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
