“Don’t get too settled,” Melissa warned, a teasing note in her voice. “Your daughter needs a bath. I think I’ll let you do the honors since that egg she’s smeared everywhere was your doing.”
“You sound as if that’s punishment,” he said. “What’s the big deal?”
“You’ll see,” Melissa retorted a little too cheerfully to suit him.
She ran the inch or so of bathwater into the tub, then left him to it. It didn’t take long for Cody to figure out why she’d had that smug expression on her face when she’d exited the bathroom.
Sharon Lynn really loved water. She loved to splash it. She loved to scoop it up by the handful and dribble it all over him. She loved to throw her toys into it, sending yet more splashes into the air.
She wasn’t quite so crazy about soap. She wriggled and squirmed, trying to get away from him. Slippery as an eel, she evaded capture until she’d managed to soak him from head to toe. In fact, he was fairly certain that he was wetter and soapier than she was.
Melissa chose that precise moment to reappear. He heard her chuckling as he tried to towel his daughter dry.
“You find this amusing?” he inquired softly.
“Mmm-hmm,” she admitted. “I sure do.”
He dipped his hand in the scant remaining water that was actually in the tub and splattered it straight in Melissa’s smug face. A startled, incredulous expression spread across her face.
“You brat,” she muttered, turning on the faucet in the sink and scooping up a handful of water to pour over his head.
Sharon Lynn squealed with glee as water splashed everywhere.
Cody nabbed a plastic cup from the counter behind him, dipped it into the bathwater and soaked Melissa’s front. Only after the damp bathrobe clung to her body did he realize the mistake he’d made. His breath snagged in his throat at the sight of her nipples hardening beneath that suddenly transparent silk. He swallowed hard, aware of the tightening in his groin and the flood of color climbing into his cheeks—and equally aware of the impossibility of pursuing the desire rocketing through him.
Melissa’s gaze locked with his for what seemed an eternity, then dropped to the unmistakable evidence of his arousal. A smile slowly tugged at the corners of her mouth.
“Serves you right,” she taunted as she turned and padded off to her room.
Cody groaned and wished like crazy that he knew Melissa’s neighbors so he could plead with them to baby-sit for the rest of the morning. He wanted to finish what she had started with that provocative taunt.
Instead he forced himself to concentrate on getting Sharon Lynn dried off and dressed. The task was somewhat complicated by the soaked condition of his own clothes. He was dripping everywhere.
As soon as he had his daughter settled in her playpen, he grabbed a towel, went into the laundry room, stripped, and tossed his clothes into the dryer. He wrapped the towel snugly around his waist and retreated to the kitchen to drink another cup of coffee while he waited for everything to dry.
When Melissa wandered in a few minutes later her mouth gaped. “Where are your clothes?” she demanded, her gaze riveted on his bare chest.
“In the dryer.”
“Get them out.”
“I can’t wear damp clothes,” he observed.
“Whose fault is it they’re wet?”
“Yours, as a matter of fact,” he said blithely. “You’re the one who insisted I bathe Sharon Lynn. You obviously know what she’s like in water.”
She fought a grin and lost. “Yeah, I do,” she admitted. “But, Cody, you cannot sit around in nothing but a towel.”
“You have any better ideas?” He didn’t wait for any suggestions from her before adding, “We could go back to bed.”
“In your dreams.”
He deliberately caught her gaze. “Absolutely,” he said softly. “You have no idea how vivid my dreams have become lately.”
From the fiery blush in her cheeks, he had the feeling, though, that he’d been wrong about that. He got the distinct impression that Melissa’s dreams had been just as erotic as his own lately. He vowed that one day soon they’d compare notes…and make them come true.
Chapter Thirteen
The rapport between them lasted all the way back to White Pines. In fact, Cody had high hopes that he was finally beginning to make progress with Melissa. He was convinced that his presence during the previous night’s medical crisis had started the difficult process of convincing her that he wasn’t going to bolt out of their lives at the first sign of trouble.
It had been such a small thing, being by her side during those tense moments, but he’d heard the gratitude in her voice this morning, seen the first faint flicker of renewed faith in her eyes. He couldn’t allow anything to shake that trust again, not until he’d had time to strengthen it.
As they drove up the long, winding lane at White Pines he was startled to see his father emerge from the house. It appeared Harlan had been watching for them and, from the too cheerful expression on his face and the contradictory worry in his eyes, Cody could only guess that there was bad news.
He stepped out of the car and faced his father warily. “Hey, Daddy, everything okay?”
“Fine, just fine,” Harlan said too heartily. He darted a worried look at Melissa, then added, “You’ll never guess who’s here to see you, son.”
Cody shot a desperate glance toward Melissa and saw that she was hanging on his father’s every word. He couldn’t imagine who might have turned up at White Pines uninvited, but experience with his father’s demeanor suggested he was right to be concerned. He regretted more than he could say having Melissa here at this precise moment. He should have walked home, even if it was twenty miles. He would have if he’d had any idea that trouble was going to be waiting on the doorstep.
He drew in a deep breath and braced himself. “Who?” he asked just as the front door creaked open and a slight figure with cropped black hair and a pixie face emerged. Shock rendered him speechless.
“Janey? What the hell?” He looked to his father, but Harlan merely shrugged. Cody turned back to the teenager who’d apparently tracked him down and come after him all the way from Wyoming. “What are you doing here?”
Even as he sought answers for Janey’s unexpected presence, he heard Melissa’s sharp intake of breath behind him. Before he could turn around, the car door slammed with enough force to rock the sturdy vehicle on its tires. He knew what that meant. He forgot all about Janey as he tried to get to Melissa before she got the wrong impression and took off in a snit. Correction, she already had the wrong impression. He just had to stop her.
“Melissa,” he protested just as the engine roared to life. “Dammit, we need to talk. Don’t you dare drive away from here!”
He might as well have been talking to the wind. The order was wasted. She’d already thrown the car into gear, then backed up, spewing gravel in every direction. He slammed his fist on the fender as she turned the car, shifted again and headed away from the house at a pace that would have done an Indy 500 driver proud.
“Terrific,” he muttered. “That’s terrific. Not five seconds ago, I actually believed she was starting to trust me and now this!”
“Cody,” his father warned, nodding toward the girl who had stopped halfway down the sidewalk.
Sure enough, Janey looked as if he’d slapped her. Cody raked his hand through his hair and tried to get a grip on his temper. It wasn’t the teenager’s fault that his personal life was a mess. He crossed to Janey Treethorn in three strides and looked into a face streaked with tears and eyes that were as wide as a doe’s caught in the cross hairs of a hunter’s gun. His anger dissipated in a heartbeat.
“Janey, don’t cry,” he said softly, pulling her into a hug. “Shh, baby, it’s okay.”
“I’m s-sorry,” she stammered. “I didn’t mean to mess up everything.”
“I know,” he soothed, awkwardly patting her back as he cast a helpless look at his father. Har
lan shrugged, clearly as bemused by this turn of events as Cody was.
“It’s not your fault,” he told her, even though he very much wanted to blame her for ruining his fragile truce with Melissa. “Come on, let’s go inside and you can tell me why you came all this way. Does your dad know you’re here?”
“Ye-es-s,” she said, sniffling. “Your father called him last night.”
Cody’s heart sank. Obviously, Janey had run away from home, if last night was the first Lance had heard of her whereabouts. His former boss was probably fit to be tied. Janey was the least rebellious of his daughters. If she had pulled a stunt as crazy as this, the other two were likely to drive him completely over the edge. Lance needed a mother for those girls and he needed her in a hurry.
Inside, Cody suggested that Harlan go and see if Maritza could rustle them up some hot chocolate. He knew it was Janey’s favorite. There had been many cold winter nights when she’d fixed it for him and her father, then lingered in the shadows listening to them talk.
Before he sat down, he went into the closest bathroom and gathered up a handful of tissues and brought them back to her. He was careful to sit in a chair opposite her, since he had the terrible feeling that her crush on him was what had brought her all the way to Texas. He’d never done a thing to encourage it, except to be kind to her, but apparently that had been enough to cause this impulsive trip to Texas.
“Feeling better?” he asked after a while, when she appeared to have cried herself out and had finished the mug of hot chocolate Maritza had served with barely concealed curiosity.
Janey nodded, but wouldn’t meet his gaze. Her cheeks were flushed with embarrassment. She tucked her jeans-clad legs up under her and huddled on the sofa like a small child expecting to be scolded. She looked so woebegone that Cody was having a difficult time maintaining what was left of his dying anger.
“Janey, tell me what this is all about.”
“I c-can’t,” she whispered.
“There must be a reason you left Wyoming and came all the way to Texas. How did you know where to find me?”
“I found the address in Dad’s papers.”
“Did something happen at home?”
She shook her head, looking more and more miserable. Finally she lifted her chin and met his gaze for barely a second, then ducked it again. “You left,” she said accusingly. “One day you just weren’t there anymore and you never said goodbye.”
Even though his reason for leaving had been an emergency, he could see how it might look from her perspective. He knew that in her reserved way, she counted on him.
“Didn’t your dad tell you why I had to come home?” he asked.
“He said your mother died.”
“That’s right.”
“But I thought you’d be coming back,” she whispered. “But then you never did. And then Dad said you’d called and that y-you’d q-quit.”
Her tears started all over again. Cody went for more tissues and brought back the whole box to buy himself the time he needed to figure out how to explain things to this shy, young girl who’d so badly needed someone that she’d chosen a miserable, cynical cowboy from Texas who already had a lousy track record for reliability.
“Janey, when I got here there were things that I realized I had to do. I couldn’t come back. I explained all of that to your father.”
“But…not…to me,” she choked between sobs. “I thought you were my friend.”
Cody sighed. “I am. I always want to be your friend.”
“Then you’ll come back as soon as things are settled here?” she inquired, hope written all over her tear-streaked face.
“No, sweetie, I can’t come back.”
“Why not?” she asked.
Not sure how she was likely to react, he drew in a deep breath before admitting, “Because I found out that I have a little girl and I have to be here for her.”
Dismay darkened her eyes. “A baby?”
“Not so much a baby anymore,” he confided. “She’s over a year old.”
“And you didn’t know about her?”
“No.”
Despite herself, she was apparently fascinated. For the first time since he’d arrived home, there was a sparkle in her dark eyes.
“How come?” she asked, her expression alive with curiosity.
“It’s a long story.”
“Was that her mom in the car just now?”
Cody nodded.
“Uh-oh,” she murmured. Guilt and misery replaced the sparkle in her eyes. “I’m sorry if I messed things up for you, Cody. I really am.”
He grinned ruefully. “Oh, the list of my sins is pretty long as it is. One more thing won’t matter all that much.”
“Want me to tell her you didn’t know I was coming here?”
He had a feeling that the less Melissa saw of Janey, the better for all of them. Janey might be only fifteen, but she was a beautiful young girl who looked older than her years. It was the very fact that her body had blossomed so prematurely that had contributed to her shyness.
Ironically, he suspected she had been drawn to him for the very reason that he hadn’t acted like the oversexed teens who attended school with her. She’d felt safe with him, free to talk about her dreams, and she had magnified that feeling into a giant-size crush.
“No, sweetie, I’ll take care of Melissa. Now, let’s think about getting you back home again. How’d you get here?”
“I used my savings for a bus ticket. Then when I got to town, I called the ranch. Your dad came and got me.”
Cody shuddered when he thought of her traveling that distance alone by bus. He also suspected that Harlan had deliberately not tried to track him down when Janey turned up to give him more time with Melissa before throwing a monkey wrench into things.
“I’ll talk to Daddy about having his pilot fly you back to Wyoming,” he told her.
Her eyes lit up. “Really?”
Her instantaneous excitement told him that her heart was already well on its way to healing. Maybe all she’d really needed was closure, a chance to say goodbye and make sure that she hadn’t lost a friend. If he’d been half so insistent on closure before he’d taken off from Texas, maybe he and Melissa would have been married by now, instead of trying to rebuild their shattered trust.
Janey would be okay. He was sure of it. In the meantime, though, he had another heart to worry about. He had a feeling patching up the holes in Melissa’s trust wasn’t going to be nearly so easy to accomplish.
* * *
Melissa broke three glasses during the breakfast rush at Dolan’s on Monday. As each one shattered, she heard a heavy sigh of resignation from Eli. She knew exactly how he felt. She’d had her fragile hopes shattered—again—the day before when she’d arrived at White Pines to find an adorable, sexy woman waiting on the doorstep for Cody.
As she swept up the debris from her latest round of clumsiness, she wished it were even half as easy to tidy up the aftermath of a broken heart.
When she finished sweeping, she glanced up and discovered Mabel sitting at the counter, curiosity written all over her face. To try to forestall the questions that were clearly on the older woman’s mind, Melissa grabbed the coffeepot and poured her a cup.
“How about a Danish, Mabel?” she asked. “We have cheese and cherry left.”
“No, thanks. So, did you and Cody have another fight?” Mabel inquired point-blank.
“No,” Melissa replied honestly. They hadn’t fought. She had taken off before her disillusionment could come pouring out in a wave of accusations.
“Now, why is it I don’t believe that?” Mabel murmured. “You never broke a glass until that boy came back into town. Since then, you’ve been smashing them up so fast poor Eli’s liable to go bankrupt.”
“I’m going to reimburse Eli for the glasses,” Melissa told her stiffly.
“No need for that,” Eli called, proving that he’d heard every word of the discussion of her love life. “M
aybe Mabel and I ought to sit that boy down and give him a stern talking to, though.”
Mabel shot their boss a sour look. “What would you know about straightening out a lovers’ tiff, old man?”
“As much as you do about starting one,” Eli shot back.
Melissa stared at them. For the first time she noticed that their bickering carried the unmistakable sting of two former lovers. Eli and Mabel, she thought incredulously. Surely not. Then again, why not? She knew of no one else in either of their lives. Maybe that was so because they’d spent years carrying the torch for each other, unable to heal some foolish rift.
“Maybe I’m not the one who needs an intermediary,” Melissa suggested, observing their reactions intently.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mabel snapped. She shot a venomous look at the pharmacist. “Neither does he, for that matter.”
“I know what I know,” Eli countered. “Besides, we’re not talking about you and me now. We’re talking about Melissa and Cody.”
“I’d rather talk about the two of you,” Melissa said hurriedly, dying to know the whole story of two people who’d worked together as far back as she could recall without giving away so much as a hint that there was anything personal between them.
“No,” Mabel and Eli chorused.
Melissa winced. “Okay, okay. We’ll make a pact. You stay out of my personal life and I’ll stay out of yours.”
Mabel gave an obviously reluctant nod. Melissa waited for Eli to concur, but instead he muttered, “Too late. Yours just walked in the door.”
Melissa’s gaze shot to the front of the drugstore. Sure enough, Cody was striding in her direction, a glint of pure determination in his eyes.
“Go away,” she said before he could settle himself on one of the stools.
“Is that any way to greet a paying customer?” he inquired.
He slapped a twenty on the counter. At the rate he was throwing them around, he was going to go broke.
“I’m not leaving until I’ve spent every last dime of that or you and I have talked,” he announced. “You pick.”
The Cowboy and His Baby Page 15