towns in general and Mustang Creek in particular. There, folks didn’t hesitate to get involved when there was a ruckus, the way they might in a big city. No, sir. These were country people; the men were cowboys and farmers, carpenters and electricians, truck drivers and garage mechanics, sure to wade in and fight if the need arose—and the women, when sufficiently riled, could be fierce, with or without their men to back them up, alone or running in a pack.
This time, though, they’d all stood by and watched, the whole bunch of them, male and female, while Hadleigh was being, as she’d put it, “abducted, damn it!”
After all, the collective reasoning went, it wasn’t as if Tripp was some stranger with dubious intentions. Like the indignant bride slung over his shoulder, he was one of their own, a hard worker, decent to the core—even if he had been a little wild in his youth and not much of a churchgoer.
He’d served his country, honorably and in a time of war, too, when the stakes were high. In places like Mustang Creek, things like that mattered.
Oakley, on the other hand, hometown boy though he was and from a prominent family into the bargain, barely registered a blip on the public-opinion meter, one way or the other. Still more kid than man, he’d never exhibited signs of even modest ambition, partied all through college and, most damning of all, forged himself a reputation for always taking the easy route.
He wasn’t hated, but he wasn’t liked, either.
When the locals thought about Oakley at all, it was usually to wonder what in creation the Stevens girl, an otherwise intelligent and exceptionally pretty one at that, saw in the guy. She was nice, in addition to her other favorable qualities and, in the town’s opinion, could’ve had just about any eligible man she took a liking to.
At that point in his mental wanderings, Junie snapped Spence back to the here and now with a soft, wistful “Isn’t it romantic? How Tripp and Hadleigh finally ended up together, even after everything that happened way back when?”
Spence adjusted his hat, frowning. “Romantic?” Just hearing the word, let alone saying it aloud, made him a little nervous, although he wouldn’t have admitted as much. Sure, okay, he was glad for the newlyweds—Tripp and Hadleigh wanted to spend the rest of their lives together, and they were obviously meant for each other. They’d traveled separate trails, long and lonely ones mostly, before their paths finally crossed again and, after some fuss and fury, decided to buckle down and forge the kind of relationship that can ride out practically anything.
And if anybody, anywhere, deserved happily-ever-after, it was those two.
Still, as far as Spence was concerned, Tripp and Hadleigh were the exception, not the rule. He felt what he always did when a buddy got married—a certain bittersweet relief that he hadn’t been the groom, standing up in front of God 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
