Just when she was sure she could no longer maintain the calm, impervious facade, Cody jerked upright, raked a hand through his hair and backed off.
“Score one for Melissa,” Harlan said softly, his voice laced with laughter.
Cody whirled on him. “Daddy, I’m warning you…”
Harlan’s dark brows rose. “Oh?”
Cody frowned. “Dammit, how come you two are in cahoots?”
“Not me,” his father protested, his expression all innocence except for the sparkle in his eyes that was quintessential Harlan. “I’m just a bystander.”
“An unwanted bystander,” Cody reminded him.
“Speak for yourself,” Melissa retorted once again.
Cody scowled down at the two of them for another minute, then muttered a harsh oath under his breath and stalked off. Only when he was out of sight did Melissa finally allow herself to relax.
“Whew! That was a close one,” Harlan said, grinning at her. “Another couple of seconds and the heat out here would have melted steel. Scorched me clear over here. You sure have figured out how to tie that boy in knots.”
To her amazement, he sounded approving. “Shouldn’t you be on his side?” Melissa inquired.
“I suspect Cody can take care of himself,” he observed. “I’m just relieved to see that you can, too.”
Melissa met his amused gaze and finally breathed a sigh of relief. She grinned at him. “It’s about time, don’t you think?”
“Way past time, I’d say,” he said, and reached over to pat her hand. “You want some advice from a man who knows Cody just about as well as anyone on earth?”
“I suspect I could use it,” she agreed, wondering at the turn of events that had truly put her and Harlan Adams in cahoots, just as Cody had accused. Maybe Harlan’s wisdom would be more effective than his wife’s advice had been.
“Despite all these centuries that have passed, the caveman instinct hasn’t entirely been bred out of us men,” Harlan began. “Now I know that’s not so politically correct, but it’s the truth of it. A man needs to struggle to claim what he wants. It builds up his passion for it, makes him stronger. Call it perversity, but things that come too easily don’t mean so much. Don’t ever tell ’em I said so, but I made every one of my sons fight me to earn the right to become his own man. They resented me at the time, but in the end they were better for it.”
Sorrow flitted across his face as he added, “Except maybe for Erik. He wanted to please too badly. I made a serious miscalculation by forcing him to work in ranching, one I’ll regret to my dying day.”
Listening to his philosophy about men, Melissa wondered if Mary Adams had put up much of a struggle. Her adoration of Harlan, her catering to his every whim, had been obvious to anyone who knew the two of them. Given Mary’s advice to her about making Cody jealous, Melissa suspected she had given her husband fits at one time.
“Did Mary make you jump through hoops?” she asked.
“She did, indeed,” Harlan told her, chuckling even as his expression turned nostalgic. “I knew the first minute I laid eyes on her that she was the woman I wanted to marry. She was smart as the dickens, beautiful and willful. She claimed later that she fell in love at first sight, too. She didn’t let me know it for a good six months, though. In fact, for a while there I was convinced she couldn’t stand to be in my presence. It was a hell of a blow to my ego.”
He shook his head. “My goodness, the things I used to do just to earn a smile. That smile of hers was worth it, though. It was like sunshine, radiating warmth on everyone it touched. For thirty-six years, I was blessed with it.”
“You’re missing her terribly, aren’t you?” Melissa said softly.
“It’s as if I lost a part of myself,” Harlan admitted, then seemed taken aback that he’d revealed so much. He drew himself up, clearly uncomfortable with the out-of-character confidences. “Enough of that now. You didn’t come all the way out here to listen to me go on and on.”
“May I ask you a question?” Melissa asked impulsively.
“Of course you can. Ask me anything.”
“Did you know Cody had asked me to marry him?”
“He told me.”
“Did he also tell you I’d turned him down?”
Harlan nodded.
She looked over at this man who had always been so kind to her, who’d treated her as a daughter long before she had any ties to his family beyond her hope of a future with his son. Did she dare ask him what she really wanted to know, whether Cody loved her for herself or only as the mother of the daughter he was so clearly anxious to claim? She hedged her bets and asked a less direct question.
“Was I wrong to say no?”
Harlan regarded her perceptively. “Are you afraid he won’t ask again?”
She drew in a deep breath, then finally nodded, acknowledging a truth that was far from comforting.
“What would you say if he does?”
“Right now?”
“Right now,” he concurred.
She thought it over carefully. Given the unresolved nature of their feelings, she would have to give him the same answer. “I’d tell him no,” she admitted.
“Then there’s your answer,” he reassured her. “Look, I don’t claim to know what happened between you and Cody that made him run off to Wyoming, but it’s plain as day to me that it wasn’t a simple misunderstanding. You keeping that baby a secret from him proves that. Feelings that complicated take time to sort out. Take as long as you want, just don’t shut him out of your life in the meantime. Silence and distance aren’t the way to patch things up.”
Harlan’s warning was still echoing in her head when she finally went in search of Cody. He was right, the lines of communication did need to remain open, for Sharon Lynn’s sake, if not her own.
She suspected Cody was either in the barn or had taken off for his own place nearby. His father had promised to look in on Sharon Lynn and to entertain her if she awakened from her nap.
When she didn’t find Cody in the barn, she set off across a field to the small house Cody had built for himself in defiance of his father’s order that he should strike out on his own and work some other ranch, maybe even start his own as Luke had. Every board Cody had hammered into place, every shingle he had laid on the roof had been a declaration that he intended to stay and claim his share of White Pines.
Melissa had watched him night after night, at the end of long, backbreaking days running the ranch. She had helped when she could, bringing him picnic baskets filled with his favorite foods on the evenings when he’d skipped supper to keep on working until the last hint of daylight faded.
She had observed his progress with her heart in her throat, waiting for him to ask her opinion on the size, the style, the color of paint, anything at all to suggest he intended it to be their home and not just his own. Though he had seemed to welcome her presence and her support, those words had never come.
Even so, she had been there with him when the last detail was completed, when the last brushstroke of paint had covered the walls. Though she had only spent a few incredible, unforgettable nights under that roof, she had always felt as if this was home. It was the place Sharon Lynn had been conceived.
As she neared the low, rambling white structure with its neat, bright blue trim, she thought she heard the once-familiar sound of hammering. She circled the house until she spotted Cody in the back, erecting what appeared to be a huge extension off what she knew to be the single bedroom.
The sight of that addition didn’t snag her attention, however, quite the way that Cody did. He had stripped off his shirt, despite the chill in the air. His shoulders were bare and turning golden brown in the sun. A sheen of perspiration made his muscles glisten as they were strained and tested by his exertion.
Sweet heaven, she thought, swallowing hard. He was gorgeous, even more spectacularly developed than he had been the last time she’d seen him half-naked.
“Cody,” she wh
ispered, her voice suddenly thready with longing.
She heard the loud thwack of the hammer against wood and something softer, followed by an oath that would have blistered a sailor’s ears. The ladder he was on tilted precariously, but he managed to right it and climb down without further mishap.
His gaze riveted on her, he muttered, “Damn, Melissa, don’t you know better than to sneak up on a man when he’s halfway up a ladder?”
She knew his testiness had more to do with his injured thumb than her unexpected presence. She grinned at him. “I’ve been in plain view for the last half mile. You would have seen me if you were the least bit observant.”
“I’m concentrating on what I’m doing, not scanning the horizon for visitors.”
“Just what is it you’re doing?”
“Adding on.”
She gave him a wry look. “That much is plain. What are you adding on?”
“A room for my daughter.”
Surprise rippled through her. “Isn’t that room Harlan’s prepared good enough?”
“I want her to have her own room in my home,” he insisted, giving her a belligerent look that dared her to argue.
“Seems like a lot of work for an occasional visit.”
He climbed down from the ladder and leaned back against it, his boot heel hooked over the bottom rung behind him. His chin jutted up belligerently. It should have warned her what was coming, but it didn’t.
“We’re not talking an occasional visit, Melissa,” he declared bluntly. “I expect to have her here a lot. You’ve had her for more than a year. I’m expecting equal time.”
A year, here with Cody? Away from her? A sudden weakness washed through her. “You can’t be serious,” she whispered, thinking of the warning her mother had given her at the outset. Had Velma been right, after all? Would Cody bring all of the Adams influence to bear to get custody of his child?
“Dead serious,” he confirmed, his unblinking gaze leveled on her.
This was a new and dangerous twist to Cody’s driven nature. Clearly he intended to go after his daughter with the same singleminded determination he’d devoted to securing his place at White Pines.
“Cody, she’s not a possession,” she said in a tone that barely concealed her sudden desperation. “She’s a little girl.”
“A little girl who ought to get to know her daddy.”
“I’ve told you—I’ve promised you—that we can work that out. I don’t want to prevent you from spending time with her, from getting to know her, but to bring her to a strange house, to expect her to live with a virtual stranger…I won’t allow it, Cody. I can’t.”
“You may not have a choice,” he said coldly. “I don’t want to get lawyers involved in this, but I will if I have to.”
Melissa had no trouble imagining who would win in a court fight. As good a mother as she’d been, Cody and his family had the power to beat her. “There has to be another way,” she said.
He nodded. “There is.”
“What? I’ll do anything.”
His mouth curved into a mockery of a smile. “You make it sound so dire. The alternative isn’t that awful. You just have to marry me.”
The conversation she’d just had with Harlan echoed in her head. She couldn’t marry Cody, not under these circumstances, especially not with him trying to blackmail her into it. What kind of a chance would their marriage have if she did? None. None at all.
She forced herself not to react with the anger or counterthreats that were on the tip of her tongue. Reason and humor would be more successful against the absurdity of what he was suggesting.
“Cody, half of the women in Texas would marry you in a heartbeat if you’re anxious to have a wife,” she said, refusing to consider the terrible consequences to her emotions if he took her up on what she was suggesting. “Why try to blackmail me into it?”
“Because you’re the one who’s the mother of my child,” he said simply.
“But that’s all I am to you,” she replied, fighting tears. “It’s not enough to make a marriage. At the first sign of trouble, what’s to prevent you from bolting again, just like you did when you saw me with Brian? You don’t trust me. You don’t want me.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he said, straightening and walking slowly toward her with a look that flatout contradicted her claim.
Melissa held her ground. If she backed down now, if she showed him any hint of weakness, he would win. The prize was more than her pride, more than her body. The prize they were warring over was her daughter.
Cody’s advance was slow and deliberate. His eyes, dark as coal in the shadow of the house, seemed to sear her with their intensity. His lips formed a straight, tight line. Anger and frustration radiated from every masculine pore.
When he neared to within a few scant inches, the heat from his body enveloped her, tugging at her like a powerful magnet. And still she held her ground.
“I want you, Me…liss…a,” he said quietly. “Make no doubt about that.”
She shivered under his slow, leisurely, pointed inspection. Her skin sizzled under that hot gaze. The peaks of her breasts hardened. Moisture gathered between her thighs. Her entire body responded as if he’d stroked and caressed every inch of her. She ached to feel his fingers where his gaze had been. And still, unbelievably, she held her ground.
Her breath snagged, then raced. Her pulse skittered crazily. She longed for someplace to sit or lean, anything to keep her weak knees from giving away her shakiness.
“Tempted, Me…liss…a?”
“No,” she squeaked, hating herself for not making the response firmer, more emphatic.
“Remember how it felt to have me inside you?” he taunted, hands jammed into his pockets, deliberately stretching faded denim over the unmistakable ridge of his arousal.
Her gaze locked on that evidence of his desire. A matching hunger rocketed through her. She swallowed hard, clenching her fists so tightly she was certain she must be drawing blood. But still she held her ground.
“In there, on that big, old, feather mattress,” he reminded her silkily. “Our legs all tangled, our bodies slick with sweat. Remember, Me...liss…a?”
Oh, sweet heaven, she thought, desperately trying to replace his images with other, safer memories of her own. Memories of being alone and scared, when she realized she was pregnant. Memories of staring at a phone that never rang as day after day, then month after month ticked by. Thinking of that, she steadied herself and held her ground.
She leveled a look straight into eyes that blazed with passion and said, “It won’t work, Cody. We can’t resolve this in bed.”
He reached out then, skimmed his knuckles lightly along her cheek and watched her shiver at the touch. “You sure about that, darlin’?”
She wasn’t sure about anything anymore except the tide of desire she was battling with every last shred of her resistance. Her breathlessness kept her silent, afraid that anything she said or the whispered huskiness of her voice would give her away.
His fingers traced a delicate, erotic path along her neck, circling her nape, pulling her closer and closer still until their lips were a scant hairsbreadth apart, their breath mingling along with their scents; hers, wildflower fresh, his, raw and purely masculine.
The touch of his mouth against hers, gentle as a breeze, commanding as the pull of the tides, sealed her fate. The ground she’d held so staunchly gave way as she swayed into the temptation of that kiss.
Cody gave a sigh that she interpreted as part relief, part satisfaction. He coaxed her lips apart, touched his tongue to hers in a provocative duet.
Melissa bowed to the inevitable then. She had no power or will to resist this lure. She gave herself up to the sweet, wild sensations that had always been her downfall with Cody. He knew every inch of her, knew how to persuade and cajole, how to tempt and tease until her body was his as it had always been.
Her heart, she prayed, she could protect a little longer.
&
nbsp; Chapter Eleven
The dare was backfiring. Cody knew it the instant he saw Melissa sprawled across his bed, her long auburn hair tangled on his pillow, her skin like smoothest satin, her coral-tipped breasts beckoning to him.
Until this moment it had only been distant memories that tormented him, fueling steamy dreams and restless nights. Now she was here and this throbbing hunger he felt for her was real. Powerful sensations he’d been telling himself that absence—and abstinence—had exaggerated were reawakened now with passionate urgency.
There might still have been a split second when he could have reclaimed sanity and reason, but if there was, he let it pass. His need for her was too great. His conviction that making love to her once again would bind her to him forever was too compelling.
The soft, winter sunlight spilled through a skylight above the bed and bathed Melissa in a golden glow. An artist might spend a lifetime searching for anything so beautiful, he thought as he stood looking down at her. An artist might spend an entire career trying to capture that same sensual vision on canvas and fail in the end. Cody certainly had never seen anything to equal the sight. He couldn’t tear his gaze away.
Pregnancy had changed her body, gently rounding it, where before it had been all sharp angles and far more delicate curves. He swallowed hard as he absorbed the changes, regretting with every fiber of his being that he’d never seen her belly swollen with his child or her breasts when they were tender and engorged with milk.
He was aware of the instant when embarrassment tinted her skin a seashell pink from head to toe. She grabbed for a corner of the sheet, but before she could cover herself, he caught the edge and tugged it gently from her grasp. He stripped away his own clothes and sank down beside her, his gaze never leaving hers.
His breath eased out of him on a ragged sigh. “You are even more beautiful than I remembered,” he said, touching his fingers to the pulse that hammered at the base of her neck, gauging her response. Her skin burned beneath his touch. Her pulse bucked like the most impatient bronco he’d ever ridden.
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