He pulled some money from his wallet and tossed the bills on the table. “I’m out of here.”
Two pairs of eyes regarded him suspiciously.
“To go where?” Justin demanded.
“Home, of course,” he replied innocently.
“Whose home?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” Harlan Patrick muttered. “Stop being a cop, Justin. It’s none of our business whose home he’s going to.”
“It sure as hell is, if it’s Sharon Lynn’s,” Justin retorted, his gaze lethal.
“Settle down,” Cord soothed. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going to the bunkhouse at White Pines. I’ve got some thinking to do.”
And if he reached the same conclusion overnight that he’d reached just now, he’d have a plan that just might solve all their problems.
Chapter Fourteen
A restless night of tossing and turning and mulling over the idea he’d had while talking to Harlan Patrick and Justin left Cord in desperate need of coffee first thing in the morning. He was about to pour himself a cup, when he looked up and saw Harlan Adams coming through the bunkhouse door. He looked like a man on a mission.
His eyes lit up when he saw the pot in Cord’s hand. “You got another cup around this place? I wouldn’t mind some decent coffee for a change.”
“I can find the cup, but I wouldn’t call this decent. It’s yesterday’s mud.”
“It has caffeine, doesn’t it? Believe me, that’s all that matters.”
The comment reminded Cord that caffeine was a clear violation of the older man’s diet. He turned and dumped everything left in the pot into the sink before he could be tempted into caving in.
“Now why’d you go and do a durn fool thing like that?” Harlan Adams demanded with an indignant expression.
“To save us both a lot of aggravation.”
With a sigh of resignation, Harlan sank into a chair. “I suppose it was the smart thing to do, from your point of view,” he conceded.
“Yours, too. From what I hear, your wife has her spies everywhere.”
The older man chuckled. “You’re right about that, especially around here.”
Cord sat down opposite him. “What brings you by here this early? Is there something I can help you with?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Just how involved you are with my granddaughter.”
Uh-oh, Cord thought. “Involved?” he repeated cautiously.
“You’re a smart man. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
“I think maybe you do.”
“Are you in love with her? I know what my eyes tell me, but I want to hear it from you.”
“Don’t you think that’s something I should be discussing with her, not you?”
His expression turned impatient at the evasion. “Oh, stop beating around the bush, boy. Any fool can see you care about Sharon Lynn. I’m just asking if it’s walking-down-the-aisle serious.”
Cord gave up the pretense. “Okay, yes. I’m serious. But it’s way too soon for her to believe that. There’s her past, for one thing. And the timing. It hasn’t been all that long since I turned up here.”
Harlan gave an approving nod. “Good, you can see that, too. I knew you had a head on your shoulders. Trouble is, there’s no time to waste.”
Cord stared. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve been mulling over this mess with little Ashley,” Harlan explained. “It seems to me like the only sensible thing to do would be for the two of you to get married and adopt that child yourselves. Any judge would see that the two of you’d be better parents for her than that drunken old crone over in Garden City.”
Maybe if he hadn’t reached the exact same conclusion himself, Cord would have been shocked by the suggestion. As it was, it was just more proof that his thinking hadn’t been clouded by pure lust or his powerful longing for family. He glanced up and saw that the older man was watching him expectantly.
“Well, what do you think?” Harlan demanded. “Will you do it?”
“With all due respect, sir, I’m not the problem. It’s Sharon Lynn who’s going to require some convincing. In case you haven’t noticed, the woman has a mind of her own.”
“Family curse,” Harlan conceded. “We’re all stubborn as the day is long, but I’ve thought about that. I’ll talk to her. She’ll listen to me. Always has. She trusts me to say what’s what.”
Cord held up his hand. “I appreciate the offer, but not this time. If there’s any proposing to be done, I’ll do it myself.”
To Cord’s relief, Harlan didn’t put up a fuss about being left out. He just gave Cord a measured look and advised, “Well, you’d best get a move on then. Once that old hag shows up and starts making waves, there won’t be a second to waste.”
The warning made perfect sense, but it wasn’t going to be that simple. “I understand what you’re saying,” Cord agreed, “but tactically, it seems to me the only way it’s going to work is for your granddaughter to be desperate. I think I have to wait until Hazel Murdock puts in an appearance.”
Harlan nodded slowly, his expression thoughtful. “You could be right. Sharon Lynn has dug in her heels when it comes to love. After that tragedy with Kyle, she’s made up her mind never to marry. She won’t say yes just like that, no matter how much she might want to.”
“Could I ask you a question?” Cord ventured.
“Of course you can.”
“Doesn’t it bother you just the teensiest bit that you’re all but pushing your granddaughter into marriage to a man she hasn’t even said she loved?”
Harlan Adams laughed at that. “Like I said, she’s stubborn. She won’t be pushed, unless it’s what she wants deep down. I happen to think it is. I’ve seen the way she looks at you, the way you look at her. More important, I’ve seen the way you treat her. When a man treats a woman with that much respect, that much caring, the love is there. All it needs is a little time and nurturing. I’m just trying to make sure it gets the jump-start required.”
“Maybe the time and nurturing ought to come before we’ve said our vows,” Cord suggested. It was a worrisome idea that had plagued him all night long. He was hoping Harlan Adams would have something to say that would reassure him.
“If the circumstances allowed for that, maybe so,” Harlan agreed. “But we don’t have that luxury. Even if there weren’t little Ashley to consider, there’s me. I’m an old man. Ever since Kyle died, Sharon Lynn’s been fixated on this notion that she’s not cut out for marriage. I’m not sure I’ll last long enough for her to figure out for herself that she’s all wrong.”
He gave Cord a conspiratorial grin. “I’m counting on you to move this along.”
“I’ll do my best, sir, but you’ll have to leave the timing to me,” Cord insisted.
This time Harlan looked vaguely disgruntled at being forced out of the driver’s seat, but he finally grumbled his assent. “Just get the job done. That’s all I care about.”
It was all that mattered to Cord, too. But something told him it was going to be a whole lot trickier than sidling up to Sharon Lynn, going down on one knee and popping the question. The woman was going to have to be desperate for it to work. That might not do a lot for his ego, but at this point he’d be grateful for just about any state of mind that allowed him to get past those rock-solid defenses of hers.
* * *
For the next week, Cord bided his time. Knowing that Harlan Adams was anxiously awaiting signs of progress didn’t ease the pressure any. He expected to be summoned for progress reports on a daily basis, but the old man restricted himself to dropping by every day or two instead. He was clearly growing dissatisfied with the lack of an engagement announcement.
The time Cord spent with Sharon Lynn and Ashley left him restless and uneasy. He was
tempted more than once to announce his plan and let the chips fall where they may, but there was too much riding on the outcome for him to speak out that impulsively. Once more, his patience was being tested to the limits. Maybe all this waiting around was building character, but it felt a whole lot more like torment.
It was another week after that before Hazel Murdock finally staggered into Dolan’s late one afternoon to see her precious grandbaby. It was the first time he’d gotten a decent up-close look at her and what he saw wasn’t reassuring. Though he guessed her age to be under fifty, the deep lines in her face, the perpetual frown and hair that was more gray than bottle-blond suggested she’d paid a heavy price for every year she’d lived. There wasn’t a speck of joy in her expression, not even when she got a first look at her granddaughter.
As Cord had predicted, she was drunk and her language was coarse, but one thing was clear. She was grimly determined to take the baby home with her—or so she claimed. There was a wily gleam in her eye when she looked at Sharon Lynn that suggested otherwise.
Sharon Lynn clung protectively to the baby and cast a desperate look at Cord. He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, then latched on to Mrs. Murdock’s elbow and guided her to a place at the counter. She perched on the stool, squared her shoulders and clung to her worn purse as if she feared it might be snatched at any second. There was something a little sad and pathetic about her, but he couldn’t afford to feel any sympathy, not when her sole purpose in being here was to take little Ashley away from them.
“How about a cup of coffee?” he said, as much to give Sharon Lynn something concrete to do as to sober the old lady up.
“Coffee’d be good,” Mrs. Murdock agreed, her gaze following Sharon Lynn and the baby she still held in her arms.
“Mrs. Murdock, have you really thought this through?” Cord asked carefully. “You’ve already raised your daughter on your own. Are you sure you want to take on the burden of another child, a brand-new baby, at this stage of your life? That’s an eighteen-year commitment, minimum.”
“God never gives us burdens we can’t handle,” she said self-righteously.
She cast another look toward the baby and, for just an instant, something in her eyes softened. “She’s a pretty one, isn’t she?” she asked and this time there was nothing cagey in her voice.
“She’s beautiful,” Sharon Lynn agreed fervently. “She’s a wonderful baby. She deserves the best possible future.”
Hazel Murdock’s gaze narrowed. “Are you saying I wouldn’t do right by my own blood?”
“Of course not,” Cord soothed. “It’s just that it’s a lot of responsibility to take on.”
“Who’ll do it, if I don’t?”
“She could stay with me,” Sharon Lynn blurted, before Cord could warn her not to.
“You’ve fallen for her, haven’t you?” the old woman said. Despite Sharon Lynn’s silence, she reached her own conclusion and nodded. “Yes, I can see that you have. Maybe we could come to some sort of an arrangement, just between the two of us.”
Before Sharon Lynn could speak, Cord asked, “What kind of an arrangement, Mrs. Murdock?”
Her gaze darted nervously from him to Sharon Lynn and back again.
“A little money, maybe, just to help out with my expenses,” she said at last. “Like you said, I’m getting up in years. My pension won’t be much.”
“You would sell your granddaughter?” Cord asked, his tone deadly. Even though Justin had warned him to anticipate something exactly like this, he was appalled.
She clearly heard the disgust in his voice and backpedaled. “Sell her? I never said such a thing.”
“That’s what it sounded like to me. What did it sound like to you, Sharon Lynn?”
Sharon Lynn was too near tears to answer.
“I don’t think we have anything more to discuss, Mrs. Murdock,” Cord said emphatically, propelling her toward the door. “If you want your granddaughter, file the appropriate papers with the court.”
“I don’t have money to hire a fancy lawyer,” she whined. “You know that, too, don’t you? I’ll go to a reporter. I’ll tell him you’re trying to take away an old lady’s only blood relation. You’ll regret this. I’ll see to it.”
Cord let her rant, then said quietly, “You’ll take Ashley over my dead body, Mrs. Murdock.”
He gave her a curt nod, then shut the door and locked it behind her. He flipped the sign on the door to Closed and went back to Sharon Lynn, who was trembling so badly he took the whimpering baby from her, then circled an arm around her waist and drew her in tight, too.
“I can’t give her up to a woman like that,” Sharon Lynn whispered. “I just can’t. Cord, she was drunk. She was here to see her grandbaby for the first time and she was so drunk she could hardly stand up. What if she took the baby in a car with her like that?”
He heard the horror in her voice and knew that it was her two greatest fears all wrapped up into one terrifying threat. “She won’t take the baby,” he insisted. “No matter what, she won’t take Ashley away from us.”
“How can we be sure?”
Here it was then, the moment he’d been waiting for. A part of him hated having to resort to using her quiet desperation to get what he wanted most in this world. Only the firm belief that she needed a family—needed him—every bit as much as he needed her permitted him to go through with the plan already supported by her grandfather.
“Come over here and sit down,” he urged. “I have an idea.”
* * *
Sharon Lynn was dazed. The whole time that horrible woman had been there, she had felt as if all the life were being sucked out of her. Only the weight of the baby in her arms had felt real. That and Cord’s unwavering presence. He had been so angry, so fiercely furious she had been astonished that Hazel Murdock hadn’t understood that and kept that awful offer to sell the baby to herself.
His anger had died now, but it had been replaced by a firm resolve. Gazing into his eyes in the gathering darkness, she saw that resolve, and her own fears were quieted. It no longer seemed to matter that she couldn’t imagine what they could possibly do to guarantee that Ashley would remain safely with them. It was enough that Cord seemed convinced that there was something that would give them a chance.
“Do you think she’ll go to court?” she asked, voicing her most immediate fear.
“I doubt it, not unless there’s money in it for her,” he said scathingly.
“But what if she does?”
“Then we’ll offer the court a better alternative, one no judge could possibly resist if he has the best interests of the baby at heart.”
She considered the all-too-scanty list of possibilities, but there was only one that made sense to her, only one she could live with.
“I could offer to keep the baby myself. I could adopt her,” she said tentatively, then went on with more enthusiasm. “Why not? I’m responsible. I have my own business. I could give her a good home.” Her conviction wavered ever so slightly. “It shouldn’t matter that I’m not married, should it?”
His gaze caught hers as he slowly shook his head. “To be honest, it could.”
There were a zillion single moms in the world. “But—”
He cut off her protest. “Just wait. I have a better plan. You and I will ask for custody.”
“Together? But how...?” Her voice trailed off as understanding dawned. “You and I...” She couldn’t seem to make herself complete the thought.
Cord had no such hesitation. “We’ll get married,” he said as if it were no more than a date for coffee. “We’ll show the court that we can offer Ashley the kind of stable, two-parent home she deserves. It’s the perfect solution.”
She waited for the shock of the outrageous suggestion to sink in, waited for her stomach to rebel at the mere thought of taking another risk on marriage, at
going through another ceremony that could end in tragedy, but it didn’t happen. This wasn’t a real marriage he was proposing, after all. It was a strategic alliance, a way to prevent Ashley from going home with that awful woman. And this was Cord, a man she’d come to trust. Her heart wouldn’t be on the line, nor would his.
As she heard herself ticking off rationalizations, she realized that she was going to consider saying yes. If it could keep the baby safe, she would consider it.
She knew what it would mean to her, what it could mean to Ashley to agree to such a marriage, but Cord’s motives were less certain and that troubled her. Of course, he cared about the baby. There wasn’t any doubt about that, but this was a huge step to take to protect a child who wasn’t even his own.
She studied him intently, but his expression was unreadable as he awaited her answer. “Why would you agree to something like that?” she asked eventually.
He grinned. “You seem to forget I’m not agreeing to it. I’m suggesting it.”
She shrugged off the distinction. “Why, though?”
“Because I’ve thought long and hard about this and it’s the only thing that makes sense. It would be the right thing for the baby, to keep her with you.” He shrugged and admitted, “And with me. I’ve fallen for her, too, you know. I want to go on being a part of her life. I want to be a dad, a different kind of dad from the one I had, different from the one biologically responsible for Ashley.”
He cupped her cheek in his palm and the graze of his fingers sent heat flaring through her.
“You’re a strong woman, Sharon Lynn. I have no doubt a court would take your petition for custody seriously, but weighed against a willing blood relation, I don’t know. It could go either way. Even Justin concedes that. Together, though, we’d be an indomitable force to reckon with.”
He made the case passionately. Convincingly. Sharon Lynn’s hand shook as she reached for her cup of coffee to buy herself some time to think it through, to analyze the pitfalls.
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