The Marriage Pact

Chapter Eight


NEITHER ONE OF them said a word during the drive back to town, and since Tripp wasn’t in the mood to chat, that was fine with him. Still, the road would have seemed a lot longer and lonelier than it was if Ridley hadn’t come along for the ride and kept him company.

Physically, Hadleigh was right there in the truck with him and the dog.

Mentally, though, it seemed she’d gone off somewhere in her head, where he couldn’t follow. Or maybe she was just asleep.

Tripp reminded himself that Hadleigh had told him she didn’t want to do any more talking that night, and he could definitely see her point. She’d made her big confession, and it followed that her batteries were low.

The thing was, women didn’t usually mean it when they claimed they didn’t want to talk, not in his experience, anyway. What they wanted, 99.9 percent of the time, was tender and preferably poetic inquiries about their feelings.

Same when there was a domestic shit storm brewing on the horizon—they’d get suspiciously quiet and radiate hostility, but ask them what was wrong, and they’d inevitably say, “Nothing.”

A man couldn’t win for losing when it came to getting a straight answer out of a pissed-off female, but he’d damned well better keep trying anyhow, no matter how hopeless the effort seemed, if he knew what was good for him.

With all these thoughts roiling in his head, Tripp glanced over at Hadleigh. She was as beautiful in profile as she was from the front, and the rear view wasn’t bad, either.

Maybe she was playing possum or she’d actually dozed off; he couldn’t tell. The sweet and slightly wicked little smile resting on her mouth both intrigued and troubled him. If Hadleigh was asleep, she was having a dream that pleased her. And if she was awake, she was thinking some pretty happy, even sensual, thoughts.

What was going on in that brain of hers, waking or sleeping?

Right around then, Tripp would have given just about anything to know that he figured into this particular equation somewhere, because if that smile meant she had a man on her mind, he damn well wanted it to be him.

Tripp had kept one eye on the road while he was checking Hadleigh out, but the next time he risked a glance in her direction, it wasn’t her dreamy expression that caught his attention. It was her breasts.

Damn, but Hadleigh had herself a fine pair of breasts, perfect ones, in fact, and the way that clingy pink top emphasized their contours made Tripp’s heart go skittering like a bucking bronco on a patch of ice. And the need to free those breasts from the confines of Hadleigh’s shirt and bra, look at them, cup them in his palms, was like a swift, sharp stab.

He damn near went off the road.

Muttering a swear word, he turned the wheel just in time and kept his gaze straight ahead, but even then, Tripp could see her at the periphery of his vision, and clearly.

Hadleigh’s breasts, he reflected miserably, were neither too big nor too small, but just right—anything more than a handful being a waste, as the old saying went.

Tripp groaned inwardly. Why had he thought taking Hadleigh out on what, by Mustang Creek standards, constituted a date, was such a good idea?

The answer surfaced almost immediately, and it wasn’t flattering. He’d believed, arrogantly enough, that if the two of them could spend an evening together, share a meal in the least romantic place available—that being Billy’s—he’d be able to win Hadleigh over, find his way around all those booby traps and barriers she’d spent a decade building around herself.

As if.

Thinking back over the early part of the evening, he knew all those genial interruptions hadn’t helped, but these were old friends and longtime neighbors, along with a few well-meaning acquaintances stopping by to say hello and ask about his dad. Sure, they’d been curious, but they genuinely cared about Jim and wanted to make sure Tripp felt welcome. They were good people, people he couldn’t and wouldn’t have brushed off for anything, not if he wanted to look in the mirror ever again.

Years away from home—college, and then air combat in Afghanistan, followed by a job he loved captaining 787s for a major airline and building his own company after that, hadn’t changed who or what he was: a Wyoming wrangler who was happier on the open range than anywhere else. Early on, he’d believed he wanted to get away from the hard work and frequent difficulties any rancher or farmer had to deal with, day after day, year after year. Now, looking back, Tripp wondered if he hadn’t done all that just so he could come home for good, when the time was right, and not spend the rest of his life wondering if he could have made it in the outside world.

If he’d stayed on the ranch, he figured, he would have been happy enough. But he might have spent more than a few restless nights staring up at the bedroom ceiling and asking himself what he’d missed out on, what he could have accomplished if he’d only taken the risks.

No, Tripp had no real regrets about the choices he’d made, with the possible exception of marrying Danielle instead of just sleeping with her for a while. That way, they could have gotten each other out of their systems and maybe even parted as friends.

Grimly, Tripp put all that out of his mind, believing as he did that what’s done is done and hashing it over wasn’t going to change a damn thing. And anyway, right here and right now wasn’t such a bad place to be, for all the sudden and completely unfamiliar things going on in his heart as well as his brain.

He wanted Hadleigh, he knew that now, for sure and certain, not just in his bed, but in the whole of his life. He was intoxicated by the spicy-floral scent of her skin, the silken shine of her hair, the ripe curves of her body—the whole package.

And his gut told him it wasn’t going to be easy.

Tripp couldn’t have said how he knew, but he was convinced Hadleigh had gone through some changes that night, and the road she was headed down might well lead her away from him for good.


The irony of that might have amused him if it hadn’t struck his middle like the blow of a sledgehammer.

And what about that kiss he’d laid on her, right there in the middle of Billy’s place, with practically the whole town looking on? What the hell had he been trying to prove?

Okay, so Hadleigh hadn’t hauled off and punched him for it or walked out or done any of a million other things she would have been justified in doing. In fact, she’d kissed him back.

It had been a stupid move on his part, just the same, Tripp thought, and damned arrogant, too.

Same with that caveman crap he’d pulled next, hustling Hadleigh out to the truck and then not taking her home, as she’d asked him to, but out to the ranch.

True, if Hadleigh hadn’t wanted to go with him, she wouldn’t have, but that didn’t justify what he’d done. He owed her an apology at the very least.

Yet she’d seemed happy enough when they got to his place, and when Jim showed up on the side porch, she’d been so kind, so engaging, that within a few moments, the old man was lit from within, glowing like a happy jack-o’-lantern with hair.

Finally, when Jim had gone to bed and Tripp and Hadleigh had the kitchen to themselves, she’d overridden her considerable pride to say she’d realized that she’d never wanted to marry Oakley Smyth, that she’d been hoping all along that he, Tripp, would swing into the church like Tarzan on a vine and carry her off.

A crazy idea, yes—but Hadleigh had been eighteen at the time, and a very sheltered eighteen at that, since Will had run almost constant interference between his kid sister and the big, bad world after their parents had died, and so had their grandmother. Alice, down to one chick in the nest after Will’s death, and probably figuring her granddaughter had already endured enough reality for one lifetime, might as well have swathed the girl in cotton batting or locked her up in an ivory tower with nothing to do but read fairy tales and watch animated movies filled with princes, princesses and singing bluebirds.

Now, as the town limits of Mustang Creek twinkled into view, Tripp concluded sadly that Hadleigh must have met with considerably more opposition that he’d thought once she’d taken up with Oakley Smyth.

Alice surely hadn’t approved of the match—no sensible person would have, knowing anything at all about the potential bridegroom—and the woman must have said and done just about everything she could to stop Hadleigh from seeing Smyth, let alone marrying him.

No easy matter, considering that her grandmother had been the only blood kin Hadleigh had left, and her approval would have meant a great deal, especially to a girl fresh out of high school. Still, Hadleigh had been brave enough to bust out and take a chance. She’d mapped out a game plan, however misguided it might have been, and she’d followed through, wagering everything on a chance at happiness, on the hope of a family of her own.

Finally, if all that wasn’t enough, Hadleigh had innocently handed her heart over to Tripp, that day at Billy’s, all a-froth in her wedding dress. Take me with you, she’d said.

What had that request cost her?

And how had he responded? He’d handed Hadleigh’s fragile heart right back to her—after fracturing it first.

Tripp thrust out an angry sigh, remembering. He hadn’t meant to be callous—he’d wanted to help—and while he didn’t know what he could have done differently under the circumstances, he wished he’d been kinder, gentler and a whole lot less blunt.

He stopped for a red light, as furious with himself as he’d ever been with anybody. Hindsight might be 20/20, but damn, it still sucked. Even after he’d cavalierly dismissed Hadleigh with the news that he had a wife, she’d loved him. He realized that now—and a fat lot of good it did this late in the game.

Okay, a case could have been made for what he’d done that day, but if he’d given the matter any real thought, he would’ve been kinder about it, taken the time to be sure she understood, even stuck around to lend moral support until the worst of the gossip died down.

Instead, he’d simply dropped Hadleigh off at home, once he knew Alice was there to pick up the pieces, and gone right back to his own well-ordered, big-city life. Thereafter, when he did think about Hadleigh, he’d smile, remembering her not as a woman, but as his best friend’s spirited kid sister—painfully young, vulnerable and, therefore, strictly off-limits.

In the interim, naturally, she’d grown up. Hadleigh was not only beautiful, she was smart and sexy, too. Some lucky bastard was bound to snatch her up, and this time around, she wouldn’t need—or want—rescuing. Nope, Hadleigh would find a good man, marry him, bear his children and make him glad to be alive every day of his life.

Tripp wanted Hadleigh to be happy, no question about it.

However, just the idea of her sharing someone else’s bed, giving birth to somebody else’s babies, was almost more than he could take.

Still, if his hunch was correct and Hadleigh was finally through waiting for him, finally ready to move on, there wouldn’t be much he could do about it, would there?

Just as Tripp came to that dismal conclusion, Hadleigh woke up, if she’d been asleep in the first place, sitting up straight, blinking, looking over at him with an expression that faintly resembled surprise.

To lend a little comic relief, Ridley chose that moment to stick his floppy-eared head through the gap between the front seats and run his wet, sloppy tongue the length of Hadleigh’s left cheek.

Startled, she laughed, wiped away the dog spit with a quick motion of one pink-sleeved arm and reached back to tug gently at Ridley’s ears. “Goofball,” she said, with a note of such tenderness in her voice that, on top of everything else, Tripp found himself envying his own four-legged sidekick.

“We’ll be at your place in a minute or so,” he told Hadleigh, and his own voice sounded, to him anyway, as though it were being piped in from somewhere far away.

Brilliant, he thought. As if Hadleigh wouldn’t know that already, having lived in Mustang Creek her whole life, except during college.

“That’s good,” she replied distractedly, still focused on Ridley. She was stroking the critter’s head, bathing the mutt in the sunny glow of her smile.

In that moment, the hackneyed term “lucky dog” took on a whole new significance for Tripp.

He couldn’t think of anything to say, nothing that would raise his rapidly dropping stock with Hadleigh, so he just drove, and, pretty soon, they were pulling up at the curb in front of her house.

Most of the lights were on, and Melody’s car was still parked outside, though she’d at least had the courtesy to move the thing so it wasn’t blocking Hadleigh’s station wagon in the driveway the way it had earlier in the evening.

Tripp parked the truck, shut off the engine and left the dog in the backseat when he got out. He walked around and grabbed the door handle on Hadleigh’s side about a second before she shoved it open with so much force that she practically knocked him over. Yep, if Tripp hadn’t been quick on his feet, he figured, she’d have body-slammed him to the sidewalk.

“Oops,” she said with a tired smile.

In an alternate universe, Tripp thought glumly, Hadleigh would invite him in, and Ridley, too. At that point in the fantasy, her dog and his conveniently disappeared into another dimension—only temporarily, of course—and after some sweet talk, perhaps in front of a crackling fire, and maybe a few glasses of wine, Hadleigh, smiling a come-hither smile, would take Tripp by the hand and lead him into her bedroom—


Tripp brought himself up short. Yeah, right.

Ridley, meanwhile, being stuck in the backseat, began to whine and trot back and forth, clearly unhappy that he’d been left behind instead of gallantly walking Hadleigh to her door and looking on with canine approval while Tripp kissed her good-night.

Get a grip, Tripp muttered to himself.

He’d walk Hadleigh to the house, though, and wait on the porch until she’d gone inside and shut the door.

Kissing her would have been nice, but even the dog probably knew that was out of the question, at least for tonight.

“I’ll be fine,” she protested, obviously flustered when Tripp opened the gate and gestured for Hadleigh to precede him. “Really. You don’t need to—”

Before she could finish her sentence, the front door flew open, and Melody stood in the chasm, peering out at them. The retriever—Muggles, wasn’t it? Or some other Harry Potter–type name?—seemed glued to Melody’s side, glistening black schnoz pressed against the screen in the outer door.

Great. An audience.

Not that he was exactly surprised.

He leveled an eloquent look at Melody, and she responded by wrinkling her nose as if to say “gotcha.”

Hadleigh seemed blissfully unaware of the exchange, and that was probably a good thing. “You see?” she asked Tripp brightly, goddess-beautiful in the light of the moon. “I’m perfectly safe, so you can go now. Thanks for dinner and—everything.”

Everything? Tripp was mystified. He’d bought her a salad and some iced tea, and she’d barely touched either one, and then he’d abducted her, behaving like a nutcase in one of those true-crime shows on TV.

He should have dressed for the part, he thought ruefully. Worn camouflage and maybe a ski mask. Scoured his fingertips with sandpaper so he wouldn’t leave prints.

“Uh, you’re welcome,” he said, several beats late and with all the urbanity of a turnip.

“It was nice,” Hadleigh said, quietly generous. She raised herself onto her toes and kissed him on the cheek, the way women did when they were bussing Great-Grampa goodbye, once visitors’ hours were over at the old folks’ home.

Melody remained in the doorway, and so did the dog—Hermione? Hortense? Whatever. What was this, anyway, some kind of sideshow?

Tripp, speechless for once in his life of free-flowing bullshit, opened his mouth and, when nothing came out, closed it again.

Hadleigh, meanwhile, turned and strolled toward the porch steps. Looking back over one silky pink shoulder, she waggled her fingers in a goodbye wave and then left him standing there, in the middle of her front walk, like a bad prom date.

He didn’t move until Hadleigh had gone into the house and closed the door behind her.

He didn’t hear the lock click, which was what he’d expected, but maybe Melody was leaving right away.

Tripp sighed once and headed for the truck.

At his approach, Ridley began to bark again, this time yapping like a teacup poodle. He didn’t like being kept out of the action—such as it was—or maybe he just objected to letting Hadleigh out of his sight.

Join the club, dog.

At least there was one good thing he could say about tonight. It was over.

And tomorrow was a new day.

* * *

MELODY, WHO HAD changed out of her own clothes and into Hadleigh’s red sweatpants and a worn-out concert T-shirt at some point in the evening, stood impatiently in the entry, shifting from one foot to the other like a kid waiting for a turn at hopscotch on the playground.

“I see you’re planning on spending the night,” Hadleigh observed casually, bending to pet Muggles, who was frantic with joy at her return. That was the great thing about dogs, she thought—they were so unabashedly glad to see their people again, whether the separation had lasted five minutes or five months.

“You’re stalling,” Melody accused her. Besides the sweatpants and T-shirt, she’d helped herself to another carton of yogurt at some point, and now she was waving the spoon at Hadleigh like an orchestra conductor’s baton. “Tell me what happened!”

Hadleigh smiled. “Okay,” she said agreeably. “Nothing. That’s what happened.”

Melody narrowed her eyes. “Are you kidding me? I checked the social media sites, my friend, and what do I see? They’re absolutely peppered, all of them, with pictures of you and Tripp—kissing!”

“I hope you made yourself at home when I was away,” Hadleigh said, her tone sweet as she took off her coat, hung it on its customary hook on the coat-tree. All the while, she had one ear trained on the sound of Tripp’s retreating truck, but Melody didn’t need to know that. “I mean,” she went on merrily, “like logging on to my computer—maybe peeking into my medicine cabinet and, if you really got bored, checking the expiration dates on the stuff in my fridge—”

Melody squared her shoulders and tried to come off as indignant. “You know very well,” she said archly, “that I didn’t need a computer to check up on you. I used my phone. Furthermore, I most definitely did not ‘peek into your medicine cabinet,’ but if I had, I might have wondered when you plan to look into birth control. As for your fridge, I probably saved your life. There were things in there that your grandmother must have bought during the first Bush administration—but not to worry. I tossed everything that bubbled or shouldn’t have been green so you wouldn’t poison yourself.”

Hadleigh laughed, shaking her head. “And those clothes?” she asked, indicating the purloined sweatpants and T-shirt.

“They were in the drier, for pity’s sake,” Melody said. “I was at loose ends and there was absolutely nothing on TV, so I decided to fold the laundry. Then I figured this outfit looked pretty comfortable and it was still nice and warm, so I changed into it. Sue me.”

“You’re impossible,” Hadleigh said, still smiling. Tripp would be well on his way home by then, heading back through town, out into the countryside, the sky popping with stars and the moon shining, even at half strength, as brightly as if it could barely contain all that light and might burst at any second.

A pang of something—yearning?—struck her, the way homesickness used to, just at twilight, when she was very young and away from home for a slumber party or a sleepover at a friend’s house. Most likely, what she felt was clearly visible in her face, but she’d already gone past Melody at that point, on her walk to the kitchen. She wanted to let Muggles out in the backyard for a few minutes and brew a cup of herbal tea in the vain hope she’d be able to sleep that night.

“That’s all you’ve got to say? That I’m impossible?” Melody ranted gleefully, curious beyond all endurance, trailing through the house in Hadleigh’s wake, right along with the dog. “The man kissed you in the middle of a busy restaurant—hell, Tripp didn’t just kiss you, he just about swallowed you, and it didn’t look like you were putting up any resistance—”

Hadleigh sighed as she moved through the archway between the dining room and kitchen and flipped on the lights. Although she knew better, she cherished a faint hope that, if she didn’t spill the whole story of that night’s nondate, Melody might drop the subject, at least for tonight, then either go home or crash in the guest room.

No such luck.

When Hadleigh opened the back door to let Muggles out, Melody started waving her smartphone around and challenged, “You don’t believe me? I can show you the pictures—”


Hadleigh followed the dog across the screened-in porch, opened the outer door and stood on the steps, hugging herself against the chill. “Of course I believe you,” she told Melody in her own good time. “And I don’t need to see the pictures because, well, actually, I was there. An eyewitness—didn’t miss a thing.”

Melody, standing in the inner doorway, heaved a dramatic sigh. “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked pitifully. “Damn it, Hadleigh, I’m your friend. We made a pact, you and me and Bex, that we were all in this husband-finding pact together. Now, all of a sudden, you’re being swept off your feet and you’re not giving up a single detail? Honestly, I’m hurt.”

“You’re not hurt—you’re nosy,” Hadleigh replied, glancing back at Melody while she waited for Muggles to finish the yard tour and come inside. She smiled then. “But you’re a best bud and I know you mean well.”

“If I’m a ‘best bud,’ why not put me out of my misery and just tell me what happened.”

“The kiss happened,” Hadleigh said softly, even a little sadly. “Oh, and I told Tripp something I probably should have kept to myself.” At the look of concern and sympathy on Melody’s face, she worked up another smile, albeit a flimsy one, and raised her shoulder in a shrug. “Other than that, there’s nothing much to tell.”

Melody squinted in the dim light flowing onto the porch through the window over the kitchen sink. “Are you all right?” she asked in a near whisper. So much for the wronged-friend diatribe.

“I will be,” Hadleigh said very softly but with a note of conviction. “What if we talk about this tomorrow, Mel? Bex is due back sometime in the afternoon, isn’t she? If we wait until she’s home, I won’t have to tell the whole story twice.”

Melody nodded her assent, if somewhat reluctantly, and crossed to where Hadleigh stood on the chilly threshold, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Fair enough,” she said. “But you’re okay, right?”

“I’m okay. Go home and get some rest.” Hadleigh managed a raw chuckle as Muggles bounded up the porch steps toward them, and her voice was steady when she teased, “The stress of all this is starting to take a toll on you, Melody. You look terrible.”

Finally, Melody laughed, though her eyes were moist with tears. “Gee, thanks,” she said with a loud sniffle.

Once they were back in the kitchen, Hadleigh filled the teakettle at the sink and Muggles consumed the last few bits of kibble in her bowl. Melody stood with her back to the counter, watching Hadleigh for signs of God knew what and gnawing away at her lower lip.

“Stay and have some tea,” Hadleigh said. After all, Melody was one of her two BFFs, and it had been kind of her to stay with Muggles all evening—ulterior motives notwithstanding. Her heart was definitely in the right place, and she definitely didn’t deserve to get the bum’s rush.

But Melody shook her head and launched herself away from the counter, only in slow motion. “I’d better go home,” she replied. “Cats are independent, and mine have plenty of food and water, but they’ve probably been waiting for me. Can’t have them thinking I’m dead or something.”

Hadleigh switched on the burner under the teakettle, crossed the room and gave her friend a quick hug. “Another half hour won’t matter, will it?” she reasoned. “Stick around for one cup of tea?”

Melody had made up her mind to go, however, and once she decided on a course of action, large or small, she invariably followed through. She was already headed for the front door as Hadleigh spoke, in fact, picking up her purse on the way, taking her coat from the brass tree in the entry.

Hadleigh hurried after her. “I’ll walk you to your car,” she said.

Melody grinned wearily. “This is Mustang Creek, Wyoming,” she reminded her friend. “Not the mean streets of Gotham City. I’ll be perfectly fine.”

Déjà vu, Hadleigh reflected. She’d said something similar to Tripp when he brought her home and insisted on waiting around until she was safely inside the house. Protesting had done her about as much good then as it would do Melody now.

Her friend wasn’t the only stubborn woman around, after all.

“I’ll just stand on the porch and keep an eye on you until you get in your car and drive away,” Hadleigh insisted.

“Whatever,” Melody said, spreading her hands in a gesture of tolerant exasperation. She went down the steps, turned at the bottom and looked back at Hadleigh, holding up her keys and jingling them for emphasis.

Hadleigh knew that was her cue to go inside, but she stayed put. Even though there was a definite nip in the air—winter was still a couple of months off, but it was on its way for sure—she wasn’t about to move, so she wrapped both arms around herself to keep from shivering and waited.

Melody slowly lowered the keys, and her expression, rimmed in the glow of the porch light, had gone solemn. “Was it bad, Hadleigh?” she asked, so softly it was a strain to hear her. “Is that why you don’t want to talk about tonight?”

“Not bad,” Hadleigh hastened to say, touched at the worry she saw not only in Melody’s face, but in her bearing. “Just—I don’t know—like being in one place as far back as you can remember, then suddenly finding yourself somewhere else.”

Melody’s brow furrowed. “That’s cryptic,” she said. Then, “If Tripp took you tonight just to spring another wife on you,” she vowed, “I may have to shoot him.” She brightened, but only a little. “And Bex will be delighted to help me hide the body.”

Hadleigh heard the teakettle beginning to whistle, way back in the kitchen. It had been Gram’s, that kettle, and it had a small bird on the spout that breathed steam and “sang” loud and shrill when the water came to a full boil. She’d always hated the darn thing, thought for sure it would split her eardrums wide-open one of these days.

For now, though, she ignored it.

“If there’s another wife,” she told Melody, “Tripp didn’t mention her. Now, will you please either agree to stay the night or get in your car and go home before I freeze to death?”

Melody hesitated for a fraction of a second, but then she grinned again, turned and practically sprinted down the walk. “I’m going, I’m going,” she called back when she reached the gate.

Hadleigh laughed, and it felt good this time, not forced, not manufactured, but natural and real.

Melody unlocked her car, got in and waited to close the door, so the interior lights would stay on, thus making her glaringly visible. She mugged, raising both eyebrows, and waved with comical enthusiasm—See, no ax murderer hiding in here—and Hadleigh waved back, sending a nonverbal message of her own. If I have to stand here all night, waiting for you to shut your door and drive away, I’ll do it.

When Melody finally fired up the engine, tooted her horn and drove away, Hadleigh counted it as a victory, however small, and went inside to silence the teakettle.