Dammit, why couldn’t everything have been more resolved between them? They were so close to working things out. She had sensed that last night in their companionable silence, in the way Cody had vowed to give her the time and space to reach her own conclusions about their relationship.

She knew exactly how Cody was going to react. Forget about time and space for thinking. He was going to demand they get married at once. She wanted that, wanted it more than anything, but not if he was only doing it because of the baby. Okay, both babies.

He was a fine father. He’d accepted his responsibility for Sharon Lynn wholeheartedly. That wasn’t the issue. He’d been proving that over and over since the day he’d learned the truth about Sharon Lynn. She had seen the adoration in his eyes whenever he was with his daughter. She had watched his pride over every tiny accomplishment.

He had even behaved as though she were important to him, too. But never once, not in all these months, had he said he loved her. She would not marry a man who could not say those words. She would not marry at all just because she was pregnant.

It created an interesting dilemma, since there wasn’t a darn thing she could do about being pregnant. There was nothing on earth that meant more to her than being a mother to Cody’s children. And she knew from bitter experience that she could do it just fine on her own, if she had to.

Still, she had to tell him sometime....

She managed to hold off for a couple of weeks, but her symptoms were cropping up when she least expected it. She didn’t want him guessing when he found her practically swooning in his arms.

After thinking it over, she chose the storeroom at Dolan’s to tell him. Eli and Mabel were getting used to her dragging Cody into the back to talk. They’d probably heard enough muffled arguments and full-scale screaming matches to last them a lifetime.

At least, though, they would be there to intervene if Cody decided to try to drag her off by the hair to the preacher. At home she’d have no such protection. She doubted even her parents would stand up to him. Her father was already on Cody’s side and her mother had maintained a stoic silence ever since her father’s edict that she butt out of Melissa’s and Cody’s business.

She had one other reason for choosing the storeroom. She had noticed that Eli and Mabel were off by themselves whispering who-knew-what at the oddest times. Melissa had the feeling that the two of them were patching whatever differences had separated them years before. Maybe the very visible ups and downs of her relationship with Cody had set an example for them. They might as well be in on the denouement.