The Marriage Pact

Chapter Nine


HE’D MARK THE days off on a calendar if he had to, Tripp promised himself the chilly, dark morning after his big night out with Hadleigh, but one thing was for damn sure: he wasn’t going near the woman again for at least a week, not on purpose, anyhow.


Tripp was 100 percent positive that if he didn’t keep his distance long enough to get his bearings, he’d do—or say—something really stupid again. Moreover, if Hadleigh happened to be looking drop-dead sexy at their next encounter, like she had in the black jeans and second-skin pink shirt she’d worn last night, well, that would probably double the odds that he’d make a damn fool of himself.

On top of that, he wondered where it had come from, this totally unfamiliar yahoo, hyped-up version of himself, walking around in his body, wearing his face and called by his name.

Would the real Tripp Galloway please stand up?

Because, damn it, this wasn’t him.

He’d been a combat pilot, for God’s sake, and he’d seen plenty of action. Once he was out of the service and flying jumbo jets for a major airline, he’d been responsible for the lives of literally thousands of passengers, as well as crew, and he’d never broken a sweat, even in some of the tough situations every pilot eventually runs into.

Later, while starting and building his charter-jet operation, he’d flown smaller, sleeker crafts a lot, especially in the beginning, when he was still getting established and couldn’t afford to hire more pilots. Over time, Tripp had coped with wind shears, ice on the wings, instrument failures, in-flight engine blowouts, some rodeo-worthy turbulence, flocks of birds, along with a few unscheduled nosedives just to make things interesting. And not once—not once in all that time—had he lost his cool. He’d simply handled it, whatever it happened to be, as he’d been trained to do.

And what all of that came down to was one outstanding fact: Tripp had never had any call to think of himself as the jumpy type. Hell, he hadn’t even known how to be anything but his normal, competent, unflappable self.

Now, because of one night, with one woman, he was a nervous wreck.

Even ranch work didn’t help calm him. He’d already fed the little band of basically useless horses out there in Jim’s sway-roofed barn, lugging hay to the stalls, filling the troughs with the garden hose, brushing the critters down.

And all he’d been able to think about, the whole blessed time, was Hadleigh—the way she looked, the way she smelled of soap and flowers, the way her whiskey-brown eyes turned almost amber when she felt strongly about something.

Which was pretty much all the time, because even when she was a little kid, Hadleigh had been opinionated and stubborn. And she hadn’t changed, at least in that respect, over the intervening years, as far as Tripp could tell.

In short, he felt as if he’d jump right out of his skin if he didn’t find manage to put her out of his mind for a while.

Tripp sighed, which he’d been doing a lot over the past twelve hours or so. The sun wasn’t even up yet as he stood there in the torn-up kitchen, alone except for Ridley, who had condescended to go out to the barn with him earlier, instead of hanging around in the house the way he’d been doing lately.

Presently, the dog was munching away on his morning ration of kibble with as much greedy vigor as he might have if he’d put in a hard day’s work rounding up strays instead of just moseying around behind Tripp, sniffing the dirt floor and wagging his tail in indolent, halfhearted swipes, like a windshield wiper slowed down by heavy slush.

Tripp made up his mind to stop ruminating—easier said than done—flipped the switch on the outdated coffeemaker and yawned broadly as he waited for the java to start flowing. With luck, he’d feel semihuman again as soon as the first swallow hit his bloodstream.

He’d caught an hour or two of sleep, max, and forget REM and all the stages that were so vital to a functioning brain; when he had dropped off, he hadn’t gone deep enough to get any real rest. Instead, he’d hovered just beneath the surface of consciousness, as fitfully active as if he’d gotten trapped under an iced-over lake, left to search wildly for a way out—all without finding so much as an air pocket.

The drip machine on the counter chugged and chortled, working hard but making no discernible progress. Tripp wasn’t into consumerism—the new appliances, the flooring and the lighting and plumbing fixtures being installed had been carefully chosen to fill a particular purpose and stand up to heavy use over the long haul, and all the renovations were being done for practical reasons rather than aesthetics. But despite all that, he meant to junk that piece-of-crap coffeemaker before the day was out, replace it with one made in the current century. He should have brought the steel-clad, state-of-the-art one-cup wonder he’d used in his Seattle condo, he supposed, but since he’d donated the thing to charity, along with all the other items he’d considered extraneous—that being nearly everything he owned, as it turned out—there was no point in stewing over it now.

He was facing the counter, leaning in with both hands braced against the edge and willing that coffee to brew already, when he heard his dad shuffle into the kitchen. The sound was accounted for by Jim’s newfound tendency to walk around in slippers for half the morning. Back in the day, the man wouldn’t have left his bedroom without being fully clothed, right down to the pair of boots on his feet.

His chuckle was low and raspy, just as it had always been, and that was a comfort to Tripp.

“I reckon staring at that coffeemaker like you’re trying to set fire to it is akin to the old saying as how a watched pot never boils,” Jim drawled.

Tripp glanced back over one shoulder, didn’t smile. He wasn’t exactly at his sweet-tempered best without coffee, especially after a restless night. Then there was the whole Hadleigh situation. “This thing’s a relic,” he grumbled, indicating the antiquated gizmo with a slight motion of his head. “Should have been tossed out years ago.”

Jim stood just inside the kitchen, still in his plaid flannel robe, which was probably even older than the coffeemaker, cinching the tie-belt a little tighter around his skinny middle. His thick gray hair stood out from his head every which way, and his beard had grown in, coarse enough to sand concrete glass smooth. Sure enough, Jim’s big ugly feet were overflowing a pair of leather slippers that had seen better days.

On top of that, dear old Dad was grinning from ear to ear. He narrowed his eyes, as if he might be trying to pick Tripp out of a lineup of dead ringers and wasn’t sure which was which. “Now why would I do a damn fool thing like that?” he retorted cheerfully. “That’s a perfectly good coffeemaker, first off, and second off, you gave it to your mother and me for Christmas the year you turned fourteen, and that means it has sentimental value. You’d shoveled a lot of snow and mucked out a lot of stalls to buy that thing, and you were proud as all get-out, too.”

That long-ago Christmas seared itself into Tripp’s mind with the clarity of a flashback in a sentimental holiday movie. His mom had still been with them then, of course, full of life and laughter, none of them even dreaming how soon Ellie would be gone. And she’d been so delighted with that modern coffee-making device, as she sat perched on the edge of the living room couch in her pink chenille robe and fluffy slippers to match, ribbons and wrapping paper at her feet, her face shining more brightly than the gleaming multicolored lights on the tree.

Tripp closed his eyes for a moment, dealing with the aftershock of a memory that was both vivid and poignant, and when he opened them again, a second or two later, his dad was standing right next to him, one fatherly hand resting on his shoulder.


“I miss her, too, son,” Jim said. “I miss her, too.”

Tripp pushed away from the counter, straightened and gave another sigh. The coffee still wasn’t ready, so he decided to settle for the strong beginnings already pooling in the bottom of the carafe, dark and bitter-smelling, looking like some kind of toxic waste and probably tasting about the same, and sloshed some into a mug.

Still unsteady, and therefore not trusting himself to speak yet, he took a big swig of the brew—it tasted just as he’d expected it would—and scalded his tongue in the bargain.

He grimaced.

Jim chuckled again, shaking his head.

Ridley, having inhaled his breakfast by now, lapped up the contents of his water bowl, went to the door and proceeded to whine, asking to be let out.

Both Jim and Tripp waited for the dog to remember the recently installed pet door. When he did, he low-crawled through it, leaving the flap swinging behind him like the saloon doors in an old Western movie.

“Don’t go expecting too much of the critter,” Jim quipped. “After all, he’s new here.”

Avoiding his dad’s gaze as best he could, and in no hurry to make small talk, Tripp toned down his coffee with a little tap water and took a cautious sip.

Jim was in the mood for conversation, it seemed. “Let me hazard a wild guess,” he said drily. “Last night didn’t go well for you and Hadleigh.”

“It went fine for Hadleigh,” Tripp allowed, still grouchy and still taking care not to look directly at his dad. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jim approach the table, draw back a chair and sit down heavily, as though the short walk from his room had used up his last reserves of energy.

“If you don’t want to tell me about it,” Jim replied, quietly magnanimous, “that’s certainly your choice. You might feel—and act—a little less like a scalded tomcat if you blew off some steam, though.”

Tripp turned and met his father’s steady gaze, if only to prove he could. “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “None of this is your fault, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. Guess I’m too used to living alone.”

Jim, though watchful and no longer smiling, seemed inappropriately cheerful. He rolled his thin shoulders in a move that resembled a shrug but wasn’t. “Aren’t we all?” he asked. “Anyway, no offense taken, son. Fact is, you never were all that easy to get along with in the morning. Getting you to roll out of the sack, pull some clothes on and help me with the chores was no simple matter, as I recall. You may remember that when your mother woke you up on schooldays, she used to stand as far from your bed as she could, lean in and poke at you with the end of the broom handle until you came out of hibernation. You were downright surly soon as you opened your eyes, and for a good while afterward, too.”

Tripp couldn’t help grinning, if a mite wanly, at the recollection of his petite, determined mother, prodding him with that damn broomstick of hers, warning him that if he didn’t get up, he’d not only miss out on breakfast, but get left behind by the school bus. And he’d better not go thinking for one moment that he could get out of doing all his usual chores, either. Plus, Ellie had said, sounding remarkably chipper for that ungodly hour, it would be a long walk to school, because nobody was going to drive him all the way into town just because he was too lazy to get out of bed on time.

“I remember,” he said, crossing to the sink, dumping the noxious contents of his mug. The coffeemaker had finally completed its mission, and he poured some, took a sip and found the brew slightly—and only slightly—more palatable than it had been the first time around. “Want a cup of this...stuff?” he asked Jim.

“I can get my own,” Jim said, setting his jawbone in that obstinate way he had. “Never have needed waiting on like some high-and-mighty potentate, and I’m not inclined to change now.”

Tripp laughed, ignored his dad’s response and fixed a second cup of coffee, which he set down squarely in front of Jim—all while the old man was still gathering his forces to rise from his chair.

Ridley, meanwhile, zipped back in through the pet door, crawling on his belly again, like a soldier slithering along the ground under a steady strafe of enemy machine-gun fire.

Jim frowned at the coffee, grumbled a thank-you and gingerly drank some of it.

Tripp slapped his dad on the shoulder, but not too hard. They’d roughhoused in the old days, the two of them, but Jim had been leather-tough back then, digging postholes, stacking bales of hay in the barn or hurling them off a flatbed truck for the range stock. He’d done it all, Jim had—wrestling cattle to the ground at branding time, castrating bulls, delivering calves and foals when there was some kind of hitch in the process and the vet was too busy elsewhere to come around. He’d trained horses to the saddle and trimmed their hooves and shoed them. Not to mention splitting wood for the fire and braving the weather to chain up some old rig held together by chicken wire, high hopes and spit, or just get the damn thing to start up and run.

This new, more fragile Jim would take some getting used to, prickly attitude, threadbare bathrobe, sorry-ass slippers and all.

“Are you gonna try to tell me Mom didn’t wait on your hand and foot?” Tripp teased, hoping to lighten the mood now that the caffeine was kicking in. “If so, save it, because I was here, remember, and she couldn’t pour your coffee or iron your shirt or rustle up your supper fast enough.”

Jim made a sound that fell somewhere between a huff and a grunt, but his mouth was twitching almost imperceptibly at the corners, and when Ridley ambled on over to rest his muzzle on one of his bony knees, Jim chuckled and jostled the dog’s ears. When his dad looked up and met Tripp’s gaze, Tripp saw both strength and sorrow in his eyes.

“You make Ellie sound like some downtrodden, unappreciated hausfrau,” Jim said straight out. He spoke quietly and evenly, in no way defensive, just sure of himself. “But since your memory is so damn clear, son, then maybe you recall how strong-minded your mama was—and how anybody looking to push her in any direction she didn’t want to go would have needed a bulldozer to budge her an inch. Ellie enjoyed being my wife, and she enjoyed being your mom. Making a nice home for all three of us was mighty important to her.”

“I know that, Dad,” Tripp said just as quietly. He paused, drank a few more swallows of coffee before going on. “You up to this big trip you’ve got planned? We could always postpone it for a while. Say, till spring...”

Jim scowled. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said testily. “You’ve been on my neck from the minute you got back, telling me I need to get off this place and do something different, kick up my heels a little. Now, all of a sudden, you’re singing a whole different tune.”

“I’m just concerned about you, that’s all,” Tripp told him. “No need to take my head off.”

“You’re a fine one to talk,” the old man retorted. “When I came in here, you looked like you might just unplug that old coffeemaker, open the back door and hurl the works halfway to the barn.”

Tripp shoved a hand through his hair, clamped his molars together for a moment, then forcibly relaxed his jaw muscles. “Okay,” he said, drawing the word out to twice its normal length.


Jim thumped at the tabletop with his right index finger, the way he’d always done when he was adamant about making his point. “Ellie was happy, damn it, tending this house. She could have gotten a job in town if she’d wanted to—she had secretarial skills, you know. Supported herself and you both before we met and got married. But she liked being right here, doing what she was doing, being who she was.”

“I wasn’t saying different, Dad,” Tripp pointed out diplomatically.

The dog, seated a few feet away, perked up his ears a little and looked from Tripp to Jim and back again, like a fascinated spectator at a badminton game.

Jim’s sigh came from somewhere deep within him. “I realize that, son,” he said after a few minutes. “I reckon I just get to fighting my own head sometimes when it comes to Ellie. Except for not having any more kids—she was sad about that and so was I—I always figured she was pretty content with the lot of a mom and a rancher’s wife. I tend to get my hackles up if anybody suggests otherwise, maybe because there’s a part of me that’ll always wonder if she ever regretted throwing in with the likes of me.”

“She was happy,” Tripp said, and he knew it was true. He could still see the light in his mother’s eyes when Jim was due back at the house after a full workday. By then, having finished his after-school chores, Tripp was usually parked at the kitchen table—this very one, in fact—doing homework. Ellie, busy fixing supper, would glance at the wall clock often. She’d hum under her breath and when she heard the roar of Jim’s truck pulling in, she’d dash into the bathroom to fuss with her hair and put on lipstick and come out wearing a fresh apron.

Ellie had a thing about aprons, even though they hadn’t even been in style, and she whipped them up herself, on her trusty sewing machine, always choosing bright fabrics with polka dots or stripes or splashy floral prints, adding ruffles and rickrack trim, and she must have had at least two dozen of them. Once one of these creations was stained, or began to look a little shabby, she’d toss it into the ragbag and make a replacement, pronto. She’d starched and ironed them, too; that was Ellie Galloway, retro when retro wasn’t cool.

At the time, Tripp reflected, thinking back over the years, he’d found it funny, the fussy aprons and all that carrying on with her hair and her lipstick, just because Jim was about to walk through the door, same as he did every night, covered from head to foot in dust or mud. There’d be a sweaty ring pressed into his hair and circling his head, showing where his hat had rested. He’d give Ellie a quick once-over and say he was surely the luckiest SOB ever to have a wife like her, and she’d blush like a cheerleader after a couple of good cartwheels. Tripp, meanwhile, rolled his eyes.

Ellie would pretend to pout when Jim refused to kiss her until after he’d taken a shower, and sometimes she’d tell Tripp to keep an eye on the potatoes or the creamed peas or the chicken roasting in the oven for a while, and she’d disappear.

None the wiser, Tripp would do as he was told and make sure supper didn’t burn until she eventually turned up again, with Jim right on her heels, half an hour or so later, bright-eyed and smiling in a very different way than usual.

Why, he wondered now, with a pang, hadn’t he realized what a good thing it was to grow up in a home like that, with parents who loved each other, who loved him? Okay, he’d been a kid, and pretty clueless when it came to anything other than rodeo, football, horses and girls. Still, he’d had plenty of friends at school who came from broken homes and lived with one parent or the other—or, like Will and Hadleigh, didn’t have either. Their grandmother had loved and looked after them, but it wasn’t the same.

Tripp couldn’t help knowing how badly Will missed his and Hadleigh’s folks, because there wasn’t much the two of them didn’t talk about. The deepest confidences traveled between their two bunk beds, after the lights were out.

He’d known Will envied him a little—maybe a lot—because Tripp’s mom nagged him to study and clean up his room, not in spite of it, and because he had rules to follow and chores to do. Jim had never once laid a hand on Tripp, but he’d been strict just the same, and even come to town looking for him a time or two when he’d stayed out past the agreed-on curfew. Tripp had been mighty embarrassed when that happened, especially given that most of his friends were around, and Jim’s voice would be real quiet when he said, “Get in the truck.”

The old man rarely said much during the drive back to the ranch, beyond a grim, “Your mother’s been worrying.” This, to Jim’s mind, was a near-felonious infraction, and Tripp would feel so guilty about it, he’d start wishing his dad would yell at him the whole way.

It would have been better than that tight-jawed silence.

“Thanks,” he said now.

Jim looked puzzled, sitting there with his wild gray-white hair and his bathrobe and those god-awful slippers, his coffee half-finished on the table in front of him. “For what, exactly?” he asked.

Tripp chuckled hoarsely. “For giving my mom a good life and treating the kid she brought along with her like your own son.”

Jim’s eyes misted over for a moment; he sniffled and looked away briefly. “You are my son,” he said, gravel-voiced even after clearing his throat a couple of times. “Your last name is Galloway, isn’t it?”

Tripp folded his arms, his head tilted slightly to one side as he studied his dad’s gaunt face. “Come on,” he said. “Mom was pretty and smart and funny, and a whole lot of other things, too. But you must have had a few misgivings where I was concerned, in the beginning at least.”

“Your mother was beautiful, not just pretty,” Jim clarified, and though the mist had disappeared, his eyes were faraway, with a hint of a smile in them now, soft as a twilight shadow. “You were three years old and cuter than any kid has a right to be. Smart as a whip, too—you could already read a little and count to twenty without a misstep. It was clear from the first that you and your mom were a package deal, and I figured that just made me twice as lucky as I already was for catching Ellie’s eye—me, a lunkheaded bachelor cowboy with a run-down ranch and not much else, and suddenly, after a lot of lonely years, I got myself a family. And this old place wasn’t just a house anymore, either—it was a home.” He paused, cleared his throat again and looked Tripp square in the eyes. “Now,” he went on with resolute cheer, “shall I scramble us some eggs and burn a few slices of toast, or are we just going to sit here and blubber over the past until we waste away from hunger?”

Tripp laughed, shook his head. “Get yourself dressed,” he said, “and we’ll drive to town—get ourselves some breakfast and buy you some new duds for that fancy cruise of yours.”

“What about all those construction fellas?” Jim fretted. “They’ll be here pretty soon. And then there’s the dog. And the chores.”

“I fed the horses, Ridley can wait in the truck and the construction crews will be fine even if you’re not here to breathe down their necks and ask them a dozen times an hour if they’re sure they know what they’re doing.” He smiled at the consternation he saw in Jim’s face. “Plus,” he finished up, “I’ll be able to get a halfway decent cup of coffee.”


* * *

HADLEIGH, BEX AND Melody gathered around an old table in the center of Melody’s spacious studio, where she drew up jewelry designs, soldered and drilled and repeatedly soaked various metals in a stinky Crock-Pot concoction with the unappealing name of liver of sulfur, though Melody called it pickle juice. Her three cats, Ralph, Waldo and Emerson, a ragtag calico crew of indeterminate breed, were lined up along the top of a nearby bookshelf like china figurines, inscrutable and unblinking, but keeping a close eye on Muggles, who apparently hadn’t noticed their presence at all, let alone felt any inclination to chase them.

“You promised to tell all,” Melody reminded Hadleigh, propping her elbows on the table, propping her chin in her palms and leaning in a little.

“I could hardly wait to get over here,” Bex added, wide-eyed.

Hadleigh figured they’d be pretty disappointed once she’d spilled the proverbial beans, but she launched in anyway, if only to get it over with, so they could talk about other things.

“I’m free,” she blurted, perhaps overzealously, and watched as Bex and Melody’s mouths fell open simultaneously. “It’s over,” Hadleigh went on, picking up speed. “I can finally leave the whole Tripp Galloway obsession behind for good and get on with my life.”

Melody blinked, then belatedly closed her mouth.

Bex gazed at Hadleigh with narrowed eyes. “What’s over?” she asked.

Melody had recovered enough to comment drily, “If anything ever actually started between the two of you, I must have been looking the other way at the time, because I definitely missed it.”

Hadleigh glanced down at a sleeping Muggles, whose muzzle rested companionably on top of her right foot, and a rush of affection went through her, so intense it bordered on pain. Love.

Scary business indeed.

Her cheeks felt warm when she met her friends’ eyes and continued, speaking slowly and precisely, in the vain hope of avoiding misunderstandings. “Tripp and I had something to eat over at Billy’s,” she recounted, her tone dutiful. “And while we were sitting there, a...thought occurred to me.” When she paused, Melody made a rolling motion with both hands, urging Hadleigh to explain and be quick about it.

So Hadleigh went on, conveniently leaving out that scandalous kiss. Melody had, no doubt, showed the photos to Bex by now.

“I—I had a sort of...epiphany, I guess you’d call it—about the wedding.” On the shelf above Melody’s unlighted Franklin stove, her great-grandmother’s sturdy mantel clock ticked ponderously, as if marking off Hadleigh’s slow, thudding heartbeats, one by one. She took a deep breath and resumed. “I realized that I’d never really wanted to marry Oakley in the first place, although I wasn’t actually conscious of that at the time of the wedding, you understand. The embarrassing truth is, I’m almost positive I was counting on Tripp showing up like a knight in shining armor, stopping the ceremony and—here’s the part that makes me wince—declaring his undying love for me, right there in front of everybody. Insisting that he and I belonged together.” Hadleigh paused and rolled her eyes in self-deprecating amusement. “What an idiot I must have been.”

Neither Bex nor Melody looked particularly surprised by Hadleigh’s admission that she’d loved Tripp the whole time. Nor did they correct her for referring to herself as an idiot.

Of course they’d guessed the truth, probably from the very first. The miracle was that after trying to talk her out of marrying Oakley and getting nowhere, they’d gone along with the idea.

“Please say you didn’t tell Tripp that,” Melody said.

Hadleigh bit her lower lip. “I wish I could,” she answered softly. “For whatever reason, I couldn’t hold it in—I did try at first, though. We went out to his ranch, and Jim was around, so we talked for a while, the three of us—mostly Jim and me. Then, when Tripp and I were alone, I told him.”

“Why?” Melody and Bex chorused, in pained and perfect unison.

“Because it’s the truth?” Hadleigh ventured, with less conviction than before. “Anyway, I think he already knew, because he didn’t seem very surprised.”

“Oh, Lord,” Bex commiserated, whacking her forehead with the heel of one palm. Then, hastily and with a flash of anger in her eyes, she demanded, “What happened then? Did Tripp brush you off like he did before? Make that same speech about how you were still young, with your whole life ahead of you, and the right man would come along someday?”

Hadleigh relaxed a little. “No,” she replied. “He didn’t. But then another really peculiar thing happened. Something—something shifted inside me all of a sudden and that’s when I knew.”

Melody and Bex were both visibly holding their breath, and their eyes were huge with suspense.

Enjoying the drama of it all the tiniest bit, Hadleigh spread her hands for emphasis. “I’d just fallen out of love with Tripp—which came as a shock, since I never thought I was in love with him to begin with.”

Melody blinked again. Bex just stared.

“You fell out of love?” Melody almost whispered once she’d recovered some of her composure. She sucked in a breath, let it out slowly and audibly. “And you think that’s a good thing?”

“How could you not have known how you felt about Tripp?” Bex asked fretfully. “Everybody knew, except maybe for Oakley. And if you did know, on any level, why go through with the wedding for heaven’s sake? What if Tripp hadn’t fallen in with your crazy plan and hauled you out of there, Hadleigh? Would you still have married Oakley?”

Melody gave a shudder at the thought, though she kept her opinion to herself. For the moment, that is.

“I don’t know what I would have done,” Hadleigh admitted, feeling stupid and, at the same time, thinking she could have used a little more understanding and support from her dearest friends. “Obviously, I wasn’t exactly in touch with my authentic self.” She lent just the faintest note of mockery to the term authentic self, not sure she possessed any such thing.

“I can’t believe you told him,” Melody reiterated.

“Were you listening before, Melody, when I said it seemed to me that Tripp already knew the truth anyhow?” Hadleigh retorted, turning snappish now. Both Melody and Bex were making her feel like a witness in a courtroom, testifying against herself.

“I really wish you hadn’t said anything,” Melody moaned.

Bex shifted her attention from Hadleigh to Melody. “Breathe,” she commanded. “It’s not as if the world is ending.” She took a moment to do some breathing of her own. “Besides, what does any of it matter now? Hadleigh’s over Tripp—she just said so. She’s ready to move on. And that is a good thing. Isn’t it?”

Melody sat up very straight and her eyes shot blue-green fire as she glared at her friends. “It would be very good,” she said pointedly, “if our scorned bride here hadn’t just crowned herself the new Queen of Denial.”

“I beg your pardon?” Hadleigh countered, out-and-out indignant now.

“You’re doing it again!” Melody wailed, waving her hands wide as she spoke. Startled, the three cats shot off the bookshelf like furry bullets, headed in all different directions, and Muggles, finally surfacing from dreamland, gave a whimper of concern.


Chagrined, Melody had the belated good grace to lower her voice. “Hadleigh, don’t you see? You’re fooling yourself again—you’re not over Tripp. You’re scared as hell, and you’re hoping if you pretend you don’t care about him anymore, this whole thing will go away and you won’t get hurt.”

Hadleigh rose to her feet, trembling a little. “Don’t you think you’re assuming an awful lot?” she asked very quietly. “Do you actually believe you know me better than I know myself?”

Melody sighed, and she seemed to deflate before their eyes. “No,” she said, her voice a sad whisper, her expressive eyes reflecting a deep sadness. “I don’t think I’m assuming anything, Hadleigh. And, yes, I do know you better than you know yourself, at least right now, in this moment. You’ve lost so much in your young life, my friend—your parents, your grandmother, your brother—and it’s perfectly natural that you wouldn’t want to risk losing still another person you love.”

“Hey, you two,” Bex inserted, alarmed “let’s not—”

On a rational level, Hadleigh knew, of course, that Melody meant well, and that she was as true a friend as she’d ever been. Hell, she might even have a point—to a degree. But sometimes her blunt statements and firm conviction that she was always right were difficult, if not impossible, to take—and this was one of those times.

“We all need some space,” Hadleigh said instead of goodbye, snatching up her shoulder bag and scrambling awkwardly into her coat, in a major hurry to get out of there before she burst into tears of frustration and sorrow and heaven knew what other mixed-up emotions.

Muggles watched her curiously.

“Hadleigh, wait,” Bex protested when Hadleigh turned on her heel and marched across the studio toward the outside door, Muggles trotting behind her. “Hadleigh, please don’t—”

“Let her go,” Hadleigh heard Melody say, sounding defeated.

Because she didn’t want Muggles to be any more alarmed than she probably already was, poor dog, Hadleigh denied herself the zing of pure satisfaction she would have gotten from slamming the studio door so hard it rattled on its hinges.

She stormed around the side of the house, through the gate and onto the sidewalk, fists bunched in the pockets of her coat. Muggles, though oddly hesitant, kept pace with her long strides.

Steaming like a boiler on overload, Hadleigh got all the way back to her place before she remembered her car was still parked in Melody’s driveway.

For now, she decided, it could just stay where it was.