The Marriage Pact

Chapter Eleven


ONCE MELODY, HADLEIGH and Bex had seated themselves, and Bex had graciously poured tea for one and all, an expectant air settled over the small gathering.

“Let’s agree,” Bex said, primly and carefully, “not to discuss Tripp Galloway.”

“Good idea,” Hadleigh said quickly. By then, she’d begun to come to terms with an unsettling thought. If she wasn’t wildly, hopelessly and permanently in love with Tripp, why had she reacted to Melody’s earlier remarks so strenuously? It wasn’t like her to fly off the handle the way she had, let alone storm off in high dudgeon.

“For now,” Melody said mildly, before taking a sip of tea.

Something mischievous but wholly benign rose up in Hadleigh then, some instinct she couldn’t define, even to herself. “Of course,” she offered in dulcet tones, “we could discuss a certain police chief. Namely, Spencer Hogan.”

Melody flushed crimson.

“Stop,” Bex interjected in a stern voice. “Now.”

“Sorry,” Hadleigh muttered, smiling into her own fragrant cup of steaming tea.

Melody shot her a warning look.

“Melody,” Bex said immediately. “Tell us all about your project.”

Melody sighed, visibly banking her fiery temper. “You mean the one you discovered by peeking at my designs while I was out of the room?” she retorted, staring pointedly at Bex.

Bex was undaunted. “That’s the one,” she said.

Again, Melody sighed. It was dramatic, that sigh, and Hadleigh recalled with amusement how active Melody had been in both her high school and college theater arts classes. Back then, she’d planned to become a trial attorney, not an artist, and she’d been convinced that training as an actress would improve her “presence in court.”

“Would you mind if I finished my tea first?” Melody inquired, with acid sweetness, glaring at Bex.

“You’re stalling,” Bex said. “But go ahead— finish your tea. We’ll wait.”

Melody set her cup and saucer down with a clink of bone china and sterling silver. “Oh, all right,” she capitulated. “Anything to keep the peace.”

Bex merely smiled.

Hadleigh didn’t dare do that, so she hid her mouth behind her cup, well aware that the laughter undoubtedly dancing in her eyes might still give her away.

Melody rose from her chair, stalked over to her drafting table and, instead of throwing back the canvas that covered whatever design she’d been working on, opened one of the drawers. She removed a simple but elegant black velvet box, the hinged kind she bought in quantity and used to display her jewelry creations.


After returning to her chair, she flipped open the box.

Hadleigh used all her self-control not to crane her neck for a look at the contents.

Melody lifted three gold bracelets, each composed of a series of graceful links, from the box. She held them, suspended, from the tip of her right index finger. “I made one of these for each of us,” she said. “As a sort of—well, a sort of symbol.”

Hadleigh didn’t even pretend to catch Melody’s drift.

“They’re charm bracelets,” Bex explained.

Melody extended one bracelet to Bex, and one to Hadleigh and then fastened the third on her own wrist.

“What—” Hadleigh began, but she was strangely choked up, and the sentence she’d been about to voice fell away, uncompleted.

“Tell her,” Bex prompted gently, opening the clasp on her own bracelet and putting it on. It glittered beautifully on her left wrist.

“Give me a chance,” Melody said, her tone a little on the snippy side, her color high.

Bex just shrugged.

Hadleigh looked down at the golden glow encompassing her wrist, feeling moved but unable to define the reasons. Jewelry was jewelry, after all, and Melody had presented both her and Bex with many pieces over recent years—pendants, rings, even bracelets. And, yet, she knew this one was special.

“It represents our covenant,” Melody said, almost shyly. “The marriage pact, I mean.”

“Okay—” Hadleigh said. “It’s beautiful, Mel, but—”

“Let her finish,” Bex interrupted, though not unkindly.

“Here’s the plan,” Melody went on, after drawing a deep breath and releasing it slowly. “We wear the bracelets, the three of us, and as we find true love, I’ll make a special charm, in triplicate, something symbolic. You know, a different design to represent each of our romances.” Hadleigh’s throat constricted, and tears scalded her eyes. “Oh, Melody—” she began, but again she couldn’t go on.

“It’s a beautiful idea, isn’t it?” Bex put in.

“The point,” Melody explained, clearly moved to tears herself and yet doggedly pressing on, “is shared purpose. We believe for each other. We honor each other’s intentions, and we keep going, no matter what. Finally, we celebrate each other’s success.” A sniffly pause. “Essentially, it’s one for all and all for one. Nobody is really home free until everyone is.”

“Wow,” Hadleigh breathed, almost overcome.

“Yeah,” Bex agreed. “The marriage pact is more than just a common goal. It’s a sacred covenant, like Melody said.”

“But it’s no good,” Melody added, somewhat breathlessly, “unless all three of us are in this for the duration.”

Hadleigh felt a jolt of genuine commitment, of a promise, a vow. “Let’s make it happen,” she said.

“Me, too.” Bex nodded, her eyes shining with tears.

“Then it’s settled,” Melody said. “As we find true love, whether it’s all at the same time or at different times, I’ll make matching charms for all three of us, designed to commemorate each romance and marriage. Nobody gives up—that’s the agreement—until we all have three charms on our bracelets.”

“That’s beautiful,” Hadleigh whispered.

“Yes,” Bex agreed, examining the bracelet twinkling on her wrist with quiet pride.

“What happens next?” Hadleigh heard herself ask.

“That’s up to the fates,” Melody said, looking intently at Hadleigh and then at Bex. “Our part is to decide—and then stand by our decision.” She paused. “So,” she went on. “Are we in or out?”

“I’m in,” Hadleigh said firmly. Inside, she was trembling a little, because on some level, she understood that this was no lark; it was some kind of serious cosmic business.

“Me, too,” Bex repeated.

Melody thrust out her upraised hand, the one sporting the glimmering gold bracelet. Bex clasped Melody’s hand, and Hadleigh grasped both.

Heaven knew what the results of this odd ritual would be, Hadleigh thought, but one thing was absolutely clear: there was no going back.

* * *

ONE DAY, OUT of the blue, Jim—still aboard ship— called home, ebullient, and considering his habit of silence, incredibly talkative. “I’ve met somebody,” he announced, before Tripp had had a chance to process his stepdad’s unusually jubilant mood.

Tripp, standing in the ranch-house kitchen with the landline receiver pressed to his ear—God forbid Jim should call him on his cell phone, like anybody else would have—was a few beats behind the action. “You’ve—what—?” he asked stupidly. At least they could have a private conversation, since the construction crews were all on their lunch breaks.

Jim had been gone for five days by then, and all that time Tripp had been awaiting news that he’d successfully boarded the Alaska-bound cruise ship. Not a word out of him. Now, to Tripp’s shock, his taciturn and patently unfanciful father seemed to be saying— But that couldn’t be it, after all these years he’d spent pining for his late wife.

Could it?

“Her name is Pauline,” Jim went on, as excited as a teenager recalling the prom date of a lifetime. “She’s retired. Used to teach high school math—”

“Whoa,” Tripp interrupted. “Slow down, Dad.”

Jim laughed, and the sound rang with a joy Tripp hadn’t heard since before his mother had died. He felt delighted and wary at the same time.

“Pauline and I are in love,” Jim continued. “It’s the real thing, Tripp, and I’m sure hoping you’ll be happy for us.”

Pauline. A math teacher. And probably not a predatory psychopath like so many of the folks featured in ID Channel “docudramas,” but still... How well could Jim possibly know this woman after less than a week? “Hold on a second, Dad—”

But Jim had the proverbial bit in his teeth, and there was no reining him in. “Pauline has an RV,” he rushed on, practically bubbling over with happy enthusiasm. “We’ll eventually want to settle on the ranch, I suppose, but in the meantime, we want to hit the road and see as much of the country as we can.”

Tripp released a long breath, and if his head didn’t quite stop reeling, at least it had slowed down. “All right,” he said cautiously, drawing the words out like a short length of rope. Wasn’t this what he’d wanted all along? For Jim to stop marking time and start living again?

Jim must have read Tripp’s mind, because he sighed and said hoarsely, “I know this seems real sudden, son—I reckon because it is pretty sudden—but I’ve only felt like this once before in my life, when I met your mother. Love happens in its own time, for its own reasons—and I am definitely in love with Pauline.” His voice took on a sober, uncertain tone. “What I need to know, Tripp, is that you’re—well, you’re okay with this.”

Tripp stood with his eyes closed and his shoulders hunched. He consciously relaxed the muscles in his back. “I want you to be happy, Dad,” he said. “If I seem a little...thrown, it’s only because things seem to be moving really fast.”

Jim chuckled, but that faintly solemn note remained. “Soon as the cruise is over, Pauline and I will head for the ranch and you can meet her for yourself. Once you do, you’ll feel a whole lot better about the situation—I promise.”


“Dad,” Tripp put in, “you don’t need my permission or my approval. It’s just—”

“It’s just that you’ve read too many of those true-crime books between flights, Captain Galloway,” Jim teased. “Pauline isn’t a nutcase with a trail of dead or missing husbands behind her. She’s a schoolteacher, Tripp, widowed for almost twenty years. She has four kids, all happily married professionals and upstanding citizens.” He paused to take a breath, evidently just getting started. “God knows, Pauline’s not after my money, because I don’t have a hell of a lot, and that’s okay, because she doesn’t either.”

“What’s her last name?” Tripp asked lightly. He’d have demanded a social-security number and a credit score, too, if he could have gotten away with it.

Jim wasn’t fooled by the attempted subtlety of Tripp’s question, but he didn’t take offense, either. He replied, with a smile in his voice, “Norbrand. Pauline Norbrand. Shall I spell it?”

Tripp laughed, feeling mildly guilty but equally determined to make sure the lady was on the level. Some things, he thought, were too important to be left to chance, and his Dad’s happiness and well-being were among them.

He’d run a background check on Oakley Smyth once upon a time, with admittedly mixed results, since he still wasn’t convinced Hadleigh would ever forgive him for it, and he was about to do the same thing all over again. This round, Pauline Norbrand would be the object of the investigation.

This is none of your business, lobbied the still small voice in Tripp’s head.

The voice was probably right, Tripp concluded, with a twinge of his conscience. Just the same, the truth was the truth, wasn’t it? Even when tough or downright painful discoveries came to light in the process?

“Nope,” he said, in belated answer to Jim’s question. “You don’t need to spell it.”

After that, the conversation swung off in an easier direction. Jim reported that he was enjoying the cruise, seeing the sights, and the food was a revelation, after years of rustling up his own grub every day. He was putting on weight, which ought to be good news, he figured. On top of that, he’d won five hundred dollars playing bingo and, yes, he was feeling just fine and getting enough rest, and, yes, he was taking his medicine as prescribed.

“You need to quit worrying so much, son,” Jim lectured affably in closing. “It’ll wear you down if you don’t put the brakes on.”

“Okay,” Tripp agreed, his smartphone already in his free hand, thumb busy scrolling for the number of his old air-force buddy’s private investigation firm up in Denver. Was the company still in business? After all, using the major search engines on the internet, most people could easily find all the information they wanted on their own.

Goodbyes were said, Jim’s humorously resigned, Tripp’s distracted, and the call ended.

Tripp decided to think a while before calling his friend and tossed his cell phone aside.

He didn’t much care for this suspicious, skeptical side of himself, but he was also a realist. Furthermore, if he’d bothered to check out his ex-wife, Danielle, in advance, he’d have saved them both a lot of trouble and wasted time.

Ridley, standing with his muzzle pressed to the pet door and whining softly, seemed to be back in helpless-critter mode. Most likely, he wanted to get outside and beg scraps from the plumbers and electricians and carpenters hanging around in the yard, finishing their lunches.

“If you want to go out,” Tripp told the dog flatly, “go out.”

Ridley tossed him an accusing look, then low-bellied through the swinging door.

Tripp, grinning a little, immediately booted up his laptop.

* * *

“I’M THROWING A party Saturday night,” Bex announced at the next gathering, an impromptu tea party held in Melody’s studio nearly a week after the bracelet presentation and renewal of the marriage pact. Since then, they’d all been busy, and they’d spent most of this visit just catching up on day-to-day stuff.

Now, when Bex finally voiced her plan for the following weekend, she and Hadleigh were getting ready to leave, putting on their coats, while Melody stacked the tea paraphernalia back on the tray.

“A party?” Melody echoed with a twinkle.

“Yes,” Bex said, shoving her hands in the pockets of her puffy coat and jutting out her chin, although the expression in her eyes was one of lively humor. “It’s not every day a person reaches a major life goal.”

“Oh—you mean the franchise thing,” Melody said, with a brief glance at Hadleigh. The two of them fretted, tacitly and in silence, that they might have given Bex’s well-earned success short shrift, glossed over the accomplishment.

“The franchise thing,” Bex confirmed, a smile flickering at the edges of her mouth. “It’s a big deal, you know. People all over the country are already signing up to take the training and open All Jazzed Up clubs of their own.”

“Of course it’s a big deal,” Hadleigh cried, turning to her friend, searching her face. She was mortified that she hadn’t been more congratulatory, more openly excited about such a major coup. “Oh, Bex—we’re so proud of you, both of us—”

She fell silent.

“I know that,” Bex said gently, filling the gap.

Melody, too, was deeply chagrined. “We are proud, Bex. Hadleigh and I are so happy for you. We could have done a better job of showing it, though.” She sighed. “Are we forgiven?”

Bex raised one shoulder slightly, her version of a shrug. She’d always been the easygoing one, the peacemaker and—on many occasions—the referee. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said, letting them off the hook.

“What can we do to help you get things ready for the party?” Hadleigh asked. It worried her sometimes, Bex’s long-standing habit of overlooking slights, however unintended, never allowing herself to be the squeaky wheel. Not even when she should have.

“Just show up,” Bex said. “No need to fuss about what you’ll wear, either, because I’ve reserved the Moose Jaw Tavern for this shindig, so jeans and T-shirts will be just fine.”

“The Moose Jaw Tavern?” Hadleigh echoed, surprised. She’d been expecting a different location—Bex’s small house, perhaps, or All Jazzed Up.

“We used to hang out at the Moose Jaw,” Melody reflected, obviously warming to the idea. “Remember? There were all those pool tournaments, dancing to the jukebox, cheap beer to drink and all the free popcorn we could eat? And what about those red-hot rodeo cowboys who passed through town now and then?”

Bex laughed. “How could any of us forget?”

Hadleigh chuckled ruefully. “I’ve tried,” she said. “To forget, I mean. Those were some wild nights.”

Melody rolled her eyes, grinning. “Oh, yeah, right, Miss Priss,” she teased. “We were real renegades, about as wild as three escapees from the nearest Girl Scout Jamboree.”

“Okay,” Bex interceded, taking Hadleigh by the elbow and edging her toward the door. “We’re getting out of here before you two get into it again.”

Melody started for the kitchen, tea tray in hand. “Good,” she called over one shoulder. “Because it just so happens that I have work to do.”

Bex and Hadleigh heard the remark, but neither of them responded, since they were outside by then. Bex pulled the door shut behind them, while Hadleigh retrieved her car keys from her coat pocket and made her way toward her station wagon, still parked at the curb. Melody’s gift, the bracelet, sparkled on her wrist as she reached for the door handle, and her spirits rose even further.


“I’m really glad you ironed things out the other day,” Bex confided, pausing on the sidewalk.

Hadleigh smiled. “Me, too,” she said. “I don’t know what got into me, acting the way I did.”

“You’re allowed to lose your cool once in a while,” Bex told her. “You’re only human, after all.”

Hadleigh grinned. “All too human sometimes.” She looked around, saw no sign of her friend’s modest but sporty compact car. “Need a ride home? Or back to the club?”

Bex shook her head. “I’ll walk,” she said. “I didn’t get in a workout today, and I need the exercise.”

Hadleigh nodded, opened her car door and got behind the wheel. “See you,” she said.

“See you,” Bex chimed in happily and headed in the opposite direction, her strides long and purposeful.

With another smile and a shake of her head, Hadleigh fired up the station wagon—the woody, as Will had called it—and drove home again.

Once there she greeted Muggles and hung up her coat. Then she pushed up her sleeves and turned to the mountains of pots and pans lining the countertop. When suppertime rolled around, she’d not only cleared the surface; she’d scrubbed out the inside of the cupboard, replaced the few kettles, pots and skillets she’d decided to keep, boxed up the rest and neatly stacked the cartons on the back porch, to be taken to the drop-off station behind the thrift store.

Hadleigh made herself a grilled cheese sandwich and heated a can of soup for her evening meal, mentally reviewing the events of the day while she ate. She’d visited Earl at the hospital, put in several hours at the shop, working on her newest online class and waiting on the occasional live and in-person customer, and gone to the tea party after that. Reflecting on Bex’s parting words about last week’s rift with Melody, Hadleigh felt another wave of relief that she’d gone straight back to apologize and make amends. She’d had to.

The trouble with flying into a grand snit and stomping off when something or someone makes us angry, she recalled Gram saying long ago, after a similar incident when Hadleigh was in junior high, is that, most of the time, people come to their senses and have to swallow their pride, turn themselves right around and apologize for throwing a tantrum. Gram had smiled gently then, no doubt to soften the message, and finished up with, It’s much easier and much less humiliating, in the long run, just to keep one’s temper in check from the beginning.

As usual, her grandmother had been right.

Hadleigh sighed. It would have been nice, she reflected, if that particular memory had popped into her head before the clash with Melody, but in her experience at least, things seldom worked out so conveniently.

She carried her soup bowl, sandwich plate and silverware to the sink, rinsed them under the faucet and placed them in the dishwasher, all under Muggles’s steady surveillance.

“What?” Hadleigh finally asked, smiling at the dog.

Muggles gave a single tentative woof.

And in the next moment someone knocked at the front door, the sound muffled by distance but brisk and matter-of-fact.

Hadleigh dried her hands, and there was a strange little leap in the hollow of her throat, as brief as a heartbeat and yet leaving a silent echo reverberating in its wake. Fear? Certainly not—this was Mustang Creek, Wyoming, her hometown, a predominantly safe and peaceful place. Excitement, then? No, it wasn’t that, either.

She headed through the house, Muggles at her side, still trying to identify the sensation as she went. In the end, she settled on a combination of alertness and expectancy.

Peering out one of the long windows on either side of the front door, Hadleigh was both surprised and not surprised to see Tripp standing on the porch. Awash in the golden glow of the outside light, he looked mythically handsome to her, with his wheat-colored hair, his chiseled features and that sculpted physique—as if he’d been born and raised on Mount Olympus instead of the Galloway ranch, disguised himself as a mortal by replacing his toga with jeans, boots, a Western-cut shirt and a denim jacket.

A silly thought, Hadleigh chided herself, but even as she released the dead bolt, turned the knob and pulled, the magic lingered in the air, like a pulse hovering just below the level of detection.

As she gazed at Tripp through the mesh of the screen door, several things she might have said came to mind: You should have called. Come on in. Can you stay awhile—say, forever?

None of these possibilities actually made the leap from her brain to her tongue, which was probably good, because she was still reeling from the sudden realization that Melody had been right all along. She did love Tripp Galloway, with all her heart, mind and body, and, furthermore, it was nothing new.

The knowledge slammed into her like a city bus moving at top speed.

While Hadleigh was recovering from the impact, Tripp’s mouth flicked up on one side, almost imperceptibly, and she saw the brief yet lethal flash of the dimple in his right cheek. By then, she had gathered enough of her scattered wits to notice the bouquet of red rosebuds he’d brought along.

Although she still didn’t speak—she wasn’t even sure she could speak, not coherently, anyway—Hadleigh worked the small hook holding the screen door shut and stepped back, nearly falling over Muggles in the process, so Tripp could come in.

Once inside, he studied her with curious amusement, his head tilted ever so slightly to one side, his eyes alight with—what? Mischief? Amusement?

He’d been wearing a hat earlier, Hadleigh decided distractedly, still mute. She could see the faint indentation it had left in his hair.

“I should have called,” Tripp said.

“But you didn’t.” Hadleigh heard her own words as if from a vast distance, and there was no accusation in her tone, only bemusement.

He grinned, all but vaporizing Hadleigh’s knees with no more effort than that. “I figured you’d tell me to take a hike if I did,” he said. With one hand, he gave the door a light backward push, closing it. With the other, he held out the bouquet. “They’re from the supermarket,” he told her amiably. “Somebody ought to open a flower shop in this town.”

Hadleigh’s own hand trembled visibly as she reached for the long-stemmed roses. Although she didn’t actually count, her brain too muddled for that, she knew there were either eighteen or twenty-four of the velvety, rich-crimson buds, and their subtle fragrance made her feel slightly dizzy. “Thank you,” she managed, blushing when her voice came out croaky, like a frog’s. “But what—”

“I was hoping we could talk,” Tripp said, the grin now gone and the glint in his eyes fading to a sort of wary tenderness.

“Why not?” Hadleigh said, more to herself than Tripp. Why not? her inner critic mimicked. That’s the best you can do—“why not”? Bravely, she tried again. “You didn’t bring Ridley?”

Not much better, you conversational whiz, you.

Tripp nodded but his eyes were solemn. Whatever was going on here, he wasn’t playing games; his tone and his expression and his manner were too earnest for that, too open. “He’s in the truck,” he replied.

Hadleigh, bent on, one, getting control over the whirlwind of emotions she’d been caught up in, and, two, putting the roses in a vase full of water as soon as possible, turned without a word and practically sprinted for the kitchen.


Tripp paused to greet Muggles—the silly dog whimpered with delight—but Hadleigh kept right on going. Don’t look back. Maybe, by some miracle, she’d regain a smidgeon of perspective by the time the trek to the kitchen was over.

She would have known Tripp was following even if she hadn’t heard the soft thump of his boot heels against the floor, the eager scrabble of Muggles’s claws as she hurried to keep up.

Not surprisingly, the hike to the kitchen was much too short to afford Hadleigh any miracles; her thoughts and feelings were just as jumbled as before—if not more so.

She kept her back to Tripp while she rummaged through several cupboards, looking for a vase large enough to accommodate the roses, then rifled one of the drawers for Gram’s old gardening scissors.

“Hadleigh,” Tripp said. His voice was low, husky, gentle.

She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t heard him speak her name—she’d tensed at the sound of it—but she didn’t turn around to face him, either. She simply said, “These are so beautiful. Thanks again.” Meanwhile, Hadleigh rode the crest of her wild emotions like a surfer on a wave, and despite her pounding heart and racing thoughts, she moved slowly and methodically, filling the tall, cut-glass vase she’d chosen to the three-quarters mark at the sink. She removed the tissue wrapping and the pointy cellophane bag that had kept the stems damp, cutting away the rubber band holding the bouquet together and finally trimming the base of each and every thorny stalk before placing it carefully in the water.

When Tripp’s hands came to rest lightly on Hadleigh’s shoulders, she flinched reflexively, not because she was startled, but because the man’s touch electrified her. He said her name again, hoarsely, and turned her around, taking the shears from her grasp, and then the single rose she’d been holding, setting them both aside.

Looking up at him, Hadleigh was both confused and thrilled. She blinked, opened her mouth to say something—anything—closed it again and bit down on her lower lip.

Tripp smiled, and his eyes were the tender blue of a spring sky, and yet warm. His breath tingled on her mouth—they were that close—when he spoke. “The roses will keep for a few minutes,” he said. “Do you think you could maybe...relax a little?”

Easy for him to say, Hadleigh thought, joyously frantic. He was cool, calm, in charge, while she felt like one of those cartoon characters undergoing an electrical shock ferocious enough, intense enough to light up her skeleton so brightly that it might be visible through her skin.

“Okay,” she said nervously, sucking in a breath and releasing it slowly.

Tripp chuckled again—the sound gruff and thoroughly masculine and, somehow, soothing, too—and cupped his hands lightly on either side of Hadleigh’s face. At that point, she couldn’t be sure if she’d gone pale or her cheeks were blazing, and it seemed to her that the floor shifted under her feet.

“Nothing is going to happen against your will,” Tripp assured her.

Hadleigh’s head spun. Was it possible to get drunk on another person’s nearness, on the warmth of his flesh, the timbre of his voice? It seemed so.

“I know,” she said in a near whisper. And she did know—her heart might not be safe with Tripp Galloway, but her body definitely was.

Tripp ran the pad of one thumb—wonderfully calloused—across Hadleigh’s lower lip. “I’d like to kiss you,” he said. “If that’s okay, I mean.”

By that point, Hadleigh thought she might die if Tripp didn’t kiss her. She gave one jerky nod, and her arms moved easily, naturally, around his neck.

Slowly, so slowly, Tripp bent his head and touched his mouth to hers, the pressure so light that it couldn’t really be called pressure. It weighed no more than a breath or a splash of moonlight.

Hadleigh groaned and rose onto her toes, seeking the fullness of what was, so far, only a promise. She felt the hard yet yielding power of Tripp, his substance and his heat, as he held her closer and then closer still.

When he finally kissed her for real, Hadleigh knew there would be no going back, not if it was up to her. Miniature fireworks flared in every nerve ending, every cell.

She heard herself whimper, and when Tripp might have withdrawn, torn his mouth from hers, she tightened her arms around his neck, held on.

And, impossibly, Tripp deepened the kiss.

Inside Hadleigh, a battle raged. This is wrong, argued her common sense. No, this is heaven, her body declared.

Common sense: It’s too sudden.

Body: I’ve waited so long. Too long.

At last, Tripp broke off the kiss, rested his forehead against Hadleigh’s and sighed. “Oops,” he muttered, with a marked lack of regret. “Believe it or not, I wasn’t planning to do that.”

Hadleigh laughed, although her throat was thick with a conglomeration of complicated emotions and her eyes burned with tears she was too proud to shed. “You planned,” she murmured, “if I remember correctly, on talking.”

Another sigh, another grin. “Yeah.”

She let her fingers slide into his hair, as she’d always wanted to do. It felt silky and warm as sunlight. “It’s possible,” Hadleigh went on lightly, “that we’ve already done too much talking.”

Tripp made a sound that was part groan, part growl, part chortle. “Hadleigh, if you’re saying what I think you’re saying—and, God, I hope you are—well, you still need to step back, take a breath and make sure you really want this to happen.”

Hadleigh drew her brows together, just briefly, in a pensive frown. “I’m saying,” she reflected solemnly, “that you ought to go out to your truck, get Ridley and bring him inside, because you’re going to be here for a while, Cowboy.”

Tripp rested his chin on top of her head and sighed again. “If we let this happen, it will change things,” he reminded her gently. “And if I’m going to live with myself afterward, I have to know you’re sure—that this isn’t some whim—”

Hadleigh placed her palms against his chest and pushed him back an inch or two so she could look directly up into his eyes. “Some whim?” she repeated reasonably and with a twinkle of humor. “I’m a grown-up now, Tripp, not somebody’s kid sister—and I know my own mind, thank you very much.”

Tripp looked mildly skeptical at this, and Hadleigh supposed there was some justification for that reaction.

“Maybe I didn’t always,” Hadleigh hastened to clarify. “Know what I thought and felt about things, I mean. But be fair, Tripp—who does?” She paused for a beat. “You? Have you always been perfectly certain of your thoughts and feelings about everything and everybody, every moment of your life?”

He laughed and shook his head. “No, babe,” he answered. “I haven’t.”

“Then why do you think I should be?”

“You’ve got me there,” Tripp conceded, and the timbre of his voice was at once sandpaper-rough and incredibly tender.

For a few moments, they just stood where they were, close but not close enough, touching each other and yet achingly aware of the distance between them.

At last, Hadleigh placed the tip of one index finger against his warm, pliable lips and broke the silence. “Just bring the dog inside,” she said. “If I change my mind somewhere along the way, I’ll be sure to let you know.”


Tripp’s chuckle was so raspy it sounded almost painful. “Yeah,” he said. “If you say no, Hadleigh, I’ll hear you, and I’ll stop—I promise you that. But I’m only human, and politically incorrect as it may be to say this, there is such a thing as a point of no return.”

Hadleigh cocked her head slightly to one side, watching the play of emotions on his face as one gave way to the next, each distinct yet shifting quickly, like brilliantly colored patterns inside a kaleidoscope. She recognized desire, reluctance, fierce passion, hope, wary amusement, then desire again.

She finally replied, musingly, almost wistfully, to his gentle warning. “Ah, yes,” she said, with a little smile, “the famous point of no return. Didn’t that already happen—right around the time you kissed me?”

Tripp sighed again and thrust the splayed fingers of one hand through his Hadleigh-rumpled hair. “And you kissed me right back,” he was quick to mention.

“Sure did,” Hadleigh said impishly. She arched one eyebrow. “Are you going to bring that poor dog inside, or do I have to do it?”

* * *

TRIPP WASN’T ENTIRELY sure his feet even touched the ground, between the time he left Hadleigh standing, kiss-flushed and glowing, in her kitchen and when he got to his truck, parked out front. He unlocked the rig, released a delighted Ridley from captivity and, while the dog cavorted on the sidewalk, opened the glove compartment and rummaged for the small, battered carton he’d brought from home. Thrusting the box in his jacket pocket, he tilted his head back, looked up at the star-strewn sky and hoped to God he was doing the right thing.

No question about it—kissing Hadleigh Stevens felt right, 1,000 percent right—and making love to her would be even better.

Still, the night would inevitably turn into the morning after, wouldn’t it, and he’d wind up standing in front of some mirror, face-to-face with himself, an obviously unavoidable confrontation, since he’d have to shave and brush his teeth and at least finger-comb his hair to feel presentable.

And Tripp Galloway wanted to be able to meet his own gaze, straight on and steady, when the time came.

Ridley, tail wagging, lifted a hind leg and sprayed the gatepost, untroubled by such dilemmas.

“You’re no help at all,” Tripp told the critter. “You know that, don’t you?”

Ridley stood on all fours now, the deed done, and went right on swinging his tail back and forth, sublimely secure in Tripp’s good intentions, content to be just what he was—an ordinary, none-too-bright, fence-post-sprinkling dog.

He looked up at Tripp, full of trust, awaiting the next development.

And Tripp felt a sudden, seismic shift. He’d loved the dog all along, but now, suddenly, the sensation was strong enough to splinter his heart.

“Come on,” he told the animal gruffly. “The lady is waiting.”

The lady was waiting, standing on the threshold now, with both the screen door and its heavier counterpart wide-open, watching.

Tripp couldn’t make out Hadleigh’s expression, since she was backlit by the porch light and the glow from the entry behind her, but he wondered if she’d expected him to bolt behind the wheel of his truck, fire up the engine and fishtail it out of there.

And, if so, would she have been disappointed to see him go—or relieved?

He had no idea, didn’t figure it mattered.

He walked as far as the porch steps, Ridley prancing at his side like some pony dolled up for a parade. Then Tripp paused, staring up at Hadleigh, astounded by the very fact of her existence, the miracle of such a glorious, confounding creation as a woman, as this woman, this beautiful, beautiful woman.

Ridley gamboled up the steps, overjoyed just to be in her presence.

Tripp understood the feeling.

Hadleigh laughed softly and bent to ruffle the dog’s ears in greeting. Then, holding both doors ajar with one shapely hip, she turned her attention to the man standing spellbound at the foot of the porch steps.

Tripp silently reminded himself that he’d known Hadleigh forever.

He and Will had been about to start second grade when she was born, after all. He’d seen her take her first steps, watched her awaken to the mysteries of the world around her, looked on with his heart in his throat as she grew, as she took more and more risks, skinning her knees and elbows. He and Will had taught her to swim, to ride bikes and horses. They’d allowed her to tag along when it was a safe enough bet that they wouldn’t be setting a bad example, and they’d protected her when the need arose.

And then, each in his own way, they’d broken Hadleigh’s heart. Will by getting himself killed in a faraway war, Tripp by wrecking her storybook wedding and promptly announcing that—oh, yeah, hadn’t he mentioned it before?—he was married.

Now, years later, Hadleigh had done what he’d been waiting for her to do all along, he suddenly realized—she’d grown into the woman he’d known she would be, and more.

Hadleigh propped her free hand on the hip that wasn’t holding open the doors. “Are you just going to stand there?” she demanded, Ridley having already weaseled his way past her into the house. “It’s freezing out here, you know.”

Whatever spell had turned Tripp to stone was suddenly broken; he could move again. He laughed, mounted the steps, crossed the porch and followed Hadleigh inside, where it was warm and the lights were dim and, for the time being anyway, they might have been the only man and woman on the planet.

* * *

HADLEIGH WASN’T A virgin, having cleared that ungainly hurdle during an awkward and mercifully brief college romance, but she wasn’t exactly a sexual sophisticate, either. She’d been intimate with one, the college boyfriend, two, another college boyfriend, who’d looked, she could admit it now, a little like Tripp, from a distance, anyway, and if she squinted, and three, a guy she met at an out-of-town business dinner and had barely thought about since. That had been the classic one-night stand, an experience she was neither ashamed nor proud of, but a rite of passage nonetheless. According to Melody, everybody got one free pass, regarding sex with a stranger—and that once had definitely been enough for Hadleigh.

Prior to all that, of course, as an eighteen-year-old potential bride with stars in her eyes and a remarkable capacity for self-deception, she’d nearly married Oakley Smyth, a fact that could still send a shudder down her spine whenever it came to mind.

The truth about Hadleigh’s relationship with Oakley would probably have surprised a lot of people—Tripp included—because she and Oakley had never progressed beyond some hand-holding and a little light necking. It hadn’t seemed all that strange at the time and, looking back, Hadleigh could see why.

Oakley, inveterate cheater that he was, might have been feeling just a bit guilty about what he was doing to the other woman in his life, and to the two children she’d had with him. Hadleigh, on the other hand, had been playing a game, acting a part in a one-woman show she expected to be cut short well before the final curtain.

Privately, Bex and Melody had dubbed her the Virtual Virgin; even after the college romances and the one-night stand, Hadleigh didn’t really get why people in books and movies made such a big deal out of sex. Sure, it could be pleasant, like a back rub or a foot massage or skinny-dipping in a cool mountain lake on a sultry summer night—and fade from memory just as quickly.


Now, teetering on the edge of a precipice, about to fling herself over the edge, not to fall but to fly, Hadleigh, unlike her eighteen-year-old self, or any of the selves that evolved later, knew exactly what she was doing. She knew there were emotional risks, all manner of them, knew she might well wind up getting her heart broken all over again.

If that happened, she’d just have to woman up and deal, she concluded. Broken hearts weren’t fun, but they usually weren’t fatal, either.

Tripp, with the cool, clean scent of a fall evening still around him, smiled quizzically and pulled Hadleigh into a loose embrace, and she was startled to realize they’d gotten all the way from the front door to the kitchen without her even noticing.

“Want to tell me about those thoughts you seem to get lost in every once in a while?” he asked. “Or is that private territory?”

Hadleigh stepped closer, slid her arms around Tripp’s lean middle, allowed herself to lean into his strength and revel in it. “I spend too much time in my head,” she confided in an indirect reply to his questions. “There’s this little room up there, where I watch my very own movies—all about the past, or what might have happened, or should have happened, or could happen in the future.” She paused, and her shoulders rose and fell with the force of her sigh. “Right now, I just want to occupy my whole body—every part of it—and be as fully and completely present as I possibly can.”

All Tripp said was, “Oh, lady.” And then he kissed her again.

It wasn’t the first time, of course—but it might as well have been, because the universe, as Hadleigh knew it anyway, darkened, shrank to a pinpoint and then exploded with light and color, expanding in all directions and at breathtaking speed.

Her fingers intertwined at Tripp’s nape, lest she come unmoored from the very earth and soar away into an invisible forever, like a vanishing star shooting toward oblivion. Hadleigh moaned, craving more of the kiss, more of Tripp, more of the strange magic they were creating together.

Even when he swept her up into his arms, the kiss went on, unbroken, and Hadleigh would have wept for joy if she’d had the breath to utter a single sob, but she hadn’t so much as a gasp or a sigh to spare. Everything she had, everything she was or would ever be, was wrapped up in the fiery charge arcing between Tripp’s mouth and her own.

He broke the contact only when he’d carried her out of the kitchen and into the dim corridor beyond, dragging in a breath. “Where—”

Hadleigh nearly laughed. Her childhood room had been upstairs, tucked at a slant under the eaves, across the hall from Will’s, as Tripp might recall, but some months after her grandmother had passed away, feeling cramped and needing a change, she’d redone the main-floor bedroom, by far the largest of the three, and moved in.

“There,” she said in a whisper, inclining her head toward the set of double doors just beyond the entrance to the bathroom.

Tripp gave a small sigh—possibly of relief—and strode in that direction.

The room was spacious and sparely furnished. There was the antique brass bed she’d bought at an estate sale, sporting one of her favorite quilts, the sturdy dresser and long, low bureau, both old, whitewashed and artfully distressed in a combination of shabby-chic and Country French. Colorful hooked rugs graced the gleaming hardwood floors, and Hadleigh’s greatest indulgence, a working fireplace constructed of old brick worn to a distinctly Tuscan shade of yellow ochre, loomed between two tall windows.

A faint spill of moonlight illuminated the space.

Tripp, still holding her in both arms, looked around, seeming a little disoriented, as though he’d suddenly found himself not merely in another room, but in another house entirely. Whatever he’d expected to see, Hadleigh deduced hazily, this wasn’t it.

He shook his head once, like a man trying to get his bearings, then crossed to the bed and sat Hadleigh down on the edge of the mattress. A moment later, he was crouching in front of her, gently removing her shoes and then her socks. Instead of standing up again, or joining her on the bed, Tripp remained where he was and began to massage her right foot, pressing into the arch with both thumbs.

Hadleigh made a crooning sound, closing her eyes and pressing her palms deep into the bedding. “Now that,” she whispered, “feels way too good—”

Tripp’s chuckle was hoarse. “That’s the general idea.”

“Who would have thought a person’s feet—” Hadleigh leaned farther back, keeping her eyes closed, gasping with startled ecstasy when Tripp took hold of her other foot and proceeded to rub both the right and the left simultaneously. “Oh—Tripp—”

“Let go, Cinderella,” he said quietly, a smile in his voice.

With a comical cry of resignation, Hadleigh stopped trying to sit upright and flopped down on the bed, landing with a bounce. “What,” she half whispered, half purred, “does it look like I’m doing?”

Tripp laughed. “Now that you mention it,” he replied, pausing the massage magic long enough to take off his jacket, rummage briefly in a pocket and set something on the bedside table, “it does look a lot like you’re letting go.”

Hadleigh’s arms flew out from her sides, spread-eagle, and she wadded handfuls of quilt in her fingers so she could remain anchored in the everyday world and because if she didn’t, she might start tearing off her clothes.

She was fully dressed, except for her shoes and socks, of course, and she was burning, aching everywhere. The danger that she might climax, and violently, before Tripp even got through fondling her toes and arches was deliciously real.

If that happened, there could be no lingering doubts—she, Hadleigh Stevens, was a weirdo, someone with a foot fetish, for heaven’s sake, and God only knew what else. It stood to reason, after all, that if Tripp Galloway could make her feel like this just by rubbing her feet... Well, what would it be like when he really got down to business?

Some part of Hadleigh wanted to scramble for that tiny room in her head, once again take refuge there. Yes, she would be lonely and wistful, full of sad yearning, like a fairy-tale princess imprisoned in a tower—but she knew how to feel lonely and wistful. Sad yearning? No problem. What Hadleigh didn’t know how to feel, what she wanted to pull back from almost as much as she wanted to fling herself, body and soul, into the very heart of the fire, was this wild, reckless passion. It was divine.

It was terrifying.

Tripp finally released his grasp on her feet, having reduced them to the consistency, it seemed to Hadleigh, of wafting smoke. He worked the snaps on his shirt, shrugged out of the garment, consigned it easily to the same oblivion that had swallowed his jacket.

The room was lit only by moonlight, but that was enough to see Tripp’s magnificent upper body, his powerful shoulders, well-sculpted chest and the distinct musculature of his midsection. A faint, wheat-gold shimmer dusted his flesh, narrowed to a V at his navel and disappeared into the low-riding waistband of his jeans.

Hadleigh marveled, shocked into silence by the sheer beauty of this man’s form, his bearing, the simple fact of his presence. Of course she’d seen Tripp without a shirt on many times. He’d been her brother’s best friend, after all—and he and Will had often stripped to the waist to shoot hoops out in the driveway on hot summer afternoons, and certainly at the community-center pool or one of the local swimming holes. Not to mention the legendary water fights in Gram’s yard, which invariably drew kids from all over town and finally morphed into epic battles involving buckets and hoses and squirt guns.


Oh, but this was very different. Hadleigh was no longer an adolescent girl, awkward and never quite sure how to stand or sit, what to do with her too-long legs or her bony-elbowed arms, for that matter, and Tripp was unquestionably a man, not a mischievous youth.

And here they were, alone, in her bedroom.

Yikes, Hadleigh thought, and then, Hallelujah!

Tripp reached out, without a word, and Hadleigh gave him her hands.

He pulled her gently to her feet, still the consistency of jelly, thanks to him, and Hadleigh’s knees buckled instantly.

Tripp caught her with ease, held her up. His eyes glinted, and one corner of his mouth tilted slightly upward. “Okay, Cinderella,” he said gruffly. “Decision time. We make love. We don’t make love. Check one.”

Hadleigh answered by hauling her T-shirt off over her head.

With an audible catch in his breath, Tripp let his gaze stray from Hadleigh’s eyes, pause briefly and tantalizingly on her mouth, and finally rest on the rounding of her breasts above the delicate lace of her bra. A low, taut exclamation escaped him, and he ran the tip of one index finger over the contours of her breasts, leaving tiny trails of invisible fire leaping along her nerves.

Hadleigh, admittedly under a spell and yet never more sure of who she was and what she wanted, boldly unhooked the front catch on her bra, letting her firm breasts spill into Tripp’s view.

That time, he actually groaned.

Then he caressed Hadleigh and chafed her nipples with the pads of his thumbs until she was the one doing the groaning.

When Tripp bent his head to suck lightly at one of the nipples he’d so deftly prepared, Hadleigh gave a little shout and leaned back in pure surrender.

The sensations Tripp wrought in her, with skillful flicks of his tongue, with the warm, loving greed of his lips, made her feverish with need, frantic and impatient, even desperate.

When he’d finished enjoying her breasts—temporarily, she hoped—Tripp kissed Hadleigh, and something broke inside her, some reservoir of passion and femininity and glorious joy, too long contained.

Tripp, seeming to sense the torrent he’d released in Hadleigh, a primal flood of physical and emotional power that could not be stopped, managed, between hungry kisses, to get rid of the rest of her clothes as well as his own. Somewhere in this process, which was as elegantly graceful as a waltz, he put on a condom.

Although neither Hadleigh nor Tripp spoke, they tacitly agreed that this first time together, they would simply give in to the demands and directives of their bodies, separate and yet somehow already one. They’d simply surrender and ride the torrents and whirlpools, eddies and undertows, wherever they took them.

Tripp lifted Hadleigh off the floor, and she instinctively clasped her long legs around his hips, tipping her head back and closing her eyes, giving herself up to him, trusting him in a way she would never have trusted any other man.

He supported her easily, his arms strong around her, nuzzling her breasts, reaching the nearest wall in a couple of strides, bracing Hadleigh against it, cupping her buttocks in the palms of his hands and kissing her long and hard and deep, kissing her breathless. She whimpered, crazed with the need for him, all of him.

“Last chance,” Tripp whispered after suckling at her earlobe and then the corresponding breast.

Hadleigh writhed against him, searching with her hips, with her softest and most vulnerable place, her breath coming in swift, shallow pants. “Now, Tripp,” she pleaded. “Now.”

With a long groan and a powerful thrust, Tripp took Hadleigh, claiming her, conquering her and being conquered himself.

The first climax seized her instantly, a long, ceaseless clenching in the depths of her femininity, perhaps even her soul. She responded without reservation, without shame, without thought, a wild creature, her body flexing against Tripp’s, over and over again, her cries throaty and primitive and tremulous with a triumph that was at once new in that moment and older than the stars.

She sobbed his name, and he soothed her, murmuring to her, kissing her neck, her eyelids, the corners of her mouth. But even as Tripp consoled Hadleigh with tender words, with caresses, with more kisses, he gave her no quarter physically. Instead, he drove deeper into her, and harder, and the pleasure grew keener and then keener still, with every movement of their bodies. As soon as one orgasm began to ebb, and Hadleigh thought she might catch her breath, another fiercer one took its place.

By the time Tripp’s control finally broke, and he surrendered at last, shouting her name, Hadleigh was spent. Her fingers buried deep in his hair, she let her softness and warmth encompass him, and wring the last measure of release from him.