The Marriage Pact

Chapter Five


BECAUSE HADLEIGH NEVER got away with much of anything, Melody blew in like a spring breeze just as Tripp was turning to leave the store.

“Hey,” Melody greeted him, after catching Hadleigh’s eye briefly and then shifting her gaze to Tripp’s face. “Nice to see you again.”

“Melody,” he acknowledged with a cordial nod.

With that, Tripp Galloway went around Melody, stepped out onto the sidewalk and closed the door behind him. The bell above gave a merry little jingle. Muggles drooped with evident dog-despondency at his departure, plopping down beneath a table display of quilting-related gift items with a soulful sigh.

Hadleigh might have found the retriever’s response depressing if she hadn’t been busy pretending not to watch out of the corner of one eye as Tripp opened the door of his truck, the bright September sun catching in his wheat-gold hair, swung up behind the wheel and reached over to ruffle his dog’s ears before starting the engine.

“What was that about?” Melody asked.

As if she—knowing Hadleigh as well as she knew herself—hadn’t already guessed what “that was about.”

“I might as well tell you,” Hadleigh said without enthusiasm.

“Yep,” Melody agreed, grinning. “You might as well. If nothing else, it’ll save me some arm-twisting.”

“He asked me out,” Hadleigh admitted.

Tripp, meanwhile, backed the truck onto the street and drove away.

Hadleigh wondered fretfully if he was gloating right now. Congratulating himself on getting his way. Didn’t he always get his way?

Melody gave a shrill whistle through her front teeth. She’d been the envy of every other girl on the playground, back in grade school, when it was commonly believed that only boys could make that ear-piercing sound. At the moment, she was just irritating. “And you said yes,” she guessed, although it was obvious that she already knew.

Hadleigh felt her shoulders sag as she nodded. “Like a fool,” she confirmed.

Melody beamed. “Hardly,” she told her brightly. “A fool would have said no. Surely you’ve noticed, my friend, that the man is one finely manufactured cowboy?”

Hadleigh’s color flared again, mainly because she privately agreed and she was furious with herself for it. “If you think Tripp’s so great,” she snapped, “why don’t you go out with him?”

“I would,” Melody replied, still grinning, “except for two tiny facts. One, he didn’t ask me, and, two, even if he had, I’d be honor-bound to turn him down, since I happen to be a very loyal friend.”

Sudden and totally embarrassing tears flooded Hadleigh’s eyes. She came out from behind the counter and stood facing Melody. “What’s the matter with me?” she asked. “Am I self-destructive or stupid or what?”

Melody immediately put her arms around Hadleigh and hugged her hard before taking her by the shoulders and holding her at a distance so she could look straight into her eyes. “Oh, honey,” she said, tearing up herself, “nothing is the matter with you. Tripp’s hot, you’ve always had a thing for him, whether you’re willing to admit it or not, and you haven’t had a real date in—what? Two years?”

“Longer,” Hadleigh confessed. Melody and Bex hadn’t had a “‘real date”—which meant something more than meeting some guy for coffee—in a month of Sundays, either. Pointing that out would not only have been unnecessary but unkind, too.

“Where’s he taking you?” Melody asked, smiling again, looking as twinkly as Disneyland on a December evening.

Hadleigh knuckled away her tears and straightened her spine. “We’re going to Billy’s,” she said. “It’s just a friendly dinner—Tripp said so himself—nothing fancy. No strings, no obligations.”

Melody looked both skeptical and delighted. She tilted her head to one side as she studied Hadleigh’s face. “It’s a start,” she insisted.

“It’s an ending,” Hadleigh said, for the sake of clarity. “Tripp and I have an agreement. One dinner. Nothing more.”

“Why all the resistance?” Melody asked, her voice soft now and a little sad. “Tell me the truth. Are you afraid of him—or of yourself? Because you’re sure as heck scared of something, any idiot could see that, so kindly don’t insult me by saying you’re not.”

Sure, she was scared, Hadleigh reasoned silently, privately.

She was terrified, actually. Why? Because Tripp had single-handedly broken her heart, a heart she’d spent a decade mending, without even knowing what he’d done. And he had the power to do it all over again.

She’d felt close to him as a child, regarded him as her friend, too, and not just Will’s, because he’d treated her that way. She’d grieved with Tripp after Will’s death, cried on his shoulder, held on to the happy memories he’d shared and the wise, even tender, counsel he’d given her, drying her tears, urging her not to let her brother’s life be all about the tragic, senseless way he’d died. Moreover, Will’s time on earth, however brief, was worth celebrating.

And after all that, Tripp had gotten married, without so much as telling her—her, Will’s sister, the orphaned child he’d charmed and teased and protected. If Tripp had felt pity for her, he’d never let it show. No, he’d nourished her as she grew, simply by accepting her as she was, joking with her, including her even when Will would have preferred that she make herself scarce.

Had Will lived, he would’ve known his closest friend had fallen in love, way off in some faraway city, known that Tripp had asked some strange woman to marry him. Will would have served as best man at the wedding, in fact, and Hadleigh, while there was no denying that she’d have been hurtin’-for-certain, wouldn’t have been blindsided, sideswiped, crushed by the discovery.


Melody, still grasping Hadleigh’s shoulders, gave her a gentle shake. “You’re not thinking of begging off, are you?” she asked. “Give Tripp a chance, Hadleigh. He deserves that much.”

Hadleigh nodded, her patched-together heart aching, afraid of being shattered again. If that happened, there would be no putting the pieces back together. No matter how many good and decent men she met after that, men she might have loved, married and had children with, her ability to trust, let alone love, would be gone. She’d have nothing to offer as a wife and mother.

“I’d be risking so much if I let myself care,” she finally choked out. It was something she hadn’t meant to say, even to one of her two closest friends, but it was out there now and she couldn’t take it back.

Melody pulled a ruefully affectionate face, squeezed Hadleigh’s shoulders lightly and let go, her hands falling to her sides. “It’s always a risk, caring deeply for another person, it’s a risk for everybody—that’s how the game is played, kiddo. Sorry, but you don’t get to be the exception, the one with a written contract from on high, happily-ever-after guaranteed. No one gets that.”

“I know,” Hadleigh whispered, after biting her lower lip. “But I’d like to go on record: I wish there were guarantees.”

Melody laughed, even as her own eyes glistened with sympathetic tears. “If you want a guarantee, sweetie, buy a major appliance.”

Hadleigh choked out a moist chuckle. “Gee,” she said. “Thanks for that.”

Melody’s face softened again. “Know what’s worse than getting your heart broken? Playing small, staying safe, hiding from life. Get a clue, Hadleigh—you’re beautiful, you’re smart and you’re one damn fine human being.” She sucked in a breath, then huffed it out, causing her bangs to flutter slightly. “If Tripp’s putting the moves on you, it shows that he’s nobody’s fool.”

Hadleigh was moved by what Melody had said, and a little saddened, too, because for all that positive reinforcement, there’d been a hint of wistfulness running beneath her words. Had Melody, who never failed to champion the marriage pact, even when Hadleigh and Bex expressed doubts, secretly stopped believing that true love would ever come her way?

“We’re making a very big deal out of this,” Hadleigh said in an effort to lighten the moment. “Tripp’s taking me out for burgers and fries, not sweeping me away to Paris so we can kiss on bridges and hold hands in sidewalk cafés. Billy’s, as you very well know, is not exactly a romantic setting.”

Melody’s response made Hadleigh wonder if her friend had heard a single word she’d said.

“When?” she asked, straight out of left field.

“When what?”

“When is this not-a-date date supposed to happen?”

As easily as that, Hadleigh was a nervous wreck again. “Tonight,” she said, with a small quaver in her voice.

“Close up the shop,” Melody commanded, linking her arm with Hadleigh’s and steering her toward the counter. “Right now. We need time to decide what you’re going to wear, girlfriend, because you can’t go like that.”

Hadleigh looked down at her jeans and rust-colored pullover sweater. “What’s wrong with—”

“I swear,” Melody said, shaking her head.

“I thought I’d change into jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt when I got home,” Hadleigh offered weakly. After all, Billy’s wasn’t a black-tie kind of joint.

Though she had gone there in a wedding dress once.

Better not to remember that, especially when she’d be sitting across the table from the same man she’d been with back then.

Besides, she had things to do here at Patches, and closing time was hours away. All the same, she knew when she was beaten. She collected her bag from its place under the counter, rummaged through it for her key ring, then snatched up her coat from the top of the nearby glass display cabinet, where she’d tossed it after Tripp had followed her into the store.

“Well, of course jeans,” Melody chirped, all business. “I’m not completely fashion-deficient. The question is, which jeans? What color? How tight? With or without fancy stitching or rhinestones?”

All the while, Melody was shuffling Hadleigh toward the door.

Muggles, of course, followed.

“Rhinestones?” Hadleigh echoed, a beat or two behind.

“Do you want to impress Tripp or not?” Melody opened the door, extended a hand for the keys once both of them, plus the dog, were on the sidewalk, standing under the faded, green-striped awning with the name Patches scripted across the ruffled part.

“Actually,” Hadleigh replied, “no. I don’t want to impress him.”

He’d said she was beautiful. Did he really think so, or was he playing some kind of game?

Back in her junior high days, when she was all teeth and knees and elbows, Tripp had often tugged lightly at one of her braids and told her she’d be a looker someday, but there was no rush to grow up, so she ought to just “be a kid” while she still could.

“Well,” Melody retorted, “that’s why you need a little friendly guidance.”

And that was that.

The next thing Hadleigh knew, the shop was locked, and she and Muggles were on their way home in the station wagon. Normally, she walked to work, since she lived only six blocks from the store, but that day, because she’d finally gotten permission to visit Earl in the hospital, she’d brought the car.

Melody’s spiffy little BMW was on her rear bumper, sort of shooing her along. If Hadleigh so much as let up on the gas pedal, Melody honked her horn.

Two or three minutes after they’d left Mustang Creek’s main street, which was seriously touristy except for Patches and one or two other small businesses, Hadleigh turned into her driveway, looked over at Muggles and sighed.

“I guess I’m not getting out of this one,” she told the attentive dog. “But one thing’s for sure. I am not wearing rhinestones.”

Muggles whined softly in response.

Melody whipped in behind Hadleigh’s car, blocking the driveway, just in case there was an escape attempt in the offing, apparently.

Five minutes later, the three of them, two women and a golden retriever, were in Hadleigh’s bedroom, closet doors wide-open, dresser drawers pulled out. Melody was flipping through Hadleigh’s limited sweater collection, looking for something with, as she phrased it, “a bit of pizzazz.”

“Don’t you own anything but turtlenecks, men’s sweatshirts and sweet little twinsets?” Melody demanded at one point, growing more frustrated with every passing moment.

“I like turtlenecks,” Hadleigh protested. She felt swept along by strong currents, just as she had on Snake River once, when she’d fallen out of a rubber raft and Will and Tripp had had to jump in after her, nearly drowning themselves before they got her to shore.

The raft was a total loss.

“So I see,” Melody fretted, continuing to ransack Hadleigh’s dresser drawers. “Honestly, Hadleigh—turtlenecks? If that isn’t symbolic, I don’t know what is. And, I might add, I had no idea you were so wardrobe-challenged. Why, I remember some of this stuff from college. Don’t you ever shop?”

Hadleigh gaped at her frenzied friend, feeling helpless and more than a little indignant. “Yes,” she said testily. Her closet, after all, was packed with clothes. “I do.”


Melody shook her head in tolerant dismay. “Anywhere besides the Western-wear place and the discount heaven out on the highway?” she asked. Then she answered her own question. “I think not.”

“Melody,” Hadleigh said. “I love you dearly, but isn’t it time you went home or back to your studio or perhaps jumped into the nearest lake?”

“You’ll thank me for this someday,” Melody replied, finally settling on a clingy pink T-shirt with long sleeves and a V-neck.

“That ‘someday,’” Hadleigh answered, “is a long way off.”

Melody flung the pink T-shirt in Hadleigh’s direction and began rooting through stacks of jeans neatly arranged on shelves inside the closet. Hadleigh had meant to toss the T-shirt ages ago—it was a remnant of a long-ago girlie-girl phase, around the time she’d finished college. Fortunately, she’d gotten over the pink penchant as quickly as she’d gotten over the guy she’d been trying to please at the time.

Joe? Jeff? Joshua?

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

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

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

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

“Go home, Melody.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

She swept out of the bathroom, modeling the outfit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Will you stop?” Hadleigh whispered fiercely.

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

He knocked.

Hadleigh rolled her eyes.

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

Hadleigh glared.

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

Tripp knocked again, a sort of offhand rap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She made his mouth water and his heartbeat quicken.

Little girl, all grown up.

Tripp sighed.

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


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

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

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

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

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

It wasn’t a victory.

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

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

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

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

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

Tripp laughed.

Remarkably, Hadleigh did, too.

Tripp entered and then shut the door behind him.

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

But a chance for what?

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

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

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