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  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.

  THE UNCLAIMED BABY

  Copyright © 1999 by Sherryl Woods

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-3716-6

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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