“Yes.”
“Well, she can stop worrying. We’ll settle everything tonight.” He leaned down and dropped a kiss on Melissa’s lips. “See you later.”
“Settle everything?” she repeated, a note of anxiety in her voice. “Cody!”
He turned back.
“What does that mean, we’re going to settle everything?”
He smiled. “Not to worry, darlin’. We’ll talk about it tonight.”
* * *
“Exactly what did he say?” Velma fretted as Melissa bathed her daughter and got her ready for their evening with Cody.
“He said we’d settle everything tonight.” She grabbed Sharon Lynn’s rubber duck in midair as her daughter hurled it from the tub.
“What does that mean?”
Melissa sighed. “I don’t know what it means, Mother. I suppose I’ll find out shortly.”
“I don’t like it. I think your father and I should be there to protect your interests.”
“I doubt Cody intends to pluck Sharon Lynn out of her high chair at the restaurant and carry her off into the night,” she said as she toweled her daughter dry. “Anything other than that, I can cope with just fine on my own.”
“What if he does decide to take her?”
“He won’t,” Melissa repeated, not sure how she knew with such conviction that Cody wouldn’t do something so outrageous. “Stop worrying. I can handle Cody.”
“You couldn’t handle him two years ago,” her mother commented. “What makes you think things are so different now?”
Melissa thought carefully about that before she answered. She used the struggle to get Sharon Lynn into her red corduroy pants and a cute little flowered shirt to buy some time.
“I’m stronger than I was then,” she said eventually. “I’ve had almost two years to see that I don’t need Cody Adams in order to survive. Sharon Lynn and I are doing just fine on our own.”
Her mother regarded her skeptically. “Are you saying you’re immune to him now?”
The kiss they’d shared on the front walk burned its way into her awareness. “No,” she admitted. “I can’t say that.”
Velma groaned. “I knew it. I knew it the minute I saw the two of you playing kissy-face on the front walk.”
“We were not playing kissy-face,” Melissa retorted, blushing just the same. “Maybe you and Mabel have the same vocabulary after all.”
“Mabel saw you kissing, too?”
“No, she just accused me of making goo-goo eyes at him way back in junior high.”
“If only you’d limited yourself to that,” Velma said dryly.
Melissa frowned. “If I had, we wouldn’t have Sharon Lynn,” she reminded her mother quietly.
Velma retreated into silence after that. She was still looking anxious when Cody arrived to pick them up. Melissa had a feeling she had her father to thank for keeping her mother from racing down the driveway after them. He appeared to have a tight grip on her elbow and a glint of determination in his eyes as he waved them off.
The ride to DiPasquali’s took only minutes. It was a wonder they didn’t crash into a tree, though. Cody couldn’t seem to take his eyes off his daughter. Sharon Lynn returned his overt inspection with shy, little peek-a-boo smiles. Apparently she’d inherited her father’s flirtatious nature, too, Melissa thought with some amusement. Cody was clearly captivated. She should have been pleased, but the doubts her mother had planted kept her from fully relaxing and enjoying the way father and daughter were bonding.
At the small Italian restaurant where both she and Cody were well known, they were ushered to a back booth amid exclamations over Sharon Lynn’s outfit and Cody’s return. Melissa didn’t miss the speculative looks sent their way by customers who knew their history only too well.
Though a high chair was set up at the end of the table for the baby, Cody insisted she was just fine beside him in the booth. Sharon Lynn stood on the vinyl seat next to him, bouncing on tiptoes and patting Cody on the top of his head.
He circled her waist with his hands and lifted her into the air, earning giggles and a resounding kiss for his trouble. Melissa watched the pair of them with her heart in her throat. When Sharon Lynn climbed into Cody’s lap, studied him seriously for a full minute, then cooed, “Da,” Melissa felt the salty sting of tears in her eyes.
Cody’s mouth dropped open. “Did she just call me Da?”
Apparently sensing approval, Sharon Lynn repeated the sound. “Da, Da, Da.”
“She knows who I am,” he whispered incredulously.
Melissa hated to disappoint him, but she knew that her daughter tended to call every man that. Besides, she refused to admit that she had tried to teach Sharon Lynn that very word while showing her a snapshot of Cody. She seriously doubted her daughter had actually made the connection between that blurry picture and the man holding her now.
She almost told him not to get too excited over it. Sharon Lynn might not even remember to connect that word with him tomorrow. The look in Cody’s eyes kept her silent. He clearly wanted to believe that he and his child had made some sort of cosmic connection.
As she watched the pair of them, something shifted inside Melissa. Her earlier doubts fled. Maybe there really was some sort of instinctive bond between father and child. She wasn’t sure what to make of this softer, gentler Cody. He had always been filled with laughter, but there was something incredibly sweet and tender in the way he teased his daughter and kept her giggling. Pride shone in his eyes at everything she did.
“She’s brilliant,” he declared every few minutes over the simplest accomplishments.
Sharon Lynn was clearly basking in the praise and the attention. Melissa held her breath, wondering just when exhaustion would overtake her daughter and turn that cheerful demeanor into far more familiar crankiness and tears. She couldn’t help worrying about how Cody would respond to his child then. Would he turn tail and run again the instant the newness of this experience wore off, just as he had abandoned a long string of women
