When he lowered the antenna and folded up the phone, he turned back into the room and nearly fell over the plump pink-clad baby.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on people,” he admonished her.
She cooed at him, batted thick eyelashes over eyes the exact shade of green as her mother’s. The little outfit she was wearing was fuzzy and made her look like a teddy bear.
“Quit trying to charm me,” he told her. “It won’t work. Some of the greatest in the world have given it their best shot.”
She gurgled at this, tilted her head at him, and said, “Uppie.”
“Yuppie? I think they call them something else now. And since I was born where most people want to be, I don’t qualify as upwardly mobile. A few notches down would suit me most days.”
“Uppie,” she said again, and something dangerous was happening to her mouth. It was turning down. And the brows over her eyes were furrowing downward, too.
“Puppy?” he said. He scanned the room, saw a plush purple dog sticking out of the toy box, and strode over to it, snagged it and brought it back to her. “Puppy,” he said, handing it to her.
She grabbed the dog by his long floppy ear and threw it across the room with astonishing force. “Uppie,” she shrieked.
He could hear the kettle whistling in the kitchen. Was that why Rachel wasn’t coming to his rescue? How could this huge voice be coming from such a small scrap of humanity?
“Uppie!”
Maybe it was a good thing Rachel couldn’t hear. She would think he was killing her daughter!
“Suppie?” he asked frantically. “You’re hungry, right? Your mother can fix that for you.” He began to edge his way toward the closed kitchen door. “I’ll just get her.”
A small fist tangled in his trouser leg.
He shook his leg a little, but the fist remained firm. As did the voice.
He bent over and tried to undo the little fingers, surprisingly powerful, one finger at a time.
Sweat was beginning to bead on his brow. He undid the fist, but it reattached itself to his shirt collar. Now he was caught in a most undignified position, anchored bent over, to a squalling baby.
Then, using his shirt collar, the baby pulled herself to standing. For a moment she looked gleeful, and then her arms began to windmill, and she staggered back a step. She pitched forward and wound surprisingly strong arms around his neck.
“Uppie.”
“I’m not your uppie. Or your auntie,” he told her. And then a light went on in his head. He got it, and it was so simple, he had to smile at himself for not getting it sooner. “Oh, up. Up.”
The squalling stopped, but the pause was expectant.
So he had to choose. Pick her up or run to her mother for help.
He picked her up, rather than admit there was nothing in twenty-nine years of preparing to take command of a small kingdom that had prepared him, even remotely, for a few minutes alone with twenty-five or so pounds of baby.
Somehow, when picturing his own impending fatherhood, he had only pictured magical moments. Reading baby a story while Sharon held him. Having the baby lie across his chest in front of a warm fire. Kissing him in his cradle. Teaching him to ride a pony. It had not even occurred to him how much later that step came.
Of course, with a large staff, neither he nor Sharon would have ever had to deal with shrieking.
Never mind that rather pungent odor he now noticed was coming from Miss Adorable Pink Fluff.
It occurred to him that he and Sharon, considered golden and blessed, might have missed something very, very important.
He picked the baby up, gingerly, expecting the grief inside him would shatter like glass. Expecting he would feel the bottomless sadness that he would never hold the lively weight of his own little child in his arms.
But that was not what he felt.
Instead, he took strange comfort from the solid weight of the baby, the warmth of her—even the smell of her seemed to be making his heart feel. Not broken. Whole.
She leaned her head into his shoulder, thrust her thumb in her mouth. She pulled it out, pronounced him a good boy, and her eyes fluttered closed. In seconds, she was sleeping.
Just like that. From shrieking instructions to sleeping in the blink of an eye.
He stood there like stone, not quite sure what to do, not sure what he had done to deserve such exquisite trust, and not quite sure about the great ball of tenderness that seemed to be unfurling in the center of his chest.
He glanced down at the shining gold of her curls, at the sweep of her lashes, at the roundness of her cheeks.
She was like her mother. He guessed her hair would eventually darken to that exact shade of auburn.
She nestled into him, sighed, and blew a few little bubbles out parted lips, and he found himself relaxing. When he was positive that neither he nor she was going to break, he dared look around again, and was again amazed by how compact this space was.
How did two people live in a space so tiny?
He marveled, too, at how Rachel had managed to make it look so lovely with nothing more than her own sense of style. Nothing in the room was expensive—there was no crystal, no beautiful carpets, no priceless paintings. And yet the room seemed more warm and inviting than any he had ever been in.
With the exception of the yellow nursery at home.
A thought came into his head, so preposterous that he dismissed it.
But the kettle had stopped wailing, and the child had stopped wailing and now he could hear Rachel humming in the other room, and the thought would not be chased away.
Marry her.
It was, of course, a ridiculous notion. A spell being cast on him by the little minx who was now drooling down the front of his silk shirt.
And yet, was it so ridiculous?
His parents were putting unbelievable pressure on him to find a new partner.
He liked this woman as much as any they had shoved his way. In a very short time she had earned his respect. She seemed to him to be courageous, capable and kind.
And it was a chance for him to do someone a good turn. Who would be more deserving than Rachel to be given a brand-new life? One where she could have all the time and money she needed, where she could pamper this little girl to her heart’s delight?
It would be a marriage in name only.
His heart was not into anything else. But his parents wouldn’t know that. Or his countrymen. They would just see what they wanted to see. If he provided the beautiful bride, they would provide the fairy tale.
Rachel came back into the room with tea things on a lovely, rustic tray. She looked at him holding the sleeping baby, and shook her head wryly.
“She couldn’t do that for poor Mrs. Brumble, could she?”
She set down the tea things, and took the baby from him. Her nose wrinkled. “Don’t you know how to make a great first impression?” she scolded the sleeping baby. Sending a wry look his way, she disappeared through another door.
His arms felt strangely empty when Carly was gone, his chest suddenly cold where her warmth had puddled against him. Rachel came back a few minutes later, the baby still sleeping, the wonderful aroma of baby powder coming into the room with them. She set her daughter gently in a playpen on one side of the room, tucked a little blanket around her.
He