The Unclaimed Baby

It had been a very long time since anyone on earth had believed in Cord Branson.

Before he could get lost in the wonder of that, a heavy thump against the back door startled them both. Sharon Lynn whirled in that direction, but Cord was faster. “You stay put. I’ll check it out. Where’s the door? Through there?”

Sharon Lynn nodded, and he began twisting locks. When he’d unlatched the last one, he slowly turned the knob and advanced cautiously. He was expecting perhaps a thief.

What he found surprised him even more.

“Holy Mother of God,” Cord murmured.

“What is it?” Sharon Lynn asked, nudging against him.

“A baby. Some damned fool left a baby out here.”

MILLS & BOON

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SHERRYL WOODS

Whether she’s living in Florida or Virginia, Sherryl Woods always makes her home by the sea. A walk on the beach, the sound of the waves, the smell of the salt air, all provide inspiration for this writer of more than sixty romance and mystery novels. Sherryl hopes you’re enjoying The Unclaimed Baby, which offers you an expanded story in the And Baby Makes Three: The Next Generation series for Silhouette. You can write to Sherryl at P.O. Box 490326, Key Biscayne, FL 33149, or—from April through December—stop by and meet her at her bookstore, Potomoc Sunrise, 308 Washington Avenue, Colonial Beach, VA 22443. Watch for Sherryl’s first mainstream book for MIRA Books, AFTER TEX, coming in October 1999.

The Unclaimed Baby
Sherryl Woods

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

Sleet slashed through the bitter cold February night. A few hours from now it was expected to turn to snow, layering over ice in a way that would leave the roads treacherous. Sharon Lynn stood in the doorway at Dolan’s Drugstore and shivered, even though it was plenty warm inside. It was Friday night at eight, an hour when the store should have been closed, but she’d taken to keeping it open later and later. It meant she didn’t have to go home to an empty house, didn’t have to go to sleep and face the nightmares.

Even though months had passed, the images came back whenever she closed her eyes. The bright head lights glaring into her eyes, weaving across the center line of the quiet country road. The screaming crunch of metal against metal, then just the screaming. Her own and Kyle’s.

And then just her own.

That summer night had been clear, with a vibrant sprinkling of stars and a glorious full moon. No danger on the road then, except for a man who’d had too much to drink.

She had been married for little more than a split second when the tragedy struck. It had been their wedding night, a night she had been anticipating and dreaming about for years, it seemed. She was finally Mrs. Kyle Mason and the rest of their lives was spread out ahead of them, a storybook future with a houseful of kids and her wonderful family nearby. In the Adams clan, family meant everything and she’d been waiting a long time to start her own.

Then, in the blink of an eye, her marriage was over and she was alone again. Worse, she had been driving the car, and even though the accident was another driver’s fault, Sharon Lynn had been consumed with guilt and grief ever since, wondering if there hadn’t been something—anything—she could have done to prevent it. For weeks it had taken every bit of strength she had just to propel herself out of bed.

Buying Dolan’s, where she had worked for years and where her mother had worked during her tumultuous relationship with Sharon Lynn’s daddy before their wedding, had given her a reason for getting up in the morning, but it had done nothing to heal her broken heart.

She had been in love with Kyle Mason forever. An honest, decent man, he had bought a ranch that neighbored the family spread at White Pines. Then he had quietly and persistently courted Sharon Lynn, consuming enough milk shakes at Dolan’s that it was a wonder he’d been able to stand the sight of them. Once he’d caught her attention, there had been no turning back.

But when it came to getting to the altar, one thing after another had delayed their vows until that fateful night.

After waiting patiently for marriage, only to have it snatched away from her in a heartbeat, Sharon Lynn had finally concluded that she was not destined for either romance or the family she had always dreamed of. She had resigned herself to a quiet, lonely existence—if it was possible to be lonely with an entire clan of Adamses on her doorstep daily with one feeble excuse or another. Cheering up grief-stricken Sharon Lynn had become the family’s mission. All the attention was wearing her out.

She wasn’t the one deserving of pity, though. It was Kyle, barely thirty when he’d been killed. She shuddered and forced the memory of that night aside. The guilt, however, wouldn’t budge, despite what everyone had said. The official sheriff’s report had exonerated her completely. Her cousin Justin, who’d been on the scene in the horrible aftermath of the collision, was a by-the-book kind of deputy. If there’d been any question of her guilt, though he would have hated laying the blame on her doorstep, he would have done it. Knowing that, she should have been able to rest easy, but she couldn’t.

Even all these long months later and despite her best intentions, the images crowded back, refusing to be ignored. She’d still been wearing her wedding dress, her beautiful silk-and-lace gown, but by then it had been torn and spattered with blood. Her husband’s blood. When her cousins had wanted to get rid of it, she’d refused to let them. It was packed away in the attic as a grim reminder of what might have been. Someday she would have to let it—and the memories—go.

“Oh, God,” she murmured as tears streaked down her cheeks. When were the memories going to blur? When would this unbearable, soul-sick pain stop?

Blinded to everything except her own internal misery, it took a blast of icy air from the unexpected opening of the door to snap her out of it. She hadn’t even seen the man approaching, hadn’t expected anyone to be out on such a cold and furious night. She glanced up to meet worried brown eyes flecked with gold.

“What’s a pretty lady like you doing all alone on a Friday night?” he asked in the easy way of a man to whom flirting was second nature. The words were barely out of his mouth when the crooked smile faded from his lips and worry creased his brow. He stepped closer and skimmed a knuckle down her cheek. “Tears? Darlin’, are you okay?”

There was a gentleness to his voice that soothed, even as alarm flared at the startling way that touch awakened her senses. She looked him over—from the curling black hair damp with rain to the soaked sheepskin jacket, rain-streaked jeans and well-worn boots. Despite the kindness in his voice, there was a hardness to him, not just to his lean body, but in his eyes. It was an intriguing combination, a dangerous one. That must be why her pulse was ricocheting all over the place.

Was he a would-be robber, checking to make sure she was all alone before seizing every penny in the cash register? Her imagination roared off down a frightening path.

Let him try, she thought fiercely, thinking of the gun that Justin had insisted she keep in the store if she was determined to hang around here alone until all hours of the night. She was a better shot than most of the family and not a one of them missed what they aimed for. Of course, there wasn’t much cash worth killing over. She’d taken most of it to the night-drop at the bank just before the new pharmacist had left for the evening.

She scowled up at the man, saw then the exhaustion in his eyes, the stubble on his cheeks, the sensuality of a mouth beginning another slow curve into a disarming smile that softened the harsh angles of his face. What she missed was any hint of a real threat. Whatever this man’s story, it seemed evident to her that he meant her no harm. His concern struck her as genuine, as impulsive and automatic as his smile.

Satisfied, she met his grin with one of her own and briskly wiped away the last traces of her tears with an impatient swipe.

“I was just debating whether to close up,” she said, turning back inside and heading for the lunch counter, which was her domain even though she owned the whole place now. A few months back she’d hired a pharmacist and a teenager to work the rest of the store once Doc Dolan had retired and headed off to the Gulf Coast of Texas. “I didn’t expect anyone to be out on a night like this. You startled me.”

“Sorry. I’ve been on the road all day. When I saw the sign and the lights on, I was thinking more about my empty stomach than I was about whether I might scare you to death. If you need to close up, I can go somewhere else.”

Sharon Lynn heard the underlying thread of disappointment in his voice and watched his gaze settling on the stale doughnuts left over from morning. She could toss those in a bag, give them to him with a takeout cup of coffee and he’d be on his way. The idea held no appeal, not when it would mean empty, lonely hours ahead. These days she was eager to snatch a few moments of companionship wherever she could find it.

“I’m in no rush,” she said quickly. “I still have some soup that’s hot and I can rustle up a hamburger or a grilled cheese and fries. I doubt you’d find anyplace else in town open on a night like this. Los Piños tends to shut down early when the weather’s bad. Nobody likes driving on the icy roads.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t drive,” she said and left it at that. She hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car since the night of the accident. In fact, she’d moved into her cousin Dani’s old house in town, just so she could walk to work. When she wanted to go out to visit the family at White Pines, there was always one relative or another around who could take her. There was no place else she needed to go.

She ladled up a bowl of homemade vegetable soup and set it on the counter in front of him. “Now, what else can I get for you?”

“A couple of cheeseburgers and fries, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”

Mind? Not if it would keep her here a few minutes longer, provide a welcome distraction from her grim memories. Her inability to shake them earlier indicated tonight they were going to be worse than usual.

“Coming right up,” she told him. Her innate curiosity and friendliness kicked in. “What brings you to Los Pin˜os?”

“A job,” he said. “My name’s Cord Branson. I’ve heard there’s an opening on a ranch around here. It’s a place called White Pines. Maybe you know the owners.”

Sharon Lynn grinned and relaxed, the last of her fears vanishing. “I ought to. White Pines belongs to my grandfather, Harlan Adams. My father—his name’s Cody Adams—and my brother, Harlan Patrick, run it.” She held out her hand. “I’m Sharon Lynn.”

“Well, I’ll be a son of a gun,” he said, grasping her hand in his and holding it just a shade longer than necessary, long enough to remind her of that earlier tingle of awareness.

“First I meet a beautiful lady and then I find out she’s related to the folks I hope to work for,” he said. “Looks like this is my lucky night, after all. Do you mind telling me about the place?”

“Of course not.” She described the ranch with the affection of someone who’d grown up roaming its vast acreage. “You’ll never see any place more beautiful, if you don’t mind land that’s a little rugged. Grandpa Harlan inherited it when the house was crumbling and the herd of cattle had dwindled down to almost nothing. His daddy wasn’t meant to be a rancher, I suppose. At any rate, now it’s one of the biggest operations in the state.”

“But you don’t live out there?”

“No, I stay right here in town now to be close to the store.”

“Don’t you miss it?”

Sharon Lynn grinned. “There’s hardly time for that. There’s always something going on out at White Pines. I’m back there practically every weekend for one celebration or another or just for an old-fashioned barbecue if granddaddy starts getting lonely for a little commotion.”

She caught the faintly wistful expression on his face. “What about you? Did you grow up on a ranch?”

“If you could call it that. It was probably every bit as bad as you say White Pines was way back when, but every time my daddy had a chance to make a real go of it, he squandered the money on booze. After he was gone, I sold the place to get a stake so I could move on to someplace where I could learn how a real ranch was run. I drifted a bit through Montana and Wyoming before heading south. Once I crossed into Texas, I kept hearing about your granddaddy and White Pines.”

“Well, you picked the right place. Nobody knows more about ranching than Grandpa Harlan and my daddy, or Harlan Patrick, to hear him tell it.”

She caught herself. “Just listen to me. I’m going on and on. Maybe you’d like to finish your meal in peace. I’ve got things I could do in the back.”

“No, indeed. Don’t even think of it. I’ve been on the road for days now. I’m glad of the company and the conversation, especially when the company’s as pretty as you and the conversation’s fascinating.”

The words were all glib charm, but as he met her gaze and smiled slowly, Sharon Lynn felt another of those quick little quivers in the pit of her stomach. Cord Branson was a very disconcerting man, more direct than most she’d met, outside of her brother and her cousins. He was certainly less subtle than Kyle, who had tended toward shyness.

She gazed into those devilish eyes with their golden sparks and something told her that she was in more danger now than she would have been if the only thing he’d wanted was to rob the place.

Cord wolfed down two of the best hamburgers he’d had in ages and tried to remember what it was that had brought him to Los Pin˜os. He knew better than most that a man didn’t get anywhere in life, if he let himself get distracted.

And yet, he couldn’t help thinking that Sharon Lynn Adams would be a damned fine distraction. He’d never seen a woman with more sorrow written all over a face that was meant for angels. He had watched with amusement as she’d run the gamut of emotions when he’d first walked through the door. He’d seen the tiny flicker of fear, the fierce resolve and then the quiet, ingrained compassion that made her take him in and feed him despite the probable inconvenience. He thought he’d also noted a hint of relief in her expression, but, unable to imagine the origin of that, he’d dismissed it.

He pegged her age at late twenties and, after glancing at her ringless fingers, wondered why no man had snapped her up. Even in the past few minutes he’d seen that she was easy to get along with and even easier on the eye. To say nothing of being an Adams. From everything he’d heard, that counted for something in these parts. Maybe for too many men that was all that counted and she’d simply gotten used to warily fending them off.

He enjoyed watching her work, the quick efficient movements, the sway of hips a little on the generous side. Even more, he liked the ready rise of color in her cheeks when he teased and the way her laughter sounded when he finally managed to coax it out of her with one of the worst jokes either of them had ever heard. He’d found himself lingering long after he’d finished his meal, drinking more caffeine than his body needed if he was to get any rest at all tonight. Still, the coffee had been an excuse. He wasn’t looking forward to going back out into the cold night or to leaving her.

“Do you have a place to stay?” she asked eventually, when a glance at the clock and the discovery that it was after ten clearly startled her. “There’s a motel outside of town, but on a night like this it’s probably full and I’m not sure you ought to risk driving that far on the icy roads.”

“No problem. Unless you think the local law enforcement will object, I’ll just find a place to pull my truck off on the side of the road and sleep in back,” he said. “I’ve got a nice warm sleeping bag and I’m used to roughing it.”

Even as he said it, she was shaking her head. “No way. I won’t have your freezing to death on my conscience. If you truly don’t mind roughing it, you can sleep in the back room here. The floor’s hard as a rock, but the sleeping bag ought to help and at least you’ll have heat.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Of course you could.”

He frowned at her. As generous as it was, the offer filled him with concern. He didn’t like thinking of her taking that kind of risk with other strangers. “You know,” he chided, “it’s possible that you’re entirely too trusting.”

She shrugged off the suggestion. “That’s the way folks around here are. First impressions count for a lot, and I can see you’re a decent man.”

Cord regarded her with blatant amusement. “I thought you said first impressions counted?”

“They do.”

“Your first impression of me was that I was here to rob you.”

A guilty flush confirmed his guess.

“Okay, yes,” she admitted, “just for a second, I did wonder. Most people would have been inside on a night like this, unless they were up to no good.”

“But you don’t wonder anymore?”

Her gaze met his, blue eyes the exact shade of wildflowers searching his face. “Not anymore,” she said at last, giving his hand a brief, reassuring pat.

He told himself later that it wasn’t the way his pulse leapt when her fingers grazed his that mattered. It wasn’t the unexpected yearning that came over him looking into her eyes. It was the fact that she said those two simple words with such quiet confidence that made him fall in love with her. It had been a very long time since anyone on earth had believed in Cord Branson.

Before he could get lost in the wonder of that, a heavy thump against the back door startled them both. Sharon Lynn whirled in that direction, but Cord was faster. “You stay put. I’ll check it out.” He gestured toward the back room. “Where’s the door? Through there?”

She nodded. “It was probably just a dog bumping into a trash can or the wind knocking something over,” she said, right on his heels.

Cord glanced over his shoulder. “I thought I told you to stay put.”

She shot him a defiant look. “It’s my store. Besides, I have a gun right here.” She snatched a very deadly looking rifle out of its hiding place. “I can look after myself.”

He grinned at the fierce response and the determined jut of her jaw. “Yes, I can see that. Okay, but would you stay behind me at least and keep that gun pointed at something other than my backside?”

She regarded him with a faint glimmer of amusement, then shrugged. “I suppose I could do that.”

“I do love an amenable woman,” he said as he began twisting locks. When he’d unlatched the last one, he slowly turned the knob, shot Sharon Lynn one last warning look, then eased outside. What he found stunned him almost as bad as confronting a thief would have.

“Holy Mother of God,” he murmured as he bent down over the basket.

“What is it?” Sharon Lynn asked, nudging against him.

The quick bump of her hip was surprisingly provocative. She was so close he could smell her perfume, something light and innocent, maybe little more than scented hand lotion. It set off a surge of pure lust just the same. There was no time for that now, though.

“A baby,” he replied, his voice hushed as he scooped the tiny child up into his arms. “Some damned fool left a baby out here in this weather. If we hadn’t been here, it would have been dead before morning.” Just the thought of that filled him with cold fury.

“Let me see,” she demanded, scooting around him. At the sight of the tiny infant, her eyes went wide with a mix of shock and indignation every bit as violent as his own.

“Oh, sweetie,” she whispered, reaching at once for the baby. “Let me. Maybe they knew we were inside and knew we’d find the baby before any harm came to it.”

“Maybe,” Cord said, because the notion seemed to console her. The basket had been left a little too close to the trash Dumpster for his liking, though. And the way the snow was coming down now, in no time at all, the basket and its contents would have been shrouded in a way that might have made it blend in with the bags of trash heaped nearby. He suspected that thump they’d heard had been an accident, not a deliberate attempt to catch their attention. No, this had been a cruel and heartless attempt to leave a child to die. He’d stake his life on that.

“Whoever did this can’t have gotten far,” Sharon Lynn said. “See if there’s any sign of him or her.”

“Him,” Cord said grimly.

“How do you know that?”

“The boot prints. There’s just enough snow on the ground to see the size of the shoe. It’s too big for a woman’s.”

Cord knew there was no point in following the trail. Whoever had done this despicable thing was long gone by now, but he went to the end of the alley just to satisfy Sharon Lynn. The footprints ended at the curb around the corner. A melted patch in the midst of all the snow indicated someone had left an engine running for a few minutes at least. Skid marks in the fresh snow suggested that whoever had driven away had probably heard the store’s back door open and left in a hurry.

By the time Cord got back inside, Sharon Lynn was holding a squalling, wide-awake baby in her arms as naturally as if this were something she did every day. The look of awe and concern on her face was enough to take his breath away. For one wild and improbable second, he imagined that she was his, the baby theirs. In that instant, with a certainty that stunned him, he knew that whatever it took, somehow he would make it happen.

Over the years he had seen too many of life’s most valuable treasures slip through his daddy’s fingers. Hawk Branson had lost his wife—Cord’s mama—to another man. He’d lost a fortune and most of the payments on the family ranch to the bottle. There’d been pitifully little left for Cord, once all the debts had been settled. Watching Hawk’s downfall had made Cord an impatient man.

When he spotted something he wanted, he went after it with a no-holds-barred vengeance. He had come here intending to claim a place for himself at the famed White Pines ranch, vowing to work harder and longer than any other hand.

He could have stayed in Montana and tried to save his daddy’s spread. The local bankers trusted him. They knew he wasn’t anything like his daddy. But there were too many defeats and bad memories associated with the place. He’d wanted a fresh start, not just as a hand at a truly successful ranch where he could learn everything there was to know about running a decent herd of cattle, but someplace where he could earn enough to buy his own land, acre by acre if he had to. Ownership and self-respect were all tied up together in his head.

Instinctively he’d aimed for Texas and its sprawling cattle ranches. He’d hung out in a bar in Fort Worth and asked questions. He’d gone to a couple of cattle auctions and asked more questions. White Pines and its owners had come up time and again, always accompanied by respectful anecdotes.

The last time he’d stopped, about a hundred miles from Los Pin˜os, he’d asked pointedly about the ranch and learned that not only was White Pines taking on new help, but there was a neighboring ranch that might be for sale. The owner had died in a tragic accident and the widow wanted no part of it. The story had piqued his interest. He’d wasted no time in getting to Los Pin˜os.

He’d been prepared to do whatever he had to to get the job he was after and to lay claim to that ranch, if the widow was willing to wait to make a sale. What he hadn’t been prepared for at all was spotting a woman like Sharon Lynn on his first night in town. She was the missing piece of his dream. Gut instinct told him that destiny had brought him into Dolan’s on this icy, miserable night.

He glanced down at her head, which was bent low as she soothed the fussing baby in her arms. The baby’s fat little fist held a thick strand of silken hair and was tugging mightily. Sharon Lynn smiled, even as she tried to disengage that tiny hand. Watching her, Cord felt a swirl of powerful emotions that rocked him on his heels. Just like that, he knew that what he was feeling was love. Impossible, unexpected, but love, just the same. The lightning bolt kind that changed a man’s life when he least expected it.

Slow down, he warned himself. He might be bold and impetuous and ready to believe in fate, but he doubted this woman or any other would be quite so ready to throw caution to the wind and jump into a relationship with a stranger.

He felt a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, just the same. For once in a life filled with nasty twists and turns, it appeared that fate had finally dealt him a winning hand.