The Cowboy and His Baby (23 page)

“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.”

“Oh,” she said softly, and settled back to mull that over.

It wasn't more than half an hour later when he noticed she seemed to be getting a little restless.

“You okay?” he asked.

She turned toward him, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she shook her head. Instantly, Cody's muscles tensed.

“Melissa, what's wrong?” he demanded. “Tell me.”

“It's not a problem,” she said. “Not yet, anyway. It's just that…” Her eyes widened and turned the color of a turbulent sea. She swallowed visibly. “Don't panic.”

Cody panicked. “Melissa!”

“It's okay, really it is. It's just that it's entirely possible that I'm in labor.” She sucked in a ragged breath, then announced, “Cody, I think we're about to have a baby.”

C
ody found his father already pacing the waiting room when he got Melissa to the hospital. He'd called him on his cellular phone, right after he'd spoken to the doctor. He'd asked Harlan to alert the rest of the family.

“Even Jordan?” his father had asked cautiously, aware of the friction between them.

Cody decided then and there it was time to get over the rift between him and his brother. This was a time for healing.

“Even Jordan,” he'd confirmed.

He turned now to his father. “Did you reach everyone?”

“They'll be here in a bit. How is she?” Harlan demanded at once as the nurse wheeled Melissa away to prep her for delivery. “Is everything okay?”

Cody wiped a stream of sweat from his brow. “She says it is, but I don't know. You had four sons. Is labor supposed to be so painful?”

“How should I know? Your mama wouldn't let me anywhere near the delivery room. She said having
babies was women's work.” He glanced at Cody with an unmistakable look of envy. “Wish I'd had a chance to be there just once, though. Seems to me like it must be a flat-out miracle. You going in there with Melissa?”

“If she'll let me,” Cody said. “She's still making up her mind whether to be furious at me for kidnapping her this afternoon.” He moaned. “I must have been out of my mind. I didn't even think about the fact that she might go into labor.”

“Cody, you weren't at the other end of the world,” Harlan reassured him. “You'd barely made it out of town. You got her here in plenty of time. The only way you could have gotten here much faster would have been to park her in a room upstairs for the last month of her pregnancy. Now, settle down.”

“It's easy for you. It's not your baby she's having.”

Just then the nurse came out. “Mr. Adams, would you like to step in for a minute? We're getting ready to take Melissa to the delivery room.”

Cody shot a helpless look at his father. “It sounds like she's not going to want me in there.”

“Maybe it's time to stop bullying the girl and tell her how much you want to be there,” Harlan advised.

Cody doubted it would be as simple as that. Indeed, Melissa shot him a look of pure hatred when he walked into her room. Of course, that might have had something to do with the whopper of a contraction she appeared to be in the middle of.

He accepted a damp cloth from the nurse and instinctively wiped Melissa's forehead with it.

“You're doing great,” he said.

“How would you know?” she retorted.

He grinned at the fiery display of temper. “Okay, you got me. I have no idea. No one's running around the halls panicking, though. That must mean something.”

“They're used to this,” she retorted. “I'm not. Besides, they're just observers. I'm doing all the work.”

“If you'd let me take those natural childbirth classes with you, I'd be more help about now.”

She latched onto his hand just then and squeezed. It was either one hell of a contraction or she was trying to punish him by breaking all of his knuckles. As soon as the pain eased, she glared at him again.

“Go away.”

“I don't think so,” he countered just as stubbornly. “I want to share this with you.”

“You want to see me writhing around in agony,” she snapped.

“No,” he insisted. “Having a baby is a miracle. I missed out on Sharon Lynn's birth. I'm going to be with you for this one.”

“Why?”

He regarded her blankly. “Don't you know?”

“Cody, I don't know anything except that you've been making a pest of yourself ever since you got back into town. What I don't know is why.”

Before he could answer, the orderlies came to wheel her down the hall to the delivery room. He could tell by the set of her jaw that she was going into that room without him unless he could find the courage to tell her what was in his heart.

“Dammit, Melissa, I love you!” he shouted after her, just as they were about to roll her out of sight.

“Stop!” Melissa bellowed at the orderlies between contractions.

Cody reached her side in an instant. Even with her face bathed in sweat, her lower lip bitten raw, she looked beautiful to him. She always had, always would.

“What did you say?” she demanded, then grabbed onto his hand with a grip so fierce he could have sworn that more bones broke.

He grinned through the pain—hers and his. “I said I love you.”

A slow, satisfied smile spread across her face. “It's about time, cowboy.”

“Haven't I been saying that for months now?” he asked, vaguely bemused that she hadn't heard it before.

“Not the words,” she told him. “How was I supposed to believe it without the words?”

“Someone once told me that actions speak louder than words. I guess I was putting it to the test. I thought you needed to see that I wasn't going anywhere.”

“I also needed to hear why that was so,” she told him, wincing as another pain started and then rolled through her. “I didn't want you with me out of a sense of obligation.”

Relief swept through him as he realized he'd risked everything and finally gotten through to her. “Does that mean you'll marry me?”

“Whenever you say.”

Cody turned and motioned to the preacher he'd had Harlan call for him. He'd also had Harlan make a call to a judge to cut through the legal red tape. “Get to it,
Reverend. I don't think this baby's going to wait much longer.”

The minister had never talked so fast in his life, quite possibly because he was conducting the ceremony in the doorway of a delivery room. Cody figured as long as they didn't cross that threshold, the baby would have sense enough not to come until his or her parents were properly married.

The “I do's” were punctuated by moans and a couple of screams. And not five minutes later, Harlan Patrick Adams came into the world with an impeccable sense of timing, just as the minister pronounced his mama and daddy man and wife. Melissa was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to be able to hold her own baby. Between Cody and his father, she'd barely gotten a look at him. Cody had finally disappeared a half hour before, but Harlan was still holding the baby with a look of such pride and sadness in his eyes.

“I wish Mary could have seen him,” he said softly as a tear spilled down his cheek.

“Wherever she is, I think she knows,” Melissa told him. “And I'll bet Erik is right beside her, watching out for all of us.”

Her father-in-law gave her a watery smile. “I can't tell you how proud it makes me to have you in this family finally.”

“I'm glad to be a part of it finally,” she told him. “Though given the way my brand new husband scooted out of here after the ceremony, I'm not so sure I made the right decision. Any idea where he went?”

There was no mistaking the spark of pure mischief in Harlan's eyes. “Can't say that I know for sure,” he said.

Melissa didn't believe him for a second. The old scoundrel and Cody were clearly up to their ornery chins in some scheme or another. Before she could try to pry their secret out of him, the door to the room slid open a crack.

“Everyone awake?” Cody inquired lightly.

“Come on in, son,” Harlan enthused. “We were just wondering where you'd gone off to.”

Cody stepped into the room and winked at her. “Should I take that to mean that you suspected I'd run off on you already?”

“It did cross my mind,” she admitted. “You turned awful pale there in the delivery room. I figured you might be having second thoughts about marriage and fatherhood.”

“Not me,” Cody retorted indignantly. “I just figured the occasion deserved a celebration. You know how this family likes to party. You up for it?”

She stared at him as he watched her uneasily. “What if I say no?”

“Then that's it. I send everyone away.”

“Everyone? Who is out there?”

“Sharon Lynn, first of all. She wants to meet her new baby brother.”

Melissa grinned. “Bring her in. Of course I want her to see the baby.”

Cody opened the door and Sharon Lynn barreled in and ran toward the bed. Over the past few months she'd grown increasingly steady on her feet. In the final weeks of her pregnancy Melissa had had a heck of a time waddling after her.

“Mama! Mama!” Sharon Lynn shouted.

Cody lifted Sharon Lynn onto the bed beside her. “Harlan, bring the baby over so Sharon Lynn can get a look,” Melissa said.

As Harlan approached with the baby, her daughter's eyes grew wide. “Baby?”

“That's right, pumpkin. That's Harlan Patrick, your baby brother.”

As if she knew that newborns were fragile, Sharon Lynn reached over and gently touched a finger to her brother's cheek. “I hold,” she announced.

“Not yet,” Melissa told her just as there was a soft knock on the door.

Cody reached for the handle, but his gaze was on her. “You ready for more visitors?”

“Who else is out there?”

“Your parents,” he said.

“Luke and Jessie,” Sharon Lynn chimed in, clearly proud that she'd learned two new names. “And Jordie and Kelly.”

Melissa chuckled as she imagined straight-laced Jordan if he ever heard himself referred to as “Jordie.” She gave her husband a warm smile, silently congratulating him for ending the feud that never should have happened.

“Let them in,” she instructed Cody. “If I'd known you were inviting half the town, I'd have insisted on that private VIP suite they have upstairs.”

As the family crowded in, a nurse came along, wheeling in a three-tiered wedding cake. Melissa stared at it in amazement. “When did you have time to order that?”

“Right after you said ‘I do' and delivered our son,” he said. “I told the bakery it was an emergency.”

Kelly leaned down to kiss her cheek. “You should have seen the look on their faces when I stopped to pick it up. Obviously, they'd never heard of an emergency wedding before.”

Melissa swung her legs over the side of the bed and prepared to go over for a closer look.

“Stay right where you are,” Cody ordered, looking panicked.

“I'm not an invalid,” she informed him.

“It's not that,” he admitted, casting a worried look at the cake. “Actually, it was a little late to come up with an emergency cake. Fortunately, they had a cancellation.”

Melissa stared at him, torn between laughing and crying. “That is someone else's cake?”

“They got the other names off,” Kelly reassured her. “Almost, anyway.”

Sure enough, when Melissa managed to get near enough for a closer look, she could spot the traces of blue food dye across the white icing on the top layer. Love Always had been left in place, but below it were the shadowy letters unmistakably spelling out Tom And Cecily.

Melissa grinned. “Get on over here, Tom,” she said pointedly. “Give old Cecily a kiss.”

Cody didn't hesitate. He gathered her close and slanted his lips across hers in a kiss that spoke of love and commitment and all the joy that was to come.

“Okay, that's enough, baby brother,” Luke said. “Give the rest of us a chance to kiss the bride.”