The Marriage Charm. Linda Miller Lael

and everybody, vowing to hang in there, for better or for worse and all the rest of it.

      In the event that things wound up on the “for better” side of the equation, great. Bring on the house with the picket fence, the regular sex and the crop of kids that usually followed.

      But what if “for worse” was the name of the game? And let’s face it, the statistics definitely indicated that the odds of success were somewhere around 50/50. For Spence’s money, a man might as well make advance reservations at the Heartbreak Hotel—at least that way, he’d have someplace to go when the glow wore off and the crap hit the fan.

      Room for one, please, and no definite checkout date.

      He liked women and made no bones about it, but his reputation had gotten out of control because he didn’t typically stick around after a date or two. There were reasons—one reason, actually, and she had a name—but whose business was that, anyway?

      Clearly no optimist when it came to matters of the heart, Spence didn’t make commitments if he could avoid it. He was considered a ladies’ man, even a womanizer, and if that perception wasn’t entirely accurate, so be it. Nobody needed to know about the side of himself he went to great lengths to hide—or that he was essentially incapable of breaking a promise, no matter how stupid that promise might be farther down the road. Come hell or high water, he wouldn’t—couldn’t—be the one to call it quits.

      His own father had bailed on the family early on, when things got rocky, and the last thing Spence wanted was to follow in the old man’s footsteps. He couldn’t help sharing Judd Hogan’s DNA, obviously, but the rest of it was a matter of choice.

      If the woman he’d married ever wanted a divorce, he wouldn’t try to stop her, wouldn’t harass her or anything like that. But he knew this much about himself: he’d be half again as stubborn to make the first move. Not only that, but he’d know, deep down, that forcing somebody’s hand was bound to leave him feeling like a coward.

      He was almost grateful when Junie brought him up short again. She touched his arm, and there was an impish sparkle in her eyes and a got-your-number slant to her mouth.

      “What?” Spence asked, looking and sounding more irritated than he really felt and taking care to keep his voice down. On the other side of the room, Estes and Radner sat with their thick noggins bent over their keyboards, fingers tapping industriously away. Spence figured they were probably playing shoot-’em-up video games or updating their profiles on some social-media website rather than checking law-enforcement sites for all-points bulletins and other information of interest to dedicated cops everywhere, as they no doubt wanted him to believe.

      Neither scenario, of course, meant their ears weren’t pitched in his and Junie’s direction, in case a tidbit of gossip drifted their way, something they could take home to their young and talkative wives. Although there was no truth to the rumor that he and Junie had been having an on-again, off-again love affair for years, it was out there and circulating, just the same.

      Junie’s smile turned downright mischievous. They’d been friends, the two of them, long before they’d become coworkers, and she could read him like a road sign. She liked to remind him of this often.

      They’d buddied up, he and Junie, way back when Spence’s mother had dumped him on her sister-in-law’s doorstep when he was nine, loudly declaring that enough was enough, by God, and she was through being a parent, through being the responsible one, through making all the decisions and all the sacrifices. Done, kaput, over it, fed up, finished.

      Kathy Hogan was never the same after Spence’s dad ditched her for another woman—younger and thinner, of course—though the truth was, she hadn’t exactly been the nurturing type even before the divorce. To her credit, Kathy had made a few half-hearted attempts at parenting after that initial drop-off at his aunt Libby’s place, reappearing periodically to gather up her young son and haul him, over Libby’s protests and his own, “home” to Virginia. But she’d never really gotten the hang of mothering, for all her fretful efforts, and sooner rather than later, Spence always ended up back in Mustang Creek.

      When Judd and the new wife were killed in a boating accident three years after they got married, something in Spence’s mom had evidently died right along with them. At Libby’s insistence, she’d stopped hauling him from one place to another, the only bright spot in an otherwise dark time.

      With a sigh, he pushed away the memories of that initial parting, although he knew they’d be back, soon and with a vengeance. Just when he thought he had it handled, squared it all away in his mind, the whole sad scenario would ambush him again.

      If it hadn’t been for Libby, his father’s oldest sister, and for Junie, who’d lived down the block and appointed herself Spence’s new best friend, he might have run off in his teens. It wasn’t like it hadn’t crossed his mind.

      End result: he didn’t have a whole lot of faith in marriage. He liked women, no question, but maybe his trust in them was more than a little compromised.

       Ya think, Einstein?

      He set his jaw briefly before meeting Junie’s silent challenge with a glare. “I’m out of here,” he told her gruffly. “If you need me—do your best not to—I’ll be over at the Moose Jaw. After that I plan to go straight home, do the chores, rustle up some grub and then sleep until I damn well feel like waking up.” He turned, adjusting his hat again as he moved, and stopped long enough to fling a narrow-eyed glance at the pair of deputies. “There’s a town out there,” he reminded them, indicating its presence with a motion of one hand. “If you two can work a little patrol time into your busy schedules, I would appreciate the effort and so would the taxpayers. We’ve had those robberies lately. I think some visibility would not hurt this department.”

      Instantly flustered, Radner and Estes clattered and jingled into action, grabbing keys and gear and beating feet for the exit. Chorusing a hurried “yes, sir,” they nearly collided with each other in the rush to get out there and protect truth, justice and the American way.

      Presto, they were invisible, which was how Spence preferred them to be, at least most of the time.

      “You enjoy watching those poor guys scramble like a pair of idiots,” Junie observed, amused, from her post behind the desk.

      Spence smiled, looked back at his friend. “Yeah,” he agreed affably. “I do. Guess all this power goes to my head.” A pause. “See you around.”

      Junie’s stock response was not if I see you first, but the phone rang just then, so her reply was a distracted, “See you,” instead, followed by a business-like, “Mustang Creek Police Department. How can I help you?”

      Spence didn’t wait for a rundown, since anything he really needed to know could be relayed to him in nanoseconds via his cell phone or the state-of-the-art communications system wired into his truck. Anyhow, genuine emergencies were blessedly rare in this neck of the woods; most incoming calls had to do with stranded cats, scary noises coming from an attic or a basement, routine fender benders, inconsiderate neighbors blocking somebody else’s driveway or playing their music too loudly, sometimes parents fretting about teenagers who should’ve been home hours before and weren’t. The duty officers ought to be up to handling any of the normal problems.

      But the robberies had him mightily bothered. They were definitely not business as usual in this quiet town. It disturbed him that the thieves seemed to know exactly where to go. When he reached the police station parking lot, said deputies were already pulling out in their spiffy city-owned SUVs, one headed east, one west.

      Spence grinned. He’d handpicked both Radner and Estes from a whole passel of fresh-from-the-academy applicants, six months before, when the mayor and the town council increased his budget. They were good cops, he reflected, arriving at his blue extended-cab pickup, and they’d be even better ones in time, when they’d logged in more hours on the job. They certainly had potential.

      He got into his truck, flipped on the headlights, started the engine, glanced ruefully at the glowing