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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, beforethat—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 (#ulink_e54145c5-eb25-525f-a491-41f3a68e84e4)
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 LeftMy 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.
She had the key—the only key—in her hand.
So how...?
Spence.
Was the chief of police supposed to hotwire a car? Melody stood there for a few minutes, tapping a sore foot, and came to the conclusion that if anyone could get away with it, he could. Okay, great, now she double-owed him.
As she pulled out of the driveway, it occurred to her that she was wearing not only her slipper shoes, but also a worn T-shirt that said Wyoming Will Rock Your Tetons on the front, and baggy sweatpants were loosely held up by a drawstring. Glamour wasn’t on the agenda today.
Fine. She planned to state her business and go. Who cares what I look like?
After all, this was an errand, not a hot date. Still, Melody did loosen her hair and let it fall around her shoulders. No use being at a total disadvantage. Spence threw her for a wide, slow loop as it was. She didn’t know why, but she found herself recalling the time they’d gone swimming in the Yellowstone River on a camping trip early in that magical summer. He’d looked downright delicious with wet hair and absolutely nothing else on... Oh, yeah, that had been one unforgettable afternoon.
Let’s put that memory in cold storage.
Melody drove slowly toward Spencer’s property, mapping out her apology as she went. She’d say she was sorry for being grumpy, foisting the blame on her diabolical shoes. He’d act distant but nice about it all, and that would be it. Done deal. Then maybe she could actually work. Creativity was a delicate thing. When she was upset, she couldn’t concentrate. So she wasn’t doing this for Spence. She was doing it for herself.
When she finally cruised through the open gateway onto the Hogan ranch and started up the long drive, a plume of dust roiling in her wake, she scanned her surroundings, immediately registering that although Spence’s truck was parked near the barn, his horse wasn’t in the pasture, and there was no sign of his dog, either.
Perfect. She’d worked up her courage and come all this way for nothing.
Clearly, the chief of police was not at home.
Torn between mild annoyance and stark relief, Melody parked, got out of the car and stood, hands on her hips, breathing in the grass-scented country air and taking in the scenery while she weighed her options.
The Grand Tetons loomed in the near distance, jagged and snow-capped.
She shifted her focus to the house. Nothing fancy, but Spence wasn’t ever going to be fancy, and no one would expect that. The low-slung structure was functional and comfortably spacious, and it suited a cowboy lawman’s lifestyle. There was a wide front porch, shaded by a sloping roof, outfitted with several wooden rocking chairs and a small table. The barn was weathered but looked like it had a new roof, and the corral was clear of any weeds, with a solid rail fence and a trough at one end.
The house and yard could have used a woman’s touch, she thought—a few flower beds, maybe a window box or two, some cheery curtains at the windows.
But Spence was a bachelor, sharing the ranch with the horse and the dog, and Melody supposed the set-up was pretty much perfect for a simple man. Only Spence wasn’t simple at all; he was darned complicated, vexing as hell, and that mistake she’d made years ago of thinking she understood him—it had really bitten her in the posterior.
Um, better put that memory on ice, too, sweetheart.
Melody began to feel fidgety. She really needed to work. It wasn’t just therapeutic on a bazillion levels, it was also her livelihood, and, therefore, the only reason she was here at all. She wanted to get that apology out of the way so she could concentrate again...
Maybe she ought to cut her losses and run, get out while the getting was good. She could always send Spence an email, dash off a breezy “sorry about that” and move on with her life.
Furthermore, she could do without the drama, she told herself. Things had been running pretty smoothly but now, all of a sudden, Spence was an issue. Again.
All he did was give you a ride home, she reminded herself silently. Lighten up.
Inspiration struck. She’d leave him a note. That would soothe her conscience, put paid to the whole matter, once and for all.
Problem solved. Resolutely, Melody climbed the steps and just in case she’d missed her guess and Spence was at home, after all, she knocked on the door. No dog and no horse almost certainly meant no Spence, but with the way her luck had been going lately, she might catch him with his pants off or something.
An intriguing thought.
She rapped firmly at the door. Waited.
No answer.
