The Marriage Pact (Hqn) (21 page)

Tripp ran the pad of one thumb—wonderfully calloused—across Hadleigh’s lower lip. “I’d like to kiss you,” he said. “If that’s okay, I mean.”

By that point, Hadleigh thought she might die if Tripp
didn’t
kiss her. She gave one jerky nod, and her arms moved easily, naturally, around his neck.

Slowly, so slowly, Tripp bent his head and touched his mouth to hers, the pressure so light that it couldn’t really be called
pressure. It weighed no more than a breath or a splash of moonlight.

Hadleigh groaned and rose onto her toes, seeking the fullness of what was, so far, only a promise. She felt the hard yet yielding power of Tripp, his substance and his heat, as he held her closer and then closer still.

When he finally kissed her for real, Hadleigh knew there would be no going back, not if it was up to her. Miniature fireworks flared in every nerve ending, every cell.

She heard herself whimper, and when Tripp might have withdrawn, torn his mouth from hers, she tightened her arms around his neck, held on.

And, impossibly, Tripp
deepened
the kiss.

Inside Hadleigh, a battle raged.
This is wrong,
argued her common sense.
No, this is heaven,
her body declared.

Common sense:
It’s too sudden.

Body:
I’ve waited so long.
Too
long.

At last, Tripp broke off the kiss, rested his forehead against Hadleigh’s and sighed. “Oops,” he muttered, with a marked lack of regret. “Believe it or not, I wasn’t planning to do that.”

Hadleigh laughed, although her throat was thick with a conglomeration of complicated emotions and her eyes burned with tears she was too proud to shed. “You planned,” she murmured, “if I remember correctly, on
talking.
”

Another sigh, another grin. “Yeah.”

She let her fingers slide into his hair, as she’d always wanted to do. It felt silky and warm as sunlight. “It’s possible,” Hadleigh went on lightly, “that we’ve already done too
much
talking.”

Tripp made a sound that was part groan, part growl, part chortle. “Hadleigh, if you’re saying what I
think
you’re saying—and, God, I hope you are—well, you still need to step back, take a breath and make sure you really want this to happen.”

Hadleigh drew her brows together, just briefly, in a pensive frown. “I’m
saying,
” she reflected solemnly, “that you ought to go out to your truck, get Ridley and bring him inside, because you’re going to be here for a while, Cowboy.”

Tripp rested his chin on top of her head and sighed again. “If we let this happen, it will change things,” he reminded her gently. “And if I’m going to live with myself afterward, I have to know you’re sure—that this isn’t some whim—”

Hadleigh placed her palms against his chest and pushed him back an inch or two so she could look directly up into his eyes. “Some whim?” she repeated reasonably and with a twinkle of humor. “I’m a grown-up now, Tripp, not somebody’s kid sister—and I know my own mind, thank you very much.”

Tripp looked mildly skeptical at this, and Hadleigh supposed there was some justification for that reaction.

“Maybe I didn’t always,” Hadleigh hastened to clarify. “Know what I thought and felt about things, I mean. But be fair, Tripp—who does?” She paused for a beat. “You? Have
you
always been perfectly certain of your thoughts and feelings about everything and everybody, every moment of your life?”

He laughed and shook his head. “No, babe,” he answered. “I haven’t.”

“Then why do you think
I
should be?”

“You’ve got me there,” Tripp conceded, and the timbre of his voice was at once sandpaper-rough and incredibly tender.

For a few moments, they just stood where they were, close but not close enough, touching each other and yet achingly aware of the distance between them.

At last, Hadleigh placed the tip of one index finger against his warm, pliable lips and broke the silence. “Just bring the dog inside,” she said. “If I change my mind somewhere along the way, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

Tripp’s chuckle was so raspy it sounded almost painful. “Yeah,” he said. “If you say no, Hadleigh, I’ll hear you, and I’ll stop—I promise you that. But I’m only human, and politically incorrect as it may be to say this, there
is
such a thing as a point of no return.”

Hadleigh cocked her head slightly to one side, watching the play of emotions on his face as one gave way to the next, each distinct yet shifting quickly, like brilliantly colored patterns inside a kaleidoscope. She recognized desire, reluctance, fierce passion, hope, wary amusement, then desire again.

She finally replied, musingly, almost wistfully, to his gentle warning. “Ah, yes,” she said, with a little smile, “the famous point of no return. Didn’t that already happen—right around the time you kissed me?”

Tripp sighed again and thrust the splayed fingers of one hand through his Hadleigh-rumpled hair. “And you kissed me right back,” he was quick to mention.

“Sure did,” Hadleigh said impishly. She arched one eyebrow. “Are you going to bring that poor dog inside, or do
I
have to do it?”

* * *

T
RIPP
WASN
’
T
ENTIRELY
sure his feet even touched the ground, between the time he left Hadleigh standing, kiss-flushed and glowing, in her kitchen and when he got to his truck, parked out front. He unlocked the rig, released a delighted Ridley from captivity and, while the dog cavorted on the sidewalk, opened the glove compartment and rummaged for the small, battered carton he’d brought from home. Thrusting the box in his jacket pocket, he tilted his head back, looked up at the star-strewn sky and hoped to God he was doing the right thing.

No question about it—kissing Hadleigh Stevens
felt
right, 1,000 percent right—and making love to her would be even better.

Still, the night would inevitably turn into the morning after, wouldn’t it, and he’d wind up standing in front of some mirror, face-to-face with himself, an obviously unavoidable confrontation, since he’d have to shave and brush his teeth and at least finger-comb his hair to feel presentable.

And Tripp Galloway wanted to be able to meet his own gaze, straight on and steady, when the time came.

Ridley, tail wagging, lifted a hind leg and sprayed the gatepost, untroubled by such dilemmas.

“You’re no help at all,” Tripp told the critter. “You know that, don’t you?”

Ridley stood on all fours now, the deed done, and went right on swinging his tail back and forth, sublimely secure in Tripp’s good intentions, content to be just what he was—an ordinary, none-too-bright, fence-post-sprinkling dog.

He looked up at Tripp, full of trust, awaiting the next development.

And Tripp felt a sudden, seismic shift. He’d loved the dog all along, but now, suddenly, the sensation was strong enough to splinter his heart.

“Come on,” he told the animal gruffly. “The lady is waiting.”

The lady
was
waiting, standing on the threshold now, with both the screen door and its heavier counterpart wide-open, watching.

Tripp couldn’t make out Hadleigh’s expression, since she was backlit by the porch light and the glow from the entry behind her, but he wondered if she’d expected him to bolt behind the wheel of his truck, fire up the engine and fishtail it out of there.

And, if so, would she have been disappointed to see him go—or relieved?

He had no idea, didn’t figure it mattered.

He walked as far as the porch steps, Ridley prancing at his side like some pony dolled up for a parade. Then Tripp paused, staring up at Hadleigh, astounded by the very fact of her existence, the miracle of such a glorious, confounding creation as a woman, as
this
woman, this beautiful, beautiful woman.

Ridley gamboled up the steps, overjoyed just to be in her presence.

Tripp understood the feeling.

Hadleigh laughed softly and bent to ruffle the dog’s ears in greeting. Then, holding both doors ajar with one shapely hip, she turned her attention to the man standing spellbound at the foot of the porch steps.

Tripp silently reminded himself that he’d known Hadleigh forever.

He and Will had been about to start second grade when she was born,
after all. He’d seen her take her first steps, watched her awaken to the mysteries of the world around her, looked on with his heart in his throat as she grew, as she took more and more risks, skinning her knees and elbows. He and Will had taught her to swim, to ride bikes and horses. They’d allowed her to tag along when it was a safe enough bet that they wouldn’t be setting a bad example, and they’d protected her when the need arose.

And then, each in his own way, they’d broken Hadleigh’s heart. Will by getting himself killed in a faraway war, Tripp by wrecking her storybook wedding and promptly announcing that—oh, yeah, hadn’t he mentioned it before?—he was married.

Now, years later, Hadleigh had done what he’d been waiting for her to do all along, he suddenly realized—she’d grown into the woman he’d known she would be, and more.

Hadleigh propped her free hand on the hip that wasn’t holding open the doors. “Are you just going to stand there?” she demanded, Ridley having already weaseled his way past her into the house. “It’s freezing out here, you know.”

Whatever spell had turned Tripp to stone was suddenly broken; he could move again. He laughed, mounted the steps, crossed the porch and followed Hadleigh inside, where it was warm and the lights were dim and, for the time being anyway, they might have been the only man and woman on the planet.

* * *

H
ADLEIGH
WASN
’
T
A
virgin, having cleared that ungainly hurdle during an awkward and mercifully brief college romance, but she wasn’t exactly a sexual sophisticate, either. She’d been intimate with one, the college boyfriend, two,
another
college boyfriend, who’d looked, she could admit it now, a little like Tripp, from a distance, anyway, and if she squinted, and three, a guy she met at an out-of-town business dinner and had barely thought about since. That had been the classic one-night stand, an experience she was neither ashamed nor proud of, but a rite of passage nonetheless. According to Melody, everybody got one free pass, regarding sex with a stranger—and that once had definitely been enough for Hadleigh.

Prior to all that, of course, as an eighteen-year-old potential bride with stars in her eyes and a remarkable capacity for self-deception, she’d nearly married Oakley Smyth, a fact that could still send a shudder down her spine whenever it came to mind.

The truth about Hadleigh’s relationship with Oakley would probably have surprised a lot of people—Tripp included—because she and Oakley had never progressed beyond some hand-holding and a little light necking. It hadn’t seemed all that strange at the time and, looking back, Hadleigh could see why.

Oakley, inveterate cheater that he was, might have been feeling just a bit guilty about what he was doing to the other woman in his life,
and
to the two children she’d had with him. Hadleigh, on the other hand, had been playing a game, acting a part in a one-woman show she expected to be cut short well before the final curtain.

Privately, Bex and Melody had dubbed her the Virtual Virgin; even after the college romances and the one-night stand, Hadleigh didn’t really get why people in books and movies made such a big deal out of sex. Sure, it could be pleasant, like a back rub or a foot massage or skinny-dipping in a cool mountain lake on a sultry summer night—and fade from memory just as quickly.

Now, teetering on the edge of a precipice, about to fling herself over the edge, not to fall but to fly, Hadleigh, unlike her eighteen-year-old self, or any of the selves that evolved later, knew
exactly
what she was doing. She knew there were emotional risks, all manner of them, knew she might well wind up getting her heart broken all over again.

If that happened, she’d just have to woman up and deal, she concluded. Broken hearts weren’t fun, but they usually weren’t fatal, either.

Tripp, with the cool, clean scent of a fall evening still around him, smiled quizzically and pulled Hadleigh into a loose embrace, and she was startled to realize they’d gotten all the way from the front door to the kitchen without her even noticing.

“Want to tell me about those thoughts you seem to get lost in every once in a while?” he asked. “Or is that private territory?”

Hadleigh stepped closer, slid her arms around Tripp’s lean middle, allowed herself to lean into his strength and revel in it. “I spend too much time in my head,” she confided in an indirect reply to his questions. “There’s this little room up there, where I watch my very own movies—all about the past, or what might have happened, or should have happened, or
could
happen in the future.” She paused, and her shoulders rose and fell with the force of her sigh. “Right now, I just want to occupy my whole body—every part of it—and be as fully and completely present as I possibly can.”

All Tripp said was, “Oh, lady.” And then he kissed her again.

It wasn’t the first time, of course—but it might as well have been, because the universe, as Hadleigh knew it anyway, darkened, shrank to a pinpoint and then exploded with light and color, expanding in all directions and at breathtaking speed.

Her fingers intertwined at Tripp’s nape, lest she come unmoored from the very earth and soar away into an invisible forever, like a vanishing star shooting toward oblivion. Hadleigh moaned, craving more of the kiss, more of Tripp, more of the strange magic they were creating together.

Even when he swept her up into his arms, the kiss went on, unbroken, and Hadleigh would have wept for joy if she’d had the breath to utter a single sob, but she hadn’t so much as a gasp or a sigh to spare. Everything she had, everything she
was
or would ever be, was wrapped up in the fiery charge arcing between Tripp’s mouth and her own.