Winter's Proposal

by Sherryl Woods

  “I can’t,” she said simply.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’ll leave again at the first sign of trouble.”

  “He left before, because you provoked him into it. I can’t say I blame him for being furious about finding you out with Brian. Going out with him was a danged fool idea to begin with.”

  Melissa’s anger wilted. “I agree, but Cody should have stayed and talked to me. He shouldn’t have run.”

  “Don’t you think he knows that now?” her father inquired reasonably. “Don’t you think if he had it to do all over again, he would make a different choice?”

  “I suppose,” she conceded reluctantly. “He says he would anyway.”

  “And aren’t you the one who made things worse by refusing to tell him about the baby?”

  She scowled at her father, the man who had stood by her even though he disagreed with her decision to keep Cody in the dark. “What’s your point?”

  “He forgave you, didn’t he? Isn’t it about time you did the same for him?”

  Melissa was startled by the depth of her father’s support for Cody. “How come you’ve never said any of this before?” she asked.

  Her father’s expression turned rueful. “Because your mother seemed to be saying more than enough without me jumping in and confusing you even more. Watching you getting more miserable day by day, I finally decided when Cody showed up today that enough was enough. I told her to butt out.”

  Melissa couldn’t help grinning. “So there’d be room for you to butt in?”

  “Something like that. Go on, cupcake. Meet Cody halfway, at least. For whatever it’s worth, I think he’s a fine man.”

  Melissa sighed. “So do I.”

  She made up her mind on the walk to her own house that she would try to overcome the last of her doubts and take the kind of risk her father was urging. There was a time when she would have risked anything at all to be with Cody. The pain of losing him once had made her far too cautious. It was probably long past time to rediscover the old Melissa and take the dare he’d been issuing for months now.

  She found him in a rocker on her front porch, a tuckered out Sharon Lynn asleep in his lap.

  “Rough afternoon?” she queried, keeping her tone light and displaying none of the annoyance she’d felt when she’d discovered he’d absconded with her daughter. She sank into the rocker next to him and put it into a slow, soothing motion. She allowed her eyes to drift closed, then snapped them open before she fell completely, embarrassingly, asleep.

  “Playing in the park is tough work,” he said, grinning at her. “There are swings and seesaws to ride, to say nothing of squirrels to be chased.” His gaze intensified. “You look frazzled. Bad day?”

  “Bad day, bad week, bad everything,” she admitted, giving in to the exhaustion and turmoil she’d been fighting.

  “I know just how to fix that,” Cody said, standing. He shifted Sharon Lynn into one arm and held out a hand. “Give me the key.”

  Melissa plucked it from her purse and handed it over without argument. As soon as he’d gone, she closed her eyes again. The soothing motion of the rocker lulled her so that she was only vaguely aware of the screen door squeaking open and the sound of Cody’s boots as he crossed the porch.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” he urged. “Here, take this.”

  She forced her eyes open and saw the tall glass he was holding out. “Lemonade?” she asked with amazement. “Where’d you get it?”

  “I made it.”

  Her eyes blinked wider. “From scratch?”

  He grinned. “I didn’t bake a chocolate soufflé, sweet pea. It’s just lemonade.”

  They sat side by side, silently rocking, for what seemed an eternity after that. The spring breeze brought the fragrance of flowers wafting by. Hummingbirds hovered around the feeder at the end of the porch.

  “This is nice, isn’t it?” Cody said eventually.

  “Not too tame for you?” Melissa asked.

  “Don’t start with me,” he chided, but without much ferocity behind the words.

  She thought of what her father had said and of her own resolution to start taking risks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I guess it’s become automatic.”

  “Think you can break the cycle?” he inquired lightly.

  Melissa met his gaze. “I’m going to try,” she promised. “I do want what you want, Cody.”

  “But you’re scared,” he guessed. At her nod he added, “Can’t say that I blame you. I spent a lot of years hiding from the responsibilities of a relationship. Once you make a commitment, there’s a lot riding on getting it right. I never did much like the idea of failing.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything, you know that.”

  “What makes you so certain we can get it right now?”

  He grinned at the question. “You know any two more stubborn people on the face of the earth?”

  Her lips twitched at that. “No, can’t say that I do.”

  “I pretty much figure if we finally make that commitment, neither one of us will bail out without giving it everything we’ve got.” He slanted a look over at her that sent heat curling through her body. “Nobody can do more than that, sweet pea. Nobody.”

  He stood, then bent down to kiss her gently. “Think about it, darlin’.”

  “You’re leaving?” she asked, unable to stop the disappointment that flooded through her.

  “If I stay here another minute with you looking at me like that, I’m going to resort to seducing you into giving me the answer I want. I think it’ll be better if I take my chances on letting you work this one out in your head.”

  He was striding off to his pickup before she could mount an argument. She actually stood to go after him, but a wave of dizziness washed over her that had her clutching at a post to keep from falling.

  What on earth? she wondered as she steadied herself. Suddenly she recalled the occasional bouts of nausea she’d been feeling that she’d chalked off to waiting too long to grab breakfast in the mornings. She thought about the bone-deep weariness that had had her half-asleep in that rocker only a short time before. And now, dizziness.

  Oh, dear heaven, she thought, sinking back into the rocker before she fainted. Unless she was very much mistaken, every one of those signs added up to being pregnant—again.

  * * *

  How could this have happened to them a second time? Melissa wondered as she left the doctor’s office in a daze the following morning. How could she be pregnant from that one time they’d made love at Cody’s? They’d been so darned careful not to repeat the same mistake. She’d held him at arm’s length, refusing to make love again for that very reason, because neither one of them used a lick of common sense once they hopped into bed together. It was better not to let their hormones get out of hand in the first place.

  She had no idea what was going to happen next, but she did know that this time she would tell Cody right away. There would be no more secrets to blow up in her face later.

  Dammit, why couldn’t everything have been more resolved between them? They were so close to working things out. She had sensed that last night in their companionable silence, in the way Cody had vowed to give her the time and space to reach her own conclusions about their relationship.

  She knew exactly how Cody was going to react. Forget about time and space for thinking. He was going to demand they get married at once. She wanted that, wanted it more than anything, but not if he was only doing it because of the baby. Okay, both babies.

  He was a fine father. He’d accepted his responsibility for Sharon Lynn wholeheartedly. That wasn’t the issue. He’d been proving that over and over since the day he’d learned the truth about Sharon Lynn. She had seen the adoration in his eyes whenever he was with his daughter. She had watched
his pride over every tiny accomplishment.

  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.

  15

  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 single 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.