Forgetting all about his resolve to let his temper cool, an hour later he was in town, pounding on the Hortons’ front door. Ken Horton, wearing a robe and slippers, opened it a crack. At the sight of Cody, he swung it wider, a welcoming smile spreading across his weathered face. Cody could see Velma’s panicky expression as she stared over her husband’s shoulder.

“Cody, what on earth?” Horton grumbled. “You trying to wake the whole neighborhood?”

“Where’s Melissa?”

“She’s not here,” he said as his wife tugged frantically on his arm. When he leaned down, she whispered something in his ear, something that wiped any lingering expression of welcome from his face. “Go on home, Cody.”

“Not until you tell me where she is.”

“Don’t make me call the sheriff.”

“Don’t make me pound the information out of you,” Cody shot back belligerently.

Ken Horton regarded him sympathetically. “Boy, go on home and get some sleep. If you’ve got things to talk over with Melissa, do it in the morning, when you’re calmer.”

Despite his earlier promise to himself to think things through clearly, Cody realized he didn’t want to be calm when he talked to Melissa. He wanted this rage to keep him focused, to keep him immune to the sight of her. He wanted to have this out with her while he was hot with anger, not lust.

“If I have to knock on every door in town, I’m going to talk to her tonight,” he swore.

“There’s nothing you have to say, nothing you need to know, that won’t be settled just as readily in the morning,” Horton repeated, still calm, still intractable.

Cody considered it as much as an admission that he and Melissa had serious issues to resolve, such as his relationship to that baby. He gathered from the warning look Horton shot at his now tearful wife that they didn’t entirely agree on whether Cody had the right to know the truth.

“Where can I find her in the morning?” he asked finally, resigned to the delay. They all knew he wouldn’t tear through town, creating yet another ruckus he’d never live down.

“She gets to work about nine,” her father told him.

“I’m not talking to her at Dolan’s,” he said. “I don’t want the whole town knowing our business.”

Horton seemed about to offer an alternative when Velma piped up. “That’ll just have to do,” she said. “We’re not telling you where she lives.”

He couldn’t decide if Velma was worried about him throttling Melissa or if she was simply being protective of her daughter’s secret. Because he wasn’t sure, he backed down.