The Marriage Pact (Hqn) (4 page)

Another time,
she’d tell herself guiltily.
I’ll make my pitch to adopt Muggles tomorrow or the next day. Earl
loves
this dog. And she’s all he has left of Eula, besides a lot of bittersweet memories, this old house and its overabundance of knickknacks.

Well,
she thought now with another sigh, the rain beating down hard on the roof over her head,
maybe “another time” has finally come.
However much she sympathized with Earl, and that was a great deal, since she’d grown up knowing him and Eula, somebody had to step up and
do
something about the situation. Muggles couldn’t speak for herself, after all. So Hadleigh was stuck.

Decision made, Hadleigh took her hooded jacket from the row of pegs on the back porch—she had to rummage for it, since Gram’s coats were still hanging there, along with a tattered denim jacket that had belonged to her dad and then to Will.

Her throat thickened, and she touched one of the sleeves, worn soft at the elbows and frayed at the cuffs. For a moment, she allowed herself to remember both men, and then, because she had a clearer picture of Will, she recalled the sound of his laugh, the way he always slammed the screen door coming in or going out, accompanied by Gram’s good-natured fussing.

Like many kid sisters, Hadleigh had idolized her big brother. She’d accepted his loss, she supposed, but she still wasn’t reconciled to the unfairness of it. He’d been so young when he was killed, full of promise and energy and idealism, and he’d never gotten the chance to chase his own dreams.

For several years, the scent of Will’s aftershave had clung to the fabric of that jacket, along with a tinge of woodsmoke, but now the garment had a dank, rainy-day smell, faintly musty, like an old sleeping bag somebody had rolled up, put away in an attic or a basement and forgotten.

Get a grip,
Hadleigh told herself when sadness threatened to overwhelm her.
Think about
right now,
because that’s what matters.

Resolutely, she raised the hood of her jacket, tugged the drawstrings tight around her face and marched out into the rain.

Hands jammed into her pockets, head lowered slightly against the continuing downpour, Hadleigh followed the concrete walkway that ran alongside the house, past the flower beds and the familiar windows, silently going over the things she might say to Earl when he opened his door—and discarding each one in turn.

Everything sounded so...patronizing. How could she tell this good man that he was too old and too sick to take proper care of his own dog? Earl Rollins had worked hard all his life, been active in his church and in the rest of the community, and he’d already lost not only his professional identity and the ordinary freedoms younger people took for granted, such as a driver’s license. He’d lost Eula, his soul mate, too.

Still, there was Muggles, a living, breathing creature who needed food, shelter and love.

Torn between responsibility and sentiment, Hadleigh forged on, reached her front yard and came to a sudden, startled stop in the soggy grass.

An ambulance was just pulling into the Rollinses’ driveway, lights flashing.

Hadleigh peered both ways and then splashed across the street, her heart wedging itself in her throat.

Another neighbor, Mrs. Culpepper, stood in Earl’s doorway, gesturing anxiously for the paramedics to hurry.

They parked the ambulance, circled to the back of the vehicle and opened the doors to pull out a collapsible gurney.

“Quickly,” Mrs. Culpepper pleaded.

Hadleigh must have read the woman’s lips, because the pounding rain, crackling like fire on roofs and sidewalks and asphalt, made it impossible to hear.

The EMTs moved past Mrs. Culpepper swiftly, disappearing inside the house.

Hadleigh hurried over to the porch. She didn’t want to get in the way, but she needed to know what was happening.

Mrs. Culpepper, after directing the paramedics to the kitchen in a shrill and tremulous voice, turned to meet Hadleigh’s gaze.

“This is terrible,” the older woman moaned.

Hadleigh felt an unbecoming—her grandmother’s word,
unbecoming
—rush of impatience, which she stifled quickly. Mrs. Culpepper, though long retired, had been her first-grade teacher and, like Earl and Eula, she was as much a part of Mustang Creek, Wyoming, as the landscape.

So Hadleigh waited politely for more information.

“I came over to check on Earl,” Mrs. Culpepper said, after some swallowing and fluttering of one hand, as though fanning herself on a hot day. “I realized I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since Tuesday. Lucky thing he never locks his doors. Eula didn’t either, even back in the day, when Earl was on the road so much because of his work. Anyhow, when nobody answered my knock—I called out a couple of times, too—I let myself in and there he was, just lying there on the kitchen floor, his eyes wide-open, staring at me. I could see what a struggle it was for him to speak...” She paused to draw a wavery breath. “I called nine-one-one right away, and then I knelt beside poor Earl and bent down, trying to hear what he was saying.”

Hadleigh rested a hand on Mrs. Culpepper’s bird-boned shoulder. “Maybe you should sit down,” she said, worried by the papery pallor in the lady’s face and the tremor in her voice.

But Mrs. Culpepper shook her head. “No, no,” she protested distractedly. “I’m fine, dear.” Another indrawn breath, this one raspy and shallow. “When I finally managed to make out what Earl was trying to tell me, this old heart of mine just cracked right down the middle. Sick as he is, that man was fretting over the dog. Wanted to know who’d take care of it.”

Hadleigh’s eyes welled with tears—she’d been right; Earl did love Muggles. But before she could formulate a reply, she saw the paramedics emerging from the kitchen, the gurney between them, Earl lying shrunken and gray under a hospital blanket, eyes closed.

Hadleigh stepped into the tiny foyer then, easing Mrs. Culpepper to one side, so the EMTs could pass, then hurrying to catch up. Stepping alongside the gurney, she managed to grasp one of Earl’s hands.

His flesh felt cold and dry against her palm and fingers.

“Don’t worry,” she said, raising her voice, the rain pelting down on all of them. “Do you hear me, Earl?
Don’t worry
about Muggles. She’s at my house right now, and I promise I’ll look after her for as long as necessary!”

Remarkably, Earl opened his eyes, blinking in the rain. He smiled, ever so tentatively, and his lips formed the words, “Thank you.”

“Step aside, please, ma’am,” one of the paramedics ordered, his tone and manner brisk but still polite.

Hadleigh moved out of the way and stood in the wet grass of Earl’s front lawn, watching as the EMTs deftly folded the gurney’s legs, then slid the patient inside. One of the men climbed in beside Earl, while the other secured the ambulance doors and then jogged around to get behind the wheel.

Seconds later, the vehicle sped away.

Dazed, Hadleigh nonetheless had the presence of mind to cross the street again, back her dilapidated, wood-paneled station wagon out of the garage and drive Mrs. Culpepper home. She lived close by, just around the block, as she pointed out, but the rain wasn’t letting up and one neighbor headed for the hospital was, Hadleigh felt, quite enough.

Once she’d delivered Mrs. Culpepper to her door, Hadleigh dashed back to the car and headed for her own place.

As she drove, she thought about Will, and how proud he’d been of that ancient station wagon. He’d insisted it was a classic and planned to restore it to its original glory as soon as he’d finished his hitch in the air force and came home to Mustang Creek.

In the end, he’d come home, all right—in a flag-draped coffin, with a bleak-eyed Tripp Galloway and two other uniformed soldiers serving as escorts.

Tripp Galloway.

Just
thinking
about the man still raised her hackles, but on this dreary, gray-skied afternoon, even the rush of acidic irritation came as a welcome distraction.

* * *

T
RIPP
CERTAINLY
HADN
’
T
planned on dropping by to see Hadleigh, not consciously, at least, but here he was, parked in front of that house where he’d spent so much time as a kid, hanging out with Will. He found himself smiling as he recalled those halcyon days, shooting hoops in the driveway, playing beat-up guitars in the garage, blithely convinced that their ragtag crew of potential rednecks was destined to be the next chart-busting grunge band.

He’d always been welcome here, back then. Always.

Alice had simply smiled and set another place at the supper table when he came home with Will after basketball, baseball or football practice, depending on the time of year. She’d make up the extra bed in Will’s room if Tripp lingered long enough after the meal, which he often did, helping with the follow-up chores. He’d clear the table, carry out the trash, help either Will or Hadleigh, whoever’s turn it was, wash and dry the dishes. Then, after his mom had died, when he was sixteen, Alice had taken it upon herself to oversee his homework and sometimes even wash his clothes.

That was Alice, God rest her generous soul.

Now,
Hadleigh
was in charge, and from her perspective, he’d be about as welcome under her roof as a flea infestation.

Ridley gave a low growl, not hostile, but a mite on the desperate side.

Great,
Tripp thought, recognizing the dog communique for what it was, a plea to be let out before he disgraced himself. He’d lift a leg against the pole supporting Hadleigh’s mailbox or crap on her lawn for sure. Or both.

With a sigh, Tripp got out of the truck, shoulders hunched against the continuous rain, walked around to the other side and opened the door so Ridley could jump down. He snapped the leash onto the Lab’s collar, tore a poop bag from the roll he kept under the passenger seat and started purposefully down the sidewalk, his trajectory away from Hadleigh’s mailbox and the trellis arching at the entrance to her front yard.

Ridley, usually a cooperative sort, balked, hunkering down and refusing to budge.

“Shit,” Tripp muttered.

Ridley immediately complied.

And that, thanks to Murphy’s Law, was the precise moment Hadleigh pulled into her driveway, at the wheel of the station wagon that had once been Will’s proudest possession. Even with the windshield awash with rain and the wipers going back and forth at warp speed, Tripp had a clear view of her face.

She looked surprised, then confused, then affronted.

Tripp bent to deploy the poop bag. Fortunately, garbage day must have been imminent, because there were trash containers in front of every house.

He tossed the bag into one of them and braced himself when he heard the heavy door of the station wagon slam, doing his best to work up a grin as he turned around to face Hadleigh, who was already headed in his direction.

The grin was flimsy, and it didn’t hold.

Hadleigh favored the dog with a heartwarming smile and a pat on the head, but when she looked up at Tripp, the smile immediately morphed into a frown.

It was a safe bet she wasn’t fixing to pat
him
on the head.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded tersely. Her fists were bunched in the pockets of her jacket, and she’d pulled the strings of her hood so tight around her face that she reminded him of a little kid all trussed up in a snowsuit for a cold winter day.

Tripp considered the question. In light of the fact that he’d gotten almost to the ranch and then doubled back, it was worth answering.

What
was
he doing there?

Damned if he knew.

Ridley wagged his tail, glanced quizzically up at Tripp, then turned a fond gaze on Hadleigh.

Tripp scrambled for a reply. “Getting wet?” he suggested.

Chapter Two

W
AS
T
RIPP
G
ALLOWAY
real—or was he a figment of her frazzled imagination?

Hadleigh bit her lower lip, shifted her weight slightly, wondering why she didn’t just turn her back on him and walk away. Instead, she seemed stuck there, as surely as if the soles of her shoes were glued to the very ordinary sidewalk in front of her equally ordinary house. There was a strange sense of dissociation, too, as though she’d left her body at some point, sprung back suddenly and landed a smidgen to one side of herself, like her own ghost.

The relentless rain continued, drenching her, drenching the man and the dog.

Both Tripp and the animal seemed oblivious to the weather, and both of them were staring at her. The dog acted cheerfully expectant, while its master looked almost as disconcerted as Hadleigh felt.

In the next instant, another dizzying change occurred, bringing her back to herself with a jolt not unlike the slamming of a steel door.

Patches of warmth pulsed in Hadleigh’s cheeks—it would be bad enough if it turned out she was teetering on the precipice of a breakdown, but having Tripp there to witness it? Unthinkable.

Her only recourse, she concluded, was to get mad.

And what
was
he doing here, anyway?

Hadn’t the man already done enough
to mess up her life? And never mind that he’d arguably rescued her from a potentially miserable situation by stopping her from marrying Oakley on that long-ago September day, because, damn it, that was beside the point!

Just about anybody else would have had the common decency to butt out, let her make her own mistakes and learn from them.

But not Tripp Galloway. Oh, no. From his officious and arrogant point of view, she’d been too young back then, too fragile, too naive—okay, too
dumb—
to make decisions, right
or
wrong, without his interference.

As though he might be reading her mind, a grin lifted one corner of Tripp’s mouth, and he gripped Hadleigh’s elbow gently. “Can we go inside?” he asked reasonably, tilting his head in the direction of the house. “Maybe you and I don’t have the sense to come in out of the rain, but poor Ridley here probably does. He’s just not in a position to say so, that’s all.”

Hadleigh felt a stab of sympathy—not for Tripp, but for the dog.

She wrenched her elbow free from Tripp’s grasp but gave a brisk nod of assent before moving toward the house. They trooped along the front walk, single file, Hadleigh in the lead, head lowered, shoulders hunched against the rain. Ridley was right behind her, Tripp bringing up the rear.

As she hurried along, Hadleigh silently willed herself to turn on one heel, stand there like a stone wall and flat-out tell the man to get gone and stay that way.

It didn’t happen.

She was behaving irresponsibly, even recklessly, allowing Tripp into her house—into her
life.
Where were her personal boundaries?

The whole situation reminded her more than a little of Gram’s favorite cautionary tale, that timeworn fable of a gullible frog hitching a ride across a wide river on a scorpion’s back, only to sustain a fatal sting in the middle of the waterway.

Why did you do it?
the feckless toad had cried, knowing they’d both drown, ostensibly because the scorpion could not survive without its stinger, a factor Hadleigh had never completely understood—but the answer made a grim sort of sense.
Because I’m a scorpion. It’s my nature to sting.

Tripp might not be a scorpion, but he could wound her, all right. Like nobody else could, in fact.

Still disgruntled, standing on the welcome mat now, and therefore out of time, Hadleigh curved a hand around the cold metal doorknob and glanced back over one shoulder, hoping her visitor would conveniently have second thoughts about the visit and leave—just load his dog and himself into his truck and drive away.

As if.
Nothing about Tripp Galloway was now or ever had been “convenient,” not for Hadleigh, anyhow.

He was way too close, and he was watching her with a sort of forlorn amusement in his eyes. They looked nearly turquoise in the rain-filtered light. His hair dripped and water beaded his unfairly long eyelashes and there was something disturbingly, deliciously
intimate
about his proximity. They might have been naked, both of them, standing face-to-face in a narrow shower stall, instead of fully clothed on her front porch.

Ridley broke the silence, suddenly shaking himself off exuberantly, baptizing both Tripp and Hadleigh in sprays of dog-scented rainwater.

There was a taut moment and then, entirely against her will, Hadleigh laughed.

Tripp’s eyes lit up at the sound, and he uttered a raspy chuckle.

Damn, even his
laugh
was sexy.

Thinking of the ill-fated frog again, Hadleigh turned away quickly, rattling the knob. The door jammed, since the wood was old and tended to swell in damp weather, and she was about to give it a hard shove with her shoulder when Tripp calmly reached past her, splayed a hand against the panel and pushed.

“This place needs some work,” he observed quietly.

Of course, the door flew open immediately, creaking on its hinges, and Muggles, who must have been waiting with her nose pressed to the crack, scrabbled backward, nails clicking on the wooden floor, to get out of the way.

Hadleigh felt a little swell of joy, despite the fact that she wasn’t over watching poor Earl being shoved into the back of an ambulance and rushed to the hospital. And now, without warning, here was Tripp.

Of all people.

Still, she had
one
reason for celebration: Muggles would be staying with her from now on, with Earl’s blessing.

“She’s harmless,” Hadleigh said, for whose benefit she didn’t know, when Tripp’s dog and the retriever met on the threshold, nose to nose, conducting a silent standoff.

Ridley gave in first, wagging his tail and drawing back the corners of his mouth in a doggy grin. His whole manner seemed to say,
Charmed, I’m sure.

“This guy’s pretty timid himself,” Tripp replied, making no move to unsnap the leash.

A few tense moments passed—at least, Hadleigh
felt tense—and then Muggles apparently lost interest, because she turned and meandered into the living room to settle on the rug in front of the unlit fireplace.

Relieved that a dogfight hadn’t broken out but otherwise as unsettled as before, Hadleigh led Tripp through the small dining room and into the tidy kitchen beyond, although she knew he could have found his way on his own, blindfolded. After all, he’d spent almost as much time in this house, growing up, as in his own. He and Will had been all but inseparable in those days.

Hadleigh took off her hoodie as they entered the heart of the house, where countless meals had been shared, where flesh-and-blood human beings had laughed and cried, celebrated and mourned, swapped dreams and secrets and silly jokes.

Heedlessly, in contrast to her usual freakish neatness, she tossed the sodden garment through the laundry-room doorway and moved automatically toward the coffeemaker. It was what country and small-town people did when someone dropped in—whether that someone was welcome or not. They offered a seat at the table, a cup of hot, fresh coffee, especially in bad weather, and, usually, food.

Since this busywork afforded Hadleigh a few desperately needed minutes to recover from the lingering shock of seeing Tripp Galloway again, she took full advantage of it. Of all the things she might have expected to happen that day, or any other for that matter, an up-close-and-personal encounter with her girlhood hero, teenage heartthrob and erstwhile nemesis wouldn’t have been anywhere on the radar.

The decision to come home must have been a sudden one on Tripp’s part. If he’d mentioned his plans to anyone, the news would have spread through Mustang Creek like a wildfire. She’d have heard about it, surely.

Or not.

“Sit down,” she said. This, too, was automatic, like the offer to serve coffee. Inside, she was still thinking about the scorpion and the toad.

Dumb-ass toad.

She heard a familiar scraping sound as Tripp pulled back a chair at the table.

Ridley ambled over to Muggles’s bowl and lapped up some water, and that made Hadleigh smile.
Make yourself at home, dog,
she thought fondly. She might have issues with Tripp—hell, she had a lot of them—but she’d never met a dog she didn’t like.

The silence in the kitchen was leaden.

While the coffee brewed, Hadleigh went to the hallway and grabbed a couple of neatly folded towels from the linen closet. After returning to the kitchen, she handed them to Tripp, one for him and one for the dog. Or, more accurately, she
shoved
them at him.

“Thanks,” Tripp murmured, with a twinkle in his eyes and a quiver of amusement on his lips.

Hadleigh didn’t bother with the customary “You’re welcome”; it would have been insincere and, anyway, she didn’t trust her voice.

A moment later, she rushed off again, this time making for her bedroom. Shivering with rain chill, she shut the door and hastily peeled off her wet clothes, replacing everything from her bra and panties outward before returning to the kitchen in dry jeans and a sweatshirt, thick socks and sneakers.

Tripp was standing at the counter, his back to the room, pouring coffee into two mugs. He’d dried his dark blond hair with the towel she’d given him earlier, leaving it attractively rumpled, but his shirt still clung, transparent, to the broad expanse of his shoulders, and his jeans were soaked through.

Hadleigh paused in the doorway, not speaking, indulging, against her better judgment, in that rare, brief opportunity to take in his lean but powerful lines. Without trying to be subtle.

Damn,
she thought, with a shake of her head. The man looked almost as good from the back as he did from the front—and where was the justice in that?

His still-damp hair curled fetchingly at his collar and she caught the familiar clean-laundry scent of his skin, even from a distance of several yards.

Hadleigh found it hard to swallow as the seconds ticked by, each one dissolving another fragile layer of the broken dreams and pretended apathy that had blanketed her heart, covering the cracks and fissures for so long.

Hadleigh felt stricken, not merely vulnerable, but
exposed,
like a still-featherless chick, hatched too soon, up to its ankles in shards of eggshell.

She stifled a sigh, frustrated with herself, and brushed one hand across her forehead.

She was losing it, all right. She was
definitely
losing it.

Blithely unaware, it seemed, that he was upending Hadleigh’s entire world all over again, the world she’d spent years gluing back together, after searching and sifting through the wreckage for all the pieces, Tripp set the coffee carafe on its burner, picked up a mug in each hand and turned around.

Hadleigh’s breath caught. Just when she thought nothing could surprise her, that she might regain her equanimity at some point, the ground shifted beneath her feet.

Her brain kicked into gear, cataloging everything about Tripp as though this were their first meeting, all in the length of a nanosecond. He was at once a stranger and someone she’d loved through a dozen lifetimes. At least that was how it felt.

Enough,
she told herself silently.
Get a grip. This isn’t like you.
And that was true—except when she designed quilts or window displays for her shop, allowing whimsy to take over, Hadleigh Stevens simply wasn’t the fanciful type.

And it wasn’t as if she’d never laid eyes on this insufferably handsome yahoo, nor had she forgotten, for one second, what he looked like.

She’d grown up with Tripp and had caught glimpses of him a few times over the years since that fateful day when he’d crashed her fairy-tale wedding like a barnstormer, but there had always been a carefully maintained distance between them.

He’d returned to Mustang Creek now and then, to attend weddings and funerals, including Alice’s memorial service two years before, but even then he’d been careful not to get too close. And while Tripp had come home for occasional visits with his stepfather, too, usually over the winter holidays, he’d never stayed long. Never tried to contact her.

So what was different about today?

Hadleigh figured she wouldn’t like the answer to that question, not that she was likely to get one, but, at the same time, she was desperate to know why he was
there,
in her house.

Tripp paused, still holding the steaming mugs, and sighed. Apparently reading both her expression and her mind, he said huskily, “I can’t rightly say why I’m here, if that’s what you’re about to ask.”

Without a word, Hadleigh walked to the table and sat down in her usual chair, figuring that Tripp would remain standing as long as she stayed on her feet, and she was beginning to feel wobbly-kneed.

Sure enough, once she was seated, he crossed to the table, set one of the mugs in front of her, and took a seat opposite hers. By then, Ridley, fur comically askew from a vigorous toweling several minutes before, promptly curled up at his master’s feet, yawned broadly and closed his eyes to catch a nap.

Tripp cleared his throat, stared down into his coffee for a few minutes and then raised his eyes to meet Hadleigh’s gaze. A sad smile curved his mouth. “It feels strange—being here in this house again, I mean—after all these years.”

Hadleigh swallowed. She was definitely overreacting to everything the man said or did, but she couldn’t seem to help it. For good or ill, she’d
always
overreacted to Tripp, her brother’s best friend, her first serious crush.

“Strange?” She croaked the word.

Tripp raised and lowered one of his strong shoulders in a shrug. “With Will gone and everything,” he explained quietly, awkwardly, his voice still gruff.

Tears threatened—as often happened when her late brother was mentioned, even though Will had been dead for over a decade—but Hadleigh forced them back. She nodded once, abruptly, before cupping her hands around the mug to warm her fingers, although she didn’t take a sip. “Yes,” she agreed softly.