“It’s down a whole degree,” Melissa observed, blocking him when he would have snatched Sharon Lynn out of the bathwater. “The Tylenol’s working.”

“Not fast enough.”

“Let’s give it another half hour,” she compromised.

Cody hesitated, then finally conceded grudgingly, “A half hour. Not a minute more.”

He sat down at the kitchen table and fixed his gaze on the clock over the sink. Apparently he intended to watch each of those thirty minutes tick by.

“Da!” Sharon Lynn called out.

Cody was on his feet in an instant. “What’s up, sweet pea? You feeling better?” he asked, caressing her cheek with fingers that shook visibly.

A smile spread across his daughter’s face. “Da,” she repeated enthusiastically.

A little color came back into Cody’s ashen complexion. “She feels a little cooler.”

Melissa agreed. “I’m betting when we check her temperature again, it’ll be just about back to normal.”

Twenty minutes later Sharon Lynn was no longer feverish. She was once again tucked into her crib. Cody, still looking shaken, stood over her.

“How do you stand this?” he murmured to Melissa. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life.”

Melissa patted his hand. “It gets easier after you’ve been through it once or twice and know what to expect,” she promised him, but he shook his head.

“I can’t imagine it getting easier,” he said. “What if her temperature hadn’t gone down? What if you’d guessed wrong?”

“Then we would have called the doctor or gotten her to the hospital.”

“It might have been too late.”

“Cody, stop that,” she ordered, not daring to admit that she’d been scared silly, too, that she always was, no matter what the books said. “It’s over. She’s going to be fine. It was just a little fever.”

He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Okay, you’re right. Just a little fever.” He still sounded unconvinced. He definitely showed no inclination to budge from beside the crib.

Melissa grinned at him. “Cody, everything really is fine. You don’t have to stand there and watch her all night.”

“I am not leaving this house,” he said, his jaw jutting out belligerently.

“Fine. You can sleep on the sofa.” She yawned. “Good night, Cody.”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to bed.”

“How can you possibly sleep?”

“Because I’m exhausted. You must be, too.” In fact, he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“I won’t sleep a wink,” he swore.

“Whatever,” she murmured, and headed for her room. At the doorway she recalled that they’d never really talked about why he’d been on her front porch in the first place. “Cody, why were you here in the middle of the night?”

A sheepish expression spread across his face. “I figured if you found me on your doorstep in the morning, you’d give me a lift home.”