“This is why he needs you,” Heather said in a loud whisper. A cutting look from Cody silenced her.

“Like she said, I picked the flowers myself. The bluebonnets are the state flower, and I figured you might like the daisies. There are plenty of ’em around here.”

“It looks like you might’ve tangled with something else,” she said, reaching for his arm and moving him toward the light so she could get a better view. “Oh, Cody,” she whispered when she saw the redness and the swelling.

“Poison ivy,” he told her.

“Let me get you some calamine for that.”

“He was hoping you would,” Heather said. “He’s real miserable. But we can’t stay long, because I have to get over to Katie Butterfield’s house and pick up my math book by eight o’clock.”

Sherry led Cody into the clinic and got a bottle of calamine lotion, swabbing the worst of the swelling with that. She gave him an antihistamine for the itch, as well.

Heather sat in the corner of the room, the chocolates in her lap. “Janey says you should give Dad an A for effort. I think so, too.” This last bit was added between bites of candy.

“Heather, I didn’t buy those for you,” Cody said irritably.

“I know, but Sherry doesn’t mind sharing them, do you?”

“Help yourself.”

“She already has,” Cody muttered.

Sherry put the lotion away while Cody rolled down his sleeves and snapped them closed at the wrists. “Heather, don’t you have something to occupy yourself with outside?”

“No.”

“Yes, you do,” he said pointedly.

“I do? Oh, I get it, you want to be alone with Sherry. Gee, Dad, why didn’t you just say so?”

“I want to be alone with Sherry.”

“Great.” Heather checked her watch. “Is fifteen minutes enough, or do you need longer? Don’t forget I have to be at Katie’s by eight.”

Cody sighed expressively, and Sherry could tell his patience was in tatters. “Fifteen minutes will be fine. I’ll meet you on the porch.”

“I can take the chocolates?”

“Heather!”

“All right, all right.” She threw him an injured look on her way outside. “I know when I’m not wanted.”

“Not soon enough, you don’t,” her father said.

Now that they were alone, Cody didn’t seem to know what he wanted to say. He paced the room restlessly, without speaking.

“Cody?”

“I’m thinking.”

“This sounds serious,” Sherry said, amused.

“It is serious. Sit down.” He pulled out a chair, escorted her to it and sat her down, then stood facing her.

“I’m sorry about the poison ivy,” Sherry ventured.

He shrugged. “My own fault. I should’ve noticed it, but my head was in the clouds thinking about you.”

“I know it’s painful. The poison ivy, I mean.”

“It won’t be as bad as the razzing I’m going to get when folks learn about this—on top of my behavior Saturday night.”

“Oh, Cody,” she whispered, feeling genuinely contrite, aware that her insistence that he be “romantic” and demonstrate his feelings had led directly to his actions. He was trying hard to give her what she wanted, yet he didn’t seem to understand what that really was. Yes, she wanted the sweet endearing things a man did for a woman he was courting, but more than that, she needed him to trust her, to open up to her.