A Daddy For Christmas

Instead, he simply reached out and skimmed back the stray lock of sleek black hair curving just under her chin. “Mari, there are a lot of things I would like to do to you, but I can assure you that poisoning you is nowhere on that list.”

Confusion chased across her face, but she wasn’t running from the room or laughing. In fact, he could swear he saw reluctant interest. Enough to make him wonder what might happen if...

A whimper snapped him out of his passion fog.

The sound wasn’t coming from Mari. She looked over his shoulder and he turned toward the sound. The cry swelled louder, into a full-out wail, swelling from across the room.

From under the room-service cart?

He glanced at Mari. “What the hell?”

She shook her head, her hands up. “Don’t look at me.”

He charged across the room, sweeping aside the linen cloth covering the service cart to reveal a squalling infant.

Two

The infant’s wail echoed in the hotel suite. Shock resounded just as loudly inside of Mari as she stared at the screaming baby in a plastic carrier wedged inside the room-service trolley. No wonder the cart had felt heavier than normal. If only she’d investigated she might have found the baby right away. Her brain had been tapping her with the logic that something was off, and she’d been too caught up in her own selfish fears about a few photos to notice.

To think that poor little one had been under there all this time. So tiny. So defenseless. The child, maybe two or three months old, wore a diaper and a plain white T-shirt, a green blanket tangled around its tiny, kicking feet.

Mari swallowed hard, her brain not making connections as she was too dumbstruck to think. “Oh, my God, is that a baby?”

“It’s not a puppy.” Rowan washed his hands at the wet-bar sink then knelt beside the lower rack holding the infant seat. He visibly went into doctor mode as he checked the squalling tyke over, sliding his hands under and scooping the child up in his large, confident hands. Chubby little mocha-brown arms and legs flailed before the baby settled against Rowan’s chest with a hiccupping sigh.

“What in the world is it doing under there?” She stepped away, clearing a path for him to walk over to the sofa.

“I’m not the one who brought the room service in,” he countered offhandedly, sliding a finger into the baby’s tiny bow mouth. Checking for a cleft palate perhaps?

“Well, I didn’t put the baby there.”

A boy or girl? She couldn’t tell. The wriggling bundle wore no distinguishing pink or blue. There wasn’t even a hair bow in the cap of black curls.

Rowan elbowed aside an animal-print throw pillow and sat on the leather couch, resting the baby on his knees while he continued assessing.

She tucked her hands behind her back. “Is it okay? He or she?”

“Her,” he said, closing the cloth diaper. “She’s a girl, approximately three months old, but that’s just a guess.”

“We should call the authorities. What if whoever abandoned her is still in the building?” Unlikely given how long she’d hung out in here flirting with Rowan. “There was a woman walking away from the cart earlier. I assumed she was just taking a cell phone call, but maybe that was the baby’s mother?”

“Definitely something to investigate. Hopefully there will be security footage of her. You need to think through what you’re going to tell the authorities, review every detail in your mind while it’s fresh.” He sounded more like a detective than a doctor. “Did you see anyone else around the cart before you took it?”

“Are you blaming this on me?”

“Of course not.”

Still, she couldn’t help but feel guilty. “What if this is my fault for taking that cart? Maybe the baby wasn’t abandoned at all. What if some mother was just trying to bring her child to work? She must be frantic looking for her daughter.”

“Or frantic she’s going to be in trouble,” he replied dryly.

“Or he. The parent could be a father.” She reached for the phone on the marble bar. “I really need to ring the front desk now.”

“Before you call, could you pass over her seat? It may hold some clues to her family. Or at least some supplies to take care of her while we settle this.”

“Sure, hold on.”

She eased the battered plastic seat from under the cart, winging a quick prayer of thankfulness that the child hadn’t come to some harm out there alone in the hall. The thought that someone would so recklessly care for a precious life made her grind her teeth in frustration. She set the gray carrier beside Rowan on the sofa, the green blanket trailing off the side.

Finally, she could call for help. Without taking her eyes off Rowan and the baby, she dialed the front desk.

The phone rang four times before someone picked up. “Could you hold, please? Thank you,” a harried-sounding hotel operator said without giving Mari a chance to shout “No!” The line went straight to Christmas carols, “O Holy Night” lulling in her ear.

Sighing, she sagged a hip against the garland-draped wet bar. “They put me on hold.”

Rowan glanced up, his pure blue eyes darkened with an answering frustration. “Whoever decided to schedule a conference at this time of year needs to have his head examined. The hotel was already jam-packed with holiday tourists, now conventioneers, too. Insane.”

“For once, you and I agree on something one hundred percent.” The music on the phone transitioned to “The Little Drummer Boy” as she watched Rowan cradle the infant in a way that made him even more handsome. Unwilling to get distracted by traveling down that mental path again, she shifted to look out the window at the scenic view. Multicolored lights blinked from the sailboats and ferries.

The Christmas spirit was definitely in full swing on the resort island. Back on the mainland, her father’s country included more of a blend of religions than many realized. Christmas wasn’t as elaborate as in the States, but still celebrated. Cape Verde had an especially deep-rooted Christmas tradition, having been originally settled by the Portuguese.

Since moving out on her own, she’d been more than happy to downplay the holiday mayhem personally, but she couldn’t ignore the importance, the message of hope that should come this time of year. That a parent could abandon a child at the holidays seemed somehow especially tragic.

Her arms suddenly ached to scoop up the baby, but she had no experience and heaven forbid she did something wrong. The little girl was clearly in better hands with Rowan.

He cursed softly and she turned back to face him. He held the baby in the crook of his arm while he searched the infant seat with the other.

“What?” she asked, covering the phone’s mouthpiece. “Is something the matter with the baby?”

“No, something’s the matter with the parents. You can stop worrying that some mom or dad brought their baby to work.” He held up a slip of paper, baby cradled in the other arm. “I found this note tucked under the liner in the carrier.”

He held up a piece of hotel stationary.

Mari rushed to sit beside him on the sofa, phone still in hand. “What does it say?”

“The baby’s mother intended for her to be in this cart, in my room.” He passed the note. “Read this.”

Dr. Boothe, you are known for your charity and generosity. Please look over my baby girl, Issa. My husband died in a border battle and I cannot give Issa what she needs. Tell her I love her and will think of her always.

Mari reread the note in disbelief, barely able to process that someone could give away their child so easily, with no guarantees that she would be safe. “Do people dump babies on your doorstep on a regular basis?”

“It’s happened a couple of times at my clinic, but never anything remotely like this.” He held out the baby toward her. “Take Issa. I have some contacts I can reach out to with extra resources. They can look into this while we’re waiting for the damn hotel operator to take you off hold.”

Mari stepped back sharply. “I don’t have much experience with babies. No experience actually, other than kissing them on the forehead in crowds during photo ops.”

“Didn’t you ever babysit in high school?” He cradled the infant in one arm while fishing out his cell phone with his other hand. “Or do princesses not babysit?”

“I skipped secondary education and went straight to college.” As a result, her social skills sucked as much as her fashion sense, but that had never mattered much. Until now. Mari smoothed a hand down her wrinkled, baggy skirt. “Looks to me like you have Issa and your phone well in hand.”

Competently—enticingly so. No wonder he’d been featured in magazines around the globe as one of the world’s most eligible bachelors. Intellectually, she’d understood he was an attractive—albeit irritating—man. But until this moment, she hadn’t comprehended the full impact of his appeal.

Her body flamed to life, her senses homing in on this moment, on him. Rowan. The last man on the planet she should be swept away by or attracted to.

This must be some sort of primal, hormonal thing. Her ticking biological clock was playing tricks on her mind because he held a baby. She could have felt this way about any man.

Right?

God, she hoped so. Because she couldn’t wrap her brain around the notion that she could be this drawn to a man so totally wrong for her.

The music ended on the phone a second before the operator returned. “May I help you?”

Heaven yes, she wanted to shout. She needed Issa safe and settled. She also needed to put space between herself and the increasingly intriguing man in front of her.

She couldn’t get out of this suite soon enough.

“Yes, you can help. There’s been a baby abandoned just outside Suite 5A, the room of Dr. Rowan Boothe.”

* * *

Rowan didn’t foresee a speedy conclusion to the baby mystery. Not tonight, anyway. The kind of person who threw away their child and trusted her to a man based solely on his professional reputation was probably long gone by now.

Walking the floor with the infant, he patted her back for a burp after the bottle she’d downed. Mari was reading a formula can, her forehead furrowed, her shirt half-untucked. Fresh baby supplies had been sent up by the hotel’s concierge since Rowan didn’t trust anything in the diaper bag.

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 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 in 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.