Читать книгу: «Finding Her Prince»

Chapter One

“Darn it, Prince Charming was right!” Suzanne Brown muttered.

She scrunched a small piece of pink, hand-knitted wool in her hand and slashed a line through another of the male names in her appointment diary. This one was Robert. Over the past two days, there had also been Mike, Duane, Les, Colin and Dan. She hadn’t spent long enough with any of them to find out their last names.

Her stomach ached and knotted with disappointment. The squeak of Robert’s footsteps on the polished vinyl floor faded into the ambient sounds of the busy hospital café, and he left without a backward glance.

Again!

It was the tiny pink baby bootie, still scrunched in her hand, that nixed the deal every single time! And every time, it happened in exactly the same way.

First, Suzanne would rummage in her purse in search of a tissue. Then she would “accidentally” let the bootie fall out of her messy purse onto the coffee shop table. Every time, it looked so cute and fragile, and every time it earned a slightly alarmed stare from the man—Mike, Les, Colin and the others—across the table.

“Are you a single mom, or something?” a couple of them had said.

Picking the bootie up—nervous, at this point—Suzanne would use it as a way to explain the situation with baby Alice.

That her birth mother, Suzanne’s much older half sister, Dr. Jodie Rimsky, had died of a brain aneurysm in the sixth month of her pregnancy. That Alice had been safely delivered, more than three months premature, by emergency Caesarean, thanks only to the quick thinking of Jodie’s medical practice partner, Michael Feldman.

That Alice was still in hospital and Suzanne was hoping for custody, once the baby was discharged. Alice had been conceived through artificial insemination at a clinic and there was no father to claim her.

Finally, after ten minutes or so, with the pink bootie still cradled in her palm, Suzanne would sit back and watch another chance at Alice’s happiness dissolve before her eyes as another near-stranger made his excuses and left.

Up until now, she had never felt much of a personal affinity for the Cinderella fairy tale. In contrast, her sister Jill and stepsister Catrina had developed a magical connection to the girl in the glass slippers just lately. Suzanne couldn’t imagine she’d ever share their sense of connection with Cinderella herself. Her feet were pretty large, and she had no glittering balls looming on her social calendar, for a start.

But suddenly, yes, she knew exactly how Prince Charming had felt, and she totally agreed with the man’s thinking on the issue.

The shoe—or in this case, the little pink bootie—was the deal breaker. If the shoe didn’t fit, the date was off.

Suzanne’s personal ad had appeared in the latest issue of a well-known New York magazine. Carefully worded, it hadn’t alluded to her pressing need for marriage. Every man who responded to it, however, had made it very clear, very early on, that little pink booties didn’t fit. Not in his heart. Not in his plans. Not anywhere. Not when those pink booties belonged to a tiny, orphaned premature baby, who was still in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.

Suzanne dropped the bootie back onto the coffee shop table in front of her and stared at it.

“Am I being too up-front with this?” she thought. “Maybe I should suggest meeting in some café in the village, instead of here. Maybe I shouldn’t tell a man about Alice until we’ve been out a few times and had a chance to connect. But that’s deceptive. Anyway I don’t have time for it! I need a husband soon! Should I reword the ad?”

Desperately seeking husband and father.

Like, this week.

The thoughts in her head raced on like a roller coaster, fast and frightening on their well-worn track.

“Because if I’m not married, if there’s no husband in the picture, then Dr. Feldman is going to recommendto the family court that custody of Alice goes to Mom. And Dr. Feldman’s recommendation will count more than anything else, because of what Jodie said about his guardianship in the will she made at the beginning of her pregnancy.”

Jodie hadn’t even known about Suzanne’s existence at that point.

“And Mom can’t have Alice, because that baby needs love, and Mom doesn’t know how to love anyone but herself, no matter how well she can pretend. I have the love. I love that baby so much! It’s changed all my plans, changed my future completely. But where am I going to find a man, soon, who can care about her the way I do?”

Suzanne didn’t have any answers, and she didn’t have any more potential husbands to meet today. She crammed the deal-breaking, heartbreaking little pink bootie back in her purse, took a final gulp of her sixth or seventh coffee and headed for the elevator. For the moment, finding a man to fit the bootie—a prince of a man, with a hero’s heart—would have to wait. She wanted to get back to the neonatal unit to see her baby girl.

“Alice has a visitor already, Suzanne,” said Terri McAllister, the head nurse for this shift.

“Oh, Mom’s here?” Suzanne didn’t succeed at the upbeat tone she was trying for. Things were tense between her and Mom at the moment. There could easily be a custody battle between them, but she didn’t want people knowing this. Not even the nurses here, who had been so wonderful since Alice’s birth.

“Uh, no, it’s not your mother,” Terri said. “I don’t think she’s been in here for about ten days.” Her tone dropped sympathetically. “She told me it’s so difficult for her to get here, what with all her charity work in Philadelphia.”

Yeah, Mom’s very believable when she says things like that.

“So who—?” Suzanne said aloud.

“This is someone new.” Something in the way Terri spoke sent a prickle of warning up Suzanne’s spine. “His name is Stephen Serkin, and he had a letter of introduction from Dr. Feldman. He’s only been in the country a couple of days, I think.”

“What on earth…?”

Suzanne didn’t finish. Easing past Terri, she could see the whole unit. It was brightly lit and crowded with the complex equipment needed for the care of ill or premature newborns. Her eyes skimmed over other babies, other visitors, and went instinctively to the far end, where Alice’s Plexiglas crib was positioned.

The crib hadn’t always been that far along in the unit. For more than two months, Alice was in the room beside the nurses’ station that was reserved for the most fragile babies of all. Moving to the far end was a “graduation” that Suzanne valued much more than her own graduation from college, complete with cap and gown and a degree in library science.

Today, there was a man sitting in the hard beige plastic chair on the far side of Alice’s crib—the chair where Suzanne herself had spent so many hours. He was watching the sleeping baby intently, and hadn’t yet looked up at Suzanne’s approach. She was walking carefully, and maybe he hadn’t heard.

She took advantage of this, and paused to watch him. Still didn’t have any idea who he was, or why he was here. Stephen Serkin. The name didn’t ring a bell. Despite the letter of introduction, which Dr. Feldman had apparently written on the man’s behalf, Feldman hadn’t mentioned any Stephen Serkin to her. And she had never seen him before in her life.

She would have remembered a man like this.

He was wearing blue denim jeans and a white T-shirt, and there was a brown leather jacket hanging over the back of the chair. The temperature in the unit was kept high for the sake of the babies, so he didn’t need the jacket in here. The garment looked well-worn, and must hug his body snugly when he had it on. Those shoulders, beneath the T-shirt, were broad and strong, and so was his chest.

He seemed to be consumed by his thoughts, although his eyes were fixed on baby Alice. They were very blue eyes, the color of shadows on snow, and above them was a frown. A lot of people frowned when they saw Alice for the first time. She was still so tiny, and still wore an oxygen mask. This stranger seemed to be measuring her in his mind, and as Suzanne watched, he bent a little closer, as if he needed to study the baby more closely still.

The movement brought his hair into the light. It was a rich, glossy brown, just long enough to fall into a couple of loose waves across the top of his well-shaped head, and it gleamed with strands of gold.

He had a scar down one cheek, Suzanne noticed as she came closer. Nothing dramatic. Just a silvery white line. It gave him an exotic look. Her gaze traveled along the thin line to reach his mouth and she saw that his top lip was just a little fuller than the lower one.

My lord, who could he be? she wondered again.

A little sound of apprehension and dismay escaped from her throat as she came past the crib next to Alice’s. It caught his attention at last. He looked up. Their eyes met, and Suzanne saw a flash of interest and anticipation in those blue eyes. Neither of them smiled. For a stretched out moment, neither of them even spoke.

Suzanne felt his assessment of her like the hot glare of a surgical lamp. She flushed. What was he thinking? There was a calculation in his regard, as if they were two athletes about to go head to head in a race.

“You must be Suzanne,” he said at last. “Is that right? Josephine’s half sister?”

“I’m Jodie’s half sister, yes.”

She used her dead sister’s nickname deliberately, as if to underline their connection and the fact that it was stronger than any connection he could possibly claim. No one had called Jodie Rimsky “Josephine.” Even her listing under Physicians in the Manhattan telephone directory had read, “Jodie Rimsky, M.D.”

“But I have no idea about you,” she added. His English was fluent and attractive to the ear, but there was an accent, most noticeable when he had said Jodie’s name. Terri had said he’d only been in the country for a couple of days. Was he French?

“I’m her first cousin. Jodie’s first cousin.” He emphasized the nickname as if to admit that Suzanne had won that particular point. The cynical little tuck at the corner of his mouth suggested it would be her last victory. “Our fathers were brothers.”

Shocked, Suzanne seized on one tiny fact that didn’t make sense. It was like pulling on a tail of yarn in the hope that the whole sweater would unravel. For some reason, she instinctively wanted this man’s story, whatever it was, to unravel now. Dr. Feldman had mentioned to her in passing that Jodie had some relatives in Europe, but he hadn’t made it sound all that important. Why was this man here, seated beside Alice’s crib? He’d come such a long way.

“If your fathers were brothers, then your name should be Rimsky,” she said. “But Terri said it was Serkin.”

“More properly…or historically…it’s Serkin-Rimsky,” he explained, his face still unsmiling. “Our fathers chose to simplify it in different ways. My passport still says Serkin, but I’ll be using the Serkin-Rimsky name in full from now on.”

It sounded like a threat.

“What do you want?” Suzanne asked, her voice harsh with apprehension.

Her gut was churning like a washing machine. It shouldn’t be like this! Most probably, he didn’t want anything. But she was so used to people wanting or not wanting Alice, she could only think of it in such terms now.

Mom and her new husband, Perry, wanted Alice. They wanted the wealth held in trust for her, through the terms of Jodie’s will. They didn’t want the health problems that were sometimes associated with premature birth. Their interest in the tiny child had only developed after the reading of Jodie’s will, and after Alice’s health had begun to improve.

Dr. Feldman, Alice’s temporary guardian, wanted the baby to go to a close blood relative who could make a stable, two-parent family for her. He didn’t want her to go to Suzanne. “Although I have a lot of sympathy for your position,” he’d said.

Unfortunately, however, Suzanne wasn’t married, she was only the baby’s half aunt, and she was just camped out in an echoing, unrenovated loft apartment, a short-term, four-month rental here in New York City. She hadn’t had time to settle in. She spent all her time at the hospital or at her financially necessary part-time library job.

Finally, all those men she’d met through the personal ad didn’t want to get saddled with a premature adopted newborn, at the very beginning of a new relationship. They didn’t want a lukewarm marriage of convenience in order to provide Suzanne with an instant husband. Oh, and she couldn’t blame them for that. It had been a crazy idea to advertise, but she was so desperate, so single-minded about it now.

Suzanne felt as if she were the only person in the world who thought about Alice in terms of love instead of wanting. She’d loved Alice, welcomed her into her heart and her life, from the moment she’d laid eyes on her in early July. Back then, Alice had weighed less than two pounds. No one could be sure she’d even survive. Back then, Suzanne had had no idea that the baby had inherited wealth, or that Dr. Feldman would prove so firm on the subject of stability and marriage.

“What do I want?” Stephen Serkin repeated.

“Yes.” She glared at him. “I mean, are you going to tell me you’ve come all the way from…?” She paused, and left him to fill in the blank.

“From Europe. From Aragovia,” he answered.

“From Europe,” she repeated. Hadn’t heard of Aragovia. “…to bring her a teddy bear, or something?”

“Not a teddy bear.”

For the first time, he smiled. His teeth were very white, but a little crooked at the top, on one side of his mouth, near the silver line of his scar. It made his smile just a bit uneven. And somehow softer, less intimidating, Suzanne decided with reluctance. Along with the glint of humor in those astonishing blue eyes, it invited others to share in his pleasure. She watched as he leaned down to the floor and pulled something from a shopping bag.

“I’ve brought her a doll,” he said.

“Oh.”

“Is that all right?” He held it out for her to inspect, as if her opinion mattered. She took it, not knowing what else to do. For a moment, their fingers touched.

“That’s fine,” she said. “Of course.”

Nothing made sense. This man hadn’t come to America just to give Alice a doll! Suzanne was bristling with mistrust, but she was touched by his gesture all the same.

It wasn’t some mass-produced synthetic collectible, wired into position inside a clear plastic box, that he could have picked up at an airport store. It was made of cloth and yarn, with a dainty, hand-painted face, and was dressed in what looked like the national folk costume from some place in Europe.

Aragovia?

It was tragic that she knew so little about her half sister. There was a ten-year age gap between them, and Suzanne hadn’t even known of Jodie’s existence until last spring. They’d only met twice. The second time, Jodie had just found out that her baby would be a girl, and had confided, “I want to name her Alice. That’s partly a blend of my parents’ names, Alex and Lisette, but it’s also after my favorite doll, as a child. She slept with me for years, until we lost her at a motel on vacation. I remember crying for so long! Memories like that come back strong when you’re pregnant, I’ve found.”

This was one of the few personal stories Suzanne had heard about her half sister’s past, and they would never have a chance to know each other better now.

“She’s allowed to have toys, I hope?” Stephen Serkin asked.

“Now, yes, if it’s clean and new,” Suzanne answered. “Her immune system is more developed than it was.”

Distracted, she turned to the crib, the soft, pretty doll still in her hand. The hand-embroidered cotton skirts of the doll’s dress tickled her wrist. She placed it where Alice would be able to see it. The baby had begun to focus on faces and black-and-white patterns now.

“She’s waking up….” she murmured. Alice was stirring.

“No, dreaming, I think,” came that complicated, musical accent. Rising to his feet, Stephen stood next to Suzanne and they both looked down at baby Alice. “Look at that! Smiling, too,” he added.

“Smiling? Oh dear lord, smiling?” Suzanne couldn’t believe it. “She’s never done that before.”

“But she is now, in her sleep. Look! Isn’t it a great sight?” He laughed, a throaty sound of pure, genuine appreciation.

“I—I can’t believe it. Isn’t it just gas, or something?”

“It’s not impossible, Suzanne,” Terri McAllister interjected, having overheard. She was checking another baby in a nearby crib. “It seems like preemies should be too little to smile, when they should still be inside a tummy in the warm and dark. But actually they smile almost as early as babies who get born when they’re supposed to.”

Suzanne gripped the Plexiglas sides of the crib and leaned closer. The smile came again, quite unmistakable now.

“Oh, Alice! Oh, you are!” she cooed.

The smile was wider this time. It was an open-mouthed and completely toothless beam that scooped dimples into each cheek and softened the baby’s whole face, even in sleep. She stretched and arched her little neck. Her creamy eyelids still seemed almost transparent, their skin was so fine.

“What on earth can she be dreaming about that’s making her so delighted and happy?” Suzanne wondered aloud.

“You,” Stephen said. He was still standing beside her, and Suzanne felt the warmth of his forearm against her wrist. His hip bumped her side.

“Me?” she echoed.

She was trying desperately not to be so conscious of his accidental touch. Out of the corner of her eye she could see just how well made his arms were. They were strong and smooth, with lengths of honed muscle. He must keep himself fit.

“Yes, you.” He smiled at her for the second time. “Of course, you.”

This time, she noticed the way the smile crinkled the skin around his eyes and lit up his whole face. Like Alice’s smile. Again, there was a teasing quality to it that immediately made her smile back. Slowly she was beginning to lose that instinctive mistrust. Maybe here, at last, was someone else who didn’t just think about wants. Alice was his cousin’s child. Was it possible that he actually cared?

“She’s dreaming about your voice,” he continued. “Your fragrance. The songs you sing to her.”

They were both watching the baby again, intent on every tiny movement in her face, every eyelid flicker and every wobble of her little fists.

“How did you know I sing to her?” Suzanne asked.

“Of course you sing! I’ve heard so many mothers singing to their babies in hospital at home in Aragovia. I’m a family doctor, myself.”

Suzanne felt a sudden twist in her gut, and a shock of recognition. “Jodie was a pediatrician.” She blinked back tears.

“I know. I did my family practice residency here in the United States, when she had just completed her specialist training. We were quite good friends for a while.”

“I got the impression most people liked her.” She was still struggling, didn’t really know what she was saying. Why had his tone changed, on that last sentence? She had so many unanswered questions about the man, this one seemed too trivial to think about.

“It distresses you to talk about your sister,” he said. He’d noticed her face and her swimming eyes. “We won’t do it now.”

“You mean…?”

“At some point soon, we need to. For now, let’s watch Alice’s smile.”

He turned back to the baby and began a lullaby in a language she didn’t recognize, singing so softly that she could hardly hear it. The tune was poignantly beautiful, and there was a tiny catch in his voice on certain notes. Suzanne could almost feel the way the melody tugged at her heart. Did Stephen Serkin know what a gorgeous voice he had?

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.