“Then let’s do it,” Cord urged. “Harlan Patrick’s agreed to fly us down, hang out nearby to serve as doting uncle and baby-sitter. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, just think what this will do for him. He’s pining for Laurie. He needs a change of scenery to think things through.”
Her brother would be with them? She was supposed to think of this as something they were doing for his benefit? That didn’t sound much like a honeymoon. She should have found that reassuring. Instead she found it irritating. As much as she adored Harlan Patrick, she wasn’t sure she wanted him along on her honey... Whoops, she’d almost done it herself. She didn’t want him along on their vacation.
Then, again, she reasoned, he could prove valuable. He could take Ashley while she and Cord spent time alone. She owed Cord that much, if only to thank him for all he’d done for her. Maybe she even owed herself a chance to discover if these feelings she’d been trampling on out of fear would blossom into the real thing, something strong enough to withstand whatever curves life tossed them. Was she brave enough to take that final, giant leap of faith?
She met Cord’s gaze, caught the hopeful expression on his face and her heart flipped over. This trip could be a turning point for the two of them.
Suddenly she realized that she desperately wanted it to be. She wanted to stop living in lonely isolation. Even with Cord in the house, that was what she’d been doing, holding him at bay, shrouding her heart in ice so it couldn’t be broken again. Maybe it was time to find out if Cord’s touches and a fiery tropical sun could melt away the ice and leave her whole again.
“I’ll go,” she said softly, even as her pulse ricocheted wildly.
Cord scooped her up and whirled around. “Thank you, darlin’. You won’t regret it.”
Sharon Lynn doubted she would regret the trip. How could she when she was finally going to steal a few days of romance with a man who had proved time and again just how deeply he loved her? It was the heartache that could come after that terrified her.
* * *
The breezes in their tropical paradise were sultry and scented with jasmine. The air shimmered with the sound of reggae, a beat that invited the listener to throw away cares and indulge in all life’s passions.
Sharon Lynn felt as if she had stepped into another world. She had even put aside her aversion to alcohol and accepted a frothy, icy tropical drink with a sweet taste and an astounding kick. She was pretty sure her inhibitions had vanished a couple of hours ago, right after Harlan Patrick had taken off with Ashley. She hadn’t even mounted much of a protest when they’d gone.
When Cord beckoned her onto the tiny, seaside dance floor, she floated into his arms. He smiled down at her.
“Having a good time?”
“I feel like some other person, as if I’ve fallen into an enchanted fairy tale. How is it possible to step off a plane and turn into somebody else?”
“No one knows you here. You can be anyone you want to be. Back home that’s not possible. In Los Piños, there’s history and family and a ton of emotional baggage. Here there’s just the heat of the sun, the brilliance of the moon, a sky studded with stars.” He winked. “And me.”
She gazed into his eyes, which were regarding her with amusement. “Do you feel different here?”
“Not so different,” he confessed. “I still want you.”
Though the words were lightly spoken, the heat in his eyes commanded her to take the statement seriously.
She tightened her arms around his neck and snuggled in closer. The sensations shimmering through her were lazy and seductive. “I think you’re a very sneaky man, Cord Branson.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you knew I wouldn’t be able to resist you here,” she murmured, her breath fanning over his chest.
His breath hitched at that. “Is that so?”
“Mm-hmm.”
He tucked a finger under her chin and tilted her face up. “This will only go so far, unless it’s what you want,” he assured her. “You’ll have to set the pace.”
She took that as an out-and-out invitation to tease. How far could she push him? she wondered.
Could she indulge in an intimate caress? She tried one and heard his gasp. That was enough to embolden her.
Maybe she could sneak a few of those breath-stealing kisses. She tried one and this time she was the one gasping for air when it was over. Still, she was tempted to go on.
Could she slide his shirt off and circle his masculine nipples with her tongue? She wisely held off on that one.
All of these were things she’d been imagining herself doing during the lonely nights when she’d been alone in her own bed while Cord slept just down the hall on the sofa. Was this her chance to experiment with her most wicked fantasies without risking her heart?
She sighed and rested her cheek against his chest, listened to the steady rhythm of his heart. His arms circled her waist. His hands rested low on her backside, tucking her body into intimate contact with his. There was no mistaking the hard length of his arousal beneath his jeans. She found that even more wildly intoxicating than that very dangerous drink she’d had.
This was Cord, she reminded herself. No man on earth was more blatantly masculine. No man she’d ever known could make her knees weak with a glance. No man had ever proved himself as capable of unselfish, generous love.
She felt her skin grow hot, felt the rush of moisture at the apex of her thighs, the pull low in her belly. Surrounded by the heat and the scent of him, she was lost, drawn to become the new woman who had walked off the plane eager for new experiences.
She looked up and met Cord’s hooded gaze “Take me back to the room,” she whispered. “Now.”
He went utterly still. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
To her amusement, after he’d paid the bill, Cord took her the long way back to the room, along a winding path through scented flowers and twinkling white lights. She supposed he’d done it to give her time to reconsider, but instead the path he’d chosen only added to the magic. She felt as if they were walking through a fairy-tale world, where nothing could ever, ever go wrong.
He cast one last questioning look at her when they stepped inside the room, but at her nod, he moved in close and brushed a kiss across her lips. No butterfly’s touch could have been lighter, yet Sharon Lynn felt the impact of that kiss all the way to her toes. It sent her reeling. If he intended to go about this so slowly, so reverently, she was going to shatter into a zillion pieces.
She wanted fast. She wanted mindless. She wanted to be caught up in all-consuming passion. And the only way to make sure of that was to reach for Cord, to strip off his shirt with a scattering of buttons, to startle him with an eager reach for the zipper of his jeans.
After one stunned instant while he assessed her reckless mood, he smiled. He had her out of her own clothes in a matter of seconds, shredding some of them in his impatience.
At last, she cried inwardly as his hands were everywhere, stirring her, arousing her, giving pleasure so intense that she wondered at the foolishness that had prevented her from seeking it before now. He took her to a climax that left her slick with sweat and shuddering with the force of it.
Then and only then did he kneel above her. Gazing into her eyes, he slowly entered her, filled her and took her on another incredible journey to a level of passion she’d only dreamed of.
Stunned by the sensations rippling through in its aftermath, she glanced across the bed to find Cord’s steady gaze on her. He reached across and brushed a wayward tendril of damp hair back from her face.
“When you’ve caught your breath,” he suggested softly, “we’ll try that again.”
Something in his voice hinted at censure. “Cord, what’s wrong?”
“The next time I wan
t to make love to you, darlin’. I don’t want to be in a rush just to make sure you won’t change your mind.”
A chill washed over her. Had he seen through her so clearly, had he guessed that the urgency was borne of panic, the fear that if she allowed herself to make love with him, to truly feel the wild sweep of emotions, she would never be able to let him go?
To her surprise, she must have been crying because Cord brushed away a tear with the pad of his thumb.
“Don’t cry, darlin’. Please don’t cry. That wasn’t meant as a criticism. All I meant was that I’ve been looking forward to making love with you for what seems like forever. Next time I want to go slow. I want it to be memorable.”
“But it was,” she protested. That, of course, was the real irony. Even though she had deliberately escalated the pace, done exactly as he had accused and rushed things, she knew she would never forget a single moment of it, could never forget the passion.
“Come here,” he said, beckoning until she was resting against his chest. “I know you don’t want me to keep on saying this, but I love you, Sharon Lynn. That’s a fact. It’s not going to go away. I’m not going to disappear on you. The only way you’ll ever get rid of me is to end this marriage yourself and kick me out on my butt. Even then, I’ll fight you to hold on to what we have.”
She blinked and looked into his fierce gaze and knew that he meant it. She wasn’t going to shake him ever. And in the last few minutes she’d realized something else: she didn’t want to. She wanted desperately to hold on tight to what they’d found, for however long it lasted.
She slid up his body until she could slant her mouth over his. At his look of surprise, she grinned. “Let’s try it your way, cowboy, and see which way we like it best.”
He made love to her slowly, then, his work-roughened hands gentle on her body and wickedly inventive.
“Interesting,” she said, when he had her restless and panting beneath him.
He chuckled at the deliberate taunt. “Sweetheart, it’s only going to get better.”
There were sly, unexpected kisses in spots she’d had no idea were so sensitive. He made love to her body in a hundred different ways without entering her, teasing her, tormenting her until she thought she’d splinter apart. She would have begged by then, but twinkling, knowing eyes met hers as he slid deeply inside her, then withdrew in a slow, exquisite rhythm that made nothing else in the world matter except Cord’s body and hers and the here and now magic between them.
When she was at the edge, when Cord hesitated above her again, he captured her gaze and held it as if to assure himself that she knew precisely who was sparking this magic. His muscles were taut with the tension of holding himself still. His expression was fierce.
“I...love...you,” he whispered as he plunged deeply into her one last time, sending them both into spasms of ecstasy.
She felt it all then, not just the sensations of wickedly satisfying sex, but the love. His and, heaven help her, her own. Fresh tears tracked down her cheeks as she touched a finger to his lips, gasped as he drew it into his mouth and sucked gently.
She swallowed hard against a tide of emotions threatening to overwhelm her. “I love you,” she confessed in a whisper.
Cord looked as if the words had shattered him. “Again,” he pleaded. “Say it again.”
“I love you.” The words came out stronger the second time.
“Ah, darlin’,” he said with a sigh, as he folded his arms around her and held her close. “Now we truly are indomitable.”
* * *
If Cord thought their idyllic time-out had solved all their problems, he was wrong. Back in Texas, back in the real world, doubts came back, along with renewed fears that they would lose their baby girl. With every day that passed, he could see Sharon Lynn slipping back into old ways, holding him at a distance as if she were once more protecting her heart. When they should have been closest, they were further apart than ever. He’d about run out of ways to change that.
Finally one night when he touched her, only to have her ease away from him, he lost patience.
“Do you want me to go now and get it over with?” he demanded quietly.
Sharon Lynn stared at him in shock. “Go? Why?”
“You’re already acting as if I’m not even here. If anything, it’s worse than before we went away, because now I know how it can be between us.”
She winced at that. “If you want me to sleep with you, I will,” she said, but the words sounded stoic, not eager or loving.
“No, dammit, that’s not what I want. Sharon Lynn, you’re putting your life on hold, our lives on hold, while we wait for the court to decide about Ashley. You have to separate that from the two of us and whether we stay together. I thought we’d worked that out, but apparently we haven’t.”
“What are you saying?”
“I want a real marriage. Not just for the baby, for us. We’re good together and I don’t want to lose that. If, God forbid, we lose in court, I don’t want that to mean the end of our marriage, too.”
She trembled and, for an instant, he felt like a creep for pushing her, but this mattered too much to let it go.
“Decide, darlin’. Once and for all, decide if you’re ready to let me in—not just into your bed, but into your heart.”
Her lips quivered, but she didn’t look away. “I thought you knew,” she whispered. “I was sure the trip had proved it. I thought you knew you were already in my heart.”
All of Cord’s fears, all of his doubts, fled at that softly spoken declaration. It underscored everything she’d said, everything he knew. She hadn’t been trying to pretend it wasn’t so. She’d just been scared. He could see that now, with her eyes wide at his threat to leave.
“Don’t leave me. Don’t ever leave me,” she begged.
A grin spread across his face at last. “No, darlin’, I never will. You can take that promise to the bank.”
* * *
They made love that night and every night after. In the mornings, too, when Cord could linger in bed. Before long they had a baby of their own on the way. They found out the same day the judge told them that their petition for adoption had been granted, that Hazel Murdock no longer intended to fight them for custody.
As they lingered in the courtroom after the ruling, surrounded by family, Sharon Lynn turned to Cord, saw only him. A smile hovered on her lips.
She reached out to place her palm against his cheek. He was real and he was hers. Forever.
Then the baby in her arms whimpered as if to stake her own right to Sharon Lynn’s attention...and her love.
“Oh, my darling,” she whispered, gazing down into that beautiful little face. “How does it feel to be Ashley Branson at last?”
“Pretty darned good, I’d wager,” her grandfather said. “Why don’t you let me take her for a minute, while you and Cord have a chance to catch your breath?”
Sharon Lynn relinquished the baby and turned to her husband. Cord’s expression was serious, far more serious than the occasion called for.
“So,” he began quietly, “how does it feel to be a mama for real?”
“Wonderful,” she said honestly. “Exhilarating.”
“And Mrs. Cord Branson? You still happy about that, too?”
She leaned forward and gave him a kiss that could leave no doubts at all about how she felt about that. “I think I’ve been waiting for you all my life,” she told him honestly. “Even when I didn’t trust myself, even when I was scared out of my wits, you never wavered. You just swept me off my feet.”
“I intend to keep right on doing that for the rest of our lives,” he warned. “Think you’re up to it?”
She grinned at him. “I can hardly wait.”
Finally, she thought later, as the family gathered to celebrate the day’s happy news—not just the adoption, but the
baby they were expecting—Cord would have the family he’d always dreamed of and she, well, she would have the only thing in life that mattered, the one thing she’d feared never having again...a heart filled with love.
* * *
Read West Texas Nights, an Adams Dynasty anthology by #1 New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods.
Coming soon from MIRA!
#1 New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods takes readers to her world of strong friendships and heartfelt emotions in her Sweet Magnolias series.
Now a Netflix original series!
Stealing Home
A Slice of Heaven
Feels Like Family
Order your copies today from MIRA!
ISBN-13: 9781488075704
Wildflower Ridge
Copyright © 2020 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Natural Born Lawman
First published in 1998. This edition published in 2020.
Copyright © 1998 by Sherryl Woods
The Unclaimed Baby
First published in 1999. This edition published in 2020.
Copyright © 1999 by Sherryl Woods
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
For questions and comments about the quality of this book, please contact us at [email protected].
Wildflower Ridge Page 40
