The Marriage Charm. Linda Miller Lael

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, before that—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

      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 Left My 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