“You could have faced it, because you’re an Adams. You come from a long line of strong people,” he said, his gaze warm and steady and reassuring. “But I’m glad we’re in this together. Ashley needs us both.”
She drew herself up, squared her shoulders and smiled bravely. “Yes, she does, and we’re going to see to it that the judge recognizes that.”
Cord grinned. “That’s the spirit.”
At the courthouse a few minutes later they were instantly surrounded by a whole slew of Adamses. Even Sharon Lynn had to admit that united, they presented a formidable force to be reckoned with. She was also reassured that the judge was an old friend of her grandfather’s, a woman known for her fierce protection of the rights of children. Surely that would work in their favor.
Janet presented their case for retaining custody. Calling first Cord, then Sharon Lynn, she led them through testimony about the brutally cold night on which they’d found the baby abandoned in the alley behind Dolan’s.
“What did you think when you saw her there?” Janet asked Cord.
“That she’d been left there to die,” he said angrily.
“Not that she’d been dropped off in the hope that she’d be found by someone who’d love and care for her?” Janet persisted.
“No,” he said flatly.
“Do you agree with your husband’s impression?” Janet asked Sharon Lynn when her turn came.
“I do,” Sharon Lynn said softly. “I didn’t want to believe any mother could allow that, but there was no other way to look at it. The baby was left too far from the door.”
Tears welled up as she remembered. “The snow was coming down so hard by then. In a few more minutes, an hour at most, she would have been under a cold blanket of snow. She would have...” She choked back a sob, then drew in a breath and faced the judge, who seemed shaken by the testimony. “She would have died.”
When Sharon Lynn left the stand, Janet called witness after witness who could talk about the love and care Cord and Sharon Lynn had given to the baby in all the weeks since that terrible night, about the love they’d discovered in the process that had led them to marry.
And finally Janet called on witnesses who could describe Hazel Murdock’s life-style.
“Your honor, I ask, is that the kind of situation in which you wish to see an innocent baby raised?” Janet asked passionately when the evidence had been presented. “I mean this as no disrespect to Mrs. Murdock. She has raised a daughter with little or no help from the child’s father. But that daughter—this baby’s mother—has vanished. Can Mrs. Murdock be expected at her age to raise yet another baby, this one her grandchild, with so few emotional and financial resources, especially when there are others capable and willing to give the child a warm, loving home?”
By contrast to Janet’s well-organized and passionately stated presentation, the attorney handling Mrs. Murdock’s case had little to offer the court in defense of his client. Even Mrs. Murdock herself seemed to be going through the motions on the stand, repeatedly citing her duty to rear the child, not her love for the baby she’d visited only once and never even asked to hold.
The judge listened to her intently, then interrupted her attorney’s questioning.
“Mrs. Murdock, do you truly want to take on the job of rearing this child?” the judge demanded.
“I’ve said so, haven’t I?” the older woman retorted with a defiant lift of her chin. “She’s my kin.” She gestured across the courtroom. “They have no claim on her.”
“Other than love,” the judge replied quietly. She uttered a sigh. “I wish I could end this matter right now, but there are any number of moral issues to be considered. Normally I would not rule against blood ties. And then there is the fact that the biological mother’s whereabouts are not known. She could turn up here tomorrow wanting her baby back. Or she might never be heard from again.”
She glanced at Sharon Lynn, who had been holding the baby cradled in her arms ever since she’d left the witness stand. Cord was snugly by her side, his hand resting reassuringly on her shoulder. A smile seemed to touch the judge’s lips for just an instant at the picture of a loving family that they presented.
“I think time is what’s needed here,” she said. “Time for me to consider all the facts, time for the police to complete their search for Victoria Murdock and her boyfriend.” She gave a pointed look toward the woman fighting them for custody. “Time for Mrs. Murdock to consider thoroughly what is truly best for her granddaughter.”
Sharon Lynn’s heart was in her throat as she waited for the judge’s ruling. Cord folded her hand in his and squeezed.
“Therefore I am granting temporary custody to Mr. and Mrs. Branson. We will come back here on July first with any additional evidence that becomes available. At that time I will be prepared to rule on permanent custody.”
Sharon Lynn released the breath she’d been holding. Three months. They had three more months with Ashley at least. She would be teething in earnest by then, crawling, maybe even trying to pull herself up to a standing position.
They had three more months for her to steal their hearts.
“I say we go celebrate,” Grandpa Harlan said, when the gavel had fallen and they’d left the courtroom.
“No,” Sharon Lynn said, casting a pleading look toward Cord. “I want to take her home. Just the two of us.” She turned to the rest of the family. “You don’t really mind, do you?”
“Of course not,” her mother said.
Cord grinned. “Then that’s what we’ll do, darlin’. You all will excuse us, won’t you?”
Despite everyone else’s agreement, her grandfather regarded them with a troubled expression, but Janet stepped in and touched his hand. To Sharon Lynn’s relief, that was all it took to silence him.
Cord turned to Janet and took her hand in his. “Thank you. You were terrific in there today. The legal profession lost a real treasure when you decided to retire. We owe you.”
“You don’t owe me a thing,” Janet protested. “The past few months, we’ve all come to love that little baby and to think of her as one of us. She deserves the life and the love the two of you could give her.”
Sharon Lynn could hardly wait to get away from all the worried looks. She knew that everyone was wondering how she would have taken it if things had gone differently in the courtroom. Truthfully she didn’t know what she would have done if she hadn’t been walking home with the baby in her arms and Cord at her side. The sun broke through as they walked, as if God were giving them His blessing on today’s outcome. For now that would have to be enough. If she looked too far into the future, she’d never leave the house. She’d stay right there where she could keep a close eye on the baby hour after hour, savoring every memory in case it turned out to be all she had.
As soon as they were home, she put the baby down for her nap, then wandered into the kitchen to find Cord staring out the window, a cup of coffee cooling in his hand. He jumped when she whispered his name.
“Sorry, darlin’,” he said, turning to her and putting the cup on the table to reach for her. “I was at least a million miles away.”
“I could see that,” she said, hesitating for only a heartbeat before stepping into his embrace. “Where’d you go?”
“I guess I moved ahead in time, rather than going to a different place.”
“To July?”
He nodded. “It will only be harder if the decision goes the other way, then.”
“It won’t,” Sharon Lynn insisted, struggling against tears. “It can’t.”
“If I were a betting man, I’d say you’re right, but it’s the outside chance that worries me.”
“We can’t think about that. I won’t believe for a single instant that we’re not going to get custody of Ashley.”
“But what if we don’t?” he persisted. “Will you be able t
o live with that?”
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” she confessed candidly, then searched his bleak expression. “But that’s not all that’s troubling you, is it?”
He gave her a weary, halfhearted smile. “When did you start reading my mind?”
“I don’t know about reading your mind, but your face is transparent. Sometimes I look into your eyes and it almost breaks my heart.”
“Why is that?”
She drew in a deep breath and confronted the issue that they occasionally alluded to, but never discussed. “I know you love me. You’ve shown it in a thousand different ways. And you’re scared to death that if the baby is taken away, our marriage will be over.”
He shot her a rueful look. “On the nose. That baby is what brought us together, what’s keeping us together.”
It was time—way past time, probably—for her to own up to the feelings that had been growing for so long now, time to risk putting her heart on the line again. But could she do it?
“Ashley’s not the only thing,” she insisted.
“What then?”
She searched her heart and came up with an answer that was as honest as she could make it, but in the end she settled for a safer half-truth.
“I care about you, Cord. How could I not? Look at all you’ve done for me. Look at how much you love Ashley, the way you are with her. You’re a wonderful man, as decent and kind as anyone I’ve ever known.”
“High praise, considering the quality of the men in your family.” He sighed. “But you still can’t say it, though, can you?”
“Say what?”
“You still can’t say you love me.”
Her silence was answer enough. She could see that. The irony, of course, was that she was falling in love with Cord. With each day that passed, the feelings grew stronger, his hold on her deepened.
She was just terrified of admitting it. She had loved Kyle and he had died. She loved Ashley and the baby could be ripped away from her at any second. How could she admit to loving Cord, when loss always seemed to follow such an admission?
* * *
Cord was absolutely certain that Sharon Lynn loved him. It was in every heated glance, in every lingering caress. Until she could recognize the emotion for something more than gratitude, though, their marriage was tied totally to Ashley’s fate. It was a terrible burden to put on a tiny baby, who, in the end, had no control over her own destiny, much less theirs.
Somehow he had to get Sharon Lynn to acknowledge her feelings, to accept their marriage as a real one before July, before a judge’s ruling either cemented their relationship or tore it apart.
Being with Sharon Lynn day in and day out, living with her, sharing everything except her bed was the sweetest kind of torment imaginable. Every time her hand brushed his, every time he dared to steal a kiss, his blood sizzled. He’d used so little hot water in his showers, the water heater could have gone on the fritz and he wouldn’t have known it.
But icy showers weren’t cutting it. He wanted her, wanted to make her his wife in every sense of the word. But how? They had established the ground rules on the day she’d agreed to marry him. What would she do if he tried to change them now? What would she do, if he swept her into his arms, carried her into the bedroom, kicked the door shut and tried to seduce her? Would she give in, but hate him afterward? Or would she finally be able to admit that she wanted him as desperately as he wanted her?
His whole life he’d been a man of action. He made quick, impetuous decisions and lived with the consequences. Now he was suddenly questioning his own instincts, twisting and turning every plan this way and that until he was dizzy with all the thinking and frustrated by the lack of action.
He’d spent the entire day at White Pines riding hard and doing every backbreaking task Cody could come up with just to keep from thinking, but it hadn’t worked. He was exhausted, but his mind was still going a mile a minute and his pulse kicked up every single time an image of Sharon Lynn came to mind.
What this marriage needed, he concluded, what it had suffered from from the outset was the lack of a honeymoon. There’d been plenty of logical reasons not to suggest one at the outset. There were probably a million more reasons why it was a bad idea now. She might panic at the very mention of the word.
But, he thought with growing enthusiasm, she couldn’t possibly say no to the notion of a little vacation. A trip all three of them could take, somewhere far from Los Piños, where lazy days on a beach would turn into romantic nights under the stars. A trip away from their cares, away from the threat of impromptu visits from Hazel Murdock. He grinned just thinking about the potential.
When he got back to the ranch office, it was already dusk. Even so, Cody was still in the office, doing whatever it was he did on that fancy computer of his that Harlan was always making a fuss about.
“I’m surprised to see you still here,” Cody said. “Lately you seem to take off the minute your work is done.”
“Newlywed syndrome,” Cord said. He drew in a deep breath. “Mind if I ask a favor?”
Cody regarded him uneasily. “I don’t mind you asking, as long as you don’t mind if I say no.”
“I think when you hear what I have to say, you’ll agree it’s important.”
Cody gestured for him to go ahead.
“I want to take Sharon Lynn and the baby on a trip, not a long one, just a few days to get away from all the pressures around her. I think she deserves it.”
Cody grinned. “Right button to push with a concerned father. I couldn’t agree more. And the two of you never did get a proper honeymoon. What did you have in mind?”
“Maybe a weekend at the beach,” he suggested, not wanting to ask for too much when Cody had already been more than generous about his work schedule.
“Son, let me give you a piece of advice. If you’re hoping to put the sparkle back in Sharon Lynn’s eyes, you’re going to have to do better than that. Now, here’s the plan I’d suggest. You call up a travel agent, get yourselves booked at a fancy hotel on a Caribbean island and don’t even think about Los Piños or anything else for at least a week.”
His grin broadened. “Now I’m not suggesting you take him along, but I’ve seen Harlan Patrick moping around here for the past few weeks. Seems to me he could use a break, too. He could take Jordan’s plane, fly you all wherever you want to go, spend a few days on the beach and bring you all back.”
Cord chuckled at Cody’s suggestion. He was acting far more like an indulgent daddy than a boss. And the idea itself was perfect. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“Hell, no, not if it means I could get some real work out of the two of you when you get back. You’re both so distracted I’m surprised we have any cattle left. I’ve got half the men in the crew chasing around behind you to make sure the gates are closed.”
Cord winced. “It’s that bad?”
“Well, I’ve got to say you’re better than my son. Since Laurie took off, his head’s in Nashville whether he’ll admit to it or not. Might’s well go on up there, for all the good he’s doing me.” He regarded Cord intently. “So, is it a deal? Should I talk to Jordan about the plane and get Harlan Patrick ready to take off, say, tomorrow?”
“Make it the day after and we’re on.” He figured it was going to take him at least that long to convince Sharon Lynn to go along with this and to pick a destination she’d always dreamed of visiting. He met Cody’s gaze. “Just one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re not expecting Harlan Patrick to move into the same hotel we do, are you?”
Cody chuckled. “No, if I were in your shoes, I’d probably insist her baby brother go on to another island.”
“Another hotel would probably do,” Cord said, then grinned. “That way he’ll be close enough to baby-sit.”
“You know something, son? This co
uld turn out to be the damnedest honeymoon anyone in the family’s ever taken,” Cody said approvingly. “Daddy’s going to be real disappointed he’s not the one who thought of it.”
Chapter Eighteen
“You want to go where?” Sharon Lynn demanded, staring at Cord incredulously.
“To the Caribbean,” Cord explained patiently.
“Now?”
“Why not now?”
“You have a job. I have Dolan’s. There’s the custody battle. How can you possibly suggest going away?”
“Because we need a break. We need time alone with the baby to catch our breath, to just be a family.”
Her gaze narrowed. “A family?” she repeated, regarding him warily. “Cord, we’re not a family, not really.”
“Who says we’re not?” he retorted heatedly. “In the eyes of the law, we are. In the eyes of your family, we are. It’s only the two of us who set down a bunch of silly ground rules we don’t know how to change.”
Those silly ground rules were the only reason she’d been able to accept the idea of this marriage in the first place and now he wanted to change them? She should have seen this coming, should have known he’d want more from her than she could give, that his patience would wear thin. Her grandfather had warned her of that.
Before she could refuse this idiotic offer of an expensive vacation, he reached for her hand. He seemed to know that she couldn’t think straight when he was touching her.
“Cord,” she protested, but not nearly vehemently enough.
He met her gaze evenly. “We need this, darlin’. We surely do. What could be so terrible about taking a trip? We’ll spend a few days sitting by a pool or swimming in the warm Caribbean waters. Maybe go out dancing. Eat some exotic food. Take a moonlit walk on the beach.”
He painted an idyllic picture. “It does sound tempting,” she admitted. So tempting that her already weakening resolve to keep Cord at arm’s length was likely to fly out the window by the end of the first romantic day. Though he’d never once mentioned the word, it sounded an awful lot like a honeymoon. The very idea made her tremble.
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