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?”