Her eyes scanned the photographs lining the walls for happier memories. Her favorite was the one in which she wore a frilly prom dress looking far too much like a Southern belle to suit her tastes. The smile she wore was broad and genuine and filled with expectations of wondrous things to come. It was hard to remember a time when her smile wasn’t tight and forced.
She almost didn’t recognize the fresh-faced young man beaming beside her in his rented tuxedo. Gangly at twenty, Buck had not yet grown into his features. The look of unguarded affection etched upon that youthful face was so poignant that it caused a tiny whimper of pain to escape from some place deep inside Melodie.
She grabbed a pillow from the bed and hugged it tightly, willing herself not to cry. Stiff from the long drive, weary bones protested against being curled into a fetal ball. Her shoulders bunched into twin knots of tension.
How could she have been so careless with such a precious gift of love? Like forgotten friends gathered together for an unexpected reunion, memories crowded into the small room. A smile tugged at Melodie’s heart as she recalled that long-ago prom.
It had taken some doing to convince Buck to go as her date. To him she had always been Little Bit, his employer’s pesky kid. When she first approached him about the prom, Buck frankly told her that he hadn’t much interest in going to such fancy doings when he had been in high school himself. In his early twenties, such a silly rite of passage held even less appeal for him.
But when Melodie confided red-faced that no one had asked her, his resistance softened. An outsider all of his life, Buck could certainly understand how she wouldn’t want to go stag to her senior prom. He also knew that it would break her mother’s heart not to see her only daughter all gussied up in that frothy pink formal she had been secretly sewing for the last month.
Buck would have just as soon cut off a hand as to see Grace Fremont hurt.
In truth, Melodie had known that Buck agreed to go to the prom with her more out of concern for her mother than for her. She never bothered telling him that she had, in fact, turned down two other young men who had sought her for their prom dates. Everything changed between them, however, when she came out of her room wearing a dress that showed off her budding curves, her flaxen hair swept up in a fashion that made her look older than her sixteen years. She watched a change come over Buck.
Little Bit was no more. In her place had stood a young woman who had every intention of making this man fall in love with her.
“Your boutonniere is outside,” she’d told him shyly after he’d pinned a corsage to her dress. She hoped he wouldn’t be embarrassed by such a simple token of her affection.
After Grace had taken her quota of photographs, Melodie had drawn Buck out of the house and into her mother’s garden. While she selected a perfect white rosebud from her mother’s prized blooms, she made him stand beneath the trellised archway that she hoped would someday be the focal point of their wedding. Beneath a rising moon and surrounded by the fragrant blossoms of a late spring, Melodie pinned the boutonniere to Buck’s lapel. So strong and broad and appealing was his chest that she could not resist running her hands across its width.
“Kiss me,” she had implored in a whisper so soft she wasn’t sure he’d even heard it.
His arms reached around her lithe, young body and drew her near. Slowly he’d lowered his mouth to hers to brush her lips with a tender kiss.
Brushing blond tendrils from her glowing face, Buck had admitted his own vulnerability. “If you ever hope to get to that prom, we’d better get going. I’d hate to do anything to betray your mother’s trust.”
The knowledge that Melodie could exercise womanly powers over a creature so much bigger and stronger than she was heady stuff indeed.
Feeling like a real-life Cinderella, she claimed all of Buck’s dances that magical evening as both reveled in the knowledge that before the sun set on the next day, everyone in town would know that they were a serious couple.
Nothing could have made Grace happier.
That summer after Melodie graduated and turned eighteen was truly enchanted. That was the summer they frolicked like colts and took every opportunity to steal kisses under a warm and gentle sun. That was the summer Melodie was crowned rodeo queen in the proud tradition of her mother and her grandmother before her. That was the summer Buck made up his mind to propose—but not before he could offer Melodie a lifestyle he felt she deserved. He put every dime he earned towards a ring at the local jeweler’s and simultaneously made plans to build her a dream home with his own capable hands.
Buck had restrained his masculine desires, respecting the tenets of the religion Grace had worked so hard to instill in them both and vowing to wait until he could legally make her his bride.
Melodie punched the pillow she was holding and, in the fading light of her mother’s bedroom, considered the aged water stains on the ceiling. How frustrated she had been that summer! In her mind she was all but throwing herself at Buck. Not coquettish by nature, she had employed every feminine wile in her limited power to let him know how desperately she wanted him. To no avail.
Rolling onto her stomach, Melodie rebuked herself for indulging in such sweet torture. Clinging to such tender memories all the while shaking her fist at the universe and reminiscing over what should have been served no useful purpose. No amount of wishful thinking was going to change history. She was here to make her amends with the past, to accept her responsibility in shaping it and to face the new day as her mother always had—bravely.
Dawn poked its rosy fingers through yellowed lace curtains and gently awakened Melodie to a new day. Eyes sticky with sleep, she was at first disoriented by her surroundings. It took a moment for her to discern that she had fallen asleep fully dressed upon her mother’s bed and that somebody had thoughtfully covered her with a blanket. Undoubtedly the same somebody who had brought her luggage in from her vehicle and deposited them at the foot of the bed.
How curious it was to wake up to the smell of bacon and eggs! And how odd that it made her feel suddenly queasy. During the course of her married life, if Melodie failed to rise to the challenge of such simple chores, she simply went without eating. Randall had been hard-pressed to prepare anything more complicated than a bowl of cold cereal for himself. Melodie felt a twinge of guilt at the uncharitable thought. The poor man was dead. That she felt more relief than remorse at his passing was surely sinful in itself.
As if merely wishing for release from the bonds of his possessive love had somehow been the cause of his death.
Rubbing her eyes in hopes of erasing such irrational thoughts, Melodie dragged herself out of bed, ran a brush halfheartedly through her hair and decided that her rumpled state would simply have to do. She hadn’t come home to compete in a beauty pageant. Besides, she’d wager Buck wouldn’t give her a second glance if she walked into the kitchen wearing a diamond tiara. If ever there had been any doubt in her mind that he might still be yearning for her after all this time, his reaction to her yesterday set the record straight once and for all.
The old house wasn’t pretentious enough to boast a dining room. Melodie opened the door of her mother’s bedroom and walked the short distance to the kitchen where Buck greeted her with a civil, “Good morning.”
She responded in kind, minus the good.
My, how that man could fill a room with his mere presence. Instinctively her hand went to her hair, making Melodie feel six shades a fool for even caring what he thought of how she looked.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked, handing her a plateful of steaming food.
Crooking an eyebrow at the polite inquiry, Melodie studied her scrambled eggs for any trace of arsenic.
“Fine,” she answered sliding into her place at the table. “Thank you for breakfast. And for bringing in my