The Marriage Charm. Linda Miller Lael

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.

      After that, Hadleigh and Bex had dragged Melody out of the dorm and off campus, winding up at the nearest mall, in one of those snip-and-dash salons, where a very gay guy with a pink Mohawk and a disturbing number of body piercings ordered her into a chair and proceeded to trim and fluff and spray her unkempt hair until she looked almost like her old self again.

      Miraculous as it seemed, that was only the beginning of the Save Melody from Herself campaign.

      Next, Hadleigh and Bex had declared that they were starving, and all three of them trooped over to the food court, with its plethora of unhealthy dining choices, and agreed, after some discussion, to share orders of yakisoba, chicken teriyaki and egg rolls.

      Then, since the multiscreen theater was right there, and they’d all been fortified by a hot meal, they decided to take in a movie or two.

      In the end, the total was three—two chick flicks and an apocalyptic action film.

      The next day, she’d gone back to class, and for weeks afterward, Bex and Hadleigh had helped her catch up on the work she’d let slide.

      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