Yuletide Baby Surprise. Catherine Mann

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