Clayton's Made-Over Mrs.

When had her voice become sultry? And when, exactly, had he lost his mind? He ran a hand through his hair and pulled himself together. Good God, this was Mel McCully. What in the world was he thinking? Clenching his teeth, he sputtered, “What difference does it make if I like it? The question you should be asking yourself is whether or not you want to have the reputation of a floozy.”

She plunked her hands on her hips and raised her chin the way she’d been doing all her life. “Clayt Carson, you couldn’t say something nice if your life depended on it.”

Clayt’s vision cleared. And then he did something he hadn’t done since he’d caught sight of Mel during the wedding ceremony hours ago. He grinned. This was more like it. This Mel he could handle.

“Would you mind telling me why you cut your hair and why you’re wearing makeup?” he asked, the epitome of superior rationality.

“I took Granddad’s advice,” she said.

“Cletus had something to do with this?”

Try as he might, Clayt couldn’t help noticing the way the light shimmered over her hair when she nodded. She tossed the slip to the sofa and turned, her skirt brushing his pant leg. He had a hard time swallowing.

From the other side of the room, she said, “He says a person catches more bees with honey.”

“Since when have you been interested in catching bees?”

He didn’t like the way she shrugged, or the way she turned, or the way he was reacting to the sight of either of those things. “Not bees, Clayt. I’m trying to draw a man.”

“Rory O’Grady?”

“Pu-lease.”

Clayt admitted that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the turn his hormones had taken, but he was enjoying the smug feeling of satisfaction coursing through him right now. Mel had gone to a lot of trouble to impress somebody, and it hadn’t been Rory O’Grady. Hot dang, he hadn’t lost his touch after all. Not that he’d ever really doubted it.

Mel was meandering on the other side of the room, letting her hand trail over the top of the television, along a windowsill and onto a picture frame of her parents, taken a long time ago. Doing his best to hold back a grin, he said, “So you’ve done all this to try to impress a man other than Rory.”

She shrugged again and answered without turning around. “I’m not getting any younger, you know.”

“Then you see marriage in your future?”

She nodded, and Clayt was almost glad she wasn’t looking, because he couldn’t keep the hundred-watt grin off his face no matter how hard he tried. “Then why don’t you just end this stupid charade and marry me once and for all?”

“What?”

When she turned this time, his mouth went dry for an entirely different reason. “Look, Mel, that didn’t sound quite the way I intended.”

Mel’s hair may have been shorter, and she might have been wearing a dress he hadn’t seen until today, but he recognized the daggers shooting from her eyes, and nobody else could twist their upper lip in such a snide way or sputter quite so vehemently.

“Stupid charade? You think this was all for your pathetic benefit? And people say Rory’s got a big head. I said I wanted a man, Clayt. I didn’t say I wanted you. I wouldn’t marry an arrogant, muddleheaded ignoramus like you if you were the last man on earth.”

He knew she couldn’t possibly reach him from the other side of the room, but Clayt took a step backward anyway. He bit back a curse and sputtered, “I don’t know why I bothered.”

“Don’t bother,” she taunted as he strode to the door. “And the next time you get the urge to fondle women’s lingerie, I suggest you buy your own!”

Fondle women’s lingerie? He hadn’t been fondling…

She slammed the door so hard Clayt doubted his ears would ever be the same. He took to the steps like a man being chased by a demon. By the time he reached the bottom, he figured that was a pretty good description of the hothead upstairs. He was still sputtering when he stomped into the alley and headed for his truck.

Confounded, contrary, ill-tempered, cantankerous woman.

Mel McCully hadn’t changed. She hadn’t changed at all.

“I’ve changed, haven’t I, Granddad?” Mel asked, handing a wet plate to Cletus.

“Oh, I s’pose there have been a few…”

Up to her elbows in soapy water, Mel pushed her hair away from her cheek with her shoulder and forged ahead in the middle of her grandfather’s reply. “I admit that I miss the convenience of my braid, but I don’t miss its weight or the way it looked. And what’s wrong with wearing a pretty dress once in my life? And there isn’t any law against using a little lipstick and mascara.”

Accustomed as he was to these talk sessions, when Mel didn’t let him get a word in edgewise, Cletus simply nodded. Scrubbing another plate, Mel said, “Clayt thinks he knows who I am. He thinks he can barge into my place and ask me what I’m trying to prove. If he didn’t have such a thick skull he’d know I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m trying to show him something.”

“He got your dander up, did he?” Cletus asked.

Mel shrugged one shoulder as she thought about a few of the things she’d said the night before last. For heaven’s sake, she’d practically called Clayt a pervert. Handing her grandfather another plate, she said, “I might have uttered a word or two I shouldn’t have.”

Pursing his thin lips, Cletus said, “Oh-oh. What did you say?”

“Well, I seem to recall mentioning that I wouldn’t marry an arrogant, muddleheaded ignoramus like him if he were the last man on earth.”

Cletus shook his old head. “I thought you were going to hold your temper where Clayt’s concerned from now on.”

Mel leaned on the old sink, suddenly tired. “It could take me the rest of my life to learn to hold on to my temper where Clayt is concerned. I wanted him to notice me, and I ended up making him mad just like I always do. I’m a pathetic, hopeless spinster who will be thirty in a few months. At this rate he’ll never notice me.”