Free Sugar Springs by Kim Law Page B

faced each other. Oh, geez, this meant she was going to have to tell him. Didn’t change the fact he was still the jerk who hadn’t wanted his kids, but she had to at least let him know who they were. Didn’t she?
    The slight tinkling of a bell indicated that someone else had opened the front door.
    “Did ya’ll know there’s a giant dog on the sidewalk out here?” Melinda O’Neil, heir to half the property within the city limits, asked before gingerly stepping over the animal and entering the salon.
    Under her breath Lee Ann murmured, “Does no one understand what a ‘Closed’ sign means these days?”
    “I think he belongs to Cody Dalton,” Melinda continued. “But I don’t see him out there anywhere.”
    Joanie snared both Lee Ann and Cody in a look before motioning to the door in the corner. “Feel free to use my office for your conversation. It’s a few years overdue.” She rose. “I’ll see what Melinda needs.”
    Before they could make their escape, Melinda sauntered toward the back, where Lee Ann remained seated. “I knew I’d find you here today, Lee Ann. You always head this way when you’re stressed. And with Cody back, looking hotter than ever, I knew you’d be stressed. I wanted...”
    When she finally caught sight of Cody sitting there, her entire posture changed. Shoulders pulled back, stomach sucked in, and breasts lifted. What was it about the entire population of single women in this town? A fresh face showed up and they immediately went into man-hunting mode.
    Cody stood and held out a hand. “Cody Dalton.” He dipped his head as he introduced himself, brushing his lips across the back of her hand as if he were some honorable cowboy.
    Melinda giggled. “I know who you are, Mr. Dalton. The infamous bad boy of Sugar Springs.” Melinda batted her fake eyelashes at him, and he graced her with one of his purely evil grins. “I may have been three years younger than you the lasttime you were here, but I wasn’t too young to pay attention. I had one of the biggest crushes of anybody.”
    Lee Ann wanted to jam her finger down her throat and throw up on the both of them. She sidled out of her chair and duckwalked to the office as Cody and Melinda continued oohing and aahing over each other. “I’ll be back here whenever you can pull yourself away.”
    Before Lee Ann fully stepped into the other room, Melinda waved a hand in her direction but didn’t shift her gaze from Cody. “I just needed to tell you, Lee Ann, the central unit finally went out at the Fish and Game Club, and Daddy isn’t replacing it until spring.”
    “Not replacing it?” That was where the twins’ big “I’m a teenager now” birthday bash was going to be held. “It’ll be too cold in there without it.”
    Melinda shook her head and finally focused on Lee Ann. “He refuses to pay jacked-up seasonal prices for a new unit when there’s a perfectly good stove and a whole stack of wood to keep the place warm. You’ve still got almost four weeks before the girls’ birthday, so I thought I should warn you in case you prefer to find another location for their party.”
    Right. Like another one existed. But she also didn’t want to deal with stoking a fire all night long, either. After she asked Melinda to go ahead and hold the reservation while she checked around, her brain finally registered the rage tightening Cody’s body. And then she realized what had been said. And what that implied.
    With three large steps, Cody loomed directly in front of her, leaving a dazed Melinda to gawk at his backside. Under his breath, he asked, “Their birthday is in December?”
    Lee Ann couldn’t breathe. She nodded.
    “I left at the end of April.”
    Nod.
    Once-warm brown eyes now burned with anger. “So you were already a month pregnant with
someone else’s
baby before I left town?”
    If anyone had asked her a week ago if she was about to change her ways and begin lying on a regular basis, she would have sworn they