The Cowboy and His Baby (12 page)

She tossed a six-pack of soft drinks she didn't need into the cart, just in case Cody wasn't as far away as
she hoped. She had to leave the store with more than a quart of milk or he'd know that this trip had been nothing more than a ploy to avoid being alone with him.

She had rounded the last aisle and was heading for the cashier when she spotted him. He was positioned in front of the baby food, studying labels with the intensity of a scientist in his lab. Apparently, though, he wasn't so absorbed that her presence escaped his notice.

“Which of these does Sharon Lynn like?” he asked, holding up competing brands of strained peas.

“Neither one.”

His brow knit worriedly. “Doesn't she have to eat vegetables?”

“Yes, but she's past the baby food. She has her first baby teeth. She can chew soft food.” She regarded him oddly. “Do you really care about this?”

“Yes,” he said succinctly, and replaced the peas. “Fill me in on everything.”

Melissa shrugged. “Okay. She can eat the junior brands. Like these,” she said, plucking a couple of jars off the shelf. “There are some foods that don't have to be specially prepared. She can eat the regular stuff. Peas, for example.”

To her surprise, he seemed to be taking in every word as if she were delivering a fascinating treatise on something far more significant than baby food. In the past he'd reserved that kind of attention for very little besides ranching.

“What are her favorite foods?” he asked, studying the larger jars intently.

“Ice cream and French fries.”

Cody stared at her. “That's her diet?”

“No,” she said patiently. “Those are her favorites.” She gestured to the junior baby food. “This is what she gets most of the time. When I have time, I even blend some myself from fresh fruits and vegetables. She's particularly fond of squishing bananas.”

Cody eyed the jars of carrots and meats and fruits, seemed to struggle with his conscience, and then turned his back on them. “Let's go.”

“Where?”

“To the ice cream section,” he said as grimly as if he were going into battle and the enemy had pulled a last-minute tactical switch. “I'm not bringing home jars of that disgusting-looking liver or those limp little bits of carrot if she'd rather have ice cream.”

“Cody, I do feed her. You don't need to stock my refrigerator, especially not with ice cream.”

He stopped in his tracks and turned to face her. “Don't you see, this isn't about you. It's about me and my daughter. You've had her to yourself for thirteen months. Now I want a chance to be important in her life.”

“By stuffing her with chocolate-fudge ice cream?”

Instead of taking her well-intended point, he seized on the tiny sliver of information she'd imparted about their daughter. “Is that her favorite? I'll buy a gallon of it.”

He sounded relieved to know that he wouldn't have to resort to another round of guesswork and label-reading. In fact, he was loping off to the frozen food section before Melissa could gather her thoughts sufficiently to argue with him.

Okay, she told herself, it was only a gallon of ice cream. So what? It wasn't as if he could buy their
daughter's affection or ruin her health with one extravagant gesture of chocolate fudge.

She had a feeling, though, that this was only the beginning. Cody was not a man to do anything by half measures. His retreat to Wyoming, abandoning not only her but his beloved home and family, was a perfect example of that. He could have straightened everything out between them with a few questions or even by hurling accusations and listening to explanations. Instead he had leapt to a conclusion and reacted by impetuously fleeing to another state.

He was doing much the same thing now that he had discovered he had a daughter. He wanted to be in her life—completely—right this instant. He wanted to marry Melissa…right this minute. The concepts of moderation or patience had obviously escaped him.

She sighed as he appropriated the shopping cart. The two half gallons of chocolate-fudge ice cream had turned into four. And she didn't like the gleam in his eyes one bit as he turned the cart on two wheels and headed straight for the shelves of diapers.

She'd been right. He was going to take over and she had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that there would be very little she could do about it.

* * *

Cody realized he had almost lost it there for a minute at the supermarket. He'd wanted to sweep entire shelves of baby food into the shopping cart.

As it was, in addition to the ice cream, they had left the store with five, giant economy-size packages of disposable diapers, a new toy duck for Sharon Lynn's bath, five storybooks he could read to her at bedtime and an astonishing selection of her favorite
juices. Melissa had just rolled her eyes at the startled checkout clerk.

“New father?” the girl had guessed.

“New enough,” Melissa had replied.

Let them make fun, Cody thought. He didn't care. This was the first step in his campaign to make himself indispensable to Melissa and his daughter.

“Where to now?” he asked when they'd piled all those diapers and the rest of the shopping bags into the back of his pickup.

“I'm going home to iron,” Melissa said, sticking to that absurd story she'd told him earlier in a blatant attempt to get rid of him. “Unless, of course, you'd like to do it for me?”

He frowned at her. “What about Sharon Lynn?”

“She's with Mother.”

“I'll drop you off and go get her,” he suggested eagerly.

“She's probably still taking her nap,” Melissa said.

She said it in such a rush he had the feeling she thought he intended to kidnap the baby and take off with her. As much as he resented the implication, he kept his tone perfectly even. “She won't sleep forever,” he countered reasonably. “I'll bring her straight home. I promise.”

“You don't have a car seat,” she noted pointedly.

Damn, but there was a lot to remember. “We'll stop now and get one.”

“All of that ice cream will melt.”

He frowned at the obstacles she kept throwing in his path. “Not in this weather. It's freezing out. And if it does, I'll buy more.”

“Couldn't you just drop me off at home?”

“No, you need to come with me. You can show me the best kind of car seat.”

Melissa sighed heavily. “Cody, what's the point? They're expensive and you probably won't…”

He guessed where she was going. “Won't what? Won't be here long enough to use it? You can get that idea right out of your head.”

He tucked a finger under her chin and forced her to face him. “I've quit my job in Wyoming. I am home to stay, Melissa. Get used to it.”

She held up her hands. “Sorry. I didn't mean anything. I was just trying to keep you from wasting money.”

“If it's for my daughter, it is not a waste of money,” he said curtly. “Now, can I find the kind of car seat I need at the discount superstore out on the highway?”

She nodded.

He turned the truck around on a dime, spewing gravel. He drove ten miles before his temper had cooled enough to speak again. He'd set out today to woo Melissa into changing her mind about marrying him. His first overtures, however, appeared to have gone awry. He'd lost his sense of humor, right along with his temper. It was no way for the two of them to start over. He sucked in a deep breath and made up his mind to mend fences.

“Truce?” he suggested, glancing over at her. She was huddled against the door, looking miserable. She shrugged.

“I'm not an ogre,” he stated. “I'm just trying to fit into Sharon Lynn's life.” Her gaze lifted to meet his. “And yours.”

She sighed. “We don't need you,” she repeated stubbornly. “We were doing just fine before you came back.”

He ignored the tide of hurt that washed through him at the dismissive comment. “Maybe I need you.”

Melissa frowned. “Yeah, right,” she said sarcastically. “As if Cody Adams ever needed anybody. Didn't you pride yourself on staying footloose and fancy free?”

He saw no point in denying something she knew better than anyone. “I did,” he agreed. He thought about the agonizing loneliness of that cabin he'd sentenced himself to in Wyoming. “Maybe being alone for the past eighteen months has changed me. Maybe I'm not the selfish, carefree, independent cuss who stormed away from Texas.”

“And maybe pigs can fly,” she countered.

He grinned at her. “Maybe they can,” he said quietly. “If you believe in magic.”

“I don't,” she said succinctly.

Cody heard the terrible pain in her voice, even if her expression remained absolutely stoic. Dear heaven, what had he done to her by running off and leaving her to face being pregnant all alone? He saw now what he hadn't observed before. Not only was Melissa stronger and more self-sufficient, she also had an edge of cynicism and bitterness that hadn't been there before. The blame for that was his, no one else's.

At the discount store, when Melissa would have grabbed the first car seat they came across, Cody stopped her, deliberately taking the time to read the package for every last detail on safety. If nothing else, he intended to impress on Melissa that he took his
parenting responsibilities seriously. Nothing was too trivial, too expensive, or too complicated to tackle if it had to do with his daughter.

Nearly an hour later they finally loaded the new car seat into the truck.

“I think that salesclerk despaired of ever getting you to make a choice,” Melissa said, the beginnings of a smile tugging at her lips.

“It wasn't for her kid,” he retorted.

“Okay, forget the salesclerk. Should I point out that the one you ended up taking is exactly the same one I tried to get you to buy when we walked in?”

He scowled at her. “What's your point?”

“That I had already done the exact same research, reached the exact same conclusion. You insisted I come along because you claimed to want my advice. When it came right down to it, though, you didn't trust me.”

Cody carefully considered the accusation before turning to meet her gaze. “You're right. I should have listened to you. It's just that this is new to me. I'm trying to get it right. I don't want to mess up with something this important.”

Her expression softened. “Cody, I can understand that. Really, I can. I was just as obsessive when I first brought Sharon Lynn home from the hospital. Mother and Daddy thought I was a lunatic. I didn't trust a piece of advice they offered. I was convinced it was probably outdated. I had to do it all for myself. Talk about reinventing the wheel.” She shook her head. “I wasted more time, only to find myself doing exactly what they'd suggested in the first place.”

He grinned. “You're just trying to save me traveling over the same learning curve, is that it?”

“Exactly,” she said. She reached over and patted his hand. “I'm not trying to keep you out of Sharon Lynn's life, or control your input, or anything like that. I promise.”

The impulsive touch didn't last nearly long enough. Cody grabbed her hand and pulled it to his lips. He brushed a kiss across her knuckles and saw the instantaneous spark of desire in her eyes. “I'll try to watch the defensiveness, if you'll do something for me.”

She regarded him with conditioned wariness. “What?”

“Bring Sharon Lynn out to White Pines this weekend,” he coaxed persuasively. At the flare of panic in her eyes, he pulled out his strongest ammunition—her fondness for Harlan. “I think seeing her would do Daddy a world of good. With Mother gone, he needs something positive in his life, something to cheer him up. You should have seen the look in his eyes this morning when I told him she was mine.”

The hint of wariness in her eyes fled and was promptly replaced by astonishment. “You told him?”

“I did. But it wasn't news. He'd figured it out the first time he saw her, the same as Jordan had.”

Her mouth gaped. “And he didn't do anything about it? I'm amazed he didn't haul your butt straight back here or offer to set up a trust fund for the baby or something.”

“Frankly, so am I. Maybe he's learned his lesson about manipulating.”

Melissa's expression was every bit as skeptical as his own had to be. “Okay,” he said. “He probably has a scheme we don't know about yet. Even so, are you
willing to take a chance? Will you bring her out? It's time she learned something about her father's side of the family.”

He was playing to her sense of fairness and it was clearly working. He could practically read her struggle with her conscience on her face.

“I'll bring her,” Melissa finally agreed with obvious reluctance. “On one condition—no tricks.”

Cody regarded her innocently. Now that he'd gotten her basic agreement, he could go along with almost anything she demanded. “What kind of tricks?”

“No preachers lurking in the shadows. No wedding license all signed and ready to be filled in.”

He feigned astonishment, even though he thought she might actually have a very good idea, one that hadn't even occurred to him until just that minute. “Would I do that?”

“In a heartbeat,” she said. “And even if you had an attack of conscience, Harlan wouldn't. No conspiracies, okay?”

“Cross my heart,” Cody said, already wondering if there was some way to pull off such a wedding.

Melissa's gaze narrowed. “Why doesn't that reassure me?”

“And you accused me of a lack of trust,” he chided.

“I'm not the one whose brother threw a surprise wedding in place of a rehearsal,” she said, reminding him of the sneaky trick Jordan and Kelly had pulled on his parents to avoid the out-of-control celebration his mother had planned for their wedding. The whole town had gossiped about that little stunt for weeks.