The Marriage Pact (Hqn) (16 page)

Chapter Nine

H
E
’
D
MARK
THE
days off on a calendar if he had to, Tripp promised himself the chilly, dark morning after his big night out with Hadleigh, but one thing was for
damn
sure: he wasn’t going near the woman again for at least a week, not on purpose, anyhow.

Tripp was 100 percent positive that if he didn’t keep his distance long enough to get his bearings, he’d do—or say—something
really
stupid again. Moreover, if Hadleigh happened to be looking drop-dead sexy at their next encounter, like she had in the black jeans and second-skin pink shirt she’d worn last night, well, that would probably double the odds that he’d make a damn fool of himself.

On top of that, he wondered where it had come from, this totally unfamiliar yahoo, hyped-up version of himself, walking around in his body, wearing his face and called by his name.

Would the
real
Tripp Galloway please stand up?

Because, damn it, this wasn’t him
.

He’d been a combat pilot, for God’s sake, and he’d seen plenty of action. Once he was out of the service and flying jumbo jets for a major airline, he’d been responsible for the lives of literally thousands of passengers, as well as crew, and he’d never broken a sweat, even in some of the tough situations every pilot eventually runs into.

Later, while starting and building his charter-jet operation, he’d flown smaller, sleeker crafts a lot, especially in the beginning, when he was still getting established and couldn’t afford to hire more pilots. Over time, Tripp had coped with wind shears, ice on the wings, instrument failures, in-flight engine blowouts, some rodeo-worthy turbulence, flocks of birds, along with a few unscheduled nosedives just to make things interesting. And not once—
not once
in all that time—had he lost his cool. He’d simply handled
it, whatever
it
happened to be, as he’d been trained to do.

And what all of that came down to was one outstanding fact: Tripp had never had any call to think of himself as the jumpy type. Hell, he hadn’t even known
how
to be anything but his normal, competent, unflappable self.

Now, because of one night, with one woman, he was a nervous wreck.

Even ranch work didn’t help calm him. He’d already fed the little band of basically useless horses out there in Jim’s sway-roofed barn, lugging hay to the stalls, filling the troughs with the garden hose, brushing the critters down.

And all he’d been able to think about, the whole blessed time, was Hadleigh—the way she looked, the way she smelled of soap and flowers, the way her whiskey-brown eyes turned almost amber when she felt strongly about something.

Which was pretty much all the time, because even when she was a little kid, Hadleigh had been opinionated and stubborn. And she hadn’t changed, at least in that respect, over the intervening years, as far as Tripp could tell.

In short, he felt as if he’d jump right out of his skin if he didn’t find manage to put her out of his mind for a while.

Tripp sighed, which he’d been doing a lot over the past twelve hours or so. The sun wasn’t even up yet as he stood there in the torn-up kitchen, alone except for Ridley, who had condescended to go out to the barn with him earlier, instead of hanging around in the house the way he’d been doing lately.

Presently, the dog was munching away on his morning ration of kibble with as much greedy vigor as he might have if he’d put in a hard day’s work rounding up strays instead of just moseying around behind Tripp, sniffing the dirt floor and wagging his tail in indolent, halfhearted swipes, like a windshield wiper slowed down by heavy slush.

Tripp made up his mind to stop ruminating—easier said than done—flipped the switch on the outdated coffeemaker and yawned broadly as he waited for the java to start flowing. With luck, he’d feel semihuman again as soon as the first swallow hit his bloodstream.

He’d caught an hour or two of sleep, max, and forget REM and all the stages that were so vital to a functioning brain; when he
had
dropped off, he hadn’t gone deep enough to get any real rest. Instead, he’d hovered just beneath the surface of consciousness, as fitfully active as if he’d gotten trapped under an iced-over lake, left to search wildly for a way out—all without finding so much as an air pocket.

The drip machine on the counter chugged and chortled, working hard but making no discernible progress. Tripp wasn’t into consumerism—the new appliances, the flooring and the lighting and plumbing fixtures being installed had been carefully chosen to fill a particular purpose and stand up to heavy use over the long haul, and all the renovations were being done for practical reasons rather than aesthetics. But despite all that, he meant to junk that piece-of-crap coffeemaker before the day was out, replace it with one made in the current century. He should have brought the steel-clad, state-of-the-art one-cup wonder he’d used in his Seattle condo, he supposed, but since he’d donated the thing to charity, along with all the other items he’d considered extraneous—that being nearly everything he owned, as it turned out—there was no point in stewing over it now.

He was facing the counter, leaning in with both hands braced against the edge and
willing
that coffee to brew already, when he heard his dad shuffle into the kitchen. The sound was accounted for by Jim’s newfound tendency to walk around in slippers for half the morning. Back in the day, the man wouldn’t have left his bedroom without being fully clothed, right down to the pair of boots on his feet.

His chuckle was low and raspy, just as it had always been, and that was a comfort to Tripp.

“I reckon staring at that coffeemaker like you’re trying to set fire to it is akin to the old saying as how a watched pot never boils,” Jim drawled.

Tripp glanced back over one shoulder, didn’t smile. He wasn’t exactly at his sweet-tempered best without coffee, especially after a restless night. Then there was the whole Hadleigh situation. “This thing’s a relic,” he grumbled, indicating the antiquated gizmo with a slight motion of his head. “Should have been tossed out years ago.”

Jim stood just inside the kitchen, still in his plaid flannel robe, which was probably even older than the coffeemaker, cinching the tie-belt a little tighter around his skinny middle. His thick gray hair stood out from his head every which way, and his beard had grown in, coarse enough to sand concrete glass smooth. Sure enough, Jim’s big ugly feet were overflowing a pair of leather slippers that had seen better days.

On top of that, dear old Dad was grinning from ear to ear. He narrowed his eyes, as if he might be trying to pick Tripp out of a lineup of dead ringers and wasn’t sure which was which. “Now why would I do a damn fool thing like that?” he retorted cheerfully. “That’s a perfectly good coffeemaker, first off, and
second
off, you gave it to your mother and me for Christmas the year you turned fourteen, and that means it has sentimental value. You’d shoveled a lot of snow and mucked out a lot of stalls to buy that thing, and you were proud as all get-out, too.”

That long-ago Christmas seared itself into Tripp’s mind with the clarity of a flashback in a sentimental holiday movie. His mom had still been with them then, of course, full of life and laughter, none of them even dreaming how soon Ellie would be gone. And she’d been so delighted with that modern coffee-making device, as she sat perched on the edge of the living room couch in her pink chenille robe and fluffy slippers to match, ribbons and wrapping paper at her feet, her face shining more brightly than the gleaming multicolored lights on the tree.

Tripp closed his eyes for a moment, dealing with the aftershock of a memory that was both vivid and poignant, and when he opened them again, a second or two later, his dad was standing right next to him, one fatherly hand resting on his shoulder.

“I miss her, too, son,” Jim said. “I miss her, too.”

Tripp pushed away from the counter, straightened and gave another sigh. The coffee still
wasn’t ready, so he decided to settle for the strong beginnings already pooling in the bottom of the carafe, dark and bitter-smelling, looking like some kind of toxic waste and probably tasting about the same, and sloshed some into a mug.

Still unsteady, and therefore not trusting himself to speak yet, he took a big swig of the brew—it tasted just as he’d expected it would—and scalded his tongue in the bargain.

He grimaced.

Jim chuckled again, shaking his head.

Ridley, having inhaled his breakfast by now, lapped up the contents of his water bowl, went to the door and proceeded to whine, asking to be let out.

Both Jim and Tripp waited for the dog to remember the recently installed pet door. When he did, he low-crawled through it, leaving the flap swinging behind him like the saloon doors in an old Western movie.

“Don’t go expecting too much of the critter,” Jim quipped. “After all, he’s new here.”

Avoiding his dad’s gaze as best he could, and in no hurry to make small talk, Tripp toned down his coffee with a little tap water and took a cautious sip.

Jim was in the mood for conversation, it seemed. “Let me hazard a wild guess,” he said drily. “Last night didn’t go well for you and Hadleigh.”

“It went fine for Hadleigh,” Tripp allowed, still grouchy and still taking care not to look directly at his dad. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jim approach the table, draw back a chair and sit down heavily, as though the short walk from his room had used up his last reserves of energy.

“If you don’t want to tell me about it,” Jim replied, quietly magnanimous, “that’s certainly your choice. You might feel—and act—a little less like a scalded tomcat if you blew off some steam, though.”

Tripp turned and met his father’s steady gaze, if only to prove he could. “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “None of this is your fault, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. Guess I’m too used to living alone.”

Jim, though watchful and no longer smiling, seemed inappropriately cheerful. He rolled his thin shoulders in a move that resembled a shrug but wasn’t. “Aren’t we all?” he asked. “Anyway, no offense taken, son. Fact is, you never were all that easy to get along with in the morning. Getting you to roll out of the sack, pull some clothes on and help me with the chores was no simple matter, as I recall. You may remember that when your mother woke you up on schooldays, she used to stand as far from your bed as she could, lean in and poke at you with the end of the broom handle until you came out of hibernation. You were downright surly soon as you opened your eyes, and for a good while afterward, too.”

Tripp couldn’t help grinning, if a mite wanly, at the recollection of his petite, determined mother, prodding him with that damn broomstick of hers, warning him that if he didn’t
get up,
he’d not only miss out on breakfast, but get left behind by the school bus. And he’d better not go thinking for one moment that he could get out of doing all his usual chores, either. Plus, Ellie had said, sounding remarkably chipper for that ungodly hour, it would be a long walk to school, because nobody was going to drive him all the way into town just because he was too lazy to get out of bed on time.

“I remember,” he said, crossing to the sink, dumping the noxious contents of his mug. The coffeemaker had finally completed its mission, and he poured some, took a sip and found the brew slightly—and
only
slightly—more palatable than it had been the first time around. “Want a cup of this...stuff?”
he asked Jim.

“I can get my own,” Jim said, setting his jawbone in that obstinate way he had. “Never have needed waiting on like some high-and-mighty potentate, and I’m not inclined to change now.”

Tripp laughed, ignored his dad’s response and fixed a second cup of coffee, which he set down squarely in front of Jim—all while the old man was still gathering his forces to rise from his chair.

Ridley, meanwhile, zipped back in through the pet door, crawling on his belly again, like a soldier slithering along the ground under a steady strafe of enemy machine-gun fire.

Jim frowned at the coffee, grumbled a thank-you and gingerly drank some of it.

Tripp slapped his dad on the shoulder, but not too hard. They’d roughhoused in the old days, the two of them, but Jim had been leather-tough back then, digging postholes, stacking bales of hay in the barn or hurling them off a flatbed truck for the range stock. He’d done it all, Jim had—wrestling cattle to the ground at branding time, castrating bulls, delivering calves and foals when there was some kind of hitch in the process and the vet was too busy elsewhere to come around. He’d trained horses to the saddle and trimmed their hooves and shoed them. Not to mention splitting wood for the fire and braving the weather to chain up some old rig held together by chicken wire, high hopes and spit, or just get the damn thing to start up and run.

This new, more fragile Jim would take some getting used to, prickly attitude, threadbare bathrobe, sorry-ass slippers and all.

“Are you gonna try to tell me Mom didn’t wait on your hand and foot?” Tripp teased, hoping to lighten the mood now that the caffeine was kicking in. “If so, save it, because I was here,
remember, and she couldn’t pour your coffee or iron your shirt or rustle up your supper fast enough.”

Jim made a sound that fell somewhere between a huff and a grunt, but his mouth was twitching almost imperceptibly at the corners, and when Ridley ambled on over to rest his muzzle on one of his bony knees, Jim chuckled and jostled the dog’s ears. When his dad looked up and met Tripp’s gaze, Tripp saw both strength and sorrow in his eyes.

“You make Ellie sound like some downtrodden, unappreciated
hausfrau,
” Jim said straight out. He spoke quietly and evenly, in no way defensive, just sure of himself. “But since your memory is so damn clear, son, then maybe you recall how strong-minded your mama was—and how anybody looking to push her in any direction she didn’t want to go would have needed a bulldozer to budge her an inch. Ellie enjoyed being my wife, and she enjoyed being your mom. Making a nice home for all three of us was mighty important to her.”