A Daddy For Christmas. Alison Roberts
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There were no reports from hotel security or authorities of a missing child that matched this baby’s description. So far security hadn’t found any helpful footage, just images of a woman’s back as she walked away from the cart as Mari stepped up to take it. Mari had called the police next, but they hadn’t seemed to be in any hurry since no one’s life was in danger and even the fact that a princess was involved didn’t have them moving faster. Delays like this only made it more probable the press would grab hold of information about the situation. He needed to keep this under control. His connections could help him with that, but they couldn’t fix the entire system here.
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