Yuletide Baby Surprise

by Catherine Mann

  Eventually, the police would make their way over with someone from child services. Thoughts of this baby getting lost in an overburdened, underfunded network tore at him. On a realistic level, he understood he couldn’t save everyone who crossed his path, but something about this vulnerable child abandoned at Christmas tore at his heart all the more.

  Had to be because the kid was a baby, his weak spot.

  He shrugged off distracting thoughts of how badly he’d screwed up as a teenager and focused on the present. Issa burped, then cooed. But Rowan wasn’t fooled into thinking she was full. As fast as the kid had downed that first small bottle, he suspected she still needed more. “Issa’s ready for the extra couple of ounces if you’re ready.”

  Mari shook the measured powder and distilled water together, her pretty face still stressed. “I think I have it right. But maybe you should double-check.”

  “Seriously, I’m certain you can handle a two-to-one mixture.” He grinned at seeing her flustered for the first time ever. Did she have any idea how cute she looked? Not that she would be happy with the “cute” label. “Just think of it as a lab experiment.”

  She swiped a wrist over the beads of sweat on her forehead, a simple watch sliding down her slim arm. “If I got the proportions wrong—”

  “You didn’t.” He held out a hand for the fresh bottle. “Trust me.”

  Reluctantly, she passed it over. “She just looks so fragile.”

  “Actually, she appears healthy, well fed and clean.” Her mother may have dumped her off, but someone had taken good care of the baby before that. Was the woman already regretting her decision? God, he hoped so. There were already far too few homes for orphans here. “There are no signs she’s been mistreated.”

  “She seems cuddly,” Mari said with a wistful smile.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to hold her while I make a call?”

  She shook her head quickly, tucking a stray strand of hair back into the loose knot at her neck. “Your special contacts?”

  He almost smiled at her weak attempt to distract him from passing over the baby. And he definitely wasn’t in a position to share much of anything about his unorthodox contacts with her. “It would be easier if I didn’t have to juggle the kid and the bottle while I talk.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure I won’t break her.” She chewed her bottom lip. “But let me sit down first.”

  Seeing Mari unsure of herself was strange, to say the least. She always commanded the room with her confidence and knowledge, even when he didn’t agree with her conclusions. There was something vulnerable, approachable even, about her now.

  He set the baby into her arms, catching a whiff of Mari’s perfume, something flowery and surprisingly whimsical for such a practical woman. “Just be careful to support her head and hold the bottle up enough that she isn’t drinking air.”

  Mari eyed the bottle skeptically before popping it into Issa’s mouth. “Someone really should invent a more precise way to do this. There’s too much room for human error.”

  “But babies like the human touch. Notice how she’s pressing her ear against your heart?” Still leaning in, he could see Mari’s pulse throbbing in her neck. The steady throb made him burn to kiss her right there, to taste her, inhale her scent. “That heartbeat is a constant in a baby’s life in utero. They find comfort in it after birth, as well.”

  Her deep golden gaze held his and he could swear something, an awareness, flashed in her eyes as they played out this little family tableau.

  “Um, Rowan—” her voice came out a hint breathier than normal “—make your call, please.”

  Yeah, probably a good idea to retreat and regroup while he figured out what to do about the baby—and about having Mari show up unexpectedly in his suite.

  He stepped into his bedroom and opened the French door onto the balcony. The night air was that perfect temperature—not too hot or cold. Decembers in Cape Verde usually maxed out at between seventy-five and eighty degrees Fahrenheit. A hint of salt clung to the air and on a normal night he would find sitting out here with a drink the closest thing to a vacation he’d had in… He’d lost count of the years.

  But tonight he had other things on his mind.

  Fishing out his phone, he leaned on the balcony rail so he could still see Mari through the picture window in the sitting area. His gaze roved over her lithe body, which was almost completely hidden under her ill-fitting suit. At least she wouldn’t be able to hear him. His contacts were out of the normal scale and the fewer people who knew about them, the better. Those ties traced back far, all the way to high school.

  After he’d derailed his life in a drunk-driving accident as a teen, he’d landed in a military reform school with a bunch of screwups like himself. He’d formed lifetime friendships there with the group that had dubbed themselves the Alpha Brotherhood. Years later after college graduation, they’d all been stunned to learn their headmaster had connections with Interpol. He’d recruited a handful of them as freelance agents. Their troubled pasts—and large bank accounts—gave them a cover story to move freely in powerful and sometimes seedy circles.

  Rowan was only tapped for missions maybe once a year, but it felt damn good to help clean up underworld crime. He saw the fallout too often in the battles between warlords that erupted in regions neighboring his clinic.

  The phone stopped ringing and a familiar voice said, “Speak to me, Boothe.”

  “Colonel, I need your help.”

  The Colonel laughed softly. “Tell me something new. Which one of your patients is in trouble? Or is it another cause you’ve taken on? Or—”

  “Sir, it’s a baby.”

  The sound of a chair squeaking echoed over the phone lines and Rowan could envision his old headmaster sitting up straighter, his full attention on the moment. “You have a baby?”

  “Not my baby. A baby.” He didn’t expect to ever have children. His life was too consumed with his work, his mission. It wouldn’t be fair to a child to have to compete with third-world problems for his father’s attention. Still, Rowan’s eyes locked in on Mari holding Issa so fiercely, as if still afraid she might drop her. “Someone abandoned an infant in my suite along with a note asking me to care for her.”

  “A little girl. I always wanted a little girl.” The nostalgia in the Colonel’s voice was at odds with the stern exterior he presented to the world. Even his clothes said stark long after he’d stopped wearing a uniform. These days, in his Interpol life, Salvatore wore nothing but gray suits with a red tie. “But back to your problem at hand. What do the authorities say?”

  “No one has reported a child missing to the hotel security or to local authorities. Surveillance footage hasn’t shown anything, but there are reports of a woman walking away from the cart where the baby was abandoned. The police are dragging their feet on showing up here to investigate further. So I need to get ahead of the curve here.”

  “In what way?”

  “You and I both know the child welfare system here is overburdened to the crumbling point.” Rowan found a plan forming in his mind, a crazy plan, but one that felt somehow right. Hell, there wasn’t any option that sat completely right with his conscience. “I want to have temporary custody of the child while the authorities look into finding the mother or placing her in a home.”

  He might not be the best parental candidate for the baby, but he was a helluva lot better than an overflowing orphanage. If he had help…

  His gaze zeroed in on the endearing tableau in his hotel sitting room. The plan came into sharper focus as he thought of spending more time with Mari.

  Yet as soon as he considered the idea, obstacles piled in his path. How would he sell her on such an unconventional solution? She freaked out over feeding the kid a bottle.

  “Excuse me for asking the obvious, Boothe, but how i
n the hell do you intend to play papa and save the world at the same time?”

  “It’s only temporary.” He definitely couldn’t see himself doing the family gig long-term. Even thinking of growing up with his own family sent his stomach roiling. Mari made it clear her work consumed her, as well. So a temporary arrangement could suit them both well. “And I’ll have help…from someone.”

  “Ah, now I understand.”

  “How do you understand from a continent away?” Rowan hated to think he was that transparent.

  “After my wife wised up and left me, when I had our son for the weekend, I always had trouble matching up outfits for him to wear. So she would send everything paired up for me.” He paused, the sound of clinking ice carrying over the phone line.

  Where was Salvatore going with this story? Rowan wasn’t sure, but he’d learned long ago that the man had more wisdom in one thumb that most people had in their entire brain. God knows, he’d saved and redirected dozens of misfit teenagers at the military high school.

  Salvatore continued, “This one time, my son flipped his suitcase and mixed his clothes up. I did the best I could, but apparently, green plaid shorts, an orange striped shirt and cowboy boots don’t match.”

  “You don’t say.” The image of Salvatore in his uniform or one of those generic suits of his, walking beside a mismatched kid, made Rowan grin. Salvatore didn’t offer personal insights often. This was a golden moment and Rowan just let him keep talking.

  “Sure, I knew the outfit didn’t match, although I didn’t know how to fix it. In the end, I learned a valuable lesson. When you’re in the grocery store with the kid, that outfit shouts ‘single dad’ to a bevy of interested women.”

  “You used your son to pick up women?”

  “Not intentionally. But that’s what happened. Sounds to me like you may be partaking of the same strategy with this ‘someone’ who’s helping you.”

  Busted. Although he felt compelled to defend himself. “I would be asking for help with the kid even if Mari wasn’t here.”

  “Mariama Mandara?” Salvatore’s stunned voice reverberated. “You have a thing for a local princess?”

  Funny how Rowan sometimes forgot about the princess part. He thought of her as a research scientist. A professional colleague—and sometimes adversary. But most of all, he thought of her as a desirable woman, someone he suddenly didn’t feel comfortable discussing with Salvatore. “Could we get back on topic here? Can you help me investigate the baby’s parents or not?”

  “Of course I can handle that.” The Colonel’s tone returned to all business, story time over.

  “Thank you, sir. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.” Regardless of his attraction to Mari, Rowan couldn’t lose sight of the fact that a defenseless child’s future hung in the balance here.

  “Just send me photos, fingerprints, footprints and any other data you’ve picked up.”

  “Roger. I know the drill.”

  “And good luck with the princess,” Salvatore said, chuckling softly before he hung up.

  Rowan drew in a deep breath of salty sea air before returning to the suite. He hated being confined. He missed his clinic, the wide-open spaces around it and the people he helped in a tangible way rather than by giving speeches.

  Except once he returned home in a week to prepare for Christmas, his window of time with Mari would be done. Back to business.

  He walked across the balcony and entered the door by the picture window, stepping into the sitting room. Mari didn’t look up, her focus totally on the baby.

  Seeing Mari in an unguarded moment was rare. The woman kept major walls up, giving off a prickly air. Right now, she sat on the sofa with her arms cradling the baby—even her body seemed to wrap inward protectively around this child. Mari might think she knew nothing about children, but her instincts were good. He’d watched enough new moms in his career to identify the ones who would have trouble versus the ones who sensed the kid’s needs.

  The tableau had a Madonna-and-child air. Maybe it was just the holidays messing with his head. If he wanted his half-baked plan to work, he needed to keep his head on straight and figure out how to get her on board with helping him.

  “How’s Issa doing?”

  Mari looked up quickly, as if startled. She held up the empty bottle. “All done with her feeding.”

  “I’m surprised you’re still sticking around. Your fans must have given up by now. The coast will be clear back to your room.”

  Saying that, he realized he should have mentioned those overzealous royal watchers to Salvatore. Perhaps some private security might be in order. There was a time he didn’t have the funds for things like that, back in the days when he was buried in the debt of school loans, before he’d gone into partnership with a computer-whiz classmate of his.

  “Mari? Are you going back to your room?” he repeated.

  “I still feel responsible for her.” Mari smoothed a finger along the baby’s chubby cheek. “And the police will want to speak to me. If I’m here, it will move things along faster.”

  “You do realize the odds are low that her parents will be found tonight,” he said, laying the groundwork for getting her to stick around.

  “Of course, I understand.” She thumbed aside a hint of milk in the corner of the infant’s mouth. “That doesn’t stop me from hoping she’ll have good news soon.”

  “You sure seem like a natural with her. Earlier, you said you never babysat.”

  She shrugged self-consciously. “I was always busy studying.”

  “There were no children in your world at all?” He sat beside her, drawing in the scent of her flowery perfume. Curiosity consumed him, a desperate need to know exactly what flower she smelled like, what she preferred.

  “My mother and father don’t have siblings. I’m the only child of only children.”

  This was the closest to a real conversation they’d ever exchanged, talk that didn’t involve work or bickering. He couldn’t make a move on her, not with the baby right here in the room. But he could feel her relaxing around him. He wanted more of that, more of her, this exciting woman who kept him on his toes.

  What would she do if he casually stretched his arm along the back of the sofa? Her eyes held his and instead of moving, he stayed stock-still, looking back at her, unwilling to risk breaking the connection—

  The phone jangled harshly across the room.

  Mari jolted. The baby squawked.

  And Rowan smiled. This particular moment to get closer to Mari may have ended. But make no mistake, he wasn’t giving up. He finally had a chance to explore the tenacious desire that had been dogging him since he’d first seen her.

  Anticipation ramped through him at the thought of persuading her to see this connection through to its natural—and satisfying—conclusion.

  Three

  Pacing in front of the sitting room window, Mari cradled the baby against her shoulder as Rowan talked with the local police. Sure, the infant had seemed three months old when she’d looked at her, but holding her? Little Issa felt younger, more fragile.

  Helpless.

  So much about this evening didn’t add up. The child had been abandoned yet she seemed well cared for. Beyond her chubby arms and legs, she had neatly trimmed fingernails and toenails. Her clothes were simple, but clean. She smelled freshly bathed. Could she have been kidnapped as revenge on someone? Growing up, Mari had been constantly warned of the dangers of people who would try to hurt her to get back at her father, as well as people would use her to get close to her father. Trusting anyone had been all but impossible.

  She shook off the paranoid thoughts and focused on the little life in her arms. Mari stroked the baby’s impossibly soft cheeks, tapped the dimple in her chin. Did she look like her mother or father? Was she missed? Rou
nd chocolate-brown eyes blinked up at her trustingly.

  Her heart squeezed tight in her chest in a totally illogical way. She’d only just met the child, for heaven’s sake, and she ached to press a kiss to her forehead.

  Mari glanced to the side to see if Rowan had observed her weak moment, but he was in the middle of finishing up his phone conversation with the police.

  Did he practice looking so hot? Even in jeans, he owned the room. Her eyes were drawn to the breadth of his shoulders, the flex of muscles in his legs as he shuffled from foot to foot, his loafers expensive but well worn. He exuded power and wealth without waste or conspicuous consumption. How could he be such a good man and so annoying at the same time?

  Rowan hung up the phone and turned, catching her studying him. He cocked an eyebrow. She forced herself to stare back innocently, her chin tipping even as her body tingled with awareness.

  “What did the police say?” she asked casually, swaying from side to side in a way she’d found the baby liked.

  “They’re just arriving outside the hotel.” He closed the three feet between them. “They’re on their way up to take her.”

  “That’s it?” Her arms tightened around Issa. “She’ll be gone minutes from now? Did they say where they will be sending her? I have connections of my own. Maybe I can help.”

  His blue eyes were compassionate, weary. “You and I both already know what will happen to her. She will be sent to a local orphanage while the police use their limited resources to look into her past, along with all the other cases and other abandoned kids they have in their stacks of files to investigate. Tough to hear, I realize. But that’s how it is. We do what we can, when we can.”

  “I understand.” That didn’t stop the frustration or the need to change things for this innocent child in her arms and all the children living in poverty in her country.