The Marriage Pact

Chapter Four


TRIPP SPENT THE better part of the next week riding the fence lines, counting cattle bearing the Galloway brand and rounding up strays to be returned to neighboring ranches. He checked out the roofs of the house and barn, both of which needed serious repairs, took care of the horses and assessed the state of the hay shed on the range.

Basically a roof supported by poles set in crumbling concrete, the shed was empty except for various nests and a lot of bird droppings. The whole shebang listed to one side and was sure to come crashing down with the first snowfall.

Looking up at a slate-gray sky already hinting at the approach of a Wyoming winter, the collar of the sheepskin coat he’d forgotten he owned drawn up to shield his ears from the wind, he’d made a mental note to rebuild the open-sided barn and order several tons of hay, pronto. Once the blizzards began, it would be next to impossible to haul feed to the cattle by truck, so there had to be a supply out on the range, ready and waiting. Since horses wouldn’t be able to get through if the snow was too deep, most ranchers owned at least one snowmobile.

In any event, water wasn’t a problem; a creek bisected the spread, too fast moving to freeze over, although that had been known to happen once in a great while. When the ice was too thick, the cattle couldn’t drink, so the surface had to be broken by hand, with posthole diggers or sledgehammers or, in extreme cases, melted beneath a few strategically placed bonfires. Snow would have slaked a cow’s thirst, but the beasts didn’t have the brains to know that, so they’d go right ahead and dehydrate, even if they were up to their chins in the stuff.

All of which added up to a lot of cold, hard work for a cattleman and any ranch hands he might be lucky enough to have on the payroll.

Now, after spending years dressed in three-piece suits instead of jeans and a shirt and boots, after flying a desk instead of an airplane and riding a swivel chair instead of a good horse, Tripp relished the prospect of using every muscle in his body, despite the inevitable aches and pains, and not, as Jim would have phrased it, just the ones between his ears.

“It’s a damn wonder this place didn’t fold up and disappear into a sinkhole,” he announced to Jim as he walked into the ranch house kitchen one evening, the barn chores done.

Jim was seated at the table, a cup of fresh coffee steaming beside him while he pored over a sheaf of colorful travel folders. A single week of taking it easy had done wonders for his disposition; he was starting to flesh out, and that sickly pallor was gradually fading.


So far, so good, by Tripp’s reasoning.

Jim acknowledged the remark, or maybe just Tripp’s existence, with a distracted nod. Ridley, that traitor, had thrown in with Jim after spending a single day on the range with Tripp—some sidekick he was—obviously preferring to lounge around in the house, where it was warm and there was always a bowl of kibble close by.

Both resigned and amused, Tripp had saddled up and ridden off by himself after Ridley flaked out on him.

“I’m thinking I might like to go on one of these singles cruises,” Jim said, while Tripp ran hot water at the sink and reached for the requisite grubby bar of soap to scrub his hands and forearms. “They’ve got some fine ones, it looks like.”

So that was the reason for all those glossy brochures. Jim must have called an eight-hundred number—he was computer phobic—had them sent and gotten them in that day’s mail, since this was the first Tripp had seen of them.

A singles cruise?

Tripp couldn’t help smiling at the image of his dad, decked out in polyester pants, a loud Hawaiian shirt and a couple of gold chains. As far as he could remember, Jim had never worn anything but jeans, work shirts and boots, though he did own one outdated suit, taken out of mothballs only for weddings and funerals.

“I’ll say this for you, old man,” he responded, grinning. “You’re full of surprises.”

Jim waggled his bushy eyebrows. “Lots of man-hungry females on those boats,” he said. “I might have lost some of my charm along the way, but maybe I can work the sympathy angle.”

This time, Tripp laughed outright. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” he said.

“Hell, yes, I’m serious,” Jim answered. “Ellie’s been gone a long time. A man gets lonesome, knocking around all by himself, like the last dried bean in the bin.”

Tripp dried his hands, still trying to imagine his rancher father whooping it up with the ladies on some ship. It was a hard concept to grasp.

“I’ve been hounding you to ramp up your social life for years now,” he pointed out with pretended annoyance. He and Jim hadn’t really talked in any depth or at any length since the day Tripp got home, but the gentleman’s truce was holding so far. “You wouldn’t join the singles group at church or do anything else that might have led to female companionship. What’s different now?”

He knew the answer, of course, but getting more than two consecutive sentences out of his dad was like trying to herd feral cats through a nail hole in the wall. Being on a roll, he meant to keep the conversation going if he could.

“It’s a funny thing, when a man gets to thinking about dying,” Jim replied, leaving his chair and his brochures to stroll over to the counter and lift the lid off the Crock-Pot, where a batch of elk stew was bubbling away. The scent was tantalizing; turned out the old man had become a pretty fair cook, living by himself. “It gives a fella some perspective. Life is short—that’s the message. And damn unpredictable, too.”

Tripp, leaning against the counter and folding his arms while Ridley roused himself enough to sniff at the knees of his jeans, indicated the colorful pile of glossy paper heaped on the table. “All right, then,” he said. “So what’s your first port of call?”

Jim frowned, turning from the Crock-Pot. “My what?”

“Where do you want to go?” Tripp translated patiently, heartened by what was, for Jim, a pretty wild plan.

Jim grinned and eased himself down into his chair again, causing Tripp to wonder if he was in pain, though he knew better than to ask. “I reckon Alaska would be my pick,” he replied. “Always wanted to see some glaciers and maybe a polar bear or two.”

“You might have to go a little farther north to find polar bears,” Tripp said. He was no wet blanket, but he didn’t want his dad to travel all that way and then be disappointed.

Jim rolled his shoulders in a shruglike motion. “It’s really the ladies I’m interested in anyhow,” he admitted. “Totem poles, too. I’d like to see a few of those.”

Tripp’s stomach rumbled as he passed the simmering pot of stew to join his dad at the table. “When are you taking off?” he asked mildly.

“Don’t be in such a hurry to get rid of me,” Jim said, his eyes dancing with good humor. A moment later, though, the sparkle faded. “I’ve got to check with my doctor first, and then there’s the matter of paying the fare.” He tapped one of the brochures with a calloused index finger. “It’s half again as much for a cabin of my own, and I’m not of a mind to bunk in with a total stranger just to get the lower rate.”

Tripp was having a hard time keeping a straight face. “I had no idea you were such a high-grader,” he joked. “You planning on flying first class when you head for the departure city? Putting up in a five-star hotel for a few days?”

Jim laughed. “Not me,” he said. “I figure a person gets where he’s going just as fast in the back of the plane as up front.”

“So I guess a private jet is out as a mode of transportation?”

“What?” Jim shot back jovially. “No spaceship?”

Tripp smiled. “A vacation would be good for you—and things are going to be pretty crazy around here for the next month or so. You probably wouldn’t get much rest if you stayed put.”

Jim’s expression was serious again. “I repeat—are you trying to get rid of me, son?”

Tripp shook his head, briefly exasperated. “I’m having new roofs put on the barn and the house, and the hay shed needs to be replaced. The fences are down in more places than they’re up, and the whole outfit will be crawling with construction crews. There won’t be much peace and quiet around here.”

The projects he’d named were a sketchy outline of what he had planned. He’d be buying cattle, hiring a few ranch hands—an expense Jim had always avoided if he could—and bringing in trailers to house them, arranging for electrical hookups and digging at least one well, acquiring a truck or two and several horses, since the current barn population wasn’t good for much except pleasure riding. Figuring Jim would feel he ought to stay home and lend a hand if he knew exactly what bringing the ranch back up to speed would mean, to say nothing of fretting over the costs, Tripp wasn’t inclined to elaborate further.

“I always meant this ranch to be yours,” Jim said, very quietly. A faint flush appeared under his cheekbones. “I was never sure you’d want it, though, what with that high-falutin’ life you were living, flying jets and running with the big dogs.” He sighed. “I admit I had hopes you’d come to your senses one day. Hightail it back here, settle down with a good woman—like Hadleigh Stevens, for instance—and have a bunch of kids.” Another sigh, this one deeper than the one before. “I did expect things around here to be in better shape when I handed the place over to you, however.”

The backs of Tripp’s eyeballs burned something awful for a few moments, and his voice came out sounding croaky. As for the part about marrying Hadleigh and raising a family, well, he couldn’t even think about that just yet. “No matter where I went,” he said, “this ranch was always home, and I’m glad you trust me to keep it going. I just wish I’d come back sooner, that’s all.” The words chafed his throat raw, as if they were made of coarse-grit sandpaper. “Dad, you knew I had money. Why didn’t you tell me you needed help?”


“Because I have my pride, that’s why,” Jim almost growled. His brows were lowered and his eyes flashed. “But I’m tired, son—plumb wore out. I can’t run this ranch any longer. I don’t even want to think about keeping a few scruffy cattle alive through another hard-ass Wyoming winter, or the pump freezing up, or the furnace breaking down. Be that as it may, if you don’t want to be saddled with this sorry excuse for a spread, I’ll understand, and I won’t blame you one bit. You’re used to big cities and everything that goes with them.” He paused, and his voice softened to the point where Tripp could barely hear him. “If you’d rather be somewhere else, well, that’s fine—all I ask is that you haul off and say so straight-out. No beating around the bush. We’ll put the place on the market as it is, get the best price we can and go on from there.”

Tripp was quiet for a long time. The ranch was Jim’s; it had been in the Galloway family for over a hundred years, in fact. The old graveyard on the other side of the cottonwood grove a mile west of the house served as the final resting place for a lot of sturdy folks, most of them related to Jim by blood.

Ellie, Tripp’s mom, was buried there, too.

“I’ll maintain the place for you, Dad,” he said quietly. “You know I have the resources to do that. You don’t have to sign it over, though. It’s rightfully yours.”

“This ranch,” Jim said crisply, “has always been passed down from father to son. And you’re my son, in every way that counts. I’d like to think that someday these acres will belong to your son, and his son after him, but things have changed. I realize that. The old ways are gone for good, more’s the pity, but you can’t fault a man for hoping.”

“No,” Tripp managed to reply. “You can’t fault a man for hoping.”

“I loved your mother more than I ever thought it was possible for a man to love a woman,” Jim went on, pushing out the words as though he was determined to say them before his fierce pride stopped them altogether. “And when she came into my life, she brought a fine boy along with her. I was proud to claim you then, and I’m proud to claim you now.”

They were both quiet for a while, Tripp bruised by the depths of his feelings for this man who had taken him in, raised him well, loved him without reservation, and Jim thinking thoughts of his own.

Eventually, Tripp broke the silence. “Suppose you go on this cruise and you meet the perfect woman and you bring her home to Mustang Creek. Then what? You’ll need a place to live—a threshold to carry her over.”

Jim raised one eyebrow and replied with a twinkle, “I reckon I could figure something out. And any woman I met on a cruise would probably have a few ideas of her own when it came to living arrangements.”

Tripp shook his head. For most of his adult life, he’d have bet money that ten tons of dynamite couldn’t blast Jim Galloway off this place, and now here he was, talking about singles cruises and opting out of ranching and taking up with women who had minds of their own. Not that Tripp’s mother hadn’t had one of those herself, because she definitely had, but she’d been a little on the old-fashioned side, too, expecting Jim to head up the family, deferring to him most of the time. “I know,” he said now, as though struck by a revelation. “Aliens kidnapped the real Jim, and you’re an imposter. Some kind of clone.”

Jim chuckled. “And here I thought I had you buffaloed,” he said.

Ridley whined just then, reminding Tripp of his presence, and headed for the back door, where he proceeded to scratch at the wood.

Tripp let the dog out, went to a cupboard and took two bowls down from the middle shelf. “Go on your cruise,” he told his dad. “I’ll get the repairs rolling, and we’ll talk about living arrangements when you get home. As for the expenses involved, let me worry about that.”

Jim acted as if Tripp hadn’t said anything at all. More surprising yet, he didn’t kick up a fuss about who was going to pay for what. “Speaking of brides,” he said craftily, “the way I see it, you owe Hadleigh Stevens a wedding.”

“Were we speaking of brides?” Tripp retorted lightly, while everything inside him turned molten at the thought of marrying Hadleigh, then settled painfully in his groin.

Jim merely chuckled again.

So it was up to Tripp to keep things going. “Maybe you’ve got marriage on your mind,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I do.” He took the lid off the Crock-Pot, ladled a healthy portion into one of the bowls and brought it to Jim.

“Hmm,” Jim said.

Outside the back door, Ridley yelped companionably and Tripp let him in, then gave him his kibble ration and a fresh bowl of water.

“Hmm yourself,” Tripp told his dad, dishing up some stew for himself. One thing about ranch work and fresh September air—the combination made a man hungry as all get-out.

“You’d sure make some dandy babies, the two of you,” Jim ruminated between bites of stew.

Tripp pictured Hadleigh in his bed. He wasn’t proud of it, but this was nothing new, since, on some level, he’d been fantasizing about her for ten years—or more. In the vision, she was warm and flushed and impishly willing. He imagined conceiving a child with her, the two of them bringing up a son or a daughter or better yet, several of each, raising them to be good people, right here in this venerable old house, where he’d grown up.

And his need for her slammed into him, all but doubled him over.

“She’s not exactly my biggest fan,” he said in a reasonable voice, and this was a reminder directed to himself as much as it was to Jim.

Jim smiled, his spoon poised halfway between his mouth and the bowl. “Oh, I bet you could win her over if you tried,” he said. “Why do you think a beauty like Hadleigh is still single after all this time? You think she let you haul her out of that church like a sack of potatoes way back when, and right in the middle of the wedding of the year, no less, because she didn’t like you? If you do, you’re not as bright as I’ve always bragged you up to be.”

Tripp realized, with incredulity, that he’d never once thought of the event from that particular angle. Then he decided it was too good to be true.

“Because she was unarmed, so she couldn’t shoot off my kneecaps on the spot?” he ventured.

This time, Jim laughed out loud. “Because she didn’t want to marry Oakley Smyth in the first place, you damn fool. She must have thought you’d come to claim her for your own.” The old man spooned up some more stew, chewed thoughtfully, swallowed. “Women are romantic, son, in case you didn’t get the memo. It must have come as a nasty shock to Hadleigh when you told her you’d already been roped in by that Danielle woman.”

That couldn’t have been the reason she hadn’t put up the fight of her life to stay at the church—could it? Sure, she’d kicked and fussed the whole way down the aisle and out to the truck, but if she’d really wanted to escape, she would have.

Wouldn’t she?

And why in hell would she have let things go so far—the dress, the flowers, the invited guests and the ceremony itself—if she didn’t want to become Mrs. Smyth?

All those questions ran through Tripp’s mind as he remembered the hurt in those golden-brown eyes when he’d told Hadleigh the stone-cold truth about Oakley and his ongoing relationship with the mother of the two children she hadn’t known about. He remembered how she’d asked him to take her with him when he left Mustang Creek, and her wounded surprise when he’d told her he was married.


Even now, years later, he felt guilty—not because he’d tied the knot with Danielle, but because he hadn’t told Hadleigh sooner.

Hell, he hadn’t told anybody in Mustang Creek, including Jim, until weeks after the fact.

Why was that?

Given a second chance, he wouldn’t have dropped the news on her like that, but what exactly could he have told her instead? That he’d thought he loved Danielle, the sophisticated jet-setter he’d met at a friend’s party? That he’d married her in haste and repented at leisure, as the old saying went? That the marriage had been over before it began, for all practical intents and purposes, if only because, once the initial heat had subsided, he and Danielle had promptly discovered that they had nothing whatsoever in common?

Oh, yeah. He would’ve sounded like the original a*shole, a cheating husband looking for a little side action.

And explaining that Danielle had already had one foot out the door wouldn’t have improved matters, either. Didn’t men always say stuff like that, to justify selling out a person who had every right under heaven to trust them?

Tripp ran the splayed fingers of one hand through his hair.

Hadleigh had been a very smart girl, and she was a smart woman. What little respect she might have had for him after the thwarted wedding would have evaporated on the spot. And, while a man and a woman might well make a relationship work without money, without a place to call home, even without love, no union   stood a chance in hell without respect.

“We’ll see,” Tripp said evasively, since he knew Jim wouldn’t drop the subject if he flat-out rejected the idea of pursuing Hadleigh..

Jim’s eyes sparkled again. “Yes,” he agreed. “I believe we will.”

* * *

HADLEIGH CALLED THE local hospital every day for almost a week to ask about Earl, and each time she was told he was holding his own but still in intensive care and still not up to having visitors.

The rest of the time, she kept busy, running the shop, working on one quilt or another, brainstorming ideas for a new online class. With the growth of the internet, cyber-instruction had become a major source of income, and sell her one-of-a-kind quilts to customers all over the world. The profits far exceeded what she brought in selling fabric and thread and patterns over the counter.

Muggles, thankfully, was her constant companion.

She might have been lonely without the dog to keep her company, since Bex and Melody were both busy with their own projects, Bex meeting with lawyers in Cheyenne as she finalized her plans to franchise the workout studio, Melody working long hours to fill a special jewelry order for a major retailer.

Despite all that, the three women kept in touch via text and email, and the marriage pact remained the hot topic, though Hadleigh would have preferred to discuss something else—the weather, maybe. Even politics or religion.

Anything but marriage, because if she thought along those lines, she had to think about Tripp Galloway and, damn it, she didn’t want to think about him.

He was a sore spot, to say the least.

So she stayed as crazy-busy as possible.

When Earl was finally moved out of intensive care and into a regular hospital room, she went to visit him, bringing flowers and showing him phone pictures of Muggles, who was waiting patiently in the station wagon.

Earl smiled at the photos, but he seemed smaller, thinner, somehow less substantial than before his heart attack. He wouldn’t be coming home after his release, he confided sadly—it was Shady Pines Nursing Home for him. The sooner he turned up his toes, as he put it, the better.

Although she kept a smile plastered on her face, Hadleigh was thoroughly depressed by the time she kissed Earl’s wrinkled forehead and said goodbye, after promising she’d be back again soon.

She was at the store, reopening after the lunch break, the faithful Muggles at her side as always, when a familiar truck pulled up at the curb.

Tripp, being the last person Hadleigh wanted to run into just then, was at the wheel. Murphy’s Law strikes again.

“Oh, hell,” she told Muggles in an undertone. Her breath quickened, and she fumbled with the shop key as she struggled to work the lock, her heart kicking hard at the back of her breastbone.

Muggles gave a happy bark, maybe because Tripp’s dog—she’d forgotten his name—was along for the ride and therefore visible through the respectably dusty windshield.

Tripp was grinning as he got out of the truck, stepped up onto the sidewalk and came toward Hadleigh. “At least one of you is glad to see me,” he said, bending to pat Muggles on the head.

Hadleigh felt her cheeks start to burn, and that was really irritating, because Tripp was bound to notice and to misunderstand, think he’d rattled her, gotten under her skin, by showing up unexpectedly.

Again.

“I think,” she replied coolly, “that you’re flattering yourself. Muggles is glad to see another dog, not you.” You vain, ridiculously, unfairly hot jerk.

Tripp looked cowboy-perfect, wearing jeans, a white shirt, a denim jacket and all that effortless sex appeal. “My mistake,” he said with a little bow.

Hadleigh practically fell through the shop door when it opened, and that made her blush even more, because she’d forgotten, for a moment, where she was and what she was doing. Busy recovering her dignity, she said nothing.

He followed her into the shop, obviously enjoying her discomfort.

The bastard.

“Taking up quilting?” she asked, moving behind the counter, putting her purse away beneath it and shouldering out of her coat.

Still grinning, Tripp shook his head. “Not in this lifetime,” he answered drily.

Standing on the other side of the counter—which was entirely too close, even with a barrier between them—he didn’t speak again. No, he just watched Hadleigh, making nerves jump under her skin wherever his gaze happened to land—which was on her mouth, then the hollow of her throat, followed by a quick dip to her breasts, and finally back to her face and directly into her eyes.

“What?” she demanded, angry because she couldn’t seem to look away no matter how she tried. What was the guy, some kind of hypnotist?

“Will you go out to dinner with me?” Tripp asked, as though that was a perfectly ordinary request to make, and never mind all that water under the bridge. Oceans of it.

“Why would I do that?” she countered, furious to discover that she wanted to accept his invitation, audacious and presumptuous as it was.

She needed her head examined.

Tripp’s comeback was immediate and typically smooth. “Because you have to eat, like everybody else?” he suggested.

What was she supposed to say now? Nothing came to her, except “Yes, of course I’ll have dinner with you” and she was damned if she’d say that.

Tripp’s expression turned solemn, probably a ruse. “Or maybe because your brother was the best friend I ever had, and it seems wrong that you and I can’t at least be civil to each other?”

Hadleigh managed to drag her gaze free of his, only to look back. She swallowed, and her eyes scalded at the mere mention of Will because, for her, grief was like that. It lay in wait, despite all the years that had passed, and pounced when she least expected.

“Hadleigh,” Tripp prodded gently. “It’s okay. We’re talking about a burger and fries at Billy’s, that’s all. Just a friendly meal—no obligations on either side.”

She stifled a sigh, folded her arms across her chest, classic body language for “back off, buddy,” but her next words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. Before she even saw them coming.


“Why are you pushing this, Tripp?”

He braced his hands against the counter and leaned forward slightly. “Partly because I think Will would want it,” he said, his delivery calm and earnest and damnably convincing. “And partly because I’ve finally noticed that you’re not a gawky kid anymore. You’re a woman, and a beautiful one at that.”

Was there the slightest hint of a caress in the way he’d said the words a woman? The “beautiful” part was probably flattery—so why had it touched her so deeply?

“I was a woman when you ruined my wedding.” She bristled, hoping Tripp wouldn’t guess how shaken she was.

The flattery theory lost some of its zip when he shook his head. “No,” he said. “You were an eighteen-year-old girl with stars in her eyes and a lot of naive fantasies about what it would mean to be married.” A pause, during which Hadleigh struggled to catch her breath. She wasn’t sure just then what she was feeling. Then he went on, so gently, so seriously. “But the promise was there all along. There were glimpses of the woman you’d be one day—the woman you are now.”

Hadleigh opened her mouth, found herself wordless and closed it again as more heat surged into her face.

Tripp chuckled gravely. Then he lifted his right hand, cupped it under her chin, ran a surprisingly calloused thumb across her mouth. “One dinner,” he said. “That’s all I’m asking for, Hadleigh.”

Her lips tingled from his touch, and she couldn’t help imagining what would happen inside her if he ever actually kissed her.

She was reluctant.

She was eager.

She was wary, and she was intrigued.

“One dinner,” she agreed in a near whisper.