Cord suppressed a weary sigh. The red-rimmed blue eyes were looking into the past now, through a very dark glass. Sometimes lately, the old man’s mind rearranged the facts. Caine would imagine that his wife, Madelyn Johnson Stockwell, hadn’t died in a boating accident on Stockwell Pond with Caine’s twin, Brandon, after all. Caine would swear the two had run off together instead.
But this about the baby was new.
Caine fisted the sheets, his bony knuckles going white as the linen they crushed. Then he struck out, wildly, hitting Cord a glancing blow. The old man wore no rings. His fingers had shrunk too much; a ring would slide right off. But his yellowed nails needed trimming. One of them sliced a thin, stinging line along Cord’s jaw. Cord pulled back sharply and touched the tiny wound. His finger came away dotted with crimson.
“It was mine,” Caine ranted, his eyes closed now, the lids quivering, his head whipping back and forth against the pillow. “I tried. Tried to take care of it. Is it my fault she never would take the money?”
None of it made any sense to Cord. His mother and his uncle were long dead. And the only baby he knew about lay in a crib in another wing of the mansion, dreaming whatever a baby might dream of.
A baby.
His daughter.
The irony struck him. Someday, would he be the one ranting in a hospital bed, while his grown daughter sat patiently at his side?
It seemed impossible, that such a tiny, helpless creature as his baby girl would ever sit upright beside her father and watch as he died.
And why? Why would she perform such a grim duty anyway?
For love?
Cord almost smiled. He did not think it was love that he felt for his father. It was something darker, something more complex. Something with anger in it, and hurt—and maybe just a touch of reluctant respect.
No, he did not love Caine. But he did feel a duty to him, and he pitied him, pitied the bitter, half-crazed shadow of himself that Caine had become.
So he sat on the edge of his father’s bed and let the old man flail his withered arms at him, striking him repeatedly, shouting more addled nonsense about Cord’s long-dead mother and his uncle Brandon and a baby that Caine didn’t seem to realize had never existed.
“Whatever your mother did, that baby was a Stockwell. Remember. We are Stockwells. We take care of our own. And I know her. She had a thousand reasons to hate me. But still, no matter what I said, I knew…deep down, I knew she was true to me. That baby…that baby was mine.”
Cord took another series of sharp blows, to the shoulder, across the neck, to the center of his chest. By then, he decided it was time to buzz for the nurses.
His father needed calming. And Cord himself had to get back to his own quarters and finish up his negotiations with Becky’s nanny-to-be.
After Cord left her, Hannah sat very still for several long moments.
What to do? How to answer?
Her heart’s desire—to stay with Becky.
Her mind’s wise instruction—to let Becky go. Now, though it would break her heart in two to do it.
She could get over a broken heart. She had done that more than once already in her twenty-five years of life.
But oh, if she lingered, it could only get worse. With every day, every hour, every minute that passed, she would love Becky more. And the risk would be greater, the pain a thousand times more terrible, if for some reason, she had to let Becky go.
And that could happen, so very easily. Cord Stockwell was a rich man. And the rich—at least in Hannah’s sad experience—were different. They broke rules. They broke hearts. They broke agreements. And they thought that their money gave them the right to run right over everyone else getting things their way.
Hannah sat up straighter.
Wait a minute, she thought. Just a cotton-pickin’ minute here.
This was not seven years ago and she was a grown woman now, not some lost little orphan looking for love where she shouldn’t be. And Cord Stockwell may have been too rich and too good-looking and too lucky with the ladies for her peace of mind, but he did seem, sincerely, to want to do right by Becky.
Her peace of mind was not the issue here. Neither was her foolish heart.
The issue was, what was right for Becky.
And she would make her decision based on that and that alone.
Right then, Hannah heard Becky cry. One short, insistent yelp came through the receiver on the table beside her.
A silence followed, but a brief one. In a moment, Becky started to wail. She was hungry.
Or she needed changing.
Or comforting.
Whatever.
Hannah rose to go to her.
Gunderson and the redheaded nurse reappeared a moment or two after Cord buzzed for them.
Cord was holding his father by then, an embrace that was actually an attempt to keep the sick man from harming himself. “More morphine,” he said. “And it will have to be by injection. Get it ready. Now.”
In his arms, Caine thrashed. “Didn’t I? Didn’t I keep my promise? Raised the bastard as my own…”
Gunderson glanced at his watch. “He had his last dose at—”
Caine raved right over him. “You witch…I loved you. Always loved you. All those others…nothing, damn it. Never. No one. Only you. But you…I know you loved him. Always. You never stopped. So I only wanted…to wipe out the taste of you.”
Cord held his struggling father close and glared at the nurses. “Get it ready, I said.”
The redhead filled the syringe. Cord held Caine still as she administered the dose.
Caine gasped. “Cold. Cold. Sinking…down…”
Within seconds, the old man went lax. Gently Cord laid him back against the pillow. A rank sigh escaped him and then he was still.
Cord rose from the bed. “Can you two take care of him now?”
“Of course, sir,” said Gunderson.
The redhead nodded.
“Trim his fingernails, will you?” Cord commanded as he strode toward the door. “He cut me, they’re so long.”
Behind him, both nurses made sounds in the affirmative.
In the hall, he found the maid he had sent away earlier. She hovered near the door to his father’s rooms, brown eyes huge with apprehension.
“It’s all right,” he said gently. “Go on in and finish up. He won’t bother you. He’s sleeping now.”
The maid dipped her head. “Sí. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Cord.”
He returned to his private sitting room to find that Hannah Miller wasn’t there.
His first reaction was a hot burst of fury. The little upstart had dared to take his daughter and leave.
But then, over the baby monitor, he heard it: the soft sound of a woman’s voice, sweet and only a little off-key, humming a lullaby.
He found her in the baby’s bedroom, which had robin’s-egg-blue walls, white furniture and a border near the ceiling of twinkling stars and smiling moons.
She sat in the white wicker rocker. She’d pulled up the shade of the window a few feet away to let in the afternoon light. She rocked slowly while she hummed, cradling his daughter and feeding her a bottle.
The