“Did he also tell you I’d turned him down?”

Harlan nodded.

She looked over at this man who had always been so kind to her, who’d treated her as a daughter long before she had any ties to his family beyond her hope of a future with his son. Did she dare ask him what she really wanted to know, whether Cody loved her for herself or only as the mother of the daughter he was so clearly anxious to claim? She hedged her bets and asked a less direct question.

“Was I wrong to say no?”

Harlan regarded her perceptively. “Are you afraid he won’t ask again?”

She drew in a deep breath, then finally nodded, acknowledging a truth that was far from comforting.

“What would you say if he does?”

“Right now?”

“Right now,” he concurred.

She thought it over carefully. Given the unresolved nature of their feelings, she would have to give him the same answer. “I’d tell him no,” she admitted.

“Then there’s your answer,” he reassured her. “Look, I don’t claim to know what happened between you and Cody that made him run off to Wyoming, but it’s plain as day to me that it wasn’t a simple misunderstanding. You keeping that baby a secret from him proves that. Feelings that complicated take time to sort out. Take as long as you want, just don’t shut him out of your life in the meantime. Silence and distance aren’t the way to patch things up.”

Harlan’s warning was still echoing in her head when she finally went in search of Cody. He was right, the lines of communication did need to remain open, for Sharon Lynn’s sake, if not her own.

She suspected Cody was either in the barn or had taken off for his own place nearby. His father had promised to look in on Sharon Lynn and to entertain her if she awakened from her nap.

When she didn’t find Cody in the barn, she set off across a field to the small house Cody had built for himself in defiance of his father’s order that he should strike out on his own and work some other ranch, maybe even start his own as Luke had. Every board Cody had hammered into place, every shingle he had laid on the roof had been a declaration that he intended to stay and claim his share of White Pines.

Melissa had watched him night after night, at the end of long, backbreaking days running the ranch. She had helped when she could, bringing him picnic baskets filled with his favorite foods on the evenings when he’d skipped supper to keep on working until the last hint of daylight faded.