The Marriage Charm. Linda Miller Lael

side. I’ve lugged around calves that weighed less.”

      Melody seethed, stung, even as something primitive and hungry unfurled inside her. “That was a terrible thing 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

      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