The Marriage Pact

Chapter Seven


YOUR PLACE OR MINE?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What was she supposed to do now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Hadleigh groaned aloud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

Again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


“The dog,” Tripp answered. “Ridley’s mighty enthusiastic when it comes to welcoming company. I put in one of those pet doors for him, so he can come and go as he pleases, and now when he hears a motor, he shoots through the gap like a lead ball fired from a cannon.”

Hadleigh smiled. She could handle a canine missile.

Seeing Jim, a strong, proud man broken by his long illness, though—that would have been tough to handle.

They were moving toward the side entrance—it led to the kitchen, if Hadleigh recalled correctly—Tripp with his hand on her elbow again, steering her through the maze of stacked building supplies and all that heavy equipment.

“I heard you were doing some repairs,” Hadleigh said, needing to make conversation as her nerves kicked up again, “but from the look of things, you’re planning on leveling the house and barn and starting over from the ground up.”

Before Tripp could respond, Ridley blasted through the pet door, leaving it to flap wildly in his wake, and streaked toward them, barking his fool head off out of sheer joy. He was no guard dog, that much was clear.

But then, neither was Muggles.

Tripp stepped in front of Hadleigh just as the dog sprang off its hind legs and all but took flight.

Laughing, Tripp caught the animal in midair, holding him in both arms, and Ridley squirmed with delight, frantically licking his master’s face and giving little intermittent yelps of delight.

“Weird dog,” Tripp said with affection.

Hadleigh found herself envying the animal for a moment, imaging what it would be like to jump and know Tripp would catch her, wrap her in his arms, hold her against his chest—

Even the face licking wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.

Since Tripp was occupied with the dog, she had a chance to get her wits about her, and she was grateful, because whatever the man said to the contrary, she was, if not an outright idiot, something of a fool—especially when it came to him.

Soon enough, Ridley began to settle down and, having spotted Hadleigh, who’d moved out from behind Tripp by then, he perked up his ears and wriggled, wanting to be set down.

Tripp complied, but he kept a close watch on Ridley until he was sure the dog would behave himself. Hadleigh leaned down and patted the critter’s furry head, telling him he was a good dog.

“Watch out,” Tripp joked, “or he might get conceited.”

Hadleigh rolled her eyes, then straightened, feeling both relaxed and anxious. That was when the side door opened and Jim appeared, not as tall as Hadleigh remembered, thinner, too, and kind of unsteady on his feet. His hair had gone from salt-and-pepper to all salt since she’d seen him last, but when he moved into the porch light, she saw the familiar smile.

“Hadleigh Stevens,” Jim almost crowed as she and Tripp mounted the two steps onto the small porch. “Is it really you, or do my eyes deceive me?”

Hadleigh smiled and stood on tiptoe to kiss Jim’s scruffy cheek before he stepped back to let her and Tripp and the dog inside.

“It’s really me,” she replied cheerfully, while Jim gazed at her with astonished pleasure.

Tripp took her coat, hung it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, put his own over it. The cheerful paper she faintly remembered had gone, and now there was only drywall, still smelling of newness. Lightbulbs dangled where there had once been fixtures, and the appliances were all askew, putting Hadleigh in mind of a few confused cattle milling around at the edge of a fast-moving river.

“Good thing I fired up the coffeemaker a little while ago,” Jim said, still pleased, apparently, by the unexpected pleasure of a late-night visit from the famous stolen bride of Bliss County.

Was that how she’d be remembered?

Perish the thought.

Tripp, meanwhile, slid another chair back from the table for Hadleigh, and she sat. He made a face at her, and Hadleigh smiled up at him in triumph.

So much for his theory that Jim would be in bed.

Tripp wasn’t giving any ground, though. He looked right into her eyes and a powerful jolt passed between them, making Hadleigh fidget. Tripp simply watched her, that wicked grin of his tugging at one side of his mouth.

“You’ll be awake half the night if you start swilling java now,” he told his stepfather affably.

Jim merely laughed and sat himself down at the table next to Hadleigh. “Don’t you fret about me, son,” he said, in the deep, rumbling voice that was as much a part of him as his character and his fine reputation. He didn’t even glance at Tripp, focused on Hadleigh the way he was. “Thing is, I’m pretty sure I’m already sound asleep and having myself a right nice dream.” His eyes twinkled. “Why, I’d swear I’m looking at the prettiest woman this side of yonder, and that means I have to be dreaming.”

Hadleigh, though she was still smiling back at Jim, felt a few faint pangs of guilt. She knew most of the neighboring ranchers and their wives had stopped by to check on Jim while he was undergoing treatment, the men lending a hand with the chores, the women cooking and cleaning and doing laundry. The people in town had rallied, too, and done as much for Jim as he’d allow, bringing him soup and casseroles and home-baked bread, ferrying letters and catalogs up from the mailbox. In season, when the beans and tomatoes came on, he got so many that he’d called the food bank over in Bliss River and asked them to come and get the overflow.

So why hadn’t she paid him a single visit?

The most honest answer was also a selfish one. She hadn’t driven out to the ranch for one reason—because Jim was Tripp’s dad, and she hadn’t wanted to spend even a minute in a place where Tripp ought to have been and wasn’t. His absence would have been too glaring, as though he’d been torn from the very fabric of the universe. Just like Will.

“I’m so sorry, Jim,” she managed. “I should have stopped by, or at least called...”

He patted her hand, shook his head. “There’s nothing you need to be sorry about,” he said gently. “Folks do what they can, when they can, and that’s the way things should be.”

Hadleigh swallowed a lump and nodded her thanks.

Tripp might or might not have seen the exchange, and read it for what it was; if he had, he gave no sign of it. Visibly suppressing a sigh, he rustled up three mugs, filled them at the old-fashioned coffeemaker and brought them to the table.

Needing to get her emotional bearings, Hadleigh looked around at the kitchen. All the cupboards were gone, except for one next to the outdated stove. The brushed-steel refrigerator was surely new, a massive thing with an ice and water dispenser, freezer drawers at the bottom and handles that gleamed fit to blind a person. A pair of dishwashers, still in their wooden crates, waited to be installed.

Having followed her glance, Jim’s smile brightened, if that was possible. He sipped some coffee, savored it awhile before he swallowed. Then he said, “My son has some mighty fancy ideas about kitchens. He’s fixing to tear out the bathrooms, too, and put in swanky fixtures, and unless I miss my guess, he’ll have the whole place rewired to run computers and the like without blowing a fuse every five minutes. Yep, the minute I’m out of his hair, all hell will break loose.”

Tripp was looking down at his coffee, a slight smile playing on his mouth, but he didn’t offer a comment.

Hadleigh stiffened. “Out of his hair?” she echoed. “You’re going somewhere?”


Jim Galloway was legendary for his attachment to the land—this land—which had been in his family for generations. The Galloway brand was one of the first to be registered in Wyoming, before it was even a state, and then there was the cemetery, where his wife and several dozen of his ancestors had been laid to rest. All of which made it next to impossible for Hadleigh to imagine him anywhere else.

Unless—

Jim gave a resounding hoot of laughter when he recognized the horrified expression on her face. “Nope, I’m not ready to turn up my toes just yet, young lady. I’m headed north to Alaska, like that old song says. Only I’ll be traveling in style, on board one of those cruise ships with twenty-four-hour buffets and ice statues as big as bison.”

Tripp smiled at the description but still said nothing.

“Wow,” Hadleigh said, as surprised by this dedicated rancher’s vacation plans as she’d ever been about anything. She’d have pegged him for the pack-trip type, leading mules along narrow trails, camping out in the wilderness with a few buddies, living off the land, all of them sipping Jack Daniels around a big bonfire at night while they swapped yarns. But a cruise? She would never have guessed that one. “That’s...great!”

“They dance till dawn on those ships,” Jim added after a few more sips of coffee. “There’s bingo with fancy prizes, and some kind of stage show every night. I don’t know how those people get any rest.”

“Speaking of rest,” Tripp interjected mildly.

His eyes still sparkling, Jim pushed back his chair, made a big production of yawning and stretching his arms. When he spoke, it was with exaggerated sincerity. “I am a trifle worn-out, come to think of it—it’s downright wearying, sitting around watching all those carpenters and electricians and plumbers work every day but Sunday.” He closed with another expansive yawn.

“Good night, Dad,” Tripp said. But he’d stood up when Jim did, out of respect for his stepfather.

Jim ignored him and turned to Hadleigh, executing an elegant bow from the waist, more like a charming courtier than a rancher. He took her hand and kissed it.

“If I were thirty years younger,” he whispered loudly, mischief dancing in his eyes, “I’d give Tripp here a run for his money, and that’s for sure.”

Hadleigh laughed softly and squeezed Jim’s calloused fingers in farewell.

He straightened, winked at her and left the room.

Hadleigh was sorry to see him go, and not just because he’d served as a buffer between her and Tripp. “I think I’m in love,” she said quietly once they were alone.

“Dad’s a charmer, all right,” Tripp said with a chuckle.

“He’s really going on a cruise to Alaska?”

“He’s really going,” Tripp confirmed, turning his chair around and sitting down again, this time straddling the seat, his arms folded atop the high back. “The doctor gave him the go-ahead yesterday. His fare’s paid and he’s even made up his mind to pick up some new clothes for the trip.”

“I’m impressed,” Hadleigh said, and she meant it.

“You’re also stalling,” Tripp informed her lightly.

She giggled, more nervous than amused. “That, too.”

Tripp caught her gaze and held it. “Something made you skittish, back at Billy’s tonight. And it was awful sudden.”

Hadleigh gulped, nodded.

He waited, not pushing, not prompting. He’d already stated his terms; if she could look him in the eye and tell him that whatever was bothering her had nothing to do with him, he wouldn’t press for answers.

She didn’t look away, much as she would have liked to. “I was thinking back. I couldn’t help it, with us sitting in the same booth we as did back then and everything.”

Tripp took her hand. And waited.

Hadleigh was reassured but no less nervous. “I don’t know what you think I’m going to say, but—well—I’ll bet it’s going to come as a surprise. You might even laugh.”

He skimmed his thumb over her knuckles, the same ones he’d brushed with his lips earlier. Hand kissing, it seemed, ran in his family. His eyes were steady when he spoke again, his voice husky. “Never gonna happen,” he said. He swept his free hand through his hair, leaving it attractively mussed, and then grimaced. “Look, Hadleigh, you don’t have to do this—you know that, right? I shouldn’t have pushed you, but the truth is, some of the stuff I’m imagining is just about driving me crazy.”

A strange, sweet warmth washed through Hadleigh’s heart in that moment, and her eyes scalded. Her throat went tight and she clutched Tripp’s hand when he probably would have pulled it away.

She’d known all along that Tripp wouldn’t press her for an answer when push came to shove—the same way she’d known, a decade before, that he’d stop her from marrying Oakley.

Maybe it was just for closure but, scared as she was, embarrassed as she was, Hadleigh needed to tell Tripp what she’d avoided realizing, what she’d so carefully blocked from her mind for all these years and why. What had been her motive?

The answer left her thunderstruck, and more than a little ashamed.

She’d been able to blame him for what was lacking in her life, that was the real reason, releasing herself from having to take responsibility for making her dreams happen.

Well, Hadleigh thought, perhaps she’d been a lackluster participant in the marriage pact, up until now, but after this, she’d be free to move on, let go of the past, get serious about finding a man who truly loved her, one she could love in return, without reservation. Together, she and Mr. Right could make a home together, build a family and be happy.

Okay, so it might not be a grand, passionate romance.

Nobody had everything.

“You were right,” Hadleigh said. “Back then, I mean. I was too young to get married, and I didn’t love Oakley any more than he loved me. What I realized tonight—what shook me up—was that I was really just using him.”

Tripp raised one eyebrow slightly. “Using Smyth? How?”

Hadleigh drew a breath, let it out slowly and took the plunge. “I was hoping you’d come back before it was too late,” she said, biting her lower lip. When he didn’t respond, she went on. “I was only eighteen, Tripp. My parents were both dead, I’d lost my brother, and Gram, well, she was a rock, but she aged a lot faster after Will died. I guess I wanted a husband, children, a home—some kind of emotional security.”

Tripp looked tired. But surprised? No. That he wasn’t.

He was quiet for a long time.

Hadleigh, though somewhat humiliated, felt an old burden fall away, and her spirit soared even as she said, “So I asked you to take me to California with you when you left here—”

“And I told you I was married,” he finished for her.

“Yeah.” She paused. “I was a dumb kid with stars in her eyes,” she continued, letting the hurt rise to the surface, so she could finally release it. “But you were my brother’s best friend, Tripp. You grew up in Mustang Creek, and weddings are the kind of thing people talk about in places like this—a lot. That being the case, I guess I thought I would have heard about your plans a little sooner.”

“I’m sorry, Hadleigh. I could have handled that better.”

But she shook her head. “Don’t you see? You didn’t hurt me. I hurt myself by having all these crazy expectations. You were a grown man, Tripp, with every right to marry whomever you wanted, do whatever you wanted. I was the one living in a dreamworld. I was a kid, as you so bluntly pointed out—”


“You were a kid,” Tripp confirmed. “A smart, beautiful kid with a future. One that was way too good to be wasted on Oakley Smyth.”

Just then, Ridley ambled over, rested his muzzle on Hadleigh’s right knee and gave a sympathetic whine. She laughed and stroked the dog’s gleaming head, touched by his efforts to cheer her up. After a moment, though, she met Tripp’s gaze.

“You knew? That I was hoping you’d show up at my wedding, I mean?”

Tripp hesitated a fraction of a second too long, then shook his head. “No,” he said, and his voice was so hoarse, he had to clear his throat. “I didn’t know—not then.”

But he’d figured it out since, obviously.

Hadleigh, exhausted now, decided not to pursue the subject any further until she’d had time to mull things over.

“I think I’m all talked out—for tonight, anyway,” she said, trying to smile.

Tripp nodded, looking both confused and relieved.

“Guess I’d better get you back to town,” he told her, “before Melody decides I’ve kidnapped you for real this time and calls in the FBI.”

As Tripp helped her into her coat, Hadleigh suddenly felt light, fatigue notwithstanding, as though a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders, one she hadn’t fully realized she was carrying.

Was she ready, at long last, to leave all those worn-out, dusty dreams behind, to stop being haunted by her eighteen-year-old self and get on with her life?

She knew one thing for sure: it was time to make some changes—some big changes.