Finding Her Prince

Of course he did. A confident man didn’t reach his thirties without knowing exactly which of his attributes and talents most appealed to women. She had the sudden instinct that there was something too deliberate about this, something that didn’t ring true.

She reacted against the emotion that had momentarily blinded her. Stepping away from him, she said in a cold tone, “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

“It’s not such a mystery, is it?” he answered. “I had a business matter to attend to in New York, and I wanted to see my cousin’s child.”

“Then you already knew about Jodie’s death?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Feldman contacted you? He went through all the names in Jodie’s address book.”

“I expect that’s how he reached me. I didn’t actually ask.”

“Then you’ve—?”

“I saw him yesterday, and he arranged for me to be able to visit here.”

“How long will you be in New York?”

“That depends. I’ll stay as long as I need to. It might be weeks. Longer.” He paused for a moment. “You seem suspicious about all this. About me. Why is that?”

Suzanne controlled a sigh and her mind raced as she sorted through what she felt safe in telling him, and what she didn’t want to reveal. She didn’t dare to look at him.

“Alice’s future is…so uncertain at the moment,” she said, still staring down at the tiny baby.

She was dressed only in a diaper as small and thin as an envelope, a white undershirt patterned with pastel rocking horses and little pink booties. She still had a feed tube in her nose, an oxygen mask on her face and monitors all over.

“It’s no secret that I’d like to get custody and bring her up as my own,” she added.

“Yes, so I understand.”

“I’ve been here every single day since she was born, and I love her so much. But that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to keep her permanently.”

“I know.” His voice had softened. “There’s your mother’s claim, too.”

“You know?”

“I talked with Michael Feldman for a while. I wanted to find out as much as I could. Look, we can’t have this discussion here. It’s too important, and there’s so much we have to work out.”

“Work out?” She was really alarmed, now. “What do we have to work out?”

Her head whirled around toward him too fast, and she swayed unsteadily for a moment. The neonatal unit went dark, then her vision cleared again.

“Are you all right?” His fingers brushed a strand of hair away from her mouth, and he was frowning.

“I’m fine.” She shook her hair back, not wanting his hand anywhere near her face. “I felt a little light-headed for a moment, that’s all.”

“How have you been sleeping lately?”

“Not very well,” she admitted. “I’m here every day, and I have to try to slot it in around work. I’ve got a lot to think about. And then I’ve had—” she counted remorsefully “—seven cups of coffee today.” With all those men who weren’t interested in fitting little pink booties into their lives. “I don’t usually do that.”

“You’re under a lot of strain,” he said. “There are things you haven’t told me, yet.”

“You think so?”

“And things I haven’t told you. As I said before, we need to work it all out, and it looks to me as if you need to eat, instead of drinking seven cups of coffee.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“There’s a coffee shop just off the lobby.”

“Believe me, I know it!”

She must have eaten a hundred meals there over the past couple of months. Didn’t suggest going elsewhere, because there didn’t seem much point. She didn’t want to turn this “talk” of his into a big production.

So this was why, five minutes later, there she was at her favorite table near the window—the one where she’d met Robert and Les and Colin and Dan—waiting for her burger, fries and soda to arrive and rummaging frantically in her messy purse for her packet of tissues. The woman sitting behind her had cat hair on her jacket, and Suzanne was allergic, and—

“Ah-ah-choo!” She got the tissue to her nose just in time, grabbed at another one and saw that familiar little pink bootie drop out onto the table. Not surprising. It had been deliberately positioned right on top of the clutter that filled her purse.

Sneezing for the third time, she thought, I’m sick of the sight of that bootie, now. It hasn’t helped.

Stephen picked the bootie up and fiddled with it absently, the way he might have fiddled with a pencil on a desk.

This isn’t where I want to be, he thought. This isn’t how I’d be handling the situation if there was more time, or if this woman wasn’t involved. I don’t enjoy playing a double game. But I can’t see any choice. My country must come first. My father taught me that, and my great-grandmother….

He was tired, he knew. His emotions had been buffeted by all the changes that had come in his life over the past few months, and the ones that were still ahead. Most of those changes were good. The Aragovian people had voted for a new constitution, with the heir to the Serkin-Rimsky family’s ancestral throne as the nation’s head of state. He had enormous hopes for his life and his country, now—hopes that would have seemed almost impossible to realize sixteen years ago, when he’d reached legal adulthood at eighteen.

But he wasn’t safe yet. Nothing was set in stone yet. Not in his country and not, it now appeared, in tiny Alice’s life. He was under pressure from his political advisers at home. Pressure to ensure that the line of succession was rock solid, by whatever means necessary. Pressure to marry as soon as possible. A suitable bride. Someone the Aragovian people would come to love. Her actual identity hardly mattered, let alone Stephen’s feelings for her.

“As a bachelor prince, Stephen, you are vulnerable to unsuitable women from your past with an eye on what you have to offer now.”

“Unsuitable women? Well, yes, there have been one or two of those….”

“No one now?”

“No.”

His last meaningful relationship had been with an American woman, part of the same family practice residency program as himself. Elin would have been “suitable.” Like Jodie, however, she hadn’t wanted him to return to Aragovia, and they’d parted in mutual anger. He’d heard she was now married to someone else.

Since then, his work as a doctor and the changing situation in his country had kept him too busy to think of relationships, suitable or otherwise.

And then there was baby Alice’s situation. He had talked with Feldman for a long time, yesterday.

“Jodie talked about you,” Michael Feldman had said, with a reserve that Stephen hadn’t missed. “She didn’t want anything to do with you at one stage, and certainly nothing to do with a place as obscure as Aragovia. Her father never believed there was any future for your family there.”

“No. That’s why he left, in the fifties. My father felt differently.”

“What’s the situation there now? The place is controlled by Russian mafia, isn’t it?”

“It was. Or by a couple of offshoots of it. But that’s changed now. There is high hope for the future of the country.”

“You should be thinking of your future, and just get out.”

Stephen hadn’t known how to answer that. He had earned a great deal of respect in his country over the past few years, through his medical work there. He had almost lost his life in defense of its heritage, and he had firm hope that his devotion to Aragovia would soon be rewarded. He wasn’t planning to “just get out.”

And yet Dr. Feldman was right about Jodie and her attitude. Stephen’s friendship with his cousin had soured, in the end, as a result of their sharply diverging views. Should he admit any of this to Suzanne? Should he tell her the full truth?

No, not yet. Definitely not yet.

His talk with Michael Feldman had continued in a more instructive vein. He’d learned about Suzanne and her claim on Alice. He’d learned about Suzanne’s mother, Rose, too. Feldman had told him that, as the child’s grandmother, her claim was stronger.

And he had begun to perceive a strategy, one which would please his advisers on all fronts.

It wasn’t the first Stephen had heard of Rose Chaloner Brown Wigan, nee Norton. His father’s brother, Alex Rimsky, had confided in him, some years ago, in a way that some men would only confide in a male relative.

“Jodie is my biological daughter, Stepan.” His accent was thick even after more than thirty years in the United States, and he used the Russian form of Stephen’s name. “She was the—how should I put it?—product of a brief and regrettable liaison just before I met Lisette. Jodie doesn’t know it. We told her from the beginning that she was adopted, and that is also true.”

“Complicated!”

“Not really. The adoption was conducted through official channels, when her natural mother gave her up at birth. You see, Lisette knew that she was unable to bear a child of her own. There was an operation for medical reasons years before. And Rose Norton did not want a child.”

“That sounds very cold.”

Alex had shrugged. “She was young and beautiful and selfish, and she had big plans for her life. Devil knows if she ever attained her dreams! They were so unrealistic. But then, who knew that I would have such success? Certainly, Rose did not believe it possible. She saw me as a poor, futureless immigrant, who had briefly captured her sensuality. I have no idea what became of her.”

And Alex Rimsky had died last year, without ever learning more about Rose, just a few months after the death of Lisette.

The deaths of her parents had affected Jodie deeply, Michael Feldman had told Stephen yesterday. During his final illness, Alex had told his daughter the truth about her origins. This had set her on a quest to find her birth mother. She had also become desperate to have a child of her own, although she was single, and had chosen artificial insemination through a reputable clinic.

A strong-willed, charismatic woman, Jodie had succeeded in both goals—becoming pregnant and finding Rose. This was when she’d learned she had two younger half sisters, through the first of Rose’s three marriages. The elder of those sisters was the woman who sat opposite Stephen now, thanking the waitress politely as their order arrived.

He liked her already. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had a presence about her—a quiet glow that was more attractive to his eye than shallow, model-perfect looks. Those green eyes were so warm and bright against her fair skin.

Her medium-dark hair waved so softly against her cheeks. It was a little untidy at this stage of the day, betraying the fact that she had a lot of other things on her mind. Her clothes were neat and pretty, though—tailored pale gray pants, a short-sleeved cream knit top and a delicate little necklace made of tiny beads and stones. The figure beneath the clothes was, on his closer inspection, more lushly curved than he had realized at first.

Her full, sensitive mouth seemed to draw his gaze, and she had a faint sprinkling of tiny golden freckles on her nose. The determined jaw told him that he shouldn’t underestimate her because of this youthful look. She wasn’t a woman he’d be able to manipulate at will. He was going to have to handle it carefully.

Her love for baby Alice was obvious. It was shaded into the glow of her eyes, sketched into the shape of her mouth. It captivated him and confirmed that he was on the right track in what he planned to do. First and foremost, beyond any question of politics and destiny, a baby like Alice needed love.

“Suzanne Brown is itching to adopt Jodie’s baby,” Dr. Feldman had said. “And it’s clear that she cares. But she’s being unrealistic. She’s not the child’s closest blood relative, and her circumstances are precarious at this stage. She’s not married, not involved with anyone, and I believe very strongly in two-parent families.”

“Yes, I can understand that.”

“I was never in favor of what Jodie was doing, setting out to have a baby on her own. Perhaps I should have told her my views on that more clearly. At that stage, though, I thought it wasn’t my concern. It is now!”

He had finished with a helpless shake of his head.

Stephen had said little in response. He wasn’t yet prepared to reveal his agenda to anyone. Feldman didn’t seem to believe in the future that Stephen hoped for.

Maybe no one here believed that it would really happen.

Stephen did, and he would have leaped to resume his title and the throne, as his people wanted. The only problem was, he wasn’t the rightful heir…

He picked up a French fry and slid it into his mouth, barely tasting the salt or the crisp heat. Food seemed irrelevant at the moment. He flicked the little pink bootie in his left hand from one finger to the other and let it finally come to rest on his thumb. The thing was so tiny that it fitted there perfectly.

There was no point in hesitating any longer. Suzanne was halfway through her burger and she was watching him with her huge green eyes, waiting to hear what he had to say.

“I have a proposition for you, Suzanne,” he said slowly. “We both have Alice’s best interests at heart. Am I right in thinking you would give almost anything to be able to bring her up as your own?”

“Of course I would,” she answered. “I love her. It’s the only thing I want, right now.”

“Then I think we should get married.”

Chapter Two

“I don’t understand why you’d be willing to do this,” Suzanne said, several confused minutes later. She took a gulp of her soda in an attempt to refresh her dry mouth.

Stephen’s offer had seriously spooked her. It clearly wasn’t something he’d come up with on the spur of the moment. He’d been thinking about it. For how long, she didn’t know. Since his meeting with Dr. Feldman?

She had been hunting down a husband for nearly two months. She’d called up two former boyfriends, but it hadn’t taken long to cross those names off her list. They had been clumsy, lackluster relationships in the first place, and the passage of several years hadn’t helped.

She’d made some discreet inquiries through friends. Any men out there with a reason of their own for wanting to sprint down the aisle at short notice? No takers. She’d placed that ill-fated personal ad.

Now, this stranger, Jodie’s first cousin, had offered her just what she wanted and she was holding back, wary and skeptical.

“Does that matter?” he asked. “Do my reasons matter?”

“Of course they matter!” She crashed her soda glass onto the table, splashing her hand with cold, fizzy liquid. “Obviously it would help my case if we got married, and you’ve realized that, but what do you stand to gain from it?”

“The same thing that you do, Suzanne.” He was watching her, his eyes steady and open. “The knowledge that it will give Alice the best chance of a happy future.”

“My mother and her husband, Perry, are planning to give her exactly that. It’s not as if she’s going to get sent to an orphanage, or something. She’ll have a mom and a dad and it’ll be fine.”

“If that’s the case, why are you fighting it?” he asked.

She couldn’t answer. Just sat there with her mouth half-open, feeling as if someone had doused her in a bucket of hot water. He had cut to the heart of the issue in nine words. If she could sincerely believe that Mom and Perry would love Alice and would put her first in their lives, then she wouldn’t be scrambling so desperately for ways to strengthen her claim, and Stephen Serkin-Rimsky knew it.

So maybe he did care. He’d talked to Michael Feldman, and he wasn’t stupid. He understood the situation, and he cared.

“Where would we live?” she asked.

He blinked. “Well…wherever is best for Alice.”

“Okay…I’ll have more questions.”

She meant it as a threat, but he only laughed. “I don’t promise I’ll have the answers to all of them.”

“I—I need to think about this,” she told him. The blood was still beating in her head. To occupy her nervous hands, she began soaking up the little puddles of spilled soda with the corner of a napkin.

“I didn’t demand an instant decision, did I?” One corner of that firm mouth lifted again.

“No, but if it’s going to happen, it has to happen soon,” she retorted, lightning fast.

Then she saw the flare of satisfaction in his blue eyes, like the flare of a match striking. He could almost touch the intensity of her need, she realized. It wasn’t a position of strength, on her part.

“Yes, it does,” he agreed. “But we can take a few days to think about what’s involved, about what it means. The implications of a divorce, if that became necessary sometime in the future. The question of how far we are prepared to go, how much of ourselves we are prepared to give, in order to make it real.”

He didn’t mention the word sex, but perhaps he didn’t need to. They both knew it was what he meant. She wondered if the prospect should shock her, and immediately discovered that it didn’t. Yes, she could—theoretically, abstractly, distantly—imagine sleeping with him. Despite the distance and the abstraction, it was unsettling. She didn’t often respond physically to a man within an hour of their first meeting.

“I really need to think about this,” she repeated.

“Do you think that I don’t?” he said. His smile was crooked, inviting hers in return. “Do you think that I’ve answered all these questions for myself? I haven’t! I’ll give you the phone number of my hotel. Call me whenever you want to. I’ll take your number, too. We might both have things to talk about.”

Suzanne nodded slowly. “That makes sense.”

She felt like adding, “I’m going to see Dr. Feldman, too. Check you out a little further.”

As long as she could manage to do that without giving away too much herself. She didn’t want Michael to guess that she was contemplating a strategic marriage to Jodie’s cousin. She’d prefer to present it to him as a done deal after the event, a practical yet optimistic arrangement that was already working well.

“Finish your burger,” Stephen said. “Will it help Alice if you get sick?”

“No, I guess it won’t,” she agreed, and picked up the half-cooled burger. Duty, not pleasure.

He watched, wearing a small, satisfied smile, and when she had finished eating, he flicked the little bootie back to her, across the table. “Don’t forget this,” he said.

“It fits your thumb better than it fits her foot, now,” she answered him. “She’s grown so much since she was born.”

“May I keep it, then?”

“For your thumb? Gloves would be a little more useful.”

He laughed. “No, not for my thumb. I’ll send it to my mother, at home, so she can see how frighteningly tiny Alice must have been when she was born. She will probably cry at the sight of it.” His face had fallen into serious lines once more. “She would have come here with me, to see the baby, only she’s been ill. She had some major surgery a couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“The discovery of this baby has done wonders for her recovery. I know she’ll want all the news of Alice that I can give her.”

And that was the moment when I knew, Suzanne thought to herself several days later. When he said that, I knew that he really did care about Alice, and I knew, for better or for worse, no matter what we decided about sex and divorce, that I’d marry him….

Rose Norton Chaloner Brown Wigan had never stayed at a five-star New York hotel before, but she was trying very hard to act as if she stayed in such establishments all the time.

It was quite sweet, in a way. At the strangest times, Suzanne detected an odd form of innocence in her selfish, beautiful and eternally blond mother. Rose and Perry had arrived from Philadelphia two days ago, “Now that our commitments have allowed us to get back here again, for a longer stay, we’re itching to see that darling baby!”

Their commitments had allowed them to do this for about two hours yesterday morning, just before lunch at Tavern on the Green.

They planned to stay over the weekend, and Mom had begged Suzanne over the phone, with that same exultant innocence, “You must come and see our suite, honey! It’s spectacular!”

Dropping in to visit Rose, as promised, Suzanne was greeted with the eager offer of anything she liked from the minibar of the sixth floor park view room. Just absolutely anything at all. A cocktail? Champagne? Chocolates?

“No, I’m fine, thanks.” Tense, too. She had something to discuss, and knew that the mood would change, at that point, like fall weather coming down from Canada on the tail end of a steamy summer.

“Are you sure, darling?” Rose said. “If there’s something you want that isn’t here, I can order it in special.”

“I’m really not hungry or thirsty.” She added gently, “You know they charge a bundle for all these little drinks and candies, Mom.” She didn’t want her mother to get carried away. Maybe Mom thought that you got these things for free. She and Perry could end up with an appalling bar bill, on top of what had to be a mammoth tab for this suite.

But Rose didn’t seem to care. “We’re putting it all on credit cards,” she said. “It’s not a problem, Suzie, really it isn’t, because we’ll pay them off no trouble, as soon as all the legal stuff with Alice’s inheritance goes through.”

Rose couldn’t quite keep the glee out of her face, but tried a little harder when her sideways glance caught Suzanne’s frown.

“I mean, as Alice’s new parents,” she continued in an earnest tone, as if giving a public speech, “we can’t be expected to live like—like hillbillies, can we?”

“No, Mom. I can’t see you as a hillbilly, I admit.”

“She’s an heiress, and we need to start moving amongst the right people—society people, you know, people who stay in hotels like this all the time—so she can make the right contacts. Perry and I have talked about this very seriously, and we both agree it’s the right thing.”

“I’m glad you’ve got your priorities worked out, Mom,” Suzanne said. Only someone who knew her very well would have picked the subtle flavor of sarcasm in her mild tone. Rose wasn’t that someone.

“Well, yes,” she answered. “Perry and I both know how important it is.”

She glanced toward her husband, who was stretched out on the couch, sleeping the way an alligator sleeps in a nice, warm Florida swamp—deceptively.

Suzanne wished she could count on his nap being genuine. She had that weather-changing announcement for Mom, and wanted to be able to make it without his input.

She took a deep breath, instead, before she spoke. “I have some news, Mom, which I hope you’ll be pleased about.”

“News? What news?” Having picked up something significant in her daughter’s tone, Rose attempted to narrow her eyes.

This was difficult. The face-lift surgery she’d had several months ago had pulled her skin so tight she wore a perpetual look of attractive, wide-eyed surprise. But the intent to narrow them was definitely there, Suzanne decided.

She bit the bullet.

“I’m getting married on Friday, and I want both of you to come to the wedding.” As Rose had done a moment earlier, Suzanne glanced at Perry, but he hadn’t stirred.

“Getting married on—! But that’s the day after tomorrow!” Rose paced the room like a soap opera actress. Her mouth was set in a line of concentration, and she was obviously thinking hard. She spun around on the high navy heels that matched her imitation silk suit, and as Suzanne had expected, the drop in temperature had arrived.

“I know why you’re doing this,” Rose accused suddenly.

“You haven’t asked me who he is.” Suzanne plowed on, as if she hadn’t heard.

Getting her head down, getting stubborn and pretending a sudden hearing loss was the only way she could deal successfully with her mother.

“It’s because of that baby. And Feldman’s views on stability and two-parent families,” Rose said, ignoring Suzanne just as thoroughly. “I thought you’d given up on this stupid rift you’re so determined to make between us, Suzie!”