“Cody? Is everything okay?” Melissa asked as he rounded the corner of the counter and headed toward her.
“Just dandy,” he confirmed, tucking one arm under her legs and the other behind her waist. He scooped her up, amid a flurry of outraged protests from her and that same pimply faced kid who’d defended her honor once before.
“It’s okay, son,” Cody assured him. “She wants to go with me.”
“I do not!” Melissa protested.
“Eli, call the cops or something,” the boy shouted, his face turning red as he bolted after Cody.
“Not on your life,” Eli said, and kept right on filling prescriptions. Mabel held the door open, grinning widely.
Melissa huffed and puffed a little longer, but by the time Cody had driven to the outskirts of town, she’d retreated into a sullen silence.
“Was that caveman approach entirely necessary?” she inquired eventually.
“I thought so.”
“I would have come with you, if you’d asked politely.”
He shot a skeptical look in her direction.
“At least, I would have thought about it,” she amended.
“That’s why I didn’t ask. You’ve been thinking entirely too much.”
“Are we going to White Pines?”
“Nope.”
“Luke and Jessie’s?” she asked hopefully, the first little sign of alarm sparking in her eyes.
“Nope.”
“Cody, where the hell are you taking me?”
“Someplace where we can be alone.”
“Where?” she repeated.
“Brian’s cabin.”
Her eyes widened. “You talked to Brian?”
“I figured drastic measures were called for, and he promised the best and quickest solution.” He glanced over at her. “I was willing to do anything it took to make this happen, sweet pea.”
“Oh,” she said softly, and settled back to mull that over.
It wasn’t more than half an hour later when he noticed she seemed to be getting a little restless.
“You okay?” he asked.
She turned toward him, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she shook her head. Instantly, Cody’s muscles tensed.
“Melissa, what’s wrong?” he demanded. “Tell me.”
“It’s not a problem,” she said. “Not yet, anyway. It’s just that…” Her eyes widened and turned the color of a turbulent sea. She swallowed visibly. “Don’t panic.”
Cody panicked. “Melissa!”
“It’s okay, really it is. It’s just that it’s entirely possible that I’m in labor.” She sucked in a ragged breath, then announced, “Cody, I think we’re about to have a baby.”
Chapter Sixteen
Cody found his father already pacing the waiting room when he got Melissa to the hospital. He’d called him on his cellular phone, right after he’d spoken to the doctor. He’d asked Harlan to alert the rest of the family.
“Even Jordan?” his father had asked cautiously, aware of the friction between them.
Cody decided then and there it was time to get over the rift between him and his brother. This was a time for healing.
“Even Jordan,” he’d confirmed.
He turned now to his father. “Did you reach everyone?”
“They’ll be here in a bit. How is she?” Harlan demanded at once as the nurse wheeled Melissa away to prep her for delivery. “Is everything okay?”
Cody wiped a stream of sweat from his brow. “She says it is, but I don’t know. You had four sons. Is labor supposed to be so painful?”
“How should I know? Your mama wouldn’t let me anywhere near the delivery room. She said having babies was women’s work.” He glanced at Cody with an unmistakable look of envy. “Wish I’d had a chance to be there just once, though. Seems to me like it must be a flat-out miracle. You going in there with Melissa?”
“If she’ll let me,” Cody said. “She’s still making up her mind whether to be furious at me for kidnapping her this afternoon.” He moaned. “I must have been out of my mind. I didn’t even think about the fact that she might go into labor.”
“Cody, you weren’t at the other end of the world,” Harlan reassured him. “You’d barely made it out of town. You got her here in plenty of time. The only way you could have gotten here much faster would have been to park her in a room upstairs for the last month of her pregnancy. Now, settle down.”
“It’s easy for you. It’s not your baby she’s having.”
Just then the nurse came out. “Mr. Adams, would you like to step in for a minute? We’re getting ready to take Melissa to the delivery room.”
Cody shot a helpless look at his father. “It sounds like she’s not going to want me in there.”
“Maybe it’s time to stop bullying the girl and tell her how much you want to be there,” Harlan advised.
Cody doubted it would be as simple as that. Indeed, Melissa shot him a look of pure hatred when he walked into her room. Of course, that might have had something to do with the whopper of a contraction she appeared to be in the middle of.
He accepted a damp cloth from the nurse and instinctively wiped Melissa’s forehead with it.
“You’re doing great,” he said.
“How would you know?” she retorted.
He grinned at the fiery display of temper. “Okay, you got me. I have no idea. No one’s running around the halls panicking, though. That must mean something.”
“They’re used to this,” she retorted. “I’m not. Besides, they’re just observers. I’m doing all the work.”
“If you’d let me take those natural childbirth classes with you, I’d be more help about now.”
She latched onto his hand just then and squeezed. It was either one hell of a contraction or she was trying to punish him by breaking all of his knuckles. As soon as the pain eased, she glared at him again.
“Go away.”
“I don’t think so,” he countered just as stubbornly. “I want to share this with you.”
“You want to see me writhing around in agony,” she snapped.
“No,” he insisted. “Having a baby is a miracle. I missed out on Sharon Lynn’s birth. I’m going to be with you for this one.”
“Why?”
He regarded her blankly. “Don’t you know?”
“Cody, I don’t know anything except that you’ve been making a pest of yourself ever since you
