Elizabeth Bevarly - The Perfect Father

She scanned the list in her hand once again. There were five names left, all of them men Sylvie didn’t know particularly well. She wasn’t sure she could make love with a man she scarcely knew, especially when she hadn’t made love that often with men she knew extremely well. But time was running out. It was already the last week of February. She’d be ovulating again in two weeks. If she wanted a Christmas baby—and she did very much want a Christmas baby—she was going to have to find the perfect father for her child quickly.

“Order up, Sylvie. Shrimp étouffée. ”

Her gaze traveled slowly from the plate of food a passing waiter placed on the bar to the man who had asked her to surprise him. And as she made her way slowly down the bar toward Mr. Buchanan, she began to study him in a way she never had before. When she set the plate before him, he looked up to murmur his thanks, and she found herself staring into clear green eyes full of intelligence.

She moved slightly away as he began to eat, but continued to observe him closely, noting with interest the expensively cut, jet black hair, the high cheekbones and perfectly sculpted jaw, the finely formed lips beneath a near-perfect nose that claimed not a chink. She had always thought Mr. Buchanan was very attractive. She considered him smart and ambitious. She also knew that although he was scarcely forty, he headed up one of Philadelphia’s most prominent architectural firms.

When he turned to lift a hand in greeting to another regular at the bar, Sylvie studied his eyes in profile. No contacts, she noted. When he turned back to her, he caught her watching him and smiled, and she noticed that one of his front teeth was bent just the tiniest bit over the other. Not enough to mar his appearance in any way, but enough to let her know he’d never had orthodontic work done.

She pulled the pencil from behind her ear and added another name to the bottom of her list, drawing an arrow from the words Mr. Buchanan to the space immediately beneath Keith’s name. Then she tucked the list back into her shirt pocket.

“Hey, Mr. Buchanan,” she said thoughtfully as she reached for his empty glass to refill it for his usual second drink. “You know, there’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Do you play any musical instruments?”

Chase was stumped. “Musical instruments?” he asked.

Sylvie nodded as she reached for a bottle of Laphroig from the mirrored shelves behind her. Had he become such a regular at Cosmo’s that she didn’t even bother to ask what he was drinking anymore, or if he even wanted a second? he wondered. Come to think of it, he couldn’t in fact remember the last time she had asked him what had once been the lead-in to all their encounters. However, the question she was asking now was a new one.

“Yeah,” she replied. “You seem like the musical type.”

“Well, I played saxophone in my high school pep band,” he confessed. “And I was part of a little jazz combo in college.”

She smiled, and Chase felt ridiculously happy that he had said something to please her. “Really?” she asked. “Saxophone?” She seemed to consider something for a moment, then nodded in what he could only liken to approval. “Saxophone’s cool.”

“Well, I haven’t played in years, of course—”

“But you were pretty good, right?”

He nodded, all modesty aside. “I was very good.”

Sylvie’s smile broadened as she placed his drink before him. “So tell me something else,” she said.

“Yes?”

“How have you been feeling lately?”

He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. “I’ve been feeling fine lately,” he told her. “Why? Do I look bad? Do you know something I don’t?”

She shook her head. “Just wanted to make sure you’re in good health.”

“By my physician’s latest account, my health is excellent, thanks.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Why so many questions?”

She studied him intently for a long time before answering, and suddenly Chase wasn’t sure he wanted to hear her reply.

“Can I be honest with you?” she asked him.

“Of course.”

She glanced around at their surroundings, at the two other bartenders and six or seven customers seated at the bar, at the flurry of waiters and waitresses who hustled around the service bar. His own gaze followed hers, and he wondered again what she was up to.

“I don’t think we should talk about it here,” she said. “But I’ll be getting off at eleven if we don’t get slammed any harder than this before then. Could I...could I maybe buy you a cup of coffee after my shift?”

Chase didn’t know what to say. He’d never seen Sylvie in a social situation before. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure he’d ever seen what she looked like from the waist down. Her invitation had come out of nowhere, completely unexpected. It unnerved him for some reason. He glanced down at his watch to find that it was just past ten. He’d have to wait an hour for her to finish up. Not that he had anything better lined up for the evening, he thought, but he probably ought to decline her invitation.

“Sure,” he heard himself reply, wondering when he’d made the decision to accept her invitation instead.

She released a long breath and looked very relieved for some reason. “Great. I appreciate it. So, what do you think of the étouffée...? ”

* * *

A little over an hour later Sylvie sat opposite Mr. Buchanan at a tiny cocktail table in the corner of Cosmo’s bar, clutching a cup of coffee as if it were a lifeline and feeling a little sick to her stomach. Was she crazy? she asked herself, studying the man opposite her as unobtrusively as possible from beneath her lashes. For the past hour she had completed her work behind the bar on automatic pilot, her thoughts instead whirling around one customer in particular.

What did she really know about Mr. Buchanan, anyway? she wondered. Not his first name, that was for sure. But he was handsome, intelligent and successful, had impeccable taste and knew how to play the saxophone. There didn’t appear to be any one particular romantic interest in his life to prevent him from fathering her child. Although he’d come into Cosmo’s a couple of times with a date, he’d never seemed to be with the same woman twice. As he himself had said, he was rabidly single.

He was older than her thirty years, she reminded herself further, by a full decade. And he was too much a workaholic to enjoy any kind of social or family life, something else that was a definite factor in Sylvie’s favor. At his age, and with his occupation, he had no desire to be saddled by the responsibilities of fatherhood. If she had a child by him, there was no doubt in her mind that the baby would be hers alone.

But could she really ask him to do what she was thinking of asking him to do? Would she be able to go through with it herself if he agreed? Her stomach knotted painfully again. She tried to find reassurance by reminding herself how often she had thought her plan through, and how well she had everything under control. Unfortunately, when she looked into the cool green eyes of the big man seated across from her, she suddenly wondered if she really understood at all exactly what she was getting herself into.

“So, Sylvie,” Chase began, uncomfortable in his realization that the two of them had been sitting at the table for more than five minutes without exchanging a single word. “What’s on your mind?”

She was staring down into her coffee cup as if it held the answers to the secrets of the universe, her long blond bangs falling in a silky sheath over her forehead. A stray tress she had tucked behind one ear fell forward, too, and Chase suddenly wanted nothing more than to reach across the tiny table and push it back into place. He’d never really noticed how soft her hair appeared to be. But in the dim glow of the candle flickering on the table between them, everything about Sylvie suddenly seemed soft.