The Marriage Pact (Hqn) (20 page)

“A party?” Melody echoed with a twinkle.

“Yes,” Bex said, shoving her hands in the pockets of her puffy coat and jutting out her chin, although the expression in her eyes was one of lively humor. “It’s not every day a person reaches a major life goal.”

“Oh—you mean the franchise thing,” Melody said, with a brief glance at Hadleigh. The two of them fretted, tacitly and in silence, that they might have given Bex’s well-earned success short shrift, glossed over the accomplishment.

“The franchise thing,” Bex confirmed, a smile flickering at the edges of her mouth. “It’s a big deal, you know. People all over the country are already signing up to take the training and open All Jazzed Up clubs of their own.”

“Of
course
it’s a big deal,” Hadleigh cried, turning to her friend, searching her face. She was mortified that she hadn’t been more congratulatory, more openly excited about such a major coup. “Oh, Bex—we’re so proud of you, both of us—”

She fell silent.

“I know that,” Bex said gently, filling the gap.

Melody, too, was deeply chagrined. “We
are
proud, Bex. Hadleigh and I are so happy for you. We could have done a better job of showing it, though.” She sighed. “Are we forgiven?”

Bex raised one shoulder slightly, her version of a shrug. She’d always been the easygoing one, the peacemaker and—on many occasions—the referee. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said, letting them off the hook.

“What can we do to help you get things ready for the party?” Hadleigh asked. It worried her sometimes, Bex’s long-standing habit of overlooking slights, however unintended, never allowing herself to be the squeaky wheel. Not even when she should have.

“Just show up,” Bex said. “No need to fuss about what you’ll wear, either, because I’ve reserved the Moose Jaw Tavern for this shindig, so jeans and T-shirts will be just fine.”

“The Moose Jaw Tavern?” Hadleigh echoed, surprised. She’d been expecting a different location—Bex’s small house, perhaps, or All Jazzed Up.

“We used to hang out at the Moose Jaw,” Melody reflected, obviously warming to the idea. “Remember? There were all those pool tournaments, dancing to the jukebox, cheap beer to drink and all the free popcorn we could eat? And
what
about those red-hot rodeo cowboys who passed through town now and then?”

Bex laughed. “How could any of us forget?”

Hadleigh chuckled ruefully. “I’ve tried,” she said. “To forget, I mean. Those were some wild nights.”

Melody rolled her eyes, grinning. “Oh, yeah, right, Miss Priss,” she teased. “We were real renegades, about as wild as three escapees from the nearest Girl Scout Jamboree.”

“Okay,” Bex interceded, taking Hadleigh by the elbow and edging her toward the door. “We’re getting out of here before you two get into it again.”

Melody started for the kitchen, tea tray in hand. “Good,” she called over one shoulder. “Because it just so happens that I have work to do.”

Bex and Hadleigh heard the remark, but neither of them responded, since they were outside by then. Bex pulled the door shut behind them, while Hadleigh retrieved her car keys from her coat pocket and made her way toward her station wagon, still parked at the curb. Melody’s gift, the bracelet, sparkled on her wrist as she reached for the door handle, and her spirits rose even further.

“I’m really glad you ironed things out the other day,” Bex confided, pausing on the sidewalk.

Hadleigh smiled. “Me, too,” she said. “I don’t know what got into me, acting the way I did.”

“You’re allowed to lose your cool once in a while,” Bex told her. “You’re only human, after all.”

Hadleigh grinned. “All
too
human sometimes.” She looked around, saw no sign of her friend’s modest but sporty compact car. “Need a ride home? Or back to the club?”

Bex shook her head. “I’ll walk,” she said. “I didn’t get in a workout today, and I need the exercise.”

Hadleigh nodded, opened her car door and got behind the wheel. “See you,” she said.

“See you,” Bex chimed in happily and headed in the opposite direction, her strides long and purposeful.

With another smile and a shake of her head, Hadleigh fired up the station wagon—the woody, as Will had called it—and drove home again.

Once there she greeted Muggles and hung up her coat. Then she pushed up her sleeves and turned to the mountains of pots and pans lining the countertop. When suppertime rolled around, she’d not only cleared the surface; she’d scrubbed out the inside of the cupboard, replaced the few kettles, pots and skillets she’d decided to keep, boxed up the rest and neatly stacked the cartons on the back porch, to be taken to the drop-off station behind the thrift store.

Hadleigh made herself a grilled cheese sandwich and heated a can of soup for her evening meal, mentally reviewing the events of the day while she ate. She’d visited Earl at the hospital, put in several hours at the shop, working on her newest online class and waiting on the occasional live and in-person customer, and gone to the tea party after that. Reflecting on Bex’s parting words about last week’s rift with Melody, Hadleigh felt another wave of relief that she’d gone straight back to apologize and make amends. She’d
had
to.

The trouble with flying into a grand snit and stomping off when something or someone makes us angry,
she recalled Gram saying long ago, after a similar incident when Hadleigh was in junior high,
is that, most of the time, people come to their senses and have to swallow their pride, turn themselves right around and apologize for throwing a tantrum.
Gram had smiled gently then, no doubt to soften the message, and finished up with,
It’s much easier and much less humiliating, in the long run, just to keep one’s temper in check from the beginning.

As usual, her grandmother had been right.

Hadleigh sighed. It would have been nice, she reflected, if that particular memory had popped into her head
before
the clash with Melody, but in her experience at least, things seldom worked out so conveniently.

She carried her soup bowl, sandwich plate and silverware to the sink, rinsed them under the faucet and placed them in the dishwasher, all under Muggles’s steady surveillance.

“What?” Hadleigh finally asked, smiling at the dog.

Muggles gave a single tentative woof.

And in the next moment someone knocked at the front door, the sound muffled by distance but brisk and matter-of-fact.

Hadleigh dried her hands, and there was a strange little leap in the hollow of her throat, as brief as a heartbeat and yet leaving a silent echo reverberating in its wake. Fear? Certainly not—this was Mustang Creek, Wyoming, her hometown, a predominantly safe and peaceful place. Excitement, then? No, it wasn’t that, either.

She headed through the house, Muggles at her side, still trying to identify the sensation as she went. In the end, she settled on a combination of alertness and expectancy.

Peering out one of the long windows on either side of the front door, Hadleigh was both surprised and
not
surprised to see Tripp standing on the porch. Awash in the golden glow of the outside light, he looked mythically handsome to her, with his wheat-colored hair, his chiseled features and that sculpted physique—as if he’d been born and raised on Mount Olympus instead of the Galloway ranch, disguised himself as a mortal by replacing his toga with jeans, boots, a Western-cut shirt and a denim jacket.

A silly thought, Hadleigh chided herself, but even as she released the dead bolt, turned the knob and pulled, the magic lingered in the air, like a pulse hovering just below the level of detection.

As she gazed at Tripp through the mesh of the screen door, several things she might have said came to mind:
You should have called. Come on in. Can you stay awhile—say, forever?

None of these possibilities actually made the leap from her brain to her tongue, which was probably good, because she was still reeling from the sudden realization that Melody had been right all along. She
did
love Tripp Galloway, with all her heart, mind and body, and, furthermore, it was nothing new.

The knowledge slammed into her like a city bus moving at top speed.

While Hadleigh was recovering from the impact, Tripp’s mouth flicked up on one side, almost imperceptibly, and she saw the brief yet lethal flash of the dimple in his right cheek. By then, she had gathered enough of her scattered wits to notice the bouquet of red rosebuds he’d brought along.

Although she still didn’t speak—she wasn’t even sure she
could
speak, not coherently, anyway—Hadleigh worked the small hook holding the screen door shut and stepped back, nearly falling over Muggles in the process, so Tripp could come in.

Once inside, he studied her with curious amusement, his head tilted ever so slightly to one side, his eyes alight with—what? Mischief? Amusement?

He’d been wearing a hat earlier, Hadleigh decided distractedly, still mute. She could see the faint indentation it had left in his hair.

“I should have called,” Tripp said.

“But you didn’t.” Hadleigh heard her own words as if from a vast distance, and there was no accusation in her tone, only bemusement.

He grinned, all but vaporizing Hadleigh’s knees with no more effort than that. “I figured you’d tell me to take a hike if I did,” he said. With one hand, he gave the door a light backward push, closing it. With the other, he held out the bouquet. “They’re from the supermarket,” he told her amiably. “Somebody ought to open a flower shop in this town.”

Hadleigh’s own hand trembled visibly as she reached for the long-stemmed roses. Although she didn’t actually count, her brain too muddled for that, she knew there were either eighteen or twenty-four of the velvety, rich-crimson buds, and their subtle fragrance made her feel slightly dizzy. “Thank you,” she managed, blushing when her voice came out croaky, like a frog’s. “But what—”

“I was hoping we could talk,” Tripp said, the grin now gone and the glint in his eyes fading to a sort of wary tenderness.

“Why not?” Hadleigh said, more to herself than Tripp.
Why not?
her inner critic mimicked.
That’s the best you can do—“why not”?
Bravely, she tried again. “You didn’t bring Ridley?”

Not much better, you conversational whiz, you.

Tripp nodded but his eyes were solemn. Whatever was going on here, he wasn’t playing games; his tone and his expression and his manner were too earnest for that, too open. “He’s in the truck,” he replied.

Hadleigh, bent on, one, getting control over the whirlwind of emotions she’d been caught up in, and, two, putting the roses in a vase full of water as soon as possible, turned without a word and practically sprinted for the kitchen.

Tripp paused to greet Muggles—the silly dog whimpered with delight—but Hadleigh kept right on going.
Don’t look back.
Maybe, by some miracle, she’d regain a smidgeon of perspective by the time the trek to the kitchen was over.

She would have known Tripp was following even if she hadn’t heard the soft thump of his boot heels against the floor, the eager scrabble of Muggles’s claws as she hurried to keep up.

Not surprisingly, the hike to the kitchen was much too short to afford Hadleigh any miracles; her thoughts and feelings were just as jumbled as before—if not more so.

She kept her back to Tripp while she rummaged through several cupboards, looking for a vase large enough to accommodate the roses, then rifled one of the drawers for Gram’s old gardening scissors.

“Hadleigh,” Tripp said. His voice was low, husky, gentle.

She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t heard him speak her name—she’d tensed at the sound of it—but she didn’t turn around to face him, either. She simply said, “These are so beautiful. Thanks again.” Meanwhile, Hadleigh rode the crest of her wild emotions like a surfer on a wave, and despite her pounding heart and racing thoughts, she moved slowly and methodically, filling the tall, cut-glass vase she’d chosen to the three-quarters mark at the sink. She removed the tissue wrapping and the pointy cellophane bag that had kept the stems damp, cutting away the rubber band holding the bouquet together and finally trimming the base of each and every thorny stalk before placing it carefully in the water.

When Tripp’s hands came to rest lightly on Hadleigh’s shoulders, she flinched reflexively, not because she was startled, but because the man’s touch electrified her. He said her name again, hoarsely, and turned her around, taking the shears from her grasp, and then the single rose she’d been holding, setting them both aside.

Looking up at him, Hadleigh was both confused and thrilled. She blinked, opened her mouth to say something—anything—closed it again and bit down on her lower lip.

Tripp smiled, and his eyes were the tender blue of a spring sky, and yet warm. His breath tingled on her mouth—they were that close—when he spoke. “The roses will keep for a few minutes,” he said. “Do you think you could maybe...
relax
a little?”

Easy for
him
to say, Hadleigh thought, joyously frantic. He was cool, calm, in charge, while she
felt like one of those cartoon characters undergoing an electrical shock ferocious enough, intense enough to light up her skeleton so brightly that it might be visible through her skin.

“Okay,” she said nervously, sucking in a breath and releasing it slowly.

Tripp chuckled again—the sound gruff and thoroughly masculine and, somehow, soothing, too—and cupped his hands lightly on either side of Hadleigh’s face. At that point, she couldn’t be sure if she’d gone pale or her cheeks were blazing, and it seemed to her that the floor shifted under her feet.

“Nothing is going to happen against your will,” Tripp assured her.

Hadleigh’s head spun. Was it possible to get drunk on another person’s nearness, on the warmth of his flesh, the timbre of his voice? It seemed so.

“I know,” she said in a near whisper. And she
did
know—her heart might not be safe with Tripp Galloway, but her body definitely
was.