with deep, maternal love as she took the girl.
Something flickered in his mind’s eye like a flashbulb taking a photo. He absorbed her tone and the tender way she cradled the baby so protectively. His memory took a snapshot to dwell on the fine details later because right now he had to stay anchored in the tension permeating the air around them.
The baby had neither Tanja’s straight, red-gold hair, her pale complexion nor her hazel eyes. The infant’s black curls and light brown skin could pass for mixed race if Tanja had slept with a man who looked like him, though. Which she must have done.
Why that dug such a deep thorn into him, Leon couldn’t say. Their marriage had been a moment of temporary madness that he only recollected as a statement of fact. His father was dead. His age was thirty-five. His legal status was “married.”
How Tanja had conducted her life these last years was none of his business.
But where was that other man? Surely he would be as affronted to have Leon named his baby’s father as Leon was at having another man’s baby passed off as his? Leon could hardly keep his dumbfounded fury off his face.
He manufactured a smile, though, hyperaware of the scrutiny they were under and that, regardless of who this baby’s father was, the infant was completely helpless and innocent. If she was Tanja’s, for the purposes of this rescue, she was his.
“She’s beautiful.” He tried to look smitten even though he’d never really looked at a baby before. This one was whimpering as she nuzzled her face into Tanja’s chest.
“I’ll make her a bottle.” The other woman took the baby again and hurried away.
“I was upset that you and I were apart. My milk didn’t come,” Tanja said with an apologetic smile toward the soldiers for speaking of such things.
“See?” Leon leaped on her remark to prove his lie. “Her brother told me diapers and formula were difficult to find here. I brought them for my daughter.”
One of the soldiers accepted that with a bored look toward his compatriot. He seemed ready to leave. His fellow soldier wore the look of a man with a hard-on for power. Leon hated men like that. He’d been raised by one and feared he had turned into one, which was why he was so filled with bitter self-loathing.
“Why were you here and not with your husband when you had the baby?” the antagonistic one asked Tanja.
“Things are different in Canada,” she began while Leon spoke at the same time. “My father died—”
Leon bit back a curse and set his arm around her again, squeezing in a signal to let him do the talking.
She was nothing but skin and bones. That alarmed him, but he was more concerned with getting through the next few minutes without an arrest.
“We married in Canada, but I had to return to Greece when my father died.” Ancient history, but true. “Tanja was already scheduled to come to work here. She didn’t know she was pregnant or she wouldn’t have traveled.” He gave her a stern frown. Naughty wife.
He felt her stiffen, but she smiled apologetically at the men. “By the time I realized, I was too far along to go back. It’s been difficult to make arrangements to leave.”
Flights had to be chartered and women weren’t allowed to leave the house, let alone the country, without a male relative.
The soldiers flicked their attention between him and Tanja, seemingly aware they were being strung along but unsure what the truth really was.
“My sister is a widow,” the man from across the street piped up. “She let Mrs. Petrakis and the baby stay here as an act of charity. My uncle is a cleric.” He mentioned the man’s name, and presumably the uncle outranked these foot soldiers because they both stood straighter. “He’s aware of all of this. Let me fetch him. He will determine if all is in order with her departure. Then we’ll have no more inquiries from their governments.”
The bored one nudged the grumpy one and gave a coaxing nod. The other sighed and jerked his head to send the brother out into the night.
From behind them, the baby’s fussing abruptly ceased. Tanja broke away to say, “Why don’t you feed Illi while I pack?”
Leon was starting to think they had a Broadway act in their future, if not a career in espionage. “I’d love to.”
The little midge was placed in the crook of his arm. Milk leaked