The Marriage Charm (Bliss County 2) (3 page)

He needed protein, preferably in the form of a thick steak, medium rare, and after feeding a couple of critters—one horse, one dog—a long, hot shower. After that, God willing, he could fall facedown on his bed and
sleep
.

Even with a plan in place, such as it was, Spence felt faintly anxious.

His black-and-white mutt, Harley, in whom a number of mysterious breeds converged, would be watching the road for him, perched vulture-style on the back of the living room couch, peering through the picture window and fogging up the glass with dog breath while he kept his vigil.

The stone-gray gelding, called Reb in deference to Spence’s Southern heritage, was content enough, he figured, grazing in the pasture beside the barn, enjoying the pleasures of summer. Still, horses were social creatures by nature, whether they were wild or tame, and all of them needed company.

With these things occupying his mind, Spence was tempted to breeze right out of town, back to his ranch, pretending he’d never planned to stop in at the Moose Jaw in the first place.

Instead, and with considerable resignation, he walked across the parking lot. The bar had been in business since frontier days, when it was a bona fide Old West saloon, and the building listed slightly to one side, like a drunk trying to look sober. The roof sloped, streaks of rust marked the presence of every nail, and the never-painted wall boards had weathered to a grungy gray.

He’d stay for ten minutes, max, Spence told himself, resolute. He’d see and be seen, say howdy where a verbal exchange was required, size things up and, finally, hit the road.

Dutifully, he opened the door.

I’ll stay for ten minutes
, he promised himself again. No more.

*

T
HE MUSIC ROARING
out of the jukebox was too loud, and the Moose Jaw was too crowded.

In Melody Nolan’s opinion, that is. Everyone else seemed to be having a grand old time, whooping it up, laughing and dancing and consuming plenty of cold beer.

Oh, there was reason to celebrate, all right. Hadleigh and Tripp were
finally
married, and that was practically a miracle, given how stubborn those two were. And Melody could comfort herself with the knowledge that the marriage pact, a secret plan that she and Hadleigh and Bex had agreed upon and set in motion a few months before was actually working—one wedding down, two to go.

Melody fingered the tiny gold horsehead on her bracelet, a symbol of triumph, not just for Hadleigh, the first bride, but for herself and Bex, as well. She’d personally designed and crafted the sparkling talismans, one for each of the three friends, and this initial charm represented Hadleigh’s relationship with Tripp, a rancher and born cowboy.

So far, so good.

Melody was wildly happy for Hadleigh, BFF extraordinaire. It was probably just fatigue—along with her very sore feet—that made her feel forlorn at the moment, unusually fractious and on the verge of tears.

Physical discomfort exacerbated this sorry state of affairs, but Melody didn’t dare kick off the spiked heels she’d been wearing for six-plus hours as one of Hadleigh’s two bridesmaids.

If she did, regret would soon overshadow relief, because her poor tootsies would puff up to three times their normal size, in which case it would be impossible to get those wretched shoes on again. Furthermore, Melody had no intention of going barefoot for the rest of the evening, since the Moose Jaw’s sawdust floor was filthy and, besides, some overenthusiastic dancer might step on her toes.

So she suffered, though not in silence.

When her
other
best friend forever, Bex, short for Becca, Stuart came back to their sticky-topped table, laughing and breathless after yet another Texas two-step with yet another cowboy, Melody glowered at her.

Bex, clad in an elegant yellow dress, identical to the one Melody wore, registered the look and made a face in response.

“Why aren’t you dancing?” Bex half shouted in order to be heard over the blare of the music and the general hoot and holler of the crowd packing the seediest watering hole in Mustang Creek, Wyoming.

“Why aren’t
you
limping?” Melody countered. Bex’s shoes, like her dress, were duplicates of her own. Yellow, pointed at the toes and stilt-like. They were definitely out of place in their surroundings. Cowboy boots were the footwear du jour.

Bex’s sigh was visible rather than audible, because of the din, and the horsehead charm on her bracelet winked in the light when she lifted one hand to push a lock of artfully streaked hair from her forehead. “Honestly, Mel,” she said. Melody was reading her lips. “Do you have to be such a party pooper?”

Mildly chagrined, Melody once again touched the charm on her own bracelet. “I’m happy,” she retorted unhappily. “Okay?”

Bex merely shook her head. The woman was a fitness guru, for heaven’s sake, and she
lived
in athletic shoes, not three-inch heels. So why wasn’t
she
in pain? Those toned calves, no doubt, gained from giving classes at one of her fitness centers. “That’s not exactly convincing.”

Just let me welter in my self-pity
. In the midst of that unbecoming thought, Melody felt an odd, heated charge tingle between the tips of her fingers and shoot up her arm, as if from the charm itself. Startled, she released it quickly, forgetting all about the exchange with Bex, sitting up a little straighter and glancing instinctively toward the bar’s entrance.

And there he was. Spence Hogan, the only man who had ever broken her heart.

Not just hers, of course. Pretty much any attractive female he came into contact with fell into that category. He should have a sign around his neck—Ol’ Love ʼem and Leave ʼem. Apparently you weren’t breathing if you were female and lived in this town and
didn’t
want to snag a date with him. By all accounts, many had. But she tried hard to plug her gossip ears when it came to him.

Spence was crossing the threshold, hat in one hand, standing so tall he almost had to duck to keep from bumping his head on the door frame.

It shouldn’t have been possible, but he looked even better in regular clothes than he had in the elegantly fitted tux he’d worn to the wedding. The guy gave a new meaning to the term “best man,” Melody thought peevishly. Her rising irritation was due to being constantly thrown into his company for the past two days. Hell, she’d had to sit next to him at the rehearsal dinner! If Tripp’s father, Jim, and his new wife hadn’t arranged that particular event, she might’ve been really annoyed at that seating snafu, but Jim was a sweetheart, and his wife probably didn’t realize she and Spence had a past. Besides, it was logical, since she was a bridesmaid and he was the best man.

Best man.

Best at
what
? Looking good? Making love? Shattering dreams?

Melody was thrown by the mere sight of Spence, which was weird because not only had they been forced into close proximity by the wedding ceremony, they’d also lived in the same small community for most of their lives. Inevitably, they ran into each other fairly often, despite her efforts to steer clear.

Nonetheless, her nerves shorted out, like an electrical circuit on overload.

Why, she wondered, silently frantic, couldn’t she just look away, render Spencer Hogan invisible, pretend he didn’t exist, as she usually managed to do?

No answer came to mind—and this development alone was maddening, since Melody
always
had a ready supply of answers. Except when it concerned Spence. Spence, with that easy, confident cowboy’s stride of his, and the vivid, new-denim blue of his eyes; if she hadn’t known better, she would’ve sworn he wore tinted contacts. The color was striking even from the far side of a crowded bar. So were his dark hair and his broad shoulders, the way his jeans fit his lean hips and long legs... Somehow, these familiar elements never failed to take her by surprise.

Spence had been about thirteen years old that memorable summer, when he first appeared on Melody’s personal radar, although he’d been around for a while. She’d been just six at the time, already thick as thieves with Bex and Hadleigh, all of them due to enter first grade in the fall.

Friends with Hadleigh’s big brother, Will, and Tripp Galloway, Spence hung around the Stevenses’ house a lot in those days, shooting hoops in the driveway with other boys from the neighborhood, playing rhythm guitar in Will and Tripp’s garage band.

One day that summer, though, he’d definitely caught her attention, which started a serious case of hero worship.

It wasn’t anything more complicated than the chain coming off her bicycle, causing her to wipe out in the street. He happened to be arriving at Will’s just then and jumped off his own battered bike. He dashed over, helping her up and examining her scraped knee and elbow, not one teasing word about the tears rolling down her face. Instead, he used the edge of his T-shirt to wipe them away. Then he brought her inside and delivered her into the caring hands of Hadleigh’s grandmother. When Melody came back out, the damage duly cleaned and bandaged, her bike was fixed and sitting by the garage.

“Hey, you okay?” he’d asked, as if he actually cared about the answer.

When she nodded, Tripp said, “I adjusted your chain. It was really loose.”

Will added, “The last time I wrecked like that, I’m pretty sure I cried, too. Don’t feel like a baby or anything.”

Then they went back to their basketball game.

That was it.

But both Hadleigh and Bex were impressed. Normally, in their experience, the boys didn’t even notice their existence.

Outwardly, nothing had changed after that day. Will and Tripp tolerated Hadleigh and her two sidekicks with benign indifference, and Spence followed their lead.

Hadleigh, Bex and Melody, on the other hand, shared a secret new awareness that nothing would ever be quite the same. They giggled and whispered among themselves, trying to unravel the mystery of this new fascination, but years passed before they finally succeeded.

Now, after all these years, Hadleigh and Tripp were deeply in love, the forever kind, and as of that very afternoon, joined in holy wedlock.

Coincidence?
Probably not
, Melody mused with a sense of philosophical awareness—undoubtedly brought on by the events of the day—as she took a sip of the beer some cowboy had bought her. She really believed this wedding was the culmination of something that had started when they were just kids.

The fairy-tale aspects of their shared history might have fostered legends if Bex and Will had grown up and fallen for each other, like Hadleigh and Tripp, but Will had been killed in Afghanistan and, while Bex had dated a lot, especially in college, she’d never met The One.

As for Melody and Spence, they’d had a summer fling once upon a time before she realized he wasn’t interested in permanence, and she’d been starry-eyed with dreams of a future together—a cozy house, children and all the rest. In the end, though, she’d made a complete fool of herself by blurting out a marriage proposal, one perfect night in July, with the last of the Independence Day fireworks still dribbling from the sky. And she would never forget—God knew, she’d
tried
—the expression on Spence’s face as he prepared his answer.

Instead of flashing that patented grin of his, instead of saying “yes, let’s do it,” the way Melody had expected him to, Spence had given her a figurative pat on the head and then, very gently, explained that he wasn’t ready to make that kind of commitment, and neither was she. She wasn’t even through college yet, Spence had reminded her, wounding her with kindness.

It had taken her years to recover. She took another sip of tepid beer as she grimly remembered that night.

Yes, he’d claimed, when she’d tearfully demanded whether he loved her, he
did
care for her, very much as a matter of fact. And that was one
more
reason he wasn’t going to be the one to derail her career, maybe even her whole life, before she’d had a chance to go places, figure things out, decide what she really wanted.

Before Melody’s personal universe disappeared into a black hole, she and Spence had spent virtually every spare moment together. Gradually, they’d grown closer and then closer still, until they’d finally made love, sweet and slow, under a star-spangled sky the first time, and in every private place they could find after that.

Oh, yes. Melody had loved Spencer Hogan with all that she had and all that she was.

Silly girl. She’d actually believed he loved her right back.

Until the breakup, of course. Spence had immediately consoled himself with Junie McFarlane, and Melody had moped around the house until it was time to go back to college in late August. There she was like a sleepwalker, distracted and depressed. Aware that things had to change, she’d switched her major from pre-law to fine arts, since she’d always loved shape and texture and color, and when that didn’t help, she hid out in the dorm, skipping classes and meals, rarely sleeping through the night.

Melody’s mother was beside herself with worry. After years of widowhood, she’d just remarried and was planning a move to Casper. Realizing she was causing distress to someone she loved—even knowing that she was keeping her mother from enjoying her newfound happiness—couldn’t cure the blues, apparently.

Left to her own devices, she would surely have crashed and burned.

Fortunately for her, however, Bex and Hadleigh had refused to let her self-destruct. They’d improvised an amateur intervention, the two of them, confronting Melody in the cramped little room the three of them shared all through college. Melody had balked at first, demanding that they leave her alone, but they were as stubborn as she was and simply wouldn’t give up.

They’d badgered her all one Saturday, until she would’ve agreed to practically anything just to get five minutes of peace and quiet. Knowing they’d finally cracked her armor, they’d pestered her to get out of the pajamas she’d been wearing for days on end, take a hot shower and put on her favorite outfit.