The Unclaimed Baby

He sighed heavily. “Okay,” he relented finally. “But this is temporary. You understand that, right?”

“Of course.”

He regarded her skeptically. “You’re sure?”

“Justin, I understand.”

“All right, then. Hopefully Lizzy’s not on duty over at Garden City. Call her and get her over here. If she gives the baby a clean bill of health, that’ll do for now. Meantime, I’ll go check out all the reports on missing kids to see if there’s a match.”

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“Don’t thank me,” he said curtly. “Something tells me I’m setting you up for heartbreak.”

Chapter 3

“Tell me again how you wound up with a baby,” Lizzy said when she arrived an hour later.

She looked every bit the doctor with her little black bag and white lab coat over a silk blouse. She’d even coiled her long, black hair into a tidy topknot. Sharon Lynn still hadn’t gotten used to her professional demeanor. To her way of thinking, Lizzy was still first and foremost a rambunctious, anything-for-a-lark cowgirl. Her medical degree from the University of Texas said otherwise.

As Sharon Lynn repeated the same story she’d told Justin, Lizzy’s eyes widened. Her mouth narrowed into a thin, disapproving line before she muttered a stream of expletives that would have blistered the ears of the person who’d abandoned the baby. Sharon Lynn said only, “My sentiments exactly.”

“How long was she outside, then?”

“Probably not more than a minute or two. We heard a thump, went to investigate and there she was.”

“So her body temperature was warm enough when you brought her inside?”

Sharon Lynn nodded. “She was pretty well bundled up. She felt fine to me. Cord thought so, too. I took her temperature and it was normal.”

Just as Justin had, Lizzy seized on the mention of the unfamiliar name. “Cord?”

“The customer who was there when it happened. He was actually the one who found her.”

“Interesting,” Lizzy said, studying her face. “Is this Cord person handsome, sexy and single?”

“I have no idea,” she claimed. At Lizzy’s skeptical look, she conceded, “Not about the single part anyway.”

Lizzy grinned. “Then he is handsome and sexy?”

“I suppose. I hardly noticed.”

“If he’d turned up after you found the baby, I might believe that, but he’d been there how long? A couple of hours? That’s a long time to hang around a drugstore during a blizzard, unless the man had something besides food on his mind.”

“Are you here to check out the baby or to cross-examine me?” Sharon Lynn grumbled.

Lizzy patted her cheek. “Not to worry. I have time to do both. Come on, let’s see the baby. We’ll get back to this Cord person later.”

Without waiting for Sharon Lynn, she headed to the bedroom and bent over the baby, who was wide-awake and waving her tiny fists in the air. Lizzy sighed. “She’s a cute one, all right. And obviously someone has been taking good care of her. Looks to me as if her weight’s normal and her color is good. Just look at those rosy little cheeks.”

She began examining her with practiced fingers, pausing to tickle a laughing response from her every now and again. When she was finished, she plucked her up off the bed and cradled her in her arms. “You are a little doll.”

Sharon Lynn watched her aunt, who was actually younger than she was, and had an almost overwhelming desire to yank the baby out of her arms. Even she recognized that as a bad sign. If she was this possessive after less than twenty-four hours, what was going to happen when the time came to give the baby up? Maybe Justin had been right to worry. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d thought.

“Don’t go getting any ideas,” she told Lizzy.

“You’ve got one of your own and I don’t see Hank letting you bring another one home for him to take care of while you finish your residency.”

“Are you kidding? Hank’s in seventh heaven playing full-time daddy. If he could figure out some way to convince me to stay pregnant and have another kid every nine or ten months, he’d be a happy man. He loves ranching, but parenthood is his true calling. I’m not sure which one of us was more surprised by that. For a long time making a go of his ranch was all that mattered to him. Now he just leaves most of that to Pete and the hands. I come home and he has a zillion and one stories about Jamey for me.”

“And how do you feel about expanding your family?”

“I wouldn’t give up Jamey for anything, but it is way too soon to be thinking of having another one. It’s easier now that med school is over and I’m here all the time, but doing my residency over in Garden City is no picnic. The hours are a killer and, despite what Hank says, I can’t put all the burden of taking care of Jamey on him. Besides, I don’t want to miss these early years. Things change too fast. He’s walking and talking a blue streak. To hear Hank and Daddy tell it, he’ll be ready to run the ranch by the time he’s five.”

“Well, obviously Grandpa Harlan would think any child of his precious baby daughter’s would be a genius,” Sharon Lynn teased. “As for Hank, he’s totally and thoroughly besotted with you. It was a given that any child you two conceived would be brighter and cuter than any other baby on earth, at least in his eyes.”

She reached for this baby and took her from Lizzy’s arms. “Of course, this one could give little Jamey a run for his money in the looks department.”

“You sound an awful lot like a proud mama,” Lizzy said, regarding her worriedly. “Sweetie, you aren’t getting any ideas about trying to keep her, are you?”

“Of course not,” Sharon Lynn denied a little too emphatically. “This is just temporary until Justin can find out who abandoned her and whether there’s any family to take her.”

“Then why did you bring home enough diapers and formula for months, rather than days?”

She could feel the color flooding her cheeks. “I just grabbed stuff last night. I wasn’t counting. Neither was Cord. We just accidentally doubled up on some stuff.”

As soon as the last was out of her mouth, she realized her mistake. The repeat mention of Cord’s name was like waving a red flag in front of Lizzy.

“Okay, into the kitchen,” Lizzy ordered in the imperious manner of a woman used to having her demands taken seriously. “You can feed the baby and I’ll pour the coffee. I want to hear all about this Cord person.”

“Don’t you have to get back to your own family?” Sharon Lynn asked hopefully.

“You are my family,” Lizzy reminded her. “I’m the aunt. I get to be nosy.”

“You’re younger than I am.”

“Doesn’t matter. In the family pecking order, I have rank. Ask Daddy.”

“It would be a waste of time asking Grandpa Harlan,” Sharon Lynn conceded. “Precious Lizzy has ruled the roost since the day she was born. After all those impossible sons of his, to say nothing of Jenny who was a fourteen-year-old troublemaker when he married your mom, you were his darling angel. Little did he know that you’d turn out to be the most stubborn and impossible of all of them.”

“None of which has a thing to do with the topic,” Lizzy reminded her, oblivious to the familiar teasing.

“Which is?”

“Cord. Tell me about him.”

Sharon Lynn forced a casual, disinterested shrug.

“He’s a nice guy. He came into Dolan’s last night, right off the road in the middle of that storm. He’d been traveling from Montana. He’s here looking for a job.”