The Marriage Charm (Bliss County 2) (30 page)

She looked endearingly startled. “Yes, you have.”

“Name the date.”

“Like I carry around a book to note those things down? Spencer Hogan, you know I’ve told you I love you.”

That was progress.

He crowded her against the counter, his much taller body pressed against hers. This was one argument he wasn’t going to lose. That decision nine years ago had been right—but it had cost him. “No, I don’t think you have. When you wanted to elope, you suggested we go off and get married. Love was left out of it.”

She put her hands on his chest and shoved. “Then why didn’t
you
bring it up?”

He refused to budge, and his mouth brushed hers. “Maybe because I loved you so much, I didn’t want you to settle for a man you didn’t love completely. Even if that man was me.”

Her eyes instantly clouded with tears. “What?”

“Just kiss me. My answer is yes. I want to marry you.”

She buried her face in his chest. “Keep trying. You almost have it.”

He ran his fingers through her silky hair. “I love you.”

“There you go. I love you, too.”

“I’m going to be so distracted this evening, I’ll burn our steaks.”

“I’ll supervise. Besides, there’s always peanut butter and jelly.”

He laughed.

“Tell me about the sword, and I’ll give you twice-baked potatoes and a spinach salad with a dressing you won’t believe.”

“That sounds like quite the deal. Done.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I
T WAS AN
unusual kind of day.

Mrs. Arbuckle, wearing a pressed jacket and tweed skirt, arrived on her doorstep before seven o’clock, with two cups of takeout gourmet coffee.

She’d taken the liberty of adding vanilla creamer to the coffee because she liked it that way, and breezed in as if Melody wasn’t in her pajamas with her hair bunched up on one side.

“Good morning. Is this too early?”

At a loss for words, Melody stepped aside. “No...no, of course not. I was practically up.”

Harley bounded out of the bedroom; all Mrs. A. had to do was lift an aristocratic eyebrow and he calmed right down and sat obediently. No words needed.

Mrs. A. should run a charm school of intimidating females, Melody decided as she followed her into the kitchen.

“You must meet my Roscoe sometime, young man,” she told Harley. “I left him at home, I’m sorry to say.”

Melody murmured something vague.

Her visitor held a bag aloft. “I brought blueberry Danishes. My favorite.”

“Um, thank you.” She was glad she’d taken the time the night before to tidy the kitchen. Spence had kept nudging her toward the bedroom, but she’d refused to leave dishes in the sink; in the end, he’d pitched in.

It was her fervent hope that he wouldn’t wander out in his boxers some time during this conversation she was apparently destined to have, vanilla creamer and all.

“My precipitous arrival has a purpose.” Mrs. A. slipped a hand into her pocket. “Here. This is perfect for the ring you’re making for me. It was meant for you, anyway.”

Spence had told her the night before that he’d planned on giving her the ring of her dreams, and Mrs. A. had agreed to help. She hadn’t mentioned that she already knew, thanks to her loyal friend, Hadleigh.

She opened the box, and there sat the Pierce diamond nestled in white velvet. Her pulse skipped up a couple of notches. “Where did you find this?”

“Well...” Mrs. Arbuckle looked smug and took a sip from her coffee cup and confided, “I didn’t find it. I stole it back.”

If the sky had turned green and the grass blue, she couldn’t have been more surprised. Although, when Melody thought about it, she’d always known that Lettie Arbuckle was a force to be reckoned with.

“You—what? How—”

“Who do you think was approached to buy it? One of my friends, of course. As soon as I found out about the robbery, I sent emails to everyone I know, asking them to contact me if anyone offered them a ring of any kind. A very elegant young woman calling herself Margot—she clearly likes names starting with “M”—approached my friend with an offer, although the provenance was forged. They arranged a meeting to look at it. My friend turned it down, and after that, I followed this other person back to Mustang Creek. I watched through the window of her—fortunately downstairs—apartment and saw her put the ring in a drawer. After she left, my driver opened her door for me. You see, he once had a less than respectable past and therefore some remarkably valuable skills.”

Picturing Mrs. A. breaking into someone’s house was beyond the realm of imagination. And yet the redoubtable older woman seemed to expect praise.

Tongue-tied, Melody managed to murmur, “That was...clever.”

“I thought so.” Mrs. Arbuckle actually beamed, if that was possible. “And you can be sure I’ve passed Marilyn’s address on to Spencer, so he has everything under control. Now, on to a more pleasant subject. I understand the trail ride was a great success.”

“It was?” Melody took a hearty gulp from her cup. Maybe she was still asleep, and this was all a dream.

“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Arbuckle nodded. “I want to sponsor it next year.”

Next year?
There
was a happy thought. “Another trail ride for girls?”

“I might even come along.”

Oh...dear.

While she had a genuine fondness for the woman sitting across from her, Melody didn’t find this suggestion appealing. In fact, the very idea of another trip like the one she hadn’t yet recovered from made her shudder.

“And I’m very interested in your wedding. Do you need help planning it?”

That was a loaded question.

“I, er, well...”

“Think about it, my dear. I’m very good at that sort of thing, if I do say so myself. Now, I must be running along, but we’ll speak soon.”

Melody was sitting there alone, except for all three cats and Harley, devouring a Danish when Spence wandered out of bed half an hour later, his hair standing straight up. Somehow he managed to pull it off. She was sure she’d never looked that gorgeous first thing in the morning.

“I smell coffee.”

“There’s vanilla creamer in it.”

“Fine.”

Melody leveled a look his way. “The last time I asked, you weren’t very cooperative, but can we elope, please?”

“Pardon me?”

“I have a good reason for asking.”

He paused. “Before coffee?”

She smothered a laugh. “No, but if you refuse me this time, Mrs. A. is going to plan the whole wedding. Also...I know you’re much more familiar with the law than I am, so can she get in trouble for this?”

When she extended the diamond ring, he finally woke up completely. His fingers raked his hair into a new degree of dishevelment as he stared at it. “Is that what I think it is?”

“The Pierce diamond. It sure is.”

“Where the hell...I mean, that’s
evidence
.”

“But a very nice gesture.”

Melody offered him her cup in sympathy. He took it and downed the contents, although it had to be lukewarm at best. “Where’d she find it?” he demanded.

“No idea. I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t
ask
.” He tossed the paper cup in the trash can.

She shook her head. “Nope. No way. Now, this elopement thing—are we doing it, or should we let Mrs. A. have at it when it comes to the wedding?”

He shuddered and dropped into a chair. “No, no. We’re going to Costa Rica or someplace suitably far away. The Gobi Desert. Mars. Seriously, how did she find it?”

“Like I said, I truly have no idea.”

“You truly didn’t ask.”

“All I can tell you is that she said she ‘stole it back.’ Is it stealing when you take something that was stolen from you?”

He looked stymied. “I think I’d let a judge decide that one.”

She got up to make him more coffee of the everyday variety. “Good luck to anyone who takes on Mrs. A. So, what did your mother’s card say?”

At the end of the trail ride, when they were riding side by side for a few minutes, Jim had told her he’d recommended that Spence just open it. If he was going to take any advice, it would be from Jim.

The look on his face told her he’d done it. She knew how momentous that was, what an important moment it had to be. A potentially life-changing moment, in fact. “Spence?”

“It’s probably easier to let you read it.”

He got up and went into the bedroom and came back just as the coffee was sputtering into the carafe. The image on the outside of the card—the kind of card you could buy at any drugstore—was a single flower.

“It’s nothing,” he said as she opened it.

It wasn’t nothing.

Three words, but not the ones everyone wanted to hear. It didn’t say
I love you
.

But it did say
I’m so sorry
.

He poured a cup of coffee. “I don’t know her well enough to believe her, so does it matter? Most people offer up regrets to make themselves feel better. Fine. She’s sorry. Good for her.”

There was a hint of that abandoned nine-year-old boy in there, despite the sexy morning stubble on his jaw. Despite the way he dwarfed the chair he was sprawled in so carelessly.

She wasn’t sure how far she should press the issue. She loved him, so it would be inaccurate to say it wasn’t her business, but in the end how he chose to handle it was up to him. She just pointed out, “There’s a phone number.”

He said over the rim of his cup, “Nice of her to put the ball in my court, isn’t it? Please tell me there’s another of those Danishes.”

Subject closed. She got up and retrieved the box and pushed it toward him. “If you hadn’t come out here at such a strategic time, I was going to hide it, but now I suppose I have to share.”

He took a man-sized piece and frowned at Harley. “Wipe that hopeful look off your face, mutt. You know the rules. There’s people food and there’s dog food.”

Melody wasn’t about to confess that she might have given him the tiniest nibble. To deflect any pastry questions, she asked, “So Mrs. A. said you had the robbery situation under control. What does that mean?”

“Thanks to you going to Junie, and Junie talking to her cousin, we caught Mary Allen, aka Marilyn Artois, at the post office picking up her mail, just like the law-abiding citizen she isn’t. How Mrs. A. figured out her address is beyond me, but several law-enforcement agencies are working on arresting her accomplices. Jim used that sword, the one I told you about last night, as bait. Then he set up one of those cameras on his back deck, the kind you can use to take pictures of animals prowling around your house. They’re activated by movement, so we have pictures of them actually breaking in.”

“You thought the thefts were personal.”

“Well, yes. I’m embarrassed to say that Mary—I mean Marilyn—thought she and I had more of a connection than we did. She resented my breaking up with her, and she resented you when she figured out who you were—the woman I was interested in. So to that extent, they
were
personal. The fact that you were also a jewelry maker fit perfectly with her vendetta. I found all of this out from Junie, by the way. Marilyn, uh, shared some of this with the cop who arrested her, who then shared it with Junie.”

“So that’s also why she trashed my place and yours the way she did.”

“Yup. She’s got quite the hate-on for me.”

“Why would she admit what she’d done?”

“Basically to make me look incompetent. Which she did,” he said wryly.

Melody started to defend him, but he shook his head. “Hey, it doesn’t make any difference. We got her in the end, despite the fact that her fingerprints didn’t appear in any state or federal database—that’s how good she was. I actually thought for some time that she was operating on her own.” He shrugged. “That was quite the enterprise she ran—the number of aliases she had, the accomplices, the way they built up the level of crime, from less serious ones, like stealing Ross Hayden’s trolling motor and antique tools to the Pierce diamond.”

“What a waste of ability. With those kinds of skills, she could have been the CEO of a major company.”

“She might not have moral fiber,” he agreed, “but she’s smart.”

“Is that what attracted you to her?”

“I like intelligent women, yes, but can we remember I went out with her only a few times? She wasn’t you. End of story. Same with every woman I’ve even looked at during the past nine years.”

The man had his moments. Melody said, “You can have the rest of the Danish. I find I’m in a generous mood.”

*

T
HERE WAS SOME
chagrin involved in having a crime ring broken up by everyone but the one person who was supposed to be in charge. The consolation was that other law enforcement hadn’t succeeded before now, either. Spence even had to speak at a press conference, and that didn’t make him very happy. A press conference was unprecedented, as far as he knew, in the history of Mustang Creek.

He’d much rather be on Reb at a full-out gallop, clean air in his lungs, Harley running alongside them.

And better yet, another rider with him, her blond hair blowing in the wind.

Tripp asked, “What do you think? Is she a beauty or what?”

The palomino mare had a gentle look in her eyes, and she took the carrot he produced like a well-mannered lady. “That’s an understatement.”

Melody was going to love her. His throat tightened.

“Her former owner was transferred for her job and couldn’t find property that didn’t involve boarding her somewhere. So she put her up for sale, saddle and bridle included. I have some very specific instructions on how she likes to be brushed and so forth.” Tripp gave an exasperated sigh. “Like I’d never brushed down a horse before. But I understand. The only reason I won the bid was that I told the owner about Melody before the auction. And the only reason I knew about this
horse
was Tate. He’s thinking about starting a bloodstock business. His father’s an investment banker, and if Tate can deliver a profit, his dad will front the setup costs. He’s been to every auction in this area, and he’s done a lot of research. He said this horse was worth snapping up for a special lady. Mel qualifies.”