The Cowboy and His Baby

by Sherryl Woods

  He had even behaved as though she were important to him, too. But never once, not in all these months, had he said he loved her. She would not marry a man who could not say those words. She would not marry at all just because she was pregnant.

  It created an interesting dilemma, since there wasn’t a darn thing she could do about being pregnant. There was nothing on earth that meant more to her than being a mother to Cody’s children. And she knew from bitter experience that she could do it just fine on her own, if she had to.

  Still, she had to tell him sometime….

  She managed to hold off for a couple of weeks, but her symptoms were cropping up when she least expected it. She didn’t want him guessing when he found her practically swooning in his arms.

  After thinking it over, she chose the storeroom at Dolan’s to tell him. Eli and Mabel were getting used to her dragging Cody into the back to talk. They’d probably heard enough muffled arguments and full-scale screaming matches to last them a lifetime.

  At least, though, they would be there to intervene if Cody decided to try to drag her off by the hair to the preacher. At home she’d have no such protection. She doubted even her parents would stand up to him. Her father was already on Cody’s side and her mother had maintained a stoic silence ever since her father’s edict that she butt out of Melissa’s and Cody’s business.

  She had one other reason for choosing the storeroom. She had noticed that Eli and Mabel were off by themselves whispering who-knew-what at the oddest times. Melissa had the feeling that the two of them were patching whatever differences had separated them years before. Maybe the very visible ups and downs of her relationship with Cody had set an example for them. They might as well be in on the denouement.

  When Cody walked through the door as he’d gotten into the habit of doing around closing every day, Melissa’s hands trembled. This time nothing on earth could have persuaded her to so much as touch a glass in Cody’s presence.

  Not even giving Cody time to get settled, she drew in a deep breath. “We need to talk.”

  “Okay,” he said, giving her that crooked smile that made her heart flip over. “What’s up?”

  “In the back,” she said.

  Cody groaned. “Not again.”

  She glanced at Eli and Mabel, who were both suddenly extremely busy, their backs to the counter. “Will you just come on?” she muttered, holding the door open.

  Cody trailed along behind her and propped a booted foot onto an unopened shipment of new glasses. “What now?”

  Melissa tried to gather her courage. Finally she blurted, “I’m pregnant.”

  Cody’s eyes widened incredulously. “You’re going to have a baby?”

  She nodded, watching him carefully, not quite able to get a fix on his reaction.

  “A baby?” Cody repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, my God.” He sank down on the box, which gave way just enough to shatter the two dozen glasses inside.

  At the sound of all that cracking glassware, Melissa started to chuckle. Cody bounced to his feet, but there was no hope for the crushed shipment.

  “You okay?” she inquired between giggles. “No glass in your backside?”

  “Forget my backside. It’s just fine. Tell me more about the baby. When is it due?”

  “You should be able to figure that one out. We only slept together that once since you got back.”

  “I can’t even add two and two right now. Just tell me.”

  “A little over six months.”

  He nodded. “Good. That’s plenty of time.”

  Melissa regarded him suspiciously. “Plenty of time for what?” she asked, although she thought she had a pretty good idea of the answer.

  “To get married,” he said at once. “Finish fixing up my house at White Pines, decorate a new nursery.”

  Melissa held up her hands. “Whoa, cowboy. Who says we’re getting married?”

  A mutinous expression settled over his face. “I do. No baby of mine is going to be born without my name. It’s bad enough that we haven’t taken care of getting Sharon Lynn’s name legally changed. I’m not doubling the problem.”

  “Okay, say I agree to get married—which I haven’t,” she added in a rush when she saw the instant gleam in his eyes. “Then what?”

  He stared at her blankly. “What?”

  “Are you planning for us to live happily ever after? Are you intending to get a divorce as soon as the ink’s dry on the birth certificate? What?” Please, she thought to herself, let him say he loves me. Please.

  “You know better than that,” he said.

  It was a wishy-washy answer if ever Melissa had heard one. “Do I?” she shot back. “How? Just because you’ve been here a few months now and haven’t taken off?”

  He raked his fingers through his hair. “Yes.”

  “Not good enough, cowboy,” she said, exiting the storeroom and emphatically closing the door behind her.

  Mabel and Eli were suspiciously close to the door, though their attention seemed to be thoroughly engaged in their work. Of course, Mabel was sweeping the exact same spot she’d swept not fifteen minutes earlier and Eli was dusting off a shelf, a task that usually fell to Mabel.

  “I’m leaving,” she announced, grabbing her purse and heading for the door.

  Mabel trailed her outside. “Don’t be a fool, girl. Marry that man and put him out of his misery.”

  “I can’t,” Melissa said, sounding pretty miserable herself.

  “Why the devil not?”

  “He’s only thinking about the babies. He’s not thinking about us at all.”

  “If that’s all he cared about, he could file for joint custody, pick them up on Friday afternoons and send you a support check,” Mabel countered. “I don’t hear him talking about doing any of that. He’s talking about marriage, has been ever since he got back into town.”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do,” Melissa insisted stubbornly. “The Adams men are nothing if not honorable.”

  Mabel shot her a look of pure disgust. “Maybe you ought to be thinking about doing the right thing, too, if that’s the case. Those babies deserve a chance at a real home. Cody’s willing to give them that. Why can’t you?”

  Mabel’s words lingered in her head as she walked over to pick up Sharon Lynn. They echoed there again and again as she fought every single attempt Cody made to persuade her to change her mind.

  She told herself she wasn’t the one making things difficult. All it would take to make her change her mind was three little words—I love you. They were about the only words in the whole English language that Cody never, ever tried.

  Chapter Fifteen

  From the instant he discovered that Melissa was pregnant again, Cody tried to persuade her to marry him. He coaxed. He wooed. He pitched a royal fit on occasion and threatened to hog-tie her and carry her off to the justice of the peace.

  For six solid months he did everything but stand on his damned head, but Melissa seemed to have clothed her heart in an impenetrable sheet of armor. He surely didn’t remember the woman being this stubborn. The whole town was watching the two of them as if they were better than any soap opera on TV. He found it mortifying to be chasing after a woman who acted as if he didn’t even exist.

  He also discovered that this new side of Melissa was every bit as intriguing as it was vexing. He realized that he’d always taken for granted that sooner or later she would admit she loved him and accept his oft-repeated proposal. That she was still turning him down with another baby on the way shook him as nothing else in his life ever had. Maybe this was one time when his charm wasn’t going to be enough.

  And the truth of it was, she seemed to be getting along just fine. He’d seen that for himself ever since he’d gotten back from Wyoming. She had made a nice life for herself and Sharon Lynn. She would fit a new baby into that life without batting an eye.

  She was strong and self-sufficient, downright competent as a sin
gle parent. She had her job at the drugstore. She had friends who were there for her. She had parents who supported her in whatever decisions she made, though he sensed that her father was not quite as thrilled with this independent streak as her mother was.

  In short, Melissa had a life, while Cody was lonelier than he’d ever imagined possible even in the dead of a rough Wyoming winter.

  The thought of Melissa going into that delivery room with anyone other than him as her labor coach grated. The prospect of his baby—a second baby, in fact—being born without his name made him see red. He wanted to be a part of that baby’s life so badly it stunned him.

  What flat-out rocked him back on his heels, though, was the fact that he wanted to be with Melissa just as badly. Maybe he’d started out just saying the words, asking her to marry him because of Sharon Lynn and more recently this new, unborn baby. But sometime, when he hadn’t been paying attention, he’d gone and fallen in love with the woman. Mature, adult love this time, not adolescent hormones and fantasy.

  How the hell was he going to get her to believe that, though? Nothing he had done in the past eight and a half months since he’d come home to Texas had done a bit of good.

  He’d been steady. He’d been reliable. He’d even managed to seduce her, which was what had gotten them into this latest fix. Melissa, however, had kept a stubborn grip on her emotions. She had refused to concede feeling so much as affection for him, much less love.

  Cody was at his wit’s end. He’d decided, though, that it was tonight or never. He was going to make one last, impressive, irresistible attempt to convince Melissa to be his wife. If it failed, he would just have to resign himself to this shadow role in the life of his children. Up until now he’d turned his back on his pride, but it was kicking up a storm for him to stop behaving like a besotted fool and give up.

  He took hat quite literally in hand and went to visit Velma. He needed her help if his plan was to work. Responding to his knock on her door in midafternoon, she regarded him with her usual suspicion.

  “What do you want?” she inquired ungraciously.

  Cody lost patience. “I am not the bad guy here,” he informed her as he stalked past her and stood in the middle of the foyer.

  He could hear Sharon Lynn chattering away in the guest room. It sounded as if she were having a tea party. He longed to go down that corridor and spend some time with her. She was changing in one way or another every day and he hated to miss a single one. Today, though, he was on a mission here and he couldn’t afford to be distracted.

  “I came by to see if you could keep Sharon Lynn here tonight,” he said.

  “Why?” Velma asked bluntly.

  “So that Melissa and I can have an evening together alone.”

  “Seems to me you two have found enough time to be alone without my help in the past. She’s about to have a baby again, isn’t she? She didn’t get that way in public, I suspect.”

  Her sarcasm grated. Cody held back the sharp retort that came to mind. If this was going to work out, it was way past time he made peace with Melissa’s mother. “Exactly what has she told you about our relationship?”

  Velma didn’t give an inch. “She doesn’t have to say a word. I can see plenty for myself.”

  “What do you think you see, then?”

  “That you think your money and your power give you the right to be irresponsible. You’ve used my daughter, left her, then come back here and used her again without ever giving a thought to the consequences.”

  “Are you aware that I have been trying to persuade your mule-headed daughter to marry me since the very first instant I got back into town?”

  Velma blinked, but she didn’t back down. Talk about stubborn pride. Velma had it in spades, which probably explained Melissa’s streak of it.

  “Too little, too late, if you ask me,” she retorted.

  Cody started to tell her he hadn’t asked her, but of course he had. “Look, I don’t blame you for resenting me, but the fact of the matter is that I love your daughter, stubborn as she is, and I want to marry her and be a father to our children. I think she loves me, too, but she thinks she’s a fool for doing it.”

  He saw from the set expression on her face that Velma had probably reinforced that belief. Maybe if he could win over the mother, she’d change her tune with Melissa and give him a fighting chance.

  “You want her to be happy, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do,” she said indignantly. “What makes you think I don’t?”

  “Because I think she’s taking her cue from you. I think if she and I had just a little time alone, we could work this out, preferably before another one of our children is born without my name. Will you give us that chance?”

  Velma spent the next minute or two in an obvious struggle with her conscience. “What is it you want, exactly?”

  “Keep Sharon Lynn here tonight. Don’t interfere with my plans. That’s all.”

  “You think you can convince her in one night, when you haven’t made any progress at all in the past nine months?” Velma inquired with a shake of her head. “You don’t know Melissa half as well as you think you do.”

  She sighed heavily. “Okay, I’ll keep Sharon Lynn for you,” she relented to Cody’s relief. “But it’ll have to be for the whole weekend. If you ask me, it’s going to take you that long, maybe even longer, to turn that girl around. She’s scared spitless she’ll admit she loves you and you’ll turn around and leave again.”

  “I won’t,” he swore. He circled Velma’s waist and spun her around. “Thank you. You’re an angel.”

  She kept her lips in a tight line, resisting him to the bitter end, but Cody thought he detected a spark of amusement in her eyes. “See that you do right by her, young man, or I’ll have your hide.”

  He kissed her cheek. “Not to worry, Velma. This is going to be a weekend to remember.”

  He was already making plans to sweep Melissa away to a quiet, secluded cabin for a romantic weekend by the time he hit the driveway.

  His first stop was her house, where he managed to sneak in without being caught by the sheriff or a neighbor. He rummaged through her drawers and closets to find lingerie and the prettiest, sexiest maternity clothes she owned. He packed them, along with perfume and cosmetics, praying that he got the right ones. He didn’t want her dissolving into tears because she couldn’t find her blush or her mascara. Her hormones had her reacting in the most bizarre ways these days. He figured he ought to get a whole lot of points for just managing to stick by her anyway.

  He’d considered taking her off to someplace fancy, maybe the most expensive suite in Dallas, but then he’d decided that would put her too close to taxis or planes or other means of escape. He wanted her all to himself.

  He fought all of his old past resentments—most of them, as it had turned out, unwarranted—and tracked Brian down in San Antonio, where he was practicing law. He pointed out that his former best friend owed him one for the scam he and Melissa had tried to pull on Cody years before.

  “I’m just grateful that you didn’t come after me with a shotgun,” Brian said. “Anything you want is yours.”

  “Does your family still have that cabin by the lake?”

  “You bet.”

  “Can Melissa and I borrow it for the weekend?”

  “It’s all yours,” Brian said at once.

  He told Cody where to find the key, offered some unsolicited advice on taming the reluctant Melissa, then added seriously, “I’m glad you called, buddy. I’ve missed you.”

  “Same here,” Cody said. “Next time you’re down this way, we’ll have to get together. You do have your own woman now, don’t you?”

  Brian chuckled. “Do I ever. Good luck. You and Melissa should have worked this out long ago. I’d have told you the truth myself, but Melissa swore me to secrecy.”

  “Secrets are her specialty, it appears,” Cody said. “Anyway, thanks again for the cabin.”

  Those arrangeme
nts made, Cody loaded groceries, flowers and nonalcoholic champagne into the back of the truck, then swung by Dolan’s. He marched straight to the soda fountain, ignoring the startled gazes of the teens gathered there.

  “Cody? Is everything okay?” Melissa asked as he rounded the corner of the counter and headed toward her.

  “Just dandy,” he confirmed, tucking one arm under her legs and the other behind her waist. He scooped her up, amid a flurry of outraged protests from her and that same pimply faced kid who’d defended her honor once before.

  “It’s okay, son,” Cody assured him. “She wants to go with me.”

  “I do not!” Melissa protested.

  “Eli, call the cops or something,” the boy shouted, his face turning red as he bolted after Cody.

  “Not on your life,” Eli said, and kept right on filling prescriptions. Mabel held the door open, grinning widely.

  Melissa huffed and puffed a little longer, but by the time Cody had driven to the outskirts of town, she’d retreated into a sullen silence.

  “Was that caveman approach entirely necessary?” she inquired eventually.

  “I thought so.”

  “I would have come with you, if you’d asked politely.”

  He shot a skeptical look in her direction.

  “At least, I would have thought about it,” she amended.

  “That’s why I didn’t ask. You’ve been thinking entirely too much.”

  “Are we going to White Pines?”

  “Nope.”

  “Luke and Jessie’s?” she asked hopefully, the first little sign of alarm sparking in her eyes.

  “Nope.”

  “Cody, where the hell are you taking me?”

  “Someplace where we can be alone.”

  “Where?” she repeated.

  “Brian’s cabin.”

  Her eyes widened. “You talked to Brian?”

  “I figured drastic measures were called for, and he promised the best and quickest solution.” He glanced over at her. “I was willing to do anything it took to make this happen, sweet pea.”