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.
Chapter Fifteen
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.
He took hat quite literally in hand and went to visit Velma. He needed her help if his plan was to work. Responding to his knock on her door in midafternoon, she regarded him with her usual suspicion.
“What do you want?” she inquired ungraciously.
Cody lost patience. “I am not the bad guy here,” he informed her as he stalked past her and stood in the middle of the foyer.
He could hear Sharon Lynn
