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Remembering all that in mere moments, Melody smiled to herself, there at the grubby table in the Moose Jaw Tavern, despite her aching feet and admittedly bad attitude.
The whole experience was ancient history now, she reflected, still watching Spence, still unable to stop watching him, as he made his way across the sawdust floor, pausing here and there to exchange a friendly word or a handshake with somebody or to laugh at some joke.
He approached the bar, spoke to the man behind it, but came away without a drink. Spence rarely indulged in alcohol; he’d told her once that it smoothed away the rough edges a little too well, whatever that meant.
At last, and with enormous effort, Melody finally managed to tear her eyes away from him, her face burning at the difficulty, and when she shifted her gaze in the opposite direction, it was to catch Bex grinning in that knowing way best friends have.
Melody grimaced at her.
Bex, unruffled as usual, laughed and shook her head, rising when yet another cowboy asked her to dance.
“Don’t be surprised if I’m not here when you get back,” Melody yelled over the music.
“Suit yourself,” Bex yelled back, good-natured to the end.
Melody was beginning to feel like a real wallflower, which was a stretch, considering how often she’d been invited to dance since she and Bex had arrived an hour or so before. After a few polite refusals, the invitations had stopped coming, and that had been okay with her and with her screaming feet.
She’d had, as her grandfather liked to say, all the fun she could stand.
Time to vamoose.
The waitress had been running a tab, and Melody wanted to pay her share, so she elbowed her way through to the cash register at the far end of the bar, searching her little yellow purse—part of the bridesmaids’ outfit—for her credit card.
She settled up and then limped toward the door, propped open to admit the summer breezes, and scanned the demolition derby in the parking lot for her car.
It was blocked in on all sides.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered, faced with two equally unappealing choices—go back inside the Moose Jaw, hunt down the bar owner and convince him to find the patrons responsible for the dilemma and get them to move their vehicles—or she could walk home.
“Is there a problem?” The voice, all too familiar, took her off guard.
She turned her head and, sure enough, Spence was standing there, watching her, his face in shadow and his expression, therefore, unreadable. Well, not completely. Was that a grin just barely tugging at one corner of his mouth?
“Yes,” Melody said stiffly. “There is a problem.” She sucked in a breath and continued in a rush of words. “In fact, there are several problems. First of all, I want to go home, and I can’t because my car is literally surrounded. Furthermore, my feet are killing me—”
Melody put on the brakes, stopped talking.
Spence, frowning as he listened, surveyed the lot full of rigs that might have been parked by half-trained baboons, and sighed. She was unprepared for the impact of his blue eyes when he looked back at her face then slid a leisurely glance down the length of her body to her shoes, which weren’t suitable for walking through gravel, let alone making the long hike home. The grin he’d probably been trying to suppress broke loose at last.
“I don’t know how you can walk in those things,” he remarked. “And, no offense, but that dress makes you look like an inverted daffodil. A wilted one. I’ll bet it’s stylish or something, but I’m not positive yellow is your color. The only good point is that it shows off one leg. I like that. You have nice legs.”
Melody rolled her eyes then snapped, “Well, thanks a whole heap for nothing.”
“Just my opinion,” Spence said. “I wasn’t kidding about the leg part.”
“I don’t remember asking for your opinion of my dress or my shoes or my legs,” she said, more than cranky now. When would this damnable night be over?
Spence’s response was a low chuckle, and the sound was so thoroughly masculine it made her heart pound. “Come to think of it,” he drawled, “you didn’t.” He paused, and in an instant, his expression changed. He seemed tired, no longer amused. “I’m headed for home myself, and I’d be glad to drop you off at your place.” A beat of silence. “Your car will be all right here till morning, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
By then, Melody’s heart had shinnied up into the back of her throat, but she managed to croak out a reply, anyway. “I don’t think—I wouldn’t—I mean—”
Spence’s mouth twitched again, and his eyes twinkled as he watched her.
Melody wanted to punch him.
She also wanted, perversely, to kiss him.
She wanted to...
Damn it all to hell, she didn’t know what she wanted.
Typically, Spence didn’t ask. Instead, without any warning at all, he swept Melody up into his arms and proceeded to carry her across the parking lot, his strides purposeful.
“What,” Melody gasped, after a considerable delay and with significant effort, “are you doing?”
“That ought to be obvious,” Spence replied reasonably. “I’m hauling you to my truck so I can drive you home. It’s not as if you could cover much ground under your own power—not in those ridiculous shoes, anyhow.”
“Hauling me?”
He nodded matter-of-factly. “You look thin enough, but I’d say you’re on the hefty side. I’ve lugged around calves that weighed less.”
Melody seethed, stung, even as something primitive and hungry unfurled inside her. “That was a terriblething to say!” she protested. “Hefty?”
They’d reached Spence’s truck, and he set her on the passenger-side running board, holding her in place with one hand while he extracted his keys from the pocket of his jeans. After easing her to one side, he opened the door and gestured for her to get in.
“Sorry,” he finally said, without conviction. When she didn’t move, he just put her in the truck’s cab.
Melody’s backside landed hard on the seat, and she was too stunned by his audacity to say another word. Or to climb right out of the truck.
Spence paused to consider some passing thought, rubbing his chin as he apparently pondered. His beard was already coming in, Melody noticed, oddly distracted.
“I guess I can be fairly tactless,” he conceded. “Hefty might have been the wrong word. But I did apologize, didn’t I?”
Melody found some remnant of her voice, enough to call him a name.
Spence shook his head in apparent amazement, but Melody knew that lethal grin of his was lurking just out of sight and might reappear at any moment, a dazzling flash that would leave her temporarily blinded.
“I should’ve known better than to try and do you a favor,” he said with a long-suffering sigh. Before Melody could react, he added a brusque, “Fasten your seat belt.” With that, he slammed the door, came around to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel.
If she hadn’t been fresh out of steam and in no mood to cripple herself for life by trying to walk home in the heels from hell, she would’ve told Spence Hogan what he could do with his favor. After that, she would have pushed the door open again and left him sitting there in his gas-guzzling phallic symbol of a truck to think what he liked.
It was a nice fantasy.
Melody folded her arms and fumed until they were out of the parking lot and on the highway. Then—she just couldn’t help it—she muttered, “You started it.”
Spence threw back his head and gave a shout of laughter.
“Well, you did,” Melody insisted. Why couldn’t she shut up, leave well enough alone? After all, her house was less than five minutes away. Surely she could have held her tongue that long.
But no.
Grinning, Spence turned to look at her. “What’s so funny?” Melody asked.
“You,” he answered succinctly. “It’s really true what they say.”
“Which is?”
“Some things never change. Neither do some people.”
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e61f1614-ada2-5c3a-8f28-289d456b3b98)
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?
