The Marriage Pact (Hqn) (12 page)

He held it for her, gentlemanly as could be.

Twilight had fallen by then, and the half-moon seemed huge and regal and impossibly bright—so bright the stars couldn’t compete.

“You can let go of my arm now,” Hadleigh told Tripp. “The performance is over.”

Suddenly, Tripp stopped, turned Hadleigh to face him and cupped a gentle hand under her chin. “I’ll ask you again,” he said. “Your place or mine?”

Chapter Seven

Y
OUR
PLACE
OR
MINE
?

That was
so
not a choice, Hadleigh thought, delighting in her own outrage.

Refusing Tripp’s help, beyond allowing him to open the passenger-side door of his truck for her, mainly because he got there first, she climbed onto the running board and planted herself in the seat. He merely smiled, closed the door, then walked around the rig to the driver’s side.

Hadleigh, having already fastened her seat belt, glared stubbornly through the windshield as Tripp got behind the wheel, started the engine. She felt like one big contradiction—going along with this ridiculous game they were playing even though she certainly didn’t have to, dreading telling the truth, and yet gripped by a driving, powerful need to do just that—whatever the consequences. Heaven help her, she wasn’t even capable of lying by
omission.

Where, exactly, was Hadleigh 3.0 at this moment, and why didn’t she get her perky little emotionally balanced self the hell back here?

“I figure we ought to head for my place,” Tripp said, sounding maddeningly reasonable, which was hard to take because Hadleigh felt anything
but
reasonable as the truck rolled out of the parking lot and onto the highway. “Since Melody is hanging out at yours.”

Hadleigh felt a frisson of alarm—and something else. Something she didn’t even try to identify.

“What about your dad?” she asked, suppressing an urge to leap to Melody’s defense, a silly idea, since Tripp hadn’t said anything negative in the first place.

At least one thing was for sure: he didn’t intend to take her home just yet.

While a part of Hadleigh wanted Tripp to drop her off on the sidewalk in front of her house and leave her alone forever after,
another
part of her was determined to see this through, no matter what, go for broke and see what came of it.

“He’s probably turned in by now,” Tripp answered easily. “And even if he hasn’t, he’ll have enough sense to give us some space—which is more than I can say for Melody.”

Hadleigh folded her arms. Okay, now he was asking for it.

“Melody,” she said tartly, “is only trying to look out for my best interests.” That was an understatement; Melody had
insisted
Hadleigh go on this date, had even chosen her clothes.

Tripp threw a grin Hadleigh’s way, but mostly he was keeping his attention on the road, an admittedly sensible thing to do, considering the alternative. “You’re probably right about that,” he conceded with gruff amusement. “But, bottom line, Melody’s good intentions are beside the point. I’m not planning to take liberties, Hadleigh, so you don’t need a bodyguard.”

For some reason, Hadleigh thought of the long-ago day when she and Bex had gotten the bright idea to paint the concrete floor of Bex’s mom and dad’s garage. They’d been an industrious pair, clearing the space, sweeping and then mopping. They’d mixed sand with some canary-yellow paint they’d found in the storage shed, congratulating each other on their ingenuity. Bex’s mom would be
so
happy when she saw what they’d done. Wasn’t she constantly fretting that the garage floor was so slick in bad weather, and somebody was bound to break their neck one of these days?

Laboring side by side, on their knees, the girls wielded their brushes, happily slopping on the gritty yellow goop, working their way from the front of the garage to the back—only to realize, when it was too late, that they’d literally painted themselves into a corner.

Not wanting to spoil their handiwork—or the soles of their sneakers—by crossing the wet expanse, they’d waited hours for the floor to dry.

Hadleigh smiled ruefully at the recollection and the correlation between that incident and the choices she’d made this very night. Here she was, trapped in another corner, albeit not entirely against her will.

What was she supposed to do now?

She didn’t owe Tripp any explanations; she knew that and so did he. He was basically teasing her, trying to get some kind of reaction.

It would be way too humiliating to tell Tripp about the realization, back there in the booth at Billy’s, that had left her so thunderstruck she’d had no time to compose herself.

The
same
booth, damn it, where her own immaturity and magical thinking had bitten her in the butt ten years before.

Lying wasn’t an option, either; Hadleigh was not only notoriously bad at it, she was constitutionally incapable. And even if she
did
manage to invent some trumped-up explanation and deliver it without stepping on her own tongue, Tripp would see right through her.

But he
had
said he’d let the subject drop if she could look him in the eye, as he’d put it, and tell him why, between one moment and the next, she’d lost her appetite and, very nearly, her composure, too. Only bravado, and, okay, a bit of an ornery streak, had carried her through the act the two of them had put on before they left the restaurant.

They’d been gone for just a few minutes, but by now, some of the spectators were surely comparing notes, texting their friends, maybe posting a blow-by-blow description of tonight’s events on social media sites. There might even be pictures, for heaven’s sake, since so many people carried smartphones these days.

She could imagine it all too well.
They kissed.
Hadleigh Stevens and Tripp Galloway,
the gossips would tell each other,
right there in Bad Billy’s Burger Palace, in front of God and everybody. We’re not talking about a friendly peck on the cheek, either. There was probably tongue involved. And then, all of a sudden, they took off. It’s not too hard to figure out what happened next, is it?

Hadleigh bristled at the thought and at the lingering effects of that stupid kiss. The grapevine would probably catch fire if any of those well-meaning busybodies knew how much she wanted what wasn’t about to happen next.

Yes, sir, she reflected, she might have been able to preserve some shred of her dignity if Tripp hadn’t hauled off and kissed her.

Dwelling on the kiss, however, would not do, Hadleigh decided. She was already finding it difficult to sit still.

Torn between her best intentions and her internal evil twin, she sighed with gusto, pressed the fingertips of both hands to her temples and wondered if she was going crazy.

She, or rather, the person she’d always been, wanted to do the right and sensible thing, and that certainly wasn’t what she had in mind. Her inner twin, however, was filibustering for hot, sweaty, sheet-twisting
sex,
and the sooner, the better.

Hadleigh groaned aloud.

Tripp, who never seemed to miss a darned thing, chuckled again. “Suppose you just get whatever it is off your chest right now. It can’t be all
that
big a deal.”

“Easy for you to say,” Hadleigh retorted. “You’re
not the one who’s going to feel like a total idiot.” This truth compulsion of hers might just turn out to be her ruin.

“You might be a lot of things, Hadleigh,” Tripp said seriously, “but you’re not
any
kind of idiot, total or otherwise.”

He’d gotten to her—again. Paid her what sounded like a sincere compliment, however backhanded, just when she least expected it to happen and was least prepared to think up a countermove.

“You’ve changed your tune,” she said in a singsong voice after they’d covered several country miles, “since the
last
time you kidnapped me.”

Tripp was in profile, of course, and the cab of the truck was dark except for a few lights on the dashboard, but Hadleigh saw his brief grin. “To my way of thinking, what I did ‘last time’ was get you out of a fix that would have led to disaster—the kind that takes years to untangle.” A studied pause, followed by a studiously casual, “How is ol’ Oakley these days, anyhow?”

“Are you going to pretend you don’t know all about him?” Hadleigh asked coolly. “This isn’t Los Angeles or Seattle, Tripp. It’s Bliss County, Wyoming, where everybody knows what everybody else is up to at any given moment. Oakley’s been in and out of rehab—sometimes for alcohol, sometimes for prescription meds, sometimes both. The executor of his father’s estate has cut off direct access to his trust fund, his mother remarried and moved to Quebec and his siblings wrote him off long ago. Oh, and he just got either his second or third divorce. I forget which.”

Tripp slowed, signaling a right turn off the dark county road onto an even darker dirt driveway. “Third,” he said without inflection.

She’d been right. Tripp had kept track of local goings-on while he was away getting rich and getting married—too bad she’d been too much of a coward to do some checking. If she had, she might have spared herself some angst.

“But who’s counting?” They were passing the ancient mailbox with
Galloway
stenciled on its side, so she knew they’d be at their destination any minute now.

Hadleigh had only been to the Galloway ranch a few times—once or twice when she wouldn’t let Will ditch her—and the day of Tripp’s mother’s funeral. There had been a wake at the house, following a graveside service in the small and very historic cemetery behind the orchard. Still numb from the loss of her own parents just eighteen months before, she’d watched the proceedings in somber silence, sticking close to Gram’s side. Will, sixteen by then, must have been drawing a few grim parallels of his own, but he’d kept his head up and his shoulders straight, if only because his best friend was counting on him to be strong.

Tripp, also sixteen that year, was stoic throughout the whole ordeal, saying little or nothing, probably taking his cues from his stepfather. Jim Galloway had been about broken in two by the loss of his wife, everyone said so, but if he did any weeping, he did it in private. By the same token, the older man wore his grief in his eyes from then on, in the set of his shoulders and the way his strong hands hung limply at his sides. Once, Jim had been outgoing, gesturing when he talked, laughing a lot.

That part of him had been buried with his wife. For all intents and purposes, Tripp had been on his own after that, emotionally, anyway. He’d spent even more time at Gram’s from then on, and Gram had made room for him without fuss or fanfare.

* * *

T
HIS
CASCADE
OF
memories made Hadleigh regret her flippant remark, but it also took her mind off the conversation she and Tripp were about to have—not that he was forcing her into anything. Oh, no, she’d
chosen
to play along with his caveman act.

Again.

Hadleigh sat up straighter, bracing herself for at least one bumpy cattle guard and about a mile of ruts beyond that. “Your dad must have been pretty lonely, living out here all by himself for so long.”

Tripp glanced her way, but she couldn’t read his expression, since his face was in shadow. “Yeah,” he agreed, his voice low and a little wary. “Dad put a good face on things whenever I came home for a visit or we talked on the phone, but it couldn’t have been easy for him.”

On impulse—one she might come to regret—Hadleigh reached past the console and the gearshift to rest her hand on Tripp’s forearm. Even through the sleeve of his denim jacket and the shirt beneath it, she felt his muscles tense, and the warmth of his skin came right through all that cloth.

She withdrew her hand. “Tripp, I wasn’t saying— I didn’t mean to imply—”

“That I should have been here?” He didn’t sound angry, just resigned and a bit sad. Did he get this a lot? Did he feel guilty for making a life somewhere else after his discharge from the service?

She hoped not, because whatever her own issues with Tripp might be, she knew he was a good man and always tried to do what was right.

“You had college ahead of you, and then a hitch in the military—”

Hadleigh’s voice fell away, like a power line weighed down by snow and ice. The military equaled Afghanistan equaled Will dying long before his time. She turned her head away from Tripp, looked out, eyes burning, at a landscape she couldn’t see, except by remembering.

A moment later it was Tripp who reached out. He took hold of Hadleigh’s hand and squeezed firmly. “Hey,” he said hoarsely. “I know you miss Will a lot, and that’s okay. To this day, I think of things I mean to tell him. I remember that he’s gone a split second later, but that’s time enough to feel the loss all over again.”

Tripp was still holding her hand, and she made no move to pull it away. “I think I liked it better,” she told him, with a broken laugh and a slight sniffle, “when we were arguing.”

Tripp laughed, and the tension eased up considerably. “All right,” he said, Mr. Agreeable. “We’ll argue.” An expectant pause followed. “You start,” he finally added.

The invitation made Hadleigh laugh, too. “Give me a minute, okay?” she joked. “I’ll come up with something that’s sure to spark a raging disagreement.”

“It’s what you do best,” Tripp replied.

She was about to protest that it took two to argue when they rounded the last bend and there was the log ranch house, a long, low-slung shadow of a place in the light of the moon. Some of the windows glowed, spilling a golden shimmer of welcome into the yard.

Maybe Jim was waiting up for Tripp; Hadleigh let herself hope he was, because her practical side had finally gotten the upper hand over the evil twin, and suddenly she wasn’t so sure she wanted to tell all—not yet.

How, she wondered, squinting at several huge pieces of machinery standing empty and idle between the house and the barn, did she get herself into these scrapes, anyway? More importantly,
why
did she do it?

It was one thing to be a high-minded disciple of the truth, and quite another to be reckless with it.

“Brace yourself,” Tripp warned before he shut off the engine, got out of the truck and came around to offer Hadleigh a hand down.

This time, she accepted his help. “Brace myself for what?” She worried that Jim might be in worse shape than she’d thought, and she schooled her face not to betray shock or, worse yet, pity when she saw him.