Wildflower Ridge - Sherryl Woods Page 0,156
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.
* * *
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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
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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.
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