Before he could answer, the orderlies came to wheel her down the hall to the delivery room. He could tell by the set of her jaw that she was going into that room without him unless he could find the courage to tell her what was in his heart.
“Dammit, Melissa, I love you!” he shouted after her, just as they were about to roll her out of sight.
“Stop!” Melissa bellowed at the orderlies between contractions.
Cody reached her side in an instant. Even with her face bathed in sweat, her lower lip bitten raw, she looked beautiful to him. She always had, always would.
“What did you say?” she demanded, then grabbed onto his hand with a grip so fierce he could have sworn that more bones broke.
He grinned through the pain—hers and his. “I said I love you.”
A slow, satisfied smile spread across her face. “It’s about time, cowboy.”
“Haven’t I been saying that for months now?” he asked, vaguely bemused that she hadn’t heard it before.
“Not the words,” she told him. “How was I supposed to believe it without the words?”
“Someone once told me that actions speak louder than words. I guess I was putting it to the test. I thought you needed to see that I wasn’t going anywhere.”
“I also needed to hear why that was so,” she told him, wincing as another pain started and then rolled through her. “I didn’t want you with me out of a sense of obligation.”
Relief swept through him as he realized he’d risked everything and finally gotten through to her. “Does that mean you’ll marry me?”
“Whenever you say.”
Cody turned and motioned to the preacher he’d had Harlan call for him. He’d also had Harlan make a call to a judge to cut through the legal red tape. “Get to it, Reverend. I don’t think this baby’s going to wait much longer.”
The minister had never talked so fast in his life, quite possibly because he was conducting the ceremony in the doorway of a delivery room. Cody figured as long as they didn’t cross that threshold, the baby would have sense enough not to come until his or her parents were properly married.
The “I do’s” were punctuated by moans and a couple of screams. And not five minutes later, Harlan Patrick Adams came into the world with an impeccable sense of timing, just as the minister pronounced his mama and daddy man and wife. Melissa was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to be able to hold her own baby. Between Cody and his father, she’d barely gotten a look at him. Cody had finally disappeared a half hour before, but Harlan was still holding the baby with a look of such pride and sadness in his eyes.
“I wish Mary could have seen him,” he said softly as a tear spilled down his cheek.
“Wherever she is, I think she knows,” Melissa told him. “And I’ll bet Erik is right beside her, watching out for all of us.”
Her father-in-law gave her a watery smile. “I can’t tell you how proud it makes me to have you in this family finally.”
“I’m glad to be a part of it finally,” she told him. “Though given the way my brand new husband scooted out of here after the ceremony, I’m not so sure I made the right decision. Any idea where he went?”
There was no mistaking the spark of pure mischief in Harlan’s eyes. “Can’t say that I know for sure,” he said.
Melissa didn’t believe him for a second. The old scoundrel and Cody were clearly up to their ornery chins in some scheme or another. Before she could try to pry their secret out of him, the door to the room slid open a crack.
“Everyone awake?” Cody inquired lightly.
“Come on in, son,” Harlan enthused. “We were just wondering where you’d gone off to.”
Cody stepped into the room and winked at her. “Should I take that to mean that you suspected I’d run off on you already?”
“It did cross my mind,” she admitted. “You turned awful pale there in the delivery room. I figured you might be having second thoughts about marriage and fatherhood.”
“Not me,” Cody retorted indignantly. “I just figured the occasion deserved a celebration. You know how this family likes to party. You up for it?”
She stared at him as he watched her uneasily. “What if I say no?”
“Then that’s it. I send everyone away.”
“Everyone? Who is out there?”
“Sharon Lynn, first of all. She wants to meet her new baby brother.”
Melissa grinned. “Bring her in. Of course I want her to see the baby.”
Cody opened the door and Sharon Lynn barreled in and ran toward the bed. Over the past few months she’d grown increasingly steady on her feet. In the final weeks of her pregnancy Melissa had had a heck of a time waddling after her.
“Mama! Mama!” Sharon Lynn shouted.
Cody lifted Sharon Lynn onto the bed beside her. “Harlan, bring the baby over so Sharon Lynn can get a look,” Melissa said.
As Harlan approached with the baby, her daughter’s eyes grew wide. “Baby?”
“That’s right, pumpkin. That’s Harlan Patrick, your baby brother.”
As if she knew that newborns were fragile, Sharon Lynn reached over and gently touched a finger to her brother’s cheek. “I hold,” she announced.
“Not yet,” Melissa told her just as there was a soft knock on the door.
Cody reached for the handle, but his gaze was on her. “You ready for more visitors?”
“Who else is out there?”
“Your parents,” he said.
“Luke and Jessie,” Sharon Lynn chimed in, clearly proud that she’d learned two new names. “And Jordie and Kelly.”
Melissa chuckled as she imagined straight-laced Jordan if he ever heard himself referred to as “Jordie.” She gave her husband a warm smile, silently congratulating him for ending the feud that never should have happened.
“Let them in,” she instructed Cody. “If I’d known you were inviting half the town, I’d have insisted on that private VIP suite they have upstairs.”
As the family crowded in, a nurse
