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 got back into town. What I don’t know is why.”

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.