Cinderella's Secret Agent
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Yawning widely, the baby relaxed into the crook of Maggie’s arm.
“Maybe I should call you Jewel,” she said. “Because you’re so precious.”
There was a quiet rap on the door. Maggie glanced up. When she saw who it was, she felt another spurt of tears.
This was crazy. It didn’t seem to take much to set her off, but the mere glimpse of the man in the doorway made her heart turn over.
But maybe it wasn’t that crazy. After all, he’d been the one who had shared the most incredible experience of her life. He’d held her daughter even before she had. Until yesterday, when he’d been nothing more than an attractive face and a good tipper, she had been uncomfortable with her reaction to him. Today she couldn’t think of anyone she’d rather see.
Smiling, Maggie motioned him into the room with a nod. “Hi, Del.”
“Hello, Maggie.” He paused in the doorway, pushing his hands into the pockets of his navy windbreaker. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“No, not at all.”
“I was in the neighborhood and I just wanted to check on how you were doing.”
“I’m fine. Great, in fact.”
His gaze went over her features, missing nothing. Apparently satisfied, he moved his gaze to the baby. “How is your daughter?”
“Wonderful. Perfect. Amazing.” She tipped her head again. “Come and see.”
He wavered. For a man who normally appeared so sure of himself, his hesitancy was…appealing. “She’s asleep,” he said.
“She’s beautiful when she’s asleep, isn’t she?”
“I wouldn’t want to wake her up.”
“I wish you would. Then you’d be able to see how beautiful she is when she’s awake.”
The skin around his eyes crinkled into the beginnings of a smile. “And that’s a completely objective opinion, right?”
“Of course. Anyone can see that she’s the most beautiful baby ever born.”
He moved to the side of the bed. He hesitated again, then looked at the child in her arms. “You’re right,” he said softly. “She’s something else.”
“She has lots of hair for a newborn, too. Isn’t it a gorgeous color?”
“Outstanding. Definitely outstanding.”
“She’s six pounds, seven ounces. That’s a good weight for being early. She doesn’t need to stay in an incubator or anything.”
“That’s great.”
“Actually, she might not have been all that early. My doctor suspects I might have miscalculated my dates.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Laszlo was right. I should have quit working earlier. It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.”
“You had no control over that, Maggie. Your baby decided it was time to be born.”
“Del?”
He glanced up. “Yes?”
She swallowed hard, determined not to be a watering pot. “Thank you. For helping me. I know we’re practically strangers, and it must have been an awful shock for you, and I’m sorry for putting you through all of that, but…” She took a deep breath, knowing no words were adequate but needing to express her gratitude anyway. “Del, I want you to know I appreciate everything you did. The way you delivered my baby, the way you stayed with me until the ambulance came. You went way past being a Good Samaritan. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.”
He regarded her in silence. Gradually, the lean lines of his face relaxed. The smile that played around the corners of his eyes spread to his lips. “Maggie, I should be the one thanking you. It was a privilege to share in your daughter’s birth. I’ll never forget it.”
“Oh, Del,” she said, her chin trembling.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. That was such a lovely thing to say.”
“You’re crying.”
“It’s the hormones. I can’t seem to stop.”
He took his hands from his pockets and grabbed a fistful of tissues from the box on the tray table. As matter-of-factly as he helped her the day before, he dabbed the tears from her cheeks. “The tears are nothing to worry about. I heard that every time my sister went through this, my brother-in-law ordered tissues by the case.”
“I’m just so—” Her voice caught on a sob. “So happy.”
“I have to confess the whole business left me a little choked up myself.”
“Crazy, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” They smiled at each other for a moment. Then he pushed his hand into his windbreaker pocket and withdrew a black and white object. “Here. I brought this for the baby.”
“What…” She looked at the toy on his palm, then picked it up with her free hand. It was a velveteen panda bear with big blue embroidered eyes, a black velvet nose and a pink satin bow tied around its neck. “Oh, it’s adorable!”
“The lady in the store said it would be safe for an infant if you removed the bow. There aren’t any other parts that could come off, and the bear’s washable, too.”
“She’ll love it. I love it. Thank you, Del. That was so sweet.” Her chin trembled again.
Before the tears could fall, he had a tissue poised and waiting.
Sniffing, she set the toy on the tray table and took the tissue from Del. “Thanks again. You must think I’m an idiot.”
“No, I think you’re a mother who loves her daughter very much.”
Shaking her head, she gave a watery laugh. “If you keep saying things like that, I’ll never stop crying.”
“Sorry.”
“No, no. I don’t mind. I’m savoring every second of this. Honest.” She wadded up the tissue and tossed it toward the wastebasket. “But you really didn’t have to bring anything—”
She drew in her breath as she caught sight of the back of his hand. The skin from his knuckles to his wrist was an angry, shiny red scattered with painful-looking gouges. “Oh, my gosh. What happened? Oh, no. Did I do that?”
“It’s nothing. I burned myself last week, that’s all.”
“How?”
He waited half a beat before he answered. “An accident at work.”
“An accident?”
He lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “A coffeepot broke.”
“I’m sorry, I hadn’t noticed yesterday,” she said, her gaze on the injured skin. “And you let me hold your hand. I’m so sorry, Del. That must have hurt.”
“Maggie, compared to what you went through, I barely noticed,” he said easily.
She had a strong urge to reach out and stroke his hand. She didn’t, of course. She might have held on to him yesterday, but those were special circumstances. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there, Del,” she said. “I mean, I took all the prenatal classes, but reading books and seeing videos can’t come close to the real thing. It’s a good thing you were so calm.”
“I’m glad I could help, although you were the one who deserves all the praise. You never let out so much as a whimper.”
“I couldn’t have. It would have driven away all of Laszlo’s customers.” Taking a steadying breath, she turned her gaze to the baby. “I was right about having a girl.”
“Yes, you were.”
“Did you say that your sister has six children?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How did she come up with six names? I can’t even settle on one.”
“She chose names from our family. Altogether we have thirteen aunts and uncles.”
“Wow. Big families must run in—” She chuckled. “I was going to say they run in the family.”
“It’s an old Missouri homesteader tradition, raising your own farmhands,” Del said dryly.
“You’re from a farm?” Maggie asked, intrigued.
“A long time ago,” he answered.
So he wasn’t a cowboy after all, she thought. He was a farmer. Well, both professions involved dealing with animals and squinting at the horizon, so it was close enough. Before she could pursue the topic, she sensed a flutter of movement against her arm. She looked at her daughter. The baby’s eyelids were flickering. “Oh, Del,” she murmured. “She’s waking up.”
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to disturb her.”
“She’s been asleep for an hour—that’s a long time for a newborn. She’s such a clever girl. I told you she’s a genius, didn’t I?”
“No, not yet.”
“Well, she is.” As her baby’s eyes blinked open, Maggie felt a rush of warmth. Would she ever tire of looking at this little miracle? She shifted on the bed to sit up straighter, smiling gratefully as Del rearranged the pillows behind her back. “Hello, precious,” she cooed. “How’s my little sweetie pie?”
Del leaned closer. Just as he had earlier, he hesitated for a moment, as if debating what to do next. Then he extended his index finger and gently stroked the baby’s cheek with his fingertip.
It must be the hormones, she thought, watching Del watch her baby. But the special warmth she felt flowing between her and her daughter expanded to envelop him, as well.
Simply saying thank-you hadn’t been anywhere near enough. He had delivered her baby, for God’s sake. Even the greeting-card companies didn’t have anything that covered that situation.
Would she have felt this way about the paramedics if they’d gotten there five minutes earlier and been the ones to deliver the baby? Or about her doctor if she’d given birth in the hospital? Somehow, she doubted it.
“Del,” she said.
He glanced up. His face wore a smile that on anyone else would be called sappy, yet on his starkly masculine features it could only be called…endearing. “You’re right, Maggie,” he said. “She’s beautiful when she’s awake, too.”
“Del, I—” She stopped suddenly, struck by a thought. “Delilah! That’s it.”
“What?”
“It feels right. More than right. It’s perfect.” She grinned. “Delilah Rice.”
“Delilah?” he repeated. “You mean as a name for your daughter?”
“Yes. What do you think?”
He stared at her. “Maggie…”
“It’s sounds great, doesn’t it? She doesn’t have any real aunts or uncles for me to name her after, so I can’t think of a better choice. You’re kind of an honorary uncle. When she grows up and asks me whose name she has, I’ll have a terrific story to tell her, won’t I?”
A muscle jumped in his cheek. He looked at the baby, then at her. “Maggie, I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”
“Delilah Rice,” she said, catching her daughter’s fist in her hand. “Hello, Delilah Rice. I’d like to introduce you to Del…”
Her words trailed off. It seemed absurd, but after everything that had happened, she still didn’t know Del’s last name.
“Rogers,” he said, smoothing over the moment before it could get awkward. “Del Rogers.”
“Del Rogers, meet the smartest, prettiest, sweetest, most lovable baby in the entire universe, Delilah Rice.”
His throat worked as he swallowed. Tentatively, he reached out and closed his hand over hers and Delilah’s. “Hello, Delilah.”
It was his voice, Maggie thought, so deep and utterly masculine. Or it could have been the gentleness of his touch. Or maybe it was the postpartum hormones. But for a moment she found herself wishing…
Wishing what? That things could be different? That she could have fallen in love with a nice man like Del instead of a rat like Alan? That Delilah wouldn’t have to grow up without a father?
Her emotions were scrambled from the trauma of childbirth, that’s all. She still knew next to nothing about Del. She wasn’t looking for a knight in shining armor—no matter how nice he might be—to ride in on a white horse and rescue her. Alan had taught her that much. She and her daughter would be fine, a family of two, with enough love to fill a lifetime.
Letting herself long for anything else was only asking for trouble.
Chapter 3
The whiskey bottle clinked as Del splashed more of the liquid into his glass. He’d finished his shift forty minutes ago. The drizzle that had been falling when he’d returned to his hotel room had strengthened to pattering rain, cloaking the dawn in gloom and guaranteeing another few hours of darkness. The routine of the Monarch Hotel was the same in New York as it was in the rest of the chain SPEAR owned— Del knew this because in the course of his assignments, he had stayed in practically every one of them. It would be after nine before the building came fully awake with the muffled thumps of closing doors and the squeaking rattle of the cleaning crew’s cart. That left him plenty of time to get good and drunk.
He returned the bottle to the bedside table, then leaned back against the headboard and cradled the glass in his hand. He hadn’t gotten drunk in years. In eight years, to be exact. But the Rogers clan was big on tradition, so maybe he would start one of his own.
Yes, maybe he should make it a tradition. Get blind drunk at least once a year, whether he needed it or not. It might do him good. Maybe if he loosened up more, took some time off from his job occasionally, he wouldn’t be hit so hard when something broke through to his emotions.
No, that wasn’t right. He was as human as the next guy. There was nothing wrong with his emotions. He had a full complement of them, he just didn’t need them for his job. When he was on the hunt, his success required the proverbial nerves of steel. Nothing bothered him, nothing distracted him when his survival and everyone else’s depended on his ability to keep calm in a crisis.
Cool as ice, he thought, taking a burning swallow. That’s the reputation he had built during his time with SPEAR. Evidently it spilled over into his off-duty hours, as well. After all, he’d kept his head in the back room of Laszlo’s diner, hadn’t he? Maggie had thanked him over and over for helping her through the baby’s birth. As a matter of fact, she’d been so grateful, she’d named her baby after him.
The baby.
Delilah.
The reason Del was getting drunk.
He took another swallow, grimacing at the taste of the liquor. This glassful was going down more easily than the last. Too bad it wasn’t working any faster.
He should have left well enough alone. He shouldn’t have gone to the hospital to see Maggie yesterday. He’d been around enough hospitals lately. He’d been at a different one the day before, visiting his colleague in intensive care. Until now, he’d never visited a maternity ward—he was more accustomed to dealing with how life ended than to seeing life begin.
No matter what he felt, he wasn’t responsible for Maggie or her baby. And as far as they were concerned, he was nothing but a bystander, so he had no right to accept the honor Maggie was giving him.
Maggie had named her baby Delilah out of gratitude. He had understood that. She had meant it as a favor. She couldn’t possibly have known about the sore spot she was probing with her innocent gesture.
It shouldn’t have bothered him. He had come to terms with his limitations almost a decade ago. He had a good life now. He was proud of his work. He enjoyed the loyalty he found among his fellow SPEAR agents and he relished the challenge of each new assignment. He didn’t need a namesake in order to feel fulfilled.
He shouldn’t have told Bill about the baby. It would have been wiser to keep his off-duty life completely separate from his work. Maggie’s world had nothing to do with the world of SPEAR. Yet Del had been so moved by his part in the child’s birth, he would have had to have mentioned it eventually. Too bad he hadn’t left it at that. But when he’d arrived for his shift tonight and Bill had asked about Maggie and the baby, Del had not only told him all about his visit to their hospital room, he’d let slip the name Maggie had chosen.
“Well, well, well,” Bill had said, drawing contemplatively on his pipe. “Delilah, huh? Congratulations, Papa.”
Del had tried to ignore the twinge of pain Bill’s ribbing had caused. “More like an uncle,” he’d said. “An honorary one.”
“That kid doesn’t need an uncle, she needs a daddy.”
“Maggie’s a strong woman. She’ll manage just fine. Anyone can see she loves her daughter to distraction.”
“Oh? How can you tell?”
“It’s all over her face whenever she talks about her.”
“Ah. You mean she gets a syrupy smile and her eyes go soft and unfocused?”
“Something like that.”
Bill let out a puff of aromatic smoke, watching it waft toward the ceiling. “The description fits you, as well.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Next thing you know you’ll be carrying baby pictures around in your wallet and looking for a house with a white picket fence.”
“Bill…”
“Admit it, Del. You’re smitten with both of them.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“June’s a good time for a wedding, I hear. That’s only two months away.”
“I’m not marrying anyone.”
“Then why all the interest in the young single mother?”
“I’m not interested in her that way. I’m just trying to do the right thing. After the way she was seduced and abandoned by Delilah’s father, she could use a friend.”
“Aha! Methinks you doth protest too much.”
Del rolled his eyes at the mangled Shakespeare.
“Maggie’s going to look pretty good once she gets back into shape,” Bill continued. “Even when she was pregnant she was a cute little thing. You like blondes, don’t you?”
“I never really thought about it.”
“Why not? You’ve already seen what she has to offer when she—”
“That’s enough, Bill,” Del said, cutting him off. He was surprised by the anger he felt at his friend’s tasteless remark. “It wasn’t some voyeuristic fantasy, Bill. It was the birth of a child.”
“Lighten up, Del. No offense meant.”
“Anyone who would be thinking of sex under those circumstances would be sick. Perverted. I have too much respect for Maggie to even consider regarding her—”
“Hey, I said lighten up.” Bill eyed him warily. “I was only joking.”
Del glanced down and saw that he’d curled his hands into fists. It had been an instinctive, protective reaction. He made an effort to relax, taking a deep breath and wiping his palms on his pants legs. “Right.”
“You’re awfully touchy about it.”
“Maggie doesn’t deserve to be mocked that way.”
“Sorry.” Bill continued to scrutinize him. “This whole childbirth thing really did get to you, didn’t it?”
“It would get to anyone.”
“Ever thought about having kids of your own, Del?”
This time he was ready—the comment didn’t cause more than a twinge. Del looked straight at his partner and lied. “No.”
Bill shifted his pipe to the corner of his mouth and smiled enigmatically. “Then you must be pleased that Maggie named her baby after you.”
Yes, he was pleased, Del thought, tipping his head back to drain his glass. That was why he was getting drunk, because Maggie had made him so doggone happy. He squinted at the bottle beside him and reached out to pour more whiskey.
The last time he’d done this, he’d gotten drunk because he’d been angry. More than angry—furious. Eight years had passed, but he still hadn’t forgotten the feeling of helpless rage that he’d tried to drown in the bottom of a bottle. He had just seen the carefully laid plans for his life crumble to nothing.
That’s what love did to a person. He’d been around the same age then that Maggie was now, and he’d been just as wrong about the person he’d fallen in love with.
Only in Del’s case, it hadn’t been a whirlwind romance with someone who was already married. He had loved Elizabeth Johanson since they had made a papier-mâché model of Mount Saint Helens together for a fifth grade geography project. The finished model had looked more like a crumpled soda can than a volcanic crater, but he had fallen head over heels for Elizabeth nevertheless.
They had gone steady all through high school. No one in the county had been surprised when Del and Elizabeth had become engaged after graduation. While she had gone away to teachers’ college, he had stayed behind to help work his parents’ farm, counting the days until they would be married. Their love had seemed stronger than ever each time Elizabeth had come home. By the time he was twenty-one, his parents had deeded him a plot of land, and he had already started to build the house he and Elizabeth had designed together. It would have plenty of bedrooms. They wanted a houseful of children.
Oh, yeah, Elizabeth had wanted children. She was wild about them. She came from a family almost as large as Del’s and she was devoted to her younger siblings. So when her youngest brother came down with the mumps the Christmas before her wedding, she hadn’t hesitated to take care of him. She hadn’t realized she would pass on the illness to Del.
Having the mumps at seven wasn’t usually serious. It was just another one of those childhood diseases that was more of a nuisance than a danger. But the consequences were different for a man of twenty-one.
Del hadn’t wanted to believe the results of the lab test his doctor had ordered. He’d had a second, and then a third, but they only verified the first. The mumps had left Del unable to father children. He was completely sterile.
It had been difficult to grasp. Del hadn’t felt any different physically. He still had the same sexual urges of any normal, red-blooded male his age. As far as he knew, his capabilities when it came to lovemaking hadn’t suffered. He had thought he was the same man.
Elizabeth had cried when he’d told her. In one breath she vowed she would always love him, but in the next she was telling him their engagement was off. She didn’t want to tie herself for life to a man who couldn’t give her children.
Del had felt his anger stir then, but he’d had no target to focus the feeling on. He couldn’t really blame Elizabeth’s brother for coming down with the mumps in the first place. And he tried not to fault Elizabeth for her honesty, either, no matter how hurtful her rejection of him was. If he really loved her, he would want her to be happy, wouldn’t he? He would let her go and wish her well.
That’s what he’d tried to do. He’d been damn noble about the whole thing. But the nobility had been submerged by a wave of fury when barely a month had passed before he learned that the woman who had promised to love him forever had eloped with his best friend. Their first child had been born eight months later.
So much for love. So much for loyalty. It hadn’t taken the love of his life long to find his replacement.
Getting drunk had seemed like a good idea then. It had helped to blunt the pain. It had diluted the frustrated anger he’d felt at Elizabeth, at fate, at his own physical defect.
But he wasn’t angry now, was he?
So why was he determined to get drunk?
It was because of Delilah. The beautiful little baby with Maggie’s eyes…and Del’s name.
Del let his head fall back against the headboard. He could feel a pleasant numbness starting in his lips. It was only a matter of time before it worked its way to his mind.
Trouble was, once the alcohol wore off, the emotions would still be there.
Maggie really had made him happy. It wasn’t just because she had named her child after him. It was her openhearted generosity. Even though they hardly knew each other, she was letting him share the joy of her baby. When was the last time he’d felt such pure, simple pleasure?
She had declared him an honorary uncle. He hadn’t been much of a real one. He always made sure to send Christmas and birthday gifts to his sister’s kids, but he didn’t see them often. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been home. He’d deliberately limited his contact with babies.
Until now, he’d never realized how much he’d been missing.
He fumbled to put his glass on the nightstand. Damn, he was drunk, all right. He was getting downright mushy. He could feel the silly smile working across his face as he thought about how incredibly soft Delilah’s cheek had felt, and how perfectly Maggie’s hand had fit within his.
He wanted to experience those feelings again.
Yet he would never know the touch of his own child. There would be no blood of his blood, flesh of his flesh. He wouldn’t be able to put that glow of happiness on a woman’s face that he saw on Maggie’s when she held her baby. He couldn’t give her the seed that would grow the miracle.
Rubbing his eyes, he shook his head. He was getting downright maudlin.