered if the man with the ice blue eyes would be there again tomorrow. It was especially embarrassing that he had witnessed that little scene -- that he had heard her lie to her husband. She had no idea why this was the aspect of the situation that she found hardest to let go of. Whatever her plans for the future, she was still married now, so she shouldn't be concerned with what any man except her husband thought of her.

But she was.

Maybe, she mused, it was because he was so quiet, just reading his newspaper or paging through his files while he sipped coffee into the afternoon.

Or maybe it was the way he was always so polite and respectful toward her, and how he glared at the young men who came in and got fresh with her.

It could be the gorgeous blue eyes, the chiseled face, the sculpted body, or the reluctant smile that appeared so rarely.

Elizabeth changed buses by rote, still trying to figure out what made the man so compelling.

Or maybe, she thought wryly, it's just the hundred dollar tips.

She had protested the first day that it was too much, but he had told her she deserved it after he kept her table occupied for her whole shift. She had still argued that it wasn't necessary, but he had been intractable. She had finally stopped arguing when he said she could donate it to charity if she wanted, but he wouldn't let her refuse it altogether. She felt a little guilty when she ultimately decided that, at the moment, she and her baby needed charity as much as anyone. But she promised herself that as soon as she got on her feet and saved some money, she would make a big donation to a real charity as he had suggested. After that day, she hadn't argued anymore, just accepted the tip with a smile and sincere, though still mildly uncomfortable, thanks.

So now, including today's tips, she had more than eight hundred dollars hidden in her bathroom vanity, at the bottom of a box of tampons -- the one place she knew Lucky would never look. If Blue Eyes came in for even a few more days, she would certainly be financially set for long enough to get herself settled in an apartment somewhere and find a new job.

She glanced up to see that the bus was approaching her stop, so she pulled the cord to signal the driver, then made her way to the back doors. As she walked the last few blocks home, she put Blue Eyes out of her mind and prepared herself to deal with her husband.