“Do you have a place to stay?” she asked eventually, when a glance at the clock and the discovery that it was after ten clearly startled her. “There’s a motel outside of town, but on a night like this it’s probably full and I’m not sure you ought to risk driving that far on the icy roads.”
“No problem. Unless you think the local law enforcement will object, I’ll just find a place to pull my truck off on the side of the road and sleep in back,” he said. “I’ve got a nice warm sleeping bag and I’m used to roughing it.”
Even as he said it, she was shaking her head. “No way. I won’t have your freezing to death on my conscience. If you truly don’t mind roughing it, you can sleep in the back room here. The floor’s hard as a rock, but the sleeping bag ought to help and at least you’ll have heat.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Of course you could.”
He frowned at her. As generous as it was, the offer filled him with concern. He didn’t like thinking of her taking that kind of risk with other strangers. “You know,” he chided, “it’s possible that you’re entirely too trusting.”
She shrugged off the suggestion. “That’s the way folks around here are. First impressions count for a lot, and I can see you’re a decent man.”
Cord regarded her with blatant amusement. “I thought you said first impressions counted?”
“They do.”
“Your first impression of me was that I was here to rob you.”
A guilty flush confirmed his guess.
“Okay, yes,” she admitted, “just for a second, I did wonder. Most people would have been inside on a night like this, unless they were up to no good.”
“But you don’t wonder anymore?”
Her gaze met his, blue eyes the exact shade of wildflowers searching his face. “Not anymore,” she said at last, giving his hand a brief, reassuring pat.
He told himself later that it wasn’t the way his pulse leapt when her fingers grazed his that mattered. It wasn’t the unexpected yearning that came over him looking into her eyes. It was the fact that she said those two simple words with such quiet confidence that made him fall in love with her. It had been a very long time since anyone on earth had believed in Cord Branson.
Before he could get lost in the wonder of that, a heavy thump against the back door startled them both. Sharon Lynn whirled in that direction, but Cord was faster. “You stay put. I’ll check it out.” He gestured toward the back room. “Where’s the door? Through there?”
She nodded. “It was probably just a dog bumping into a trash can or the wind knocking something over,” she said, right on his heels.
Cord glanced over his shoulder. “I thought I told you to stay put.”
She shot him a defiant look. “It’s my store. Besides, I have a gun right here.” She snatched a very deadly looking rifle out of its hiding place. “I can look after myself.”
He grinned at the fierce response and the determined jut of her jaw. “Yes, I can see that. Okay, but would you stay behind me at least and keep that gun pointed at something other than my backside?”
She regarded him with a faint glimmer of amusement, then shrugged. “I suppose I could do that.”
“I do love an amenable woman,” he said as he began twisting locks. When he’d unlatched the last one, he slowly turned the knob, shot Sharon Lynn one last warning look, then eased outside. What he found stunned him almost as bad as confronting a thief would have.
“Holy Mother of God,” he murmured as he bent down over the basket.
“What is it?” Sharon Lynn asked, nudging against him.
The quick bump of her hip was surprisingly provocative. She was so close he could smell her perfume, something light and innocent, maybe little more than scented hand lotion. It set off a surge of pure lust just the same. There was no time for that now, though.
“A baby,” he replied, his voice hushed as he scooped the tiny child up into his arms. “Some damned fool left a baby out here in this weather. If we hadn’t been here, it would have been dead before morning.” Just the thought of that filled him with cold fury.
“Let me see,” she demanded, scooting around him. At the sight of the tiny infant, her eyes went wide with a mix of shock and indignation every bit as violent as his own.
“Oh, sweetie,” she whispered, reaching at once for the baby. “Let me. Maybe they knew we were inside and knew we’d find the baby before any harm came to it.”
“Maybe,” Cord said, because the notion seemed to console her. The basket had been left a little too close to the trash Dumpster for his liking, though. And the way the snow was coming down now, in no time at all, the basket and its contents would have been shrouded in a way that might have made it blend in with the bags of trash heaped nearby. He suspected that thump they’d heard had been an accident, not a deliberate attempt to catch their attention. No, this had been a cruel and heartless attempt to leave a child to die. He’d stake his life on that.
“Whoever did this can’t have gotten far,” Sharon Lynn said. “See if there’s any sign of him or her.”
“Him,” Cord said grimly.
“How do you know that?”
“The boot prints. There’s just enough snow on the ground to see the size of the shoe. It’s too big for a woman’s.”
Cord knew there was no point in following the trail. Whoever had done this despicable thing was long gone by now, but he went to the end of the alley just to satisfy Sharon Lynn. The footprints ended at the curb around the corner. A melted patch in the midst of all the snow indicated someone had left an engine running for a few minutes at least. Skid marks in the fresh snow suggested that whoever had driven away had probably heard the store’s back door open and left in a hurry.
By the time Cord got back inside, Sharon Lynn was holding a squalling, wide-awake baby in her arms as naturally as if this were something she did every day. The look of awe and concern on her face was enough to take his breath away. For one wild and improbable second, he imagined that she was his, the baby theirs. In that instant, with a certainty that stunned him, he knew that whatever it took, somehow he would make it happen.
Over the years he had seen too many of life’s most valuable treasures slip through his daddy’s fingers. Hawk Branson had lost his wife—Cord’s mama—to another man. He’d lost a fortune and most of the payments on the family ranch to the bottle. There’d been pitifully little left for Cord, once all the debts had been settled. Watching Hawk’s downfall had made Cord an impatient man.
When he spotted something he wanted, he went after it with a no-holds-barred vengeance. He had come here intending to claim a place for himself at the famed White Pines ranch, vowing to work harder and longer than any other hand.
He could have stayed in Montana and tried to save his daddy’s spread. The local bankers trusted him. They knew he wasn’t anything like his daddy. But there were too many defeats and bad memories associated with the place. He’d wanted a fresh start, not just as a hand at a truly successful ranch where he could learn everything there was to know about running a decent herd of cattle, but someplace where he could earn enough to buy his own land, acre by acre if he had to. Ownership and self-respect were all tied up together in his head.
Instinctively he’d aimed for Texas and its sprawling cattle ranches. He’d hung out in a bar in Fort Worth and asked questions. He’d gone to a couple of cattle auctions and asked more questions. White Pines and its owners had come up time and again, always accompanied by respectful anecdotes.
The last time he’d stopped, about a hundred miles