The Marriage Charm

CHAPTER TWO

BY SPENCE’S RUEFUL calculations, the whole fiasco took less than ten minutes to unfold, from start to finish.

The instant he’d brought the truck to a stop at the curb in front of Melody’s house, and before he could get out of the rig and walk around to open her door, she’d bolted, making her gimpy way across the sidewalk without a wave of the hand or even a backward glance—never mind saying goodbye or thank you.

Since no self-respecting man drove a woman home after dark and then just sat behind the wheel like a lump and watched while she hiked to her door, Spence was on the move in a heartbeat.

He’d caught up to Melody at the gate, when the pain in her feet finally reined her in. She’d paused, resting her right hand on one of the newel posts to keep her balance while she used her left to pry off her shoes, one and then the other, grimacing with relief. For a moment, Spence thought she might pitch the things into the nearby bushes, but in the end, she didn’t.

Instead, she tilted her chin upward, met Spence’s gaze straight on, and said tersely, “You can leave anytime now.” She gestured in the direction of the house, the offending stilettos waggling with the motion. “I hardly think I need a police escort to get to my own front door.”

Stubbornly silent, Spence had opened the gate, taken Melody by the elbow and squired her onto the porch. She hadn’t objected, not verbally, anyway, but she’d looked mad enough to bite off the business end of a shovel.

Spence had waited, without comment, until she’d fished a key from her impossibly small handbag and thrust it into the lock with so much force that he wouldn’t have been surprised if the thing snapped in two.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen.

As soon as Melody was over the threshold, she’d favored Spence with one last glare and slammed the door in his face.

At the memory, a muscle bunched in Spence’s jaw, and he ground the truck’s gears as he left the town behind, speeding up the second he hit the open road. With a conscious effort, he unclamped his molars and relaxed his rigid shoulders.

All right, yeah. He’d put his foot in his mouth a couple of times, back there at the Moose Jaw—he’d never been able to think straight in close proximity to Melody—but he’d said he was sorry, after all, and he’d meant it. Mostly.

Shouldn’t his apology, however halfhearted, have counted for something?

If the woman hadn’t been contrary to the marrow of her bones, she’d have met him halfway, or at least made a stab at civility, if only because he’d obviously been trying to help her out. Anybody else would’ve cut him some slack for his good intentions.

Of course, Melody wasn’t anybody else, she was her usual hardheaded, cussed self. A casual observer might have thought he was fixing to kidnap her, the way she’d carried on.

Irritated beyond all common sense—Spence was tired and he was hungry and that combination virtually guaranteed a bad attitude—he flung his hat onto the passenger seat and shoved splayed fingers through his hair.

He hadn’t improved matters, he reflected, by tossing the little hellcat over his shoulder and lugging her to his truck, either. This was real life, present tense, complete with new and often puzzling rules for any male-female interaction—not some vintage John Wayne-Maureen O’Hara movie.

No question, Spence reasoned grimly; he’d acted in haste, and he would surely repent at leisure.

And yet he’d had to do something to break the standoff, didn’t he? Otherwise, he and Melody would probably still be standing in that parking lot, bickering like a couple of damn fools, with no end in sight.

Just when Spence was beginning to think he might be getting some adult perspective on the events of the evening, another rush of frustration came over him, and he was right back at square one.

He simmered for at least five more minutes then put a foot to the clutch and shifted again. By degrees, he began to calm down. He recalled the way Melody had looked, standing in the bug-specked yellow glow of her porch light, with her makeup worn away in some places and smudged in others. He remembered how she’d bitten down on her lower lip like she did whenever she was stressed out. And how her hair, her gorgeous honey-colored hair, seemed ready to come unpinned of its own accord and tumble down around her shoulders.

Just picturing that made his groin tighten.

He sighed.

Melody was always beautiful, no matter what, Spence admitted silently, with a sad twitch of his mouth that didn’t stretch far enough to classify as a smile.

The ache between his legs migrated upward, nestling in the uncharted territory hidden somewhere behind his heart, a slow, familiar throb of sorrow and regret.

He’d lost her.

That wasn’t exactly breaking news. Whatever he and Melody had had together—or almost had—was part of the distant past. At times, though, it rose up out of nowhere and seared him.

Like tonight.

Spence clenched his back teeth, determined to tough out the rush of emotion that had ambushed him, partly because he knew he didn’t have a choice and partly because that was what he did. He endured, knowing all too well that resisting these particular feelings was futile and would merely deepen and prolong the misery.

Again, he sighed.

Since both Spence and Melody made every effort to avoid each other, the figurative bodies stayed buried. Invariably, though, some special occasion rolled around, like their friends’ wedding that afternoon, and all the tattered specters rose like howls riding a night wind, reminding him that the dreams and plans he’d once cherished were over for good.

This, too, he reminded himself grimly, would pass.

Sooner or later.

So he just drove.

Mercifully, his mood improved a notch or two when the outlines of his house and barn came into sight. They weren’t anything fancy, those structures, but they had good, solid bones and so much history they’d probably grown roots over the years. Deep ones, too, stretching far into the earth, gnarled and sturdy, anchoring themselves to the land.

Spence parked behind the dark house then reclaimed his hat from the passenger seat and got out. The instant the soles of his boots struck the fine Wyoming dirt, he felt the familiar mantle of peace settle over him.

He was home.

He smiled at the sounds heralding his return from the outside world—his gelding, Reb, nickered a greeting from the nearby pasture, all but invisible in the darkness, while Harley tuned up a one-dog orchestra, yipping with joyful anticipation behind the kitchen door a few yards away.

“Hold on,” Spence called out to both critters. “I’m on my way.”

* * *

MELODY’S THREE CATS, Ralph, Waldo and Emerson, were sitting in a tidy row when she hobbled into the kitchen, barefoot and vowing never to put on high heels again, no matter who was getting married, herself included.

Not that there was much danger of that, considering the state of her love life.

“Reoooow,” the cats chorused in perfect unison.

Despite appearances, Melody knew the animals hadn’t formed a welcoming committee—this was a protest.

She laughed, still shaken from her most recent encounter with Spence but recovering fast, now that he’d gone and her shoeless feet were free to swell as they liked. “Spare me the drama,” she chided her pets, padding over to the counter, taking a favorite mug from the wooden rack on the wall next to the sink. “I know I’m late serving your supper, but I don’t feel guilty about it, okay? One of my best friends tied the knot today.” Melody paused to smile, happy because Hadleigh was happy, and wasn’t that proof things worked out, at least some of the time?

Melody filled the mug with water, dropped in an herbal tea bag—electric raspberry—and fired up the microwave.

The furry trio didn’t break rank, merely turning their heads her way instead, watching accusingly as Melody opened a can of cat food, took three small plates from the appropriate stack in the cupboard and divided the grub evenly.

In the meantime, the microwave whirred companionably.

The cats remained in formation while Melody, carrying their feast with the deftness of a veteran truck-stop waitress, delivered their evening meal.

They were an odd bunch, her regal and totally opinionated fuzz balls. Hadleigh and Bex said so often, and Melody had to agree. Littermates adopted from the local shelter a few years ago, they looked so much alike, right down to the last splotch of calico, that even she couldn’t tell them apart.

Interchangeable as they were, she reasoned, she might as well have named them all Bob. It would’ve been simpler.

Leaving the felines to their banquet, Melody walked out of the kitchen, down the nearby hallway and into her bedroom.

There, full of sleepy relief, she took off the dress, the snagged pantyhose and the scratchy slip, letting them fall in a heap on the floor. Then, in her bra and panties, she got a clean and well-worn nightshirt from a dresser drawer and headed for the shower.

She turned on the spigots, adjusted them until the water temperature was exactly right and stepped under the spray. Closing her eyes, she tilted her face back, standing still, savoring the bliss, as the last vestiges of her makeup washed away.

She reveled in the ordinary pleasure of being under her own roof again, alone, unobserved, free to be Melody rather than some public version of herself.

Her hair proved to be a problem—she had to shiver outside the shower long enough to remove the last few pins and brush out the snarls teased in that morning by a local hairdresser—but Melody managed the task and stepped back under the steamy, pelting flow. After a thorough shampoo and a lot of soaping and rinsing, she sighed, shut off the water and got out, wrapping herself in a large bath towel, sari-style.

When the mirror had defogged, she combed out her wet tresses—she didn’t have the energy to use the blow dryer, which meant she’d have to soak her head again in the morning to tame the beast, but that was fine with her. Tomorrow seemed years away.

On automatic pilot now, Melody brushed her teeth and wiped a few lingering smudges of mascara from beneath her eyes. Finally, she pulled on the nightshirt.

She left the bathroom to make her nightly rounds—all windows shut, every door locked, stove burners turned off—and congratulated herself silently for not thinking about Spence Hogan even once. It was a winning streak, a personal best; for almost half an hour, Melody reflected, her busy brain had remained Spence-free.

She gave a small sigh, deflated. He’d slipped right back into her thoughts, though.

So much for the winning streak.

When she reached the kitchen again, Melody noticed that the cat brigade had finished eating and wandered off to some other part of the house, probably her studio. They liked to sit unblinking on the fireplace mantel, so completely motionless that visitors sometimes mistook them for oversize knickknacks.

She smiled as she scooped up the empty plates, rinsed each one thoroughly and stashed them in the dishwasher. Then she dried her hands, crossed to the back door and peered at the dead bolt. She knew she’d locked it that morning, before leaving the house, but she’d been known to forget things, like everybody else.

Dutifully, Melody moved on to the next item on her mental agenda—making sure the front door was secured. She’d been pretty flustered after the encounter with Spence.

Then she examined each and every window.

Since she worked at home, and she’d never gotten around to having an air-conditioning system installed, she often kept three or four of them open during the day, hoping to catch any stray breeze that might have swept down from the snow-crowned peaks of the Grand Tetons.

The tour ended in Melody’s studio, her favorite part of the house.

The space, originally the living room, wasn’t huge, but it was a great place to work, with its strategically placed skylights, built-in bookshelves and the custom-made cabinets where she stored art supplies.

The tension seeped from her shoulders as she looked around. Some nights, unwilling to be parted from whatever project happened to be consuming her at the time, she actually slept in here, curled up on the long sofa, burrowed under the soft weight of a faded cotton coverlet, spinning straw into gold as she dreamed.

The cats, as she’d predicted, sat side by side on the wide mantel above the fireplace, impersonating statues. Thanks to the permanent claim they’d staked to the entire surface, Melody couldn’t keep framed photographs or a nice clock or any other decorative items there, as a normal person might. She shook her head, smiling, and turned to look at the design board that took up most of the opposite wall. Every inch bristled with sketches, appointment cards, snapshots, sticky notes scribbled with reminders and ideas for new pieces of jewelry, and glossy images of watches and pendants, rings and bracelets, torn from various magazines.

Melody would never have copied another artist’s work, but she liked to admire the really good stuff. Now and then, some aspect of a design sparked her own imagination and hurled her into a creative—okay, manic—frenzy that might last for hours or even days. She invariably emerged from these episodes with some new and totally original creation.

When she worked, she focused almost entirely on process rather than objectives. For Melody, the magic lay in the what-ifs, the little experiments, the sheer alchemy of transforming raw materials into something beautiful, timeless and utterly unique, a piece she hoped would be treasured and eventually passed down, generation after generation.

Tired though she felt, Melody was tempted to perch on the cushioned stool in front of her drafting table, open her sketchbook to a fresh page, pick up a pencil and see what emerged.

Get some sleep first, counseled her practical side.

Melody decided to take her own advice. Although she’d pulled many an all-nighter over the course of her artistic career, she did her best work after a good night’s rest.

It was time to hit the sheets.

Ralph, Waldo and Emerson, still sitting on the mantel, watched inscrutably as she passed, unmoving except for their eyeballs.

Pausing to flip the light switch before leaving the room, Melody smiled again. “Hadleigh and Bex are right,” she told them. “You’re not ordinary earth cats, you’re aliens.”

* * *

SPENCE’S INNER ALARM clock woke him promptly—and completely—at four the next morning, like it always did in the summertime. In the dead of winter, he usually made it to five before his eyes flew open and stayed that way, whether he’d gotten any real rest or not.

“Damn,” he muttered, sitting up, running the palms of both hands along his face. Another few hours of sleep, and he might have felt halfway human, but since staying in bed would be the classic losing battle, he tossed back the lightweight covers and set his feet on the floor.

Harley was stationed in the bedroom doorway, watching him with hopeful interest. The dog’s head was cocked to one side, and his ears were perked.

“What?” Spence asked. No way was he going to let that critter make him feel guilty; he’d set out an extra bowl of kibble the night before, along with a backup supply of water. He’d also remembered to unlatch the pet door, in case Harley needed a yard break during the night.

Harley responded with a cheery little yip and thumped the hardwood floor with his tail, barely able to contain his eagerness to follow up on whatever opportunities presented themselves.

Spence sighed, drawing a hand through his rumpled hair. Even if he hadn’t been hardwired to get up at the crack—hell, before that—the damn dog would probably have stared him awake.

He stood, shaking his head in pretended frustration, but the fact was, he couldn’t help grinning. Clearly, Harley knew that this wasn’t going to be a stay-at-home-and-wait kind of day, but a tag-along one instead, bursting with canine delights like riding shotgun in Spence’s truck, sticking to his boot heels like a burr, streaking through tall grass to keep up with Reb out on the range.

Didn’t matter to ol’ Harley where Spence went or what he did, whether he was on foot or in the saddle, as long as he got to play sidekick.

A man had to admire that sort of loyalty.

After a shave and a shower, Spence returned to the bedroom and opened a few bureau drawers in the hope that at least one set of clean clothes might have manifested itself when he wasn’t looking. No such luck.

With a towel around his waist, he made for the small laundry room off the kitchen, opened the dryer and pulled out a shirt. Yesterday’s jeans would have to do, but what the hell. He’d only worn them for a couple of hours the night before, and it wasn’t as if he’d been digging post holes or wrestling a roped calf to the ground at the time.

No, he thought. He’d just been wrestling a testy woman into his truck, that was all.

Maybe, Spence mused, he ought to apologize to Melody—again—for the hefty comment. He should have used muscular, but that probably wouldn’t have gone over well, either. Solid? Um, no. Considering her feminine grace, he was just surprised she wasn’t lighter, that was all. She must work out.

Nope. None of those possibilities would be deemed acceptable. Better to keep his distance, rather than risk stepping in it again.

Only that didn’t seem exactly right, either.

Weighing the decision in his mind, Spence opened the door and left it ajar, so Harley could go outside without having to shinny through the much smaller pet door. With freedom beckoning, the animal shot through the gap at bullet speed, as if he had a date with destiny.Spence, still wearing the towel, slung the shirt over his shoulder and put the coffee on before going back to his room. He scouted around for the jeans he’d discarded the night before, found them partway under the bed and yanked them on. Then he shrugged into the shirt, noting that it could have used a few licks with a hot iron.

Oh, well. In the bigger scheme of things, a few wrinkles wouldn’t matter. After all, he had the day off, and he wasn’t going anywhere fancy—just to the feed store on the outskirts of town, followed by a brief stop at the supermarket. Soon as he and Harley got back, he’d be saddling Reb and riding out to see how the fences were holding up.

He planned to put the incident with the prickly Ms. Nolan right out of his mind.

CHAPTER THREE

MELODY STUBBED HER toe on the doorjamb trying to carry a filled cup and two art magazines into her studio. For some reason, one of the cats—she couldn’t be sure which—had decided to weave between her legs. The balancing act was an experiment in agility and she managed to stay upright, but just barely.

Gritting her teeth, she sacrificed one of her glossy periodicals to protect the guilty feline from a splash of hot coffee. Those pages would probably never come apart again. Thanks a lot.

“One day,” she warned all of them out loud, “I won’t be so graceful.”

The other two resident fuzz balls gazed blandly back at her from their perch on the mantel, and Melody got the distinct impression they wouldn’t have credited her with grace to begin with, and they were probably right. Cats had a way of saying things without actual articulation or even body language. Besides, they’d seen her doing yoga—they mimicked her movements—so they could have a point. All three of them were better at it.

Damn it, her feet still hurt. She should write a song, something like “The Broken Toe Blues.” Or “I Left My Arch in Mustang Creek.” Maybe it would top the charts, since almost every woman in the world could relate.

With a little grin and a sigh, Melody shook off the whimsical idea. She was a designer, not a songwriter, and besides, she didn’t have a smidge of musical talent.

Cozy in loose sweatpants and a shapeless T-shirt, she pulled out the chair at her worktable and got busy.

Or tried to, anyway.

After nearly three hours of dedicated—and largely fruitless—effort, she reluctantly faced reality. Her muse was on hiatus.

Damn. This was a big commission, a bib necklace set with precious stones for a picky client who’d collected the gems herself on various trips, and the design was hidden in a compartment in Melody’s brain, but it hadn’t emerged yet. Mrs. Arbuckle was infamously outspoken, so she really wanted to get it right or she’d hear about it, and not necessarily in a tactful way.

Melody was good and stuck—and that wasn’t her only problem.

Resting her forehead on one fist, she contemplated the unsavory options on her list. For starters, she probably owed Spence an apology.

Probably? Try definitely.

She’d been pretty rude to him, all things considered. Oh yeah, she’d been mad at his assumption that he could pick her up and cart her off to his truck like some Neanderthal in boots and a cowboy hat, but in the light of day, she couldn’t deny that he’d done her a favor. And because she’d been hungry and tired, and her feet were hurting like crazy, she’d been just plain ungracious.

Her grandmother, who had helped raise her, would not have approved of Melody’s behavior—or his, for that matter, although that was beside the point. And even though Grandma Jean wasn’t around to voice her opinion anymore, Melody swore she could feel it.

So yes, an apology was in order. Melody put down her drawing pen with a sigh. She knew from experience that the missing muse wouldn’t put in an appearance until she’d cleared her conscience.

“This is easy to fix,” she told the cats as she got to her feet, which were not back to normal but were at least safeguarded by a pair of soft, comfy shoes that would qualify as slippers if anyone wanted to get technical about it. “I’ll go there, talk to the man, tell him I appreciated that he wanted to help—even if he was crass about it.”

One of the fur faces—Melody was fairly sure it was Waldo, still gracing the mantel—yawned with obvious disinterest. She’d seen that expression before, and at the moment, she found it irritating. “Fine, she muttered. “I won’t bore you with the details. And I won’t say anything to him about being rude. Does that approach suit your royal highnesses?”

Waiting for an answer was pointless, of course. She just grabbed her purse—at least she was back to one that could hold more than a matchbox—intending to hoof it over to the Moose Jaw to pick up her car.

Halfway out the door, she stopped dead. The vehicle was sitting in her driveway. She blinked to make sure it wasn’t an optical illusion. Nope, definitely there.