The Marriage Pact (Hqn) (11 page)

But when it came to settling down, well, he wasn’t about to limit his options that way. Spence was about keeping options open,
all
of them. Not surprisingly, he had all the women he had time for, and then some.

Melody had gone out with him on a few dates, in both high school and college, and that second time around they’d seemed serious about each other—until something had gone wrong and they’d broken up. After that, all Melody would say was that they’d both come to their senses and agreed to call it quits.

“I was wondering when I’d run into you,” Spence was saying to Tripp when Hadleigh tuned back in on the conversation. “My office is still in the same place it always was, you know. After better than a week back home, I’d have thought you could find your way over there and say howdy.”

With that, Spence commandeered a chair from a nearby table, dragged it over and sat down.

“Make yourself at home,” Tripp told his friend drily. “And, by the way, the ranch hasn’t been relocated, either.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Hadleigh spotted Ginny heading toward them with the drinks they’d ordered a few minutes before.

She set the glasses down with a simultaneous
thump
and nudged the police chief lightly in one shoulder. “I suppose you want something to eat?” she asked, cheerfully affronted.

Spence gave the older woman one of his famous grins bordering on impertinence—a brief flash of white teeth, a twinkle in his too-blue eyes, a dimple denting his right cheek for an instant.

And sure enough, he made even Ginny blush. Ginny, who could stand toe-to-toe with any other
charmer in all of creation and hold her ground.

“Just coffee, please,” Spence said. “Black, as usual.”

Ginny, who prided herself on being, as she put it, “a tough old broad,” grunted, then turned and beelined it for the big java machine behind the counter.

Spence sighed, as if to say it was all in a day’s work, and it wasn’t
his
fault he appealed to women of all ages, types and descriptions.

“Was there something you wanted, old buddy?” Tripp asked, not unkindly. “Because if you’re just here to while away your coffee break shooting the breeze, well, I happen to be a little busy right now.”

Spence’s gaze moved smoothly to Hadleigh’s face, stayed there a moment and then, after a slight twitch of a grin and an almost imperceptible lift of his eyebrows, turned his attention back to Tripp. “So I see,” he replied, pretending to be miffed. “I won’t keep you long.”

“Good,” Tripp said.

Ginny bustled over with Spence’s coffee and set it down in front of him. The heavy stoneware cup rattled against its matching saucer.

Too smart to make eye contact with Spence again, she gave Hadleigh a meaningful look instead.

Hadleigh smiled reassuringly.

A second later, Ginny was gone.

Spence took a sip of his coffee, deliberately lingering. “How’s Jim doing?” he asked presently, in an offhand tone.

It was a gibe, though a mild one, and subtle. Hadleigh might not have picked up on it at all if Tripp’s eyes hadn’t looked hot enough to come to a blue boil—and if she hadn’t seen this kind of masculine interaction a million times growing up around Will and his friends. They would’ve done just about anything for each other, the three of them, and yet those line-in-the-sand challenges arose occasionally, as though they were young bulls, marking out their separate territories.

Close as they were, Will and Tripp had tangled more than once, bloodying their knuckles, blackening each other’s eyes, rolling in the yard like a pair of fools until one of two things happened. Either Gram came outside and sprayed them both down with the garden hose or, because they’d been so equally matched, they’d finally worn themselves out and lain side by side on their backs, gasping for breath and laughing up at the sky. And, of course, if Spence was around, he’d jump right in at the first sign of a brawl.

At first, these tussles had scared Hadleigh—her brother and his friends went at it full throttle and in high gear—but she’d eventually figured out, with a little help from Gram, that fighting was like a sport to them, a way to vent excess energy and prove something to themselves as well as each other.

Tripp took his sweet time replying to Spence’s question about Jim Galloway’s well-being. When he did, he rested his forearms on the table, leaned a fraction of an inch in his friend’s direction and replied, “My dad’s doing all right, Spence. Thanks for asking.”

Spence rolled his eyes. “No
problem,
”
he said.

Then he scraped back his chair, stood up and favored Hadleigh with a courtly nod of farewell. His coffee, half-finished, remained on the table, apparently forgotten.

“
That
was neighborly of you,” Hadleigh observed once Spence had walked away.

Since Ginny was headed their way with the food, Tripp waited until she’d served Hadleigh her salad, plunked his plate down, picked up Spence’s abandoned cup and saucer and left them again.

“I thought Spence was your friend,” Hadleigh persisted when Tripp didn’t speak right away.

“He is,” Tripp said, picking up the pepper shaker and seasoning his meal generously.

Hadleigh lowered her voice. “Well,” she retorted, “nobody would have guessed that from the way you acted just now.”

Tripp chuckled. “Everything’s fine, Hadleigh,” he assured her. “In fact, a bunch of us are getting together for a poker game real soon.”

She picked up her fork and stabbed halfheartedly at a chunk of the blue cheese that garnished her salad. “I still don’t understand,” she admitted, practically whispering. “You and Spence go way back, and you were
rude.
”

Tripp grinned, taking his own fork in hand and watching Hadleigh from the other side of the table. “Because men aren’t conciliatory, like women,” he said, with a maddening air of mirthful reason. “Spence wanted to get under my skin for not getting in touch right away, it’s true, but what just happened wasn’t about him and me. It was about
you
and me.”

Hadleigh opened her mouth, closed it again. She still hadn’t gotten the morsel of blue cheese more than halfway to her face.

“What?” she finally managed, confounded.

Tripp’s grin broadened. He took the time to savor a forkful of gravy-laden mashed potatoes and swallow before he troubled himself to answer. “This is a small town,” he said at long last—and quite unnecessarily. “Everybody knows we’ve mixed about as well as oil and water these past ten years.” He paused, picked up his knife and began to cut up the gigantic slab of breaded chicken, also awash in gravy, and taking up most of the space on his plate. Just when Hadleigh began to fantasize about stabbing him with her fork out of sheer frustration, he went on, “We have a legend to live down, you and I. I’m the man who carried you out of your wedding before you could get yourself saddled with the wrong husband, and you’re the spitfire bride who fought me every inch of the way. So, naturally, our having a peaceable meal together in a public place is bound to raise some speculation.”

Hadleigh’s mind snagged momentarily on the phrase “the spitfire bride who fought me every inch of the way.”
Had
she put up a real fight? Or had she been, for all her kicking and squirming and loud protests, well, just a
little
bit
thrilled?

It was a possibility she’d never seriously considered, though of course it
had
crossed her mind. Gram had hinted once or twice that Hadleigh might actually have been hoping
,
in some hidden corner of her heart, that Tripp would come to her rescue like a hero in a romantic movie, stop the wedding and carry her off like pirates’ plunder. Next stop: happily ever after.

At the time, she hadn’t been conscious of any such plan.

But what about her
un
conscious aims?

She frowned. No, she decided. Even at eighteen, she hadn’t been
that
much of an airhead. For one thing, she’d had no way of knowing how Tripp would react to the news that she was getting married to Oakley—hearing about the wedding, he might well have dismissed Will’s little sister as a dingbat and never given her another thought.

Except, she
had
known he’d come back to Mustang Creek, she realized with a start, known he’d storm straight into the church and call a halt to the ceremony if it came to that, and have no qualms at all about raising hell.

How
had she known? That was no great intellectual leap. Her brother, never a fan of Oakley’s, would probably have done the very same thing. Will and Tripp had always thought along very similar lines, allowing for the occasional loud disagreement, usually over a girl.

Slowly, Hadleigh set her fork down, leaned back in her seat and marveled at how she’d kept herself in the dark about her real motives, both at the time and right on through the next ten years
.

Tripp, watching her, stopped eating. “Something wrong with your food?” he asked.

Hadleigh swallowed, shook her head. “I was having a flashback,” she said.

He didn’t seem annoyed, just puzzled. “Look, Hadleigh, I’m sorry if sitting here bothers you—”

She interrupted quickly. “No,” she told him, “it’s not the booth. Or the food.”

“Then what?” It was a patient question, although that didn’t mean he’d let her skate over the issue.

Hadleigh turned her head to see if any of the other customers were watching—they were—and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I can’t talk about it here,” she said. “Maybe I can’t talk about it
anywhere,
ever.”

Tripp frowned. Now, she could see, bewilderment
was
giving way to exasperation. “If it concerns me,” he said evenly, “then we’re going to talk about it—whatever ‘it’ is.”

“What makes you think everything in the universe somehow affects you?” It was a lame attempt to make Tripp back off, and she saw right away that it had failed.

“Hadleigh.” That was all he said, just her name.

She tried again. “Really, it’s nothing—”

There was a short, uncomfortable silence.

“Look me in the eye and tell me I don’t figure into whatever’s going on in that beautiful head of yours,” Tripp challenged quietly,
too
quietly, “and I’ll take you at your word.”

“You...you’d believe me?”

“I didn’t say that,” he replied tersely.

She couldn’t do it, couldn’t lie to Tripp’s face or anyone else’s, and he knew that as well as she did.

Hadleigh sighed, and it seemed to her that she was deflating like a punctured tire.

Tripp waited. And though he held up one hand to signal a passing Ginny for the check, his eyes never left Hadleigh’s face.

Ginny hurried over with the bill. Her earlier glee was gone—she looked worriedly from Tripp’s plate to Hadleigh’s. While Tripp had at least made a dent in his supper, Hadleigh’s salad was practically untouched, and the fact was all too obvious.

“Is something wr—”

Tripp broke in before Ginny could finish her sentence. “Everything’s fine,” he said, flashing a grin at the woman that probably would have made Hadleigh’s clothes fall off, then and there, if it had been directed her way. “We just remembered we’re supposed to be somewhere in a couple of minutes, that’s all.”

Ginny fairly melted at the explanation, beaming and handing over the tab.

After a glance at the total, Tripp took a bill from his wallet and held it out to Ginny with the cash register slip.

“I’ll get your change real quick, since you’re in a hurry and all,” Ginny promised, flushed and eager to please.

Tripp was already out of the booth, on his feet. “No need,” he said, extending a hand to Hadleigh as she slid over the seat, fumbling with her coat and handbag.

Hadleigh ignored his offer, partly because she was watching Ginny and partly because she could still stand up on her own last time she checked.

Tripp leaned in to whisper, his breath warm as it met Hadleigh’s ear. He was fully aware, damn him, that just about everyone in the place was watching them, speculating. “Your place or mine?” he asked.

Hadleigh felt color surge into her face, even as her ear and neck tingled, but her smile was radiant, if a little forced. “Neither,” she said very sweetly. If Tripp could put on a show, so could she. “Our deal was dinner and nothing more. Now dinner’s over—and so is the evening.”

Tripp’s responding smile was like a flood of sunlight parting the clouds after a rainstorm. “Not until we have that talk I mentioned, it isn’t,” he told her firmly. Anyone looking on would have thought the two of them were bound to fall into bed together the instant they were behind closed doors.

As if she’d just tumble onto the nearest mattress for Tripp Galloway!
That
wasn’t going to happen, and a damn good thing, too.

Mostly.

“We had an agreement!” Hadleigh argued under her breath.

Tripp held Hadleigh’s coat for her. Now it wasn’t just his smile that heated her through and through; the blue heat in his eyes made her so warm she was afraid she’d start sweating or even faint. “Our
agreement,
”
he reminded her, taking her hand, lifting it and brushing his lips ever so lightly across her knuckles, “didn’t cover ducking out early because you don’t want to talk about whatever’s on your mind with so many people around.”

Hadleigh smiled her widest smile. Two could play his game.

Only Tripp was one move ahead, as it turned out. Before she could tell him what he could do with his agreement, he
kissed
her, the bastard.

Right there in Bad Billy’s Burger Palace and Drive-Thru, with fully half the county looking on.

Hadleigh didn’t exactly kiss Tripp back, but she didn’t push him away, either.

She was lost.

The other diners didn’t even pretend they hadn’t seen what happened. There were fond murmurs, chuckles and a smattering of applause.

Every bit as self-assured as he’d been on her almost-wedding day, Tripp took Hadleigh by one elbow and squired her past the tables and booths and the crowded counter to the main door.