The Marriage Charm (Bliss County 2) (22 page)

“Can I help?” He leaned against the counter, watching her.

“Nope.”

“Time for a quick shower?”

She turned, the pan sizzling. “I’m not going to sleep with you tonight.”

His quicksilver smile was as compelling as ever, his dark hair ruffled. “That’s not what I was asking. I was actually thinking that I just mucked out a stall and brushed down a horse, and I’d like to clean up before I eat whatever it is that smells so good. Have I got five minutes?”

She flushed. “Sure. Yes.”

Idiot
was exactly right
.

Melody crossed over to yank open the refrigerator door and take out the plastic bag that held the marinated chicken for the stir-fry. She tried to remind herself that maybe he wasn’t sitting around thinking about sex all the time. This was just dinner. Wait, no, supper. Oh, whatever!

The chicken hit the pan with a satisfying sizzle. She used a wooden spoon to stir it then threw in some broccoli florets and let it cook with the lid on before she poured in the sauce.

When Spence strolled back in, hair wet, in clean jeans and a denim shirt, he sniffed the air. “I’m upgrading this meal from good to great. What are we having, and do you want a glass of wine?”

“Garlic chicken with broccoli, and yes.” Reckless move, but she’d spotted that wine already chilling, and if he’d gone to the trouble of buying it, she didn’t mind having a glass. She’d follow Mrs. Arbuckle’s example. The sun was well over the yardarm, wasn’t it? Not that she could have explained what a yardarm was. Something to do with sailing, she thought...

“I’m off duty. I’ll have one, too.” He removed it from the fridge and opened a drawer to get a corkscrew. “This particular week I’ve done my civic duty. What’s in the oven?”

Cowboys were notorious for always being hungry. Lawmen, too, she supposed. “Crab wontons.”

“Music to my ears.” He uncorked the bottle with a soft popping sound. He had to search several cupboards, but in the end produced two wineglasses that didn’t match. Melody felt a sense of enjoyment as she watched him take a tentative sip, long fingers curled around the stem of the glass.

Surely not his usual tipple. On the rare occasions when he drank, he was strictly an ice-cold American-brewed lager kind of man. Judging by what she’d observed on the rare occasions they’d been at the same social event.

“Not too bad.” He eased onto a stool by the counter. “You seem to have things under control, but is there anything I can do?”

Just sit where you are and be part of the scenery
. She didn’t say that out loud but he looked like a guy on the front of a
GQ
magazine—if they dressed their models in boots and a denim shirt, which they usually didn’t but maybe should. Even the hint of a fine beard creeping along his jaw worked in a rakish sort of way. There went the romance novels again. But she supposed if anyone in this neck of the woods qualified as a rake, he was the one.

Melody shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“I like having you in my kitchen.”

“You like someone else cooking for you.” She sprinkled in chopped green onions.

“For once, no argument. Both statements are true.”

“No argument? That would be a milestone.”

“For us,” he agreed, “sure would. But I’m glad you’re here. Tell me that counts for something.”

It did, and she was afraid of it, so she changed the subject. “I don’t suppose someone kindly returned my diamond today and said, ‘Aw shucks, officer, I’m sorry I robbed the nice lady.’”

“No. That isn’t, by the way, how it usually works.”

“I know.” She continued chopping, which was therapeutic for taking out her anger. “Tell me you like ginger.”

“I do.”

“Do you want kids?”

She heard an inner voice screaming,
Where the hell did
that
come
from?
two seconds after she opened her big mouth. She hadn’t seen it coming. Maybe it was because of Hadleigh’s possible pregnancy, maybe it was the robbery, but it all resulted in a desperate need to get her life in focus.

Spence looked down at his glass of wine and then at her. His blue eyes were direct. “Yep.”

Nothing more. No dissertation on why, or any hedging, just a confirmation. She’d be pushing it if she asked how many, so she went back to stirring the chicken. She didn’t really know how many she wanted, either, so that was a discussion better left for another time.

That was the moment, the very moment, she decided she was going to marry one headstrong police officer who’d never even pretended to propose to her.

She glanced at the charm on her bracelet and made a silent wish.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

B
EYOND A DOUBT,
Spence thought happily, the meal was off the charts.

Tender chicken and fluffy rice and some sort of spicy sauce that was sort of Asian and yet unique enough that he asked her what was in it. When it came to cooking, he was mostly a meat-and-potatoes man, with the obligatory veggie chucked in.

Melody just smiled at him in that way she had, which always did something interesting to his composure, and promised to give him the recipe. She wore another one of those clingy blouses tucked into perfectly fitting jeans, and her usual understated makeup. When a woman looked like Melody, she didn’t need to doll herself up.

He wasn’t all that interested in the recipe. What he really wanted was to ask her to make it again. For him. Just for him.

He did his solid best to not devour her stir-fry like a starved madman.

The
madman
description applied in more ways than one, particularly when he remembered her question about kids—and his answer.

Yep.
That was what he’d said.

He’d meant it, too.

When he put down his fork after his second helping, telling himself that thirds was going a bit far, he picked up his napkin. “That was way good. Take good and make it ten times better.”

Melody managed amused and appreciative pretty well. “I got the impression you liked it.”

“I swear I ate lunch. Although it didn’t compare to what you just made. Not even close. I’d eat this every single day.”

“Spence.” Sitting across the table, she held her head in both hands. “I swore I was not going to sleep with you.”

“But now you’re tempted?” A man could hope.

“No.”

Ah, shot down again.

“Yes.”

A light glimmered at the end of the tunnel. “No
and
yes? If you want to confuse me, that’s the way to do it.”

“I want to.”

Valuable information to have. He raised his brows. “I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

She fiddled with the stem of her wineglass. “But... I recognize that a relationship involves a lot of different things. There’s companionship and romance—like moonlit walks on the beach or sharing a hammock on a sunny afternoon. There’s the everyday stuff, the triumphs you share, and the problems you cope with. And, yes, there’s sex. What I’m saying is, I don’t want ours to be based
primarily
on sex. People spend time in bed, but as a percentage of the average day, it’s small potatoes.”

“I think I’ve just been doubly insulted. Were you implying that I’m a little fast on the trigger? Nor do I like being compared to a fairly bland root vegetable, either.”

Melody shook her head, laughing. “Neither one, as you very well know. I’m just saying great sex isn’t enough.”

“Okay, that’s better. I like the
great
part.” He lifted a placating hand. “I’m sorry, I’ll be serious. I understand what you’re saying. I don’t even disagree. Let me help you clean up, and we’ll go sit on the porch.”

If she wanted moonlight, there was nothing like watching the moon rise over the mountains, no matter what phase it was in. He’d trade a rocking chair on his porch, a horse grazing in the background and a tangy breeze over a beach any day of the week. Nothing wrong with an ocean view, but he was more of a Wyoming man.

They worked companionably together to clear up the kitchen. He dried, since he knew where the dishes and utensils went, and she washed and rinsed. When they were done, he picked up her wineglass and refilled it—she wasn’t driving anywhere tonight—and escorted her to the best place in the world.

As they settled in their respective chairs, he took in a breath of clean, fresh air. “I know it isn’t a city view of skyscrapers with all the lights, and I can appreciate that, too, but I think I need...quiet.”

On cue, a pack of coyotes began to yip in a western chorus.

“Or such as it is,” he added ruefully. “Critters aren’t quiet. The elk bugling in the fall wake me up in the middle of the night. But it’s a good kind of noise. Not cars on a freeway.”

Melody’s profile was soft in the moonlight as she settled back, her gaze focused on the view. She crossed her ankles. “I haven’t really wanted to live anywhere else. There are people who roam the globe, addicted to always being in new places, but I wasn’t born with that gene. Oh, I took a semester in Glasgow at the University of Strathclyde my senior year in college, and I loved it. And I went to Italy once and enjoyed the beauty and the history, but my roots are here.”

He knew she’d studied abroad. This was Mustang Creek; not everyone from around here went to Scotland for six months. “What else?”

“It’s your turn. Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

He’d lived in this town his whole life. The book on Spencer Hogan was wide open, except for one thing. “My mother sent me a card the other day,” he said slowly. “Just like that, out of the blue. After all these years. Why?”

The fact that he’d even admitted it surprised him. It wasn’t a part of his life he talked about. Melody knew, of course. Everyone did. His mother had dumped him with his aunt Libby and walked away. None of that was news.

Of course she asked him, “What did it say? The card or letter, whatever it was.”

“Don’t know.” He looked over at the mountains. Peaceful. Serene. A timber-ridged silhouette against a darkening sky. There were wolves in those darkened ridges, mountain lion and plenty of bear, other dangers, too, but no people.

Melody stared at him. “Don’t know? You haven’t opened it or did you burn it?”

He shifted in his chair. “Burn it? Let’s not get dramatic. Though I have to admit it occurred to me to just throw it away. It’s in my desk at the office. I’m trying to decide if I want to hear anything she has to say. I’m leaning toward not.”

She didn’t go all female on him and tell him he should open it. Melody sipped her wine and studied the glorious scenery. Harley had it bad. He’d come out with them and was asleep at her feet.

He and that dog sure understood each other. He’d worship there, too.

“I take it my opinion is welcome.”

“I haven’t told another person on this planet but you. Not even Tripp. Feel free.”

She gave him an unfathomable look. “You haven’t told Junie?”

“Oh, jeez. We work together, and we’re friends. Have been since childhood. That’s the beginning, middle and end of it.”

To his relief, Melody seemed to accept that and settled more comfortably against the back of her chair. “I honestly don’t know what I’d do in your place. Atticus Finch says, well Harper Lee does, anyway, in
To Kill a Mockingbird
, unless you’ve walked in another person’s skin, you don’t know what he’s put up with, what he’s gone through, and I think it’s a valid point. Although I’m trying to imagine what would make me abandon my child, and I just can’t come up with it.”

“Me, neither.” Spence sighed and rubbed his jaw. “So I can’t decide if I should even waste my time reading it.”

After several minutes of silence, she said the most unexpected thing.

“It hadn’t occurred to me before, but women are sort of like cats.”

He turned his head to look at her. “Okay.”

Melody had a quirky smile on her face. “I just mean we are so inquisitive. Men are different. They’re more like dogs. They take everything at face value and deal with it and move on. There’s not a cat on this planet who could leave that envelope on your desk alone. If it was from my mother who’d been gone since I was nine years old, I would’ve torn it right open. Now, I see your point, she deserves nothing from you, but I still would have opened it on the spot. I couldn’t have stopped myself.”

“Being designated a canine,” he said wryly, “I thought I might take it over to my aunt and let her look at it. Since she’s the one who raised me, maybe she should make the call as to whether I reply or not.”

“Your aunt is fantastic. She definitely deserves a lot of credit.”

She sure did deserve credit. She’d welcomed a confused nine-year-old boy into her home, her life. No hesitation. He’d been a handful in high school, too, and she’d taken it in stride. “I don’t know that it’s a plea for forgiveness. I don’t know that it’s a plea for anything. It’s a card, judging by the feel of the envelope. That’s it. My birthday’s in March. Maybe it got lost in the mail or something.”

“How many has she sent you?”

“Cards? My mother? This would be the first.”

“I kind of want to wipe the floor with her.”

That muttered comment made him choke on a sip of the wine he’d been trying to drink all evening. One glass, and he still wasn’t finished. Apparently, he wasn’t all that cultured. A squat brown bottle was more his style.

Melody wasn’t the kind of woman who engaged in brawls. She was artistic and much too sensitive. He said quietly, “That impractical and rather improbable sentiment is duly noted. And appreciated. However, I’m not nine years old anymore. I don’t understand her reasons for doing what she did, but I no longer
need
to. The day I worked that out set me free. She doesn’t define me, I do.”

She nodded slowly then went back to gazing up at the star-speckled sky. “That’s a healthy attitude. It’s clouding up a little. I heard it was supposed to rain.”

She was perceptive enough to abandon his least favorite subject. “That’ll keep the ranchers happy.”

“Are we really talking about the weather?”

“Seems like it.”

“You shouldn’t drive home,” he said.