The Marriage Pact (Hqn) (10 page)

Joe? Jeff? Joshua?

Something that started with a
J.
She couldn’t quite remember.

“Yes!” Melody crowed triumphantly, holding up a pair of skinny black jeans with—sure enough—sprays of rhinestones trailing down both legs and shimmering across the back.

“I’ve had those forever,” Hadleigh said, almost desperately. “You remember, we bought matching pairs, you and Bex and me, to wear to a rock concert. I might not even be able to zip them up.”

“Nonsense,” Melody answered. “You probably weigh what you did in high school. Which, may I say, is downright annoying?”

“Go
home,
Melody.”

“Not until you try on the outfit,” Melody said, digging in her figurative heels. “If it doesn’t fit, fine. You can go out with one of the hottest guys this town has ever produced looking like a homeless person. It’s up to you.”

Knowing she’d need all her strength to get through the burger date at Billy’s, and already half worn-out from arguing with her friend, Hadleigh took the coward’s way out, carrying the jeans and shirt to her bathroom.

She’d be vindicated in a few minutes, she told herself, because whatever Melody thought, she
had
gained weight over the years. Enough, she hoped, to take those jeans and that gaudy pink T-shirt out of the equation—permanently.

She might have slammed the bathroom door if she hadn’t been afraid the noise would startle poor Muggles, who was an innocent bystander.

The jeans still fit, it turned out. This development was irritating, but it was also somewhat gratifying.

The T-shirt was a little tight, especially around her breasts, but it was a lot more modest than Melody probably hoped it would be, not so low-cut that her belly button showed and all.

She swept out of the bathroom, modeling the outfit.

“
That’s
what I’m talking about,” Melody cried gleefully.

Hadleigh wouldn’t be jollied out of her mood. “
Now
will you go home?”

“Go home?” Melody echoed. “So you can change into baggy sweatpants and one of your brother’s flannel shirts the minute I’m gone? No possible way.”

True to her word, Melody stayed, giving Hadleigh unwanted pointers on makeup and debating whether she ought to wear her hair up or down.

Reminding her friend, ad infinitum, that she and Tripp were going to a fast-food place, not some swanky restaurant, did absolutely no good at all.

When Tripp showed up at six o’clock, according to plan, Melody was still hanging around, sitting cross-legged on the couch, shoes off, feet up, spooning yogurt into her mouth from a plastic container. She wasn’t going anywhere, she’d long since declared. She was going to stick around and keep the dog company until Hadleigh came back and told her
everything.

“
If
you come back,” Melody added slyly, hurrying over to the front window to peer out at the street. For her part, Hadleigh wouldn’t have been caught dead watching for her so-called date to arrive. “Wow,” her pushy friend murmured. “The man
washed his truck
for the occasion. And he looks like seven kinds of heaven, too—right down to the shine on his boots.”

“Will you stop?”
Hadleigh whispered fiercely.

“He’s opening the gate,” Melody reported between spoonfuls of yogurt. “Coming up the walk. Now he’s on the porch steps—”

He knocked.

Hadleigh rolled her eyes.

Melody gestured wildly, mouthing the words, “Open the door.”

Hadleigh glared.

“If you don’t let him in right now,” Melody told her, too loudly, “I
will.
”

Tripp knocked again, a sort of offhand rap.

Hadleigh shoved past Melody and practically pulled the heavy door off its hinges, she yanked so hard on the knob.

Melody had been right—Tripp
did
look better than good, clad in jeans that fit him with casual perfection, a crisp long-sleeved shirt the same arresting shade of blue as his eyes and a pair of boots that had probably cost more than the entire contents of her quilt store. He took in her appearance with a subtle but thorough sweep of his eyes, and a corner of his mouth tilted upward.

Hadleigh lifted the hook on the screen door, trying to appear suitably disinterested. “You’re here,” she said, and then could have bitten off her tongue.
Well, duh,
gibed her inner teenager.

Tripp’s grin twitched again but, mercifully, he didn’t make a smart remark. Instead, he just said, “Ready?”

Hadleigh nodded, making a production out of getting her purse, hoping he hadn’t noticed that he’d made her blush again.

Am I ready? Oh, Cowboy, you have no idea how ready I am.

Melody hung back, like a vigilant parent trying to be subtle, her face wreathed in smiles and her eyes dancing. Muggles ambled into the foyer from the living room, tail waving tentatively as she gazed adoringly up at Tripp.

“Hey, dog,” Tripp said warmly, bending to tug gently at Muggles’s floppy golden ears, first one and then the other.

Muggles, apparently satisfied with the attention, licked Tripp’s hand and sway-tailed it back to the living room.

Hadleigh headed for the open door, putting one arm through the shoulder strap of her purse. She was about to offer a slightly acid goodbye to her friend when Melody raised a finger to her lips, shushing her.

Tripp poked his head around the door, grinned and said companionably, “Don’t wait up for us, Melody.”

“Do feel free to move your car, though,” Hadleigh told her sweetly, since the BMW was still blocking the driveway.

Melody merely grinned, executed a little salute and trailed after Muggles to the living room, no doubt planning to make herself comfortable on the couch again.

There was a certain sense of déjà vu, Tripp thought, as he drove into the parking lot at Billy’s, with Hadleigh riding in the passenger seat of his truck.

Not that a lot of things weren’t different now. She wasn’t wearing a bride’s getup this time, for one, and he hadn’t had to abduct her from a church to get her here, either. Hadleigh had been a girl back then, but now she’d ripened into a woman—and
what
a woman.

She made his mouth water and his heartbeat quicken.

Little girl, all grown up.

Tripp sighed.

Hadleigh had come along willingly, for all her protests—he wouldn’t have forced her in any case and she knew it—but that didn’t mean she
wanted
to be there, not with him at least. She was sitting up very straight, with her chin jutting out slightly, her gaze fixed straight ahead.

Tripp parked the truck, got out, walked around to Hadleigh’s side and opened the passenger door. She wouldn’t look at him, ignored the hand he offered, stepped onto the running board and then the gravel-covered ground.

There’d be no fence-mending tonight, he thought with grim amusement. Not if Hadleigh Stevens could help it.

As they walked toward the entrance to Billy’s, Tripp wondered what, if anything, he could say or do to get on her good side.

Short of leaving town and staying gone, he couldn’t come up with a single idea. Not one that was workable, anyway.

He opened the door for her, and she stopped, right there on the worn rubber mat where folks had been wiping their boots free of dust and manure for some forty years, and looked him directly in the eyes.

It wasn’t a victory.

“Guess I could throw you over my shoulder and carry you inside,” he said mildly, with a smattering of bravado and very little conviction that she’d let him get away with any such thing. “Of course, that would make a scene.”

Hadleigh glared at him for a moment longer, then released a disgusted breath and stalked into the restaurant.

Tripp’s delight, not to mention his relief, was out of all proportion to winning one small battle, but something good came out of everything. He had a few minutes to admire her very shapely backside, high and tight and deliciously round beneath black denim and a splash of rhinestones.

And that stretchy pink shirt she was wearing?
Damn.
There was only one way Hadleigh could look better than she did with it on, and that was with it
off.

“Come in or go out,” the legendary Billy barked from behind the cash register, effectively breaking whatever spell had turned Tripp to stone, still holding the heavy glass door open long after Hadleigh had crossed the threshold. “I ain’t paying to heat the whole state of Wyoming, you know!”

Tripp laughed.

Remarkably, Hadleigh did, too.

Tripp entered and then shut the door behind him.

Maybe, just maybe, there
was
a chance for him and Hadleigh, after all.

But a chance for what?

A new start? Friendship? Some kind of truce, be it easy—or armed and dangerous?

Once, Tripp had believed he knew all the answers, at least where the breach between him and Hadleigh was concerned.

Now, with his heart shinnying up his throat and pounding there like a drumbeat, with his brain reeling, his blood running hot and his groin aching, he wasn’t so sure he knew a damned thing.

Chapter Six

H
ERE
SHE
WAS
,
Hadleigh thought, out on what amounted to a date—a casual one, thank heaven—with none other than Tripp “The Heartbreaker” Galloway. The very thing she’d sworn she’d never do, no way, no how.

Not that she’d actually expected to get the chance....

Now, after all the fretting and fussing she’d done earlier, standing by helplessly while Melody ransacked her closet and bureau drawers for just the right outfit, she felt strangely calm as she breathed in the familiar scents of Billy’s place. She would have known where she was by the aromas alone, even if she’d been blindfolded: French fries and onion rings bubbling in hot grease, burgers sizzling on the grill, freshly baked pies, scorched coffee and a hint of the disinfectant the janitor used.

However self-possessed she might feel—please, God, let it last—Hadleigh was conscious of Tripp in the charged nucleus of every cell and every space in between, even though he was still somewhere behind her. Masculine to the core, the man virtually exuded heat and vitality; it struck her with a visceral impact.

Oh,
yeah. She was definitely picking up some interesting—okay,
sexy
—vibes from him, and she couldn’t help responding, not just physically, but emotionally as well, and maybe beyond that into sacred and uncharted personal territory.

Moreover, the near panic she’d experienced until just moments before had subsided so subtly that she hadn’t consciously registered the shift. She’d undergone a lasting change both swift and gradual, like the nearly imperceptible brightening of the sky as dawn stretched tentative fingers over the eastern horizon and, after moments measured in miniature eternities, spilled floods of dazzling light everywhere.

Yep, something was different, all right.
She
was different.

And more truly
herself
than she’d ever been.

The epiphany was a delicious one, bordering on the mystical, but it was startling, too, because now, Hadleigh knew, she was going to have to push up her figurative sleeves, wade in and get to know this confident stranger, this
someone
she’d probably always been without even being aware of it.

But didn’t transcendent experiences like this usually happen in meditation or in church, on mountaintops or beside quiet streams—provided they took place at all? Surely, not many personal miracles took place in joints like Bad Billy’s Burger Palace on a busy evening?

Okay, the tectonic shift, while obviously exciting, was a little on the bizarre side, but what choice did she have besides going with the flow? She was bound to wash ashore downstream somewhere, regretful and bedraggled, but why not enjoy this gentle, crazy joy while she could?

With all this going on in her heart and mind, Hadleigh’s motor skills were on autopilot. She found herself standing dutifully beside the please-wait-to-be-seated sign next to the counter holding the cash register, and looked around, taking in the busy scene while Billy blustered away at Tripp about shutting the door, damn it, because he had no desire to heat the surrounding countryside.

She smiled, savoring the ordinary in a very special way, and allowed herself to think idle thoughts, noting, for instance, that every stool at the counter was occupied by a customer, and most of the booths and tables were, too. Waitresses bustled to and from the kitchen in back, where twin fry cooks named Peter and Paul labored amid steam vapors and wisps of smoke from the fryers. Conversations buzzed on every side, creating a companionable cacophony.

She went on to consider “Bad” Billy himself, a sixtyish man she’d known virtually all her life. Billy tried to disguise his true nature—to all appearances, the man had all the warmth and charm of a badger swatting away a swarm of bees. No one who’d known him long took his curmudgeonly rants seriously, though. A longtime widower with no children, Billy played Santa every Christmas, and not just at the town’s tree-lighting ceremony, either. No, he delivered whole holiday dinners to folks who were sick or out of work or grieving the loss of a loved one. He bought new toys all year long and stashed them in a unit over at the storage place, and sometime on Christmas Eve, those same toys turned up on certain front porches all over town and out in the country, too.

Although Billy always tried to keep this philanthropy a secret, most likely because he wanted to preserve his reputation as a Grinch, everybody knew what really went on. In fact, lots of locals dropped off shopping bags full of nonperishable food and gifts right there at the Burger Palace, starting the Friday after Thanksgiving.

And that wasn’t all there was to Billy, either, of course. He and several of his equally crusty cronies had formed a band somewhere along the line, and they entertained the residents over at the senior center at least once a month, Billy’s accordion wheezing out lively polkas while the other band members backed him on banjos, guitars and a set of snare drums.

It was Tripp’s wry response to Billy’s gruff chiding that brought Hadleigh back from her pleasant mental meanderings.

“I see your personality hasn’t changed since my last visit, you miserable old reprobate,” Tripp said in a good-natured way. “Good to know there are still a few things a man can count on.”

Billy made a huffing sound, a combination of laughter and disdain, and Hadleigh finally glanced back at the two men, amused by the exchange. It was typical Mustang Creek banter between old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while, man-speak for
it’s about damn time
you came back home, you sorry so-and-so.

In this context, those were words of affection.

“I’ll tell you what
else
a fella can reckon on for sure,” Billy grumbled. “No matter how often you leave town, or how long you’ve been gone, Galloway, you’re still a smart-ass when you show up again.”

Tripp laughed. “Now, that isn’t very original,” he drawled. “I hear it all the time.”

“Don’t need to be original,” Billy blustered. “Just needs to be true.”

That time, Tripp didn’t answer. Maybe he was remembering that when it came to arguing with Billy, getting in the last word would take way too long, if it could be done at all.

Ginny, an aging waitress who’d worked at Billy’s since opening day, bustled over to greet Hadleigh with a nudge of one elbow and a stage-whispered, “I
heard
you and Tripp were seeing each other—and it’s a fine idea, if you ask me!”

Hadleigh blushed slightly and refrained, out of respect for an elder, from pointing out that she
hadn’t
asked, and she didn’t bother to say that she and Tripp weren’t “seeing each other,” either, because that would have been a waste of time. Once the wheels of the local gossip mill started grinding, there was no stopping them.

Anyhow, Ginny Clooney was a good woman, and she’d been one of Gram’s closest friends.

So Hadleigh suppressed a sigh, smiled warmly and asked, “Is there a place open near one of the windows?”

She’d barely completed the question when she felt Tripp’s hand come to rest, lightly but firmly, on the small of her back. As attuned to him as Hadleigh was at the moment, he’d still managed to catch her off guard. His touch made her jump, sent a fiery ache blazing through her system, zapping her nerve endings with enough heat to short-circuit them. Why, she might as well have tried to climb over an electrified fence in a lightning storm and gotten herself high-centered on the top rail—or been goosed from behind with a cattle prod.

Except that either of those things would have been painful, and this
wasn’t.
Instead, it felt dangerously, treacherously, deliciously good.

Hadleigh reined in her runaway imagination, and fast, but not before she’d thought about how it would feel to be skin to skin with Tripp in some private place.

“Sure, you can sit by the window, honey,” Ginny prattled as she moved through the jam-packed restaurant, wending her way past people-filled booths and chairs encircling tables, finally coming to a stop next to the one where Hadleigh would have preferred not to sit. “How about this?”

Whether by design or coincidence, Ginny had chosen the very same booth Hadleigh and Tripp had shared the day of her wedding-that-wasn’t.

In her mind’s eye, Hadleigh saw the two of them as they must have looked then, Tripp determined, stubborn, unapologetic, herself, eighteen years old, hopelessly romantic, with the lace of her voluminous bridal gown billowing up around her, sparkly veil straggling down her back, holding on by a single hairpin. Her makeup had been smudged, her glue-on lashes long gone and her intricately braided, salon-styled chignon had drooped sadly, nearly resting on her right shoulder.

Hadleigh, stricken by the memory, blinked the scene away.

“It’ll do just fine, Ginny,” she heard Tripp say very quietly.

Ginny made some lighthearted reply, and the next thing Hadleigh knew, she was seated, with Tripp across from her, a slight grin tugging at his mouth but not quite rising into his eyes.

The waitress handed them each a menu, promised to return in a few minutes and rushed away. By then, more hungry people were arriving at Billy’s, while others, having finished their meals, prepared to leave, gathering coats and handbags and backpacks, tossing crumpled bills onto debris-strewn tables for the tip, bundling babies into carriers, lifting sticky-fingered toddlers from high-chairs, herding older children away from the gumball machine and the arcade games and toward the exit.

Hadleigh’s throat tightened at the ordinary poignancy of it all. She loved living in Mustang Creek, always had, despite bittersweet memories of her lost parents and Gram and, of course, Will. Then, aware that Tripp was watching her, and possibly seeing a few of the soul bruises she usually kept hidden, she turned her gaze to meet his.

“Did you arrange this ahead of time?” she asked, with a touch of irony. “Our being seated in this particular booth, I mean?”

Tripp’s own gaze was steady as he looked back at her, and his expression was still serious. “No,” he answered, with a raspy half chuckle. “Must have been plain ol’ dumb luck.”

Hadleigh picked up her menu with a flourish. “If you say so,” she replied in a breezy “whatever” tone, studying the list of offerings she could have recited from memory.

He chuckled again, shook his head. “Now, why would I do that, Hadleigh? I’m trying to get on your good side, if I haven’t made that clear.”

She closed her menu, having decided, during the tense drive from her place to Billy’s with Tripp, on her default dish—a Cobb salad with Thousand Island dressing. Since Hadleigh 3.0 was in charge, having ousted Chicken Little, hopefully for good, she asked the same question she’d asked a week ago, when Tripp suddenly turned up in her life again, the question he’d sidestepped before.

She thought she knew the answer, but it was just a guess. She needed to hear Tripp’s take on the situation. “What brings you back to Mustang Creek after all this time?”

Tripp hadn’t opened his own menu; maybe he’d already planned his order, too. He sat with his hands resting on the vinyl-covered folder, fingers loosely interlaced, at ease now, but he was still watchful. “I’m here because of my dad, mainly,” he said, as expected. Everyone knew Jim Galloway had been battling prostate cancer for a while now, even though the man personified the strong, silent type. “He says he’s past the worst of it and that’s probably true, since he’s no damn good at lying and never has been.” Tripp paused, gave a sigh. “The ranch, on the other hand, looks as if it’s been going downhill for a while.”

Just then, Ginny was back, with her lipstick-bright smile, her perky wash-and-wear uniform and her crepe-soled shoes, armed with an order pad and a stubby pencil. The interruption was fine with Hadleigh, because the Galloway ranch
did
look pretty forlorn, reminding her of those old photos of once-prosperous family farms, foreclosed on or simply forsaken when the Great Depression hit back in the 1930s.

She bit her lower lip rather than give an opinion, not just because Ginny was standing right there, all ears, waiting to take their orders, but because she knew that the present state of the once-thriving ranch was none of her business.

Hadleigh asked for the salad, the lunch-size one instead of the dinner portion, along with a glass of unsweetened iced tea.

Tripp chose the chicken-fried steak and said he’d have plain water with extra ice, if Ginny would be so kind.

Ginny, flattered and humming under her breath, quickly went on her way again, leaving them alone. Since Billy’s was one of the busiest eating establishments in the county, however, they weren’t by themselves for long.

Folks stopped by to say hello to Tripp—they greeted Hadleigh, too, of course, but most of them saw her around town all the time. They wanted to ask how Jim was holding up and whether or not Tripp meant to stick around and run the ranch, things like that.

Tripp was cordial to all of them, patiently answering the same questions over and over again: yes, Jim seemed to be getting better, and he was even thinking about taking himself a vacation on a cruise ship. And, yes, Tripp would be staying on to help out as much as he could.

Did that mean he was home for good?

Hadleigh was still trying to work out whether she hoped the answer would be yes or no when Spence Hogan, the local police chief, came through the door, crossed the restaurant and came to a stop beside their table.

He smiled at Hadleigh, then turned almost immediately to Tripp.

Spence had gone to high school with Will and Tripp, and the three of them had been buddies. Dark haired and handsome, with indigo-blue eyes and a quick smile, Spence, at thirty-five, was perennially single and, thus, by the rules of the marriage pact, he qualified as potential husband material—technically, anyway.

Because nothing and no one is perfect, there were drawbacks, even without the hometown-guy, familiarity-breeds-boredom factor.

Spence loved being a cop, and he was a good one, committed to his job and his community. He was honest, upright and solvent, and definitely a pleasure to look at, no question about that. All points in his favor.