“You wouldn’t be scared now, would you? We were just talking about a little old hug, maybe an innocent little massage to get rid of the tension in those shoulders.” His gaze was as innocent as a lamb’s. “What’s the harm in that?”
There was absolutely nothing wrong with a hug—if it came from a friend and not a man whose touches were beginning to worry her. She couldn’t pinpoint precisely when the effect of a casual caress had turned alarmingly dangerous, but it had happened, all right. Her pulse was zinging around right now like an Indy 500 leader in the final lap.
There was certainly nothing inappropriate about a massage, either—especially one administered by a professional and not by a man whose intentions were not entirely honorable, if that gleam in his eyes was anything to judge by.
“No harm,” she told him finally. “But I’ll pass just the same.”
He gave the baby a sorrowful look. “Angel pie, I don’t know what we’re going to do about her,” he lamented. “She’s a very uptight lady.”
Sharon Lynn didn’t especially like the label. “Well, you’d be uptight, too, if you were worried night and day that Ashley was going to be snatched away from you.”
His expression sobered at once. “Now that’s where you’re wrong,” he said, clearly insulted by the criticism. “I am worried half to death about what the future holds when it comes to this baby girl. She means as much to me as she does to you. I don’t want you ever thinking otherwise.”
She winced at his tone, which was a mix of anger and hurt. “I’m sorry. I know you care about her. I just figured it wouldn’t be the same for you.”
“Well, it is,” he retorted. “Why the hell do you think Harlan Patrick and I went poking around over in Garden City? I don’t want this baby to wind up in the custody of the wrong person any more than you do.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
As if she sensed the tension suddenly brewing in the air between the adults, the baby began to whimper. At once, Cord’s expression softened. “Shh, sweetie. It’s okay. We’re just having a little discussion. Sometimes grown-ups don’t agree about things. It’s a fact of life.”
Sharon Lynn couldn’t help smiling as the baby stared at him quizzically. “You talk to her as if she can understand every word.”
“Maybe she does,” he countered. “Ashley’s a smart one. After all, who knows better than she does that all it really takes to be happy is a full tummy and someone to love her? Maybe we’d all be better off if we were wise enough to stick with those priorities.”
She sensed yet another implied criticism in his words. “And I’m not wise enough to take you up on your offer, is that it? Do you honestly think you can make everything all right by taking me to dinner and giving me a shoulder to lean on?”
He shrugged. “Seems to me it’s worth a try.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe she was being uptight and skittish over nothing. Maybe he only intended kindness and she was reading way too much into it.
“Okay, okay, I’ll go to dinner.”
“Now there’s a gracious acceptance, if ever I’ve heard one.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“Oh, I’ll take it,” he said, then inquired innocently, “Want the hug before or after?”
“We’ll discuss it after,” she said. Maybe in a couple of months, she thought. Better yet, a couple of years, when she could get a sharper grip on this tug of longing that kept sneaking up on her when she was around him.
“Your friend here is not very spontaneous,” he told the baby, then regarded Sharon Lynn with amusement. “But I can work with that.”
That was exactly what she was afraid of. If she let her guard down with Cord Branson for even an instant, things were going to get so spontaneous, so deliciously wicked, she might be thrown permanently off-kilter. She might even start to care. And that, she had vowed on the night Kyle was killed, was never going to happen again. She reminded herself that it was essential that no one—not that precious little baby and certainly not Cord—ever mean that much to her again.
She gazed at Ashley then, felt a lump forming in her throat and realized yet again that it was too late. The vow was already broken. Ashley had breached all of her defenses and Cord