The Marriage Pact

Chapter Six


HERE SHE WAS, Hadleigh thought, out on what amounted to a date—a casual one, thank heaven—with none other than Tripp “The Heartbreaker” Galloway. The very thing she’d sworn she’d never do, no way, no how.

Not that she’d actually expected to get the chance....

Now, after all the fretting and fussing she’d done earlier, standing by helplessly while Melody ransacked her closet and bureau drawers for just the right outfit, she felt strangely calm as she breathed in the familiar scents of Billy’s place. She would have known where she was by the aromas alone, even if she’d been blindfolded: French fries and onion rings bubbling in hot grease, burgers sizzling on the grill, freshly baked pies, scorched coffee and a hint of the disinfectant the janitor used.

However self-possessed she might feel—please, God, let it last—Hadleigh was conscious of Tripp in the charged nucleus of every cell and every space in between, even though he was still somewhere behind her. Masculine to the core, the man virtually exuded heat and vitality; it struck her with a visceral impact.

Oh, yeah. She was definitely picking up some interesting—okay, sexy—vibes from him, and she couldn’t help responding, not just physically, but emotionally as well, and maybe beyond that into sacred and uncharted personal territory.

Moreover, the near panic she’d experienced until just moments before had subsided so subtly that she hadn’t consciously registered the shift. She’d undergone a lasting change both swift and gradual, like the nearly imperceptible brightening of the sky as dawn stretched tentative fingers over the eastern horizon and, after moments measured in miniature eternities, spilled floods of dazzling light everywhere.

Yep, something was different, all right. She was different.

And more truly herself than she’d ever been.

The epiphany was a delicious one, bordering on the mystical, but it was startling, too, because now, Hadleigh knew, she was going to have to push up her figurative sleeves, wade in and get to know this confident stranger, this someone she’d probably always been without even being aware of it.

But didn’t transcendent experiences like this usually happen in meditation or in church, on mountaintops or beside quiet streams—provided they took place at all? Surely, not many personal miracles took place in joints like Bad Billy’s Burger Palace on a busy evening?

Okay, the tectonic shift, while obviously exciting, was a little on the bizarre side, but what choice did she have besides going with the flow? She was bound to wash ashore downstream somewhere, regretful and bedraggled, but why not enjoy this gentle, crazy joy while she could?

With all this going on in her heart and mind, Hadleigh’s motor skills were on autopilot. She found herself standing dutifully beside the please-wait-to-be-seated sign next to the counter holding the cash register, and looked around, taking in the busy scene while Billy blustered away at Tripp about shutting the door, damn it, because he had no desire to heat the surrounding countryside.

She smiled, savoring the ordinary in a very special way, and allowed herself to think idle thoughts, noting, for instance, that every stool at the counter was occupied by a customer, and most of the booths and tables were, too. Waitresses bustled to and from the kitchen in back, where twin fry cooks named Peter and Paul labored amid steam vapors and wisps of smoke from the fryers. Conversations buzzed on every side, creating a companionable cacophony.

She went on to consider “Bad” Billy himself, a sixtyish man she’d known virtually all her life. Billy tried to disguise his true nature—to all appearances, the man had all the warmth and charm of a badger swatting away a swarm of bees. No one who’d known him long took his curmudgeonly rants seriously, though. A longtime widower with no children, Billy played Santa every Christmas, and not just at the town’s tree-lighting ceremony, either. No, he delivered whole holiday dinners to folks who were sick or out of work or grieving the loss of a loved one. He bought new toys all year long and stashed them in a unit over at the storage place, and sometime on Christmas Eve, those same toys turned up on certain front porches all over town and out in the country, too.

Although Billy always tried to keep this philanthropy a secret, most likely because he wanted to preserve his reputation as a Grinch, everybody knew what really went on. In fact, lots of locals dropped off shopping bags full of nonperishable food and gifts right there at the Burger Palace, starting the Friday after Thanksgiving.

And that wasn’t all there was to Billy, either, of course. He and several of his equally crusty cronies had formed a band somewhere along the line, and they entertained the residents over at the senior center at least once a month, Billy’s accordion wheezing out lively polkas while the other band members backed him on banjos, guitars and a set of snare drums.

It was Tripp’s wry response to Billy’s gruff chiding that brought Hadleigh back from her pleasant mental meanderings.

“I see your personality hasn’t changed since my last visit, you miserable old reprobate,” Tripp said in a good-natured way. “Good to know there are still a few things a man can count on.”


Billy made a huffing sound, a combination of laughter and disdain, and Hadleigh finally glanced back at the two men, amused by the exchange. It was typical Mustang Creek banter between old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while, man-speak for it’s about damn time you came back home, you sorry so-and-so.

In this context, those were words of affection.

“I’ll tell you what else a fella can reckon on for sure,” Billy grumbled. “No matter how often you leave town, or how long you’ve been gone, Galloway, you’re still a smart-ass when you show up again.”

Tripp laughed. “Now, that isn’t very original,” he drawled. “I hear it all the time.”

“Don’t need to be original,” Billy blustered. “Just needs to be true.”

That time, Tripp didn’t answer. Maybe he was remembering that when it came to arguing with Billy, getting in the last word would take way too long, if it could be done at all.

Ginny, an aging waitress who’d worked at Billy’s since opening day, bustled over to greet Hadleigh with a nudge of one elbow and a stage-whispered, “I heard you and Tripp were seeing each other—and it’s a fine idea, if you ask me!”

Hadleigh blushed slightly and refrained, out of respect for an elder, from pointing out that she hadn’t asked, and she didn’t bother to say that she and Tripp weren’t “seeing each other,” either, because that would have been a waste of time. Once the wheels of the local gossip mill started grinding, there was no stopping them.

Anyhow, Ginny Clooney was a good woman, and she’d been one of Gram’s closest friends.

So Hadleigh suppressed a sigh, smiled warmly and asked, “Is there a place open near one of the windows?”

She’d barely completed the question when she felt Tripp’s hand come to rest, lightly but firmly, on the small of her back. As attuned to him as Hadleigh was at the moment, he’d still managed to catch her off guard. His touch made her jump, sent a fiery ache blazing through her system, zapping her nerve endings with enough heat to short-circuit them. Why, she might as well have tried to climb over an electrified fence in a lightning storm and gotten herself high-centered on the top rail—or been goosed from behind with a cattle prod.

Except that either of those things would have been painful, and this wasn’t. Instead, it felt dangerously, treacherously, deliciously good.

Hadleigh reined in her runaway imagination, and fast, but not before she’d thought about how it would feel to be skin to skin with Tripp in some private place.

“Sure, you can sit by the window, honey,” Ginny prattled as she moved through the jam-packed restaurant, wending her way past people-filled booths and chairs encircling tables, finally coming to a stop next to the one where Hadleigh would have preferred not to sit. “How about this?”

Whether by design or coincidence, Ginny had chosen the very same booth Hadleigh and Tripp had shared the day of her wedding-that-wasn’t.

In her mind’s eye, Hadleigh saw the two of them as they must have looked then, Tripp determined, stubborn, unapologetic, herself, eighteen years old, hopelessly romantic, with the lace of her voluminous bridal gown billowing up around her, sparkly veil straggling down her back, holding on by a single hairpin. Her makeup had been smudged, her glue-on lashes long gone and her intricately braided, salon-styled chignon had drooped sadly, nearly resting on her right shoulder.

Hadleigh, stricken by the memory, blinked the scene away.

“It’ll do just fine, Ginny,” she heard Tripp say very quietly.

Ginny made some lighthearted reply, and the next thing Hadleigh knew, she was seated, with Tripp across from her, a slight grin tugging at his mouth but not quite rising into his eyes.

The waitress handed them each a menu, promised to return in a few minutes and rushed away. By then, more hungry people were arriving at Billy’s, while others, having finished their meals, prepared to leave, gathering coats and handbags and backpacks, tossing crumpled bills onto debris-strewn tables for the tip, bundling babies into carriers, lifting sticky-fingered toddlers from high-chairs, herding older children away from the gumball machine and the arcade games and toward the exit.

Hadleigh’s throat tightened at the ordinary poignancy of it all. She loved living in Mustang Creek, always had, despite bittersweet memories of her lost parents and Gram and, of course, Will. Then, aware that Tripp was watching her, and possibly seeing a few of the soul bruises she usually kept hidden, she turned her gaze to meet his.

“Did you arrange this ahead of time?” she asked, with a touch of irony. “Our being seated in this particular booth, I mean?”

Tripp’s own gaze was steady as he looked back at her, and his expression was still serious. “No,” he answered, with a raspy half chuckle. “Must have been plain ol’ dumb luck.”

Hadleigh picked up her menu with a flourish. “If you say so,” she replied in a breezy “whatever” tone, studying the list of offerings she could have recited from memory.

He chuckled again, shook his head. “Now, why would I do that, Hadleigh? I’m trying to get on your good side, if I haven’t made that clear.”

She closed her menu, having decided, during the tense drive from her place to Billy’s with Tripp, on her default dish—a Cobb salad with Thousand Island dressing. Since Hadleigh 3.0 was in charge, having ousted Chicken Little, hopefully for good, she asked the same question she’d asked a week ago, when Tripp suddenly turned up in her life again, the question he’d sidestepped before.

She thought she knew the answer, but it was just a guess. She needed to hear Tripp’s take on the situation. “What brings you back to Mustang Creek after all this time?”

Tripp hadn’t opened his own menu; maybe he’d already planned his order, too. He sat with his hands resting on the vinyl-covered folder, fingers loosely interlaced, at ease now, but he was still watchful. “I’m here because of my dad, mainly,” he said, as expected. Everyone knew Jim Galloway had been battling prostate cancer for a while now, even though the man personified the strong, silent type. “He says he’s past the worst of it and that’s probably true, since he’s no damn good at lying and never has been.” Tripp paused, gave a sigh. “The ranch, on the other hand, looks as if it’s been going downhill for a while.”

Just then, Ginny was back, with her lipstick-bright smile, her perky wash-and-wear uniform and her crepe-soled shoes, armed with an order pad and a stubby pencil. The interruption was fine with Hadleigh, because the Galloway ranch did look pretty forlorn, reminding her of those old photos of once-prosperous family farms, foreclosed on or simply forsaken when the Great Depression hit back in the 1930s.

She bit her lower lip rather than give an opinion, not just because Ginny was standing right there, all ears, waiting to take their orders, but because she knew that the present state of the once-thriving ranch was none of her business.

Hadleigh asked for the salad, the lunch-size one instead of the dinner portion, along with a glass of unsweetened iced tea.

Tripp chose the chicken-fried steak and said he’d have plain water with extra ice, if Ginny would be so kind.

Ginny, flattered and humming under her breath, quickly went on her way again, leaving them alone. Since Billy’s was one of the busiest eating establishments in the county, however, they weren’t by themselves for long.


Folks stopped by to say hello to Tripp—they greeted Hadleigh, too, of course, but most of them saw her around town all the time. They wanted to ask how Jim was holding up and whether or not Tripp meant to stick around and run the ranch, things like that.

Tripp was cordial to all of them, patiently answering the same questions over and over again: yes, Jim seemed to be getting better, and he was even thinking about taking himself a vacation on a cruise ship. And, yes, Tripp would be staying on to help out as much as he could.

Did that mean he was home for good?

Hadleigh was still trying to work out whether she hoped the answer would be yes or no when Spence Hogan, the local police chief, came through the door, crossed the restaurant and came to a stop beside their table.

He smiled at Hadleigh, then turned almost immediately to Tripp.

Spence had gone to high school with Will and Tripp, and the three of them had been buddies. Dark haired and handsome, with indigo-blue eyes and a quick smile, Spence, at thirty-five, was perennially single and, thus, by the rules of the marriage pact, he qualified as potential husband material—technically, anyway.

Because nothing and no one is perfect, there were drawbacks, even without the hometown-guy, familiarity-breeds-boredom factor.

Spence loved being a cop, and he was a good one, committed to his job and his community. He was honest, upright and solvent, and definitely a pleasure to look at, no question about that. All points in his favor.

But when it came to settling down, well, he wasn’t about to limit his options that way. Spence was about keeping options open, all of them. Not surprisingly, he had all the women he had time for, and then some.

Melody had gone out with him on a few dates, in both high school and college, and that second time around they’d seemed serious about each other—until something had gone wrong and they’d broken up. After that, all Melody would say was that they’d both come to their senses and agreed to call it quits.

“I was wondering when I’d run into you,” Spence was saying to Tripp when Hadleigh tuned back in on the conversation. “My office is still in the same place it always was, you know. After better than a week back home, I’d have thought you could find your way over there and say howdy.”

With that, Spence commandeered a chair from a nearby table, dragged it over and sat down.

“Make yourself at home,” Tripp told his friend drily. “And, by the way, the ranch hasn’t been relocated, either.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Hadleigh spotted Ginny heading toward them with the drinks they’d ordered a few minutes before.

She set the glasses down with a simultaneous thump and nudged the police chief lightly in one shoulder. “I suppose you want something to eat?” she asked, cheerfully affronted.

Spence gave the older woman one of his famous grins bordering on impertinence—a brief flash of white teeth, a twinkle in his too-blue eyes, a dimple denting his right cheek for an instant.

And sure enough, he made even Ginny blush. Ginny, who could stand toe-to-toe with any other charmer in all of creation and hold her ground.

“Just coffee, please,” Spence said. “Black, as usual.”

Ginny, who prided herself on being, as she put it, “a tough old broad,” grunted, then turned and beelined it for the big java machine behind the counter.

Spence sighed, as if to say it was all in a day’s work, and it wasn’t his fault he appealed to women of all ages, types and descriptions.

“Was there something you wanted, old buddy?” Tripp asked, not unkindly. “Because if you’re just here to while away your coffee break shooting the breeze, well, I happen to be a little busy right now.”

Spence’s gaze moved smoothly to Hadleigh’s face, stayed there a moment and then, after a slight twitch of a grin and an almost imperceptible lift of his eyebrows, turned his attention back to Tripp. “So I see,” he replied, pretending to be miffed. “I won’t keep you long.”

“Good,” Tripp said.

Ginny bustled over with Spence’s coffee and set it down in front of him. The heavy stoneware cup rattled against its matching saucer.

Too smart to make eye contact with Spence again, she gave Hadleigh a meaningful look instead.

Hadleigh smiled reassuringly.

A second later, Ginny was gone.

Spence took a sip of his coffee, deliberately lingering. “How’s Jim doing?” he asked presently, in an offhand tone.

It was a gibe, though a mild one, and subtle. Hadleigh might not have picked up on it at all if Tripp’s eyes hadn’t looked hot enough to come to a blue boil—and if she hadn’t seen this kind of masculine interaction a million times growing up around Will and his friends. They would’ve done just about anything for each other, the three of them, and yet those line-in-the-sand challenges arose occasionally, as though they were young bulls, marking out their separate territories.

Close as they were, Will and Tripp had tangled more than once, bloodying their knuckles, blackening each other’s eyes, rolling in the yard like a pair of fools until one of two things happened. Either Gram came outside and sprayed them both down with the garden hose or, because they’d been so equally matched, they’d finally worn themselves out and lain side by side on their backs, gasping for breath and laughing up at the sky. And, of course, if Spence was around, he’d jump right in at the first sign of a brawl.

At first, these tussles had scared Hadleigh—her brother and his friends went at it full throttle and in high gear—but she’d eventually figured out, with a little help from Gram, that fighting was like a sport to them, a way to vent excess energy and prove something to themselves as well as each other.

Tripp took his sweet time replying to Spence’s question about Jim Galloway’s well-being. When he did, he rested his forearms on the table, leaned a fraction of an inch in his friend’s direction and replied, “My dad’s doing all right, Spence. Thanks for asking.”

Spence rolled his eyes. “No problem,” he said.

Then he scraped back his chair, stood up and favored Hadleigh with a courtly nod of farewell. His coffee, half-finished, remained on the table, apparently forgotten.

“That was neighborly of you,” Hadleigh observed once Spence had walked away.

Since Ginny was headed their way with the food, Tripp waited until she’d served Hadleigh her salad, plunked his plate down, picked up Spence’s abandoned cup and saucer and left them again.

“I thought Spence was your friend,” Hadleigh persisted when Tripp didn’t speak right away.

“He is,” Tripp said, picking up the pepper shaker and seasoning his meal generously.

Hadleigh lowered her voice. “Well,” she retorted, “nobody would have guessed that from the way you acted just now.”

Tripp chuckled. “Everything’s fine, Hadleigh,” he assured her. “In fact, a bunch of us are getting together for a poker game real soon.”

She picked up her fork and stabbed halfheartedly at a chunk of the blue cheese that garnished her salad. “I still don’t understand,” she admitted, practically whispering. “You and Spence go way back, and you were rude.”

Tripp grinned, taking his own fork in hand and watching Hadleigh from the other side of the table. “Because men aren’t conciliatory, like women,” he said, with a maddening air of mirthful reason. “Spence wanted to get under my skin for not getting in touch right away, it’s true, but what just happened wasn’t about him and me. It was about you and me.”


Hadleigh opened her mouth, closed it again. She still hadn’t gotten the morsel of blue cheese more than halfway to her face.

“What?” she finally managed, confounded.

Tripp’s grin broadened. He took the time to savor a forkful of gravy-laden mashed potatoes and swallow before he troubled himself to answer. “This is a small town,” he said at long last—and quite unnecessarily. “Everybody knows we’ve mixed about as well as oil and water these past ten years.” He paused, picked up his knife and began to cut up the gigantic slab of breaded chicken, also awash in gravy, and taking up most of the space on his plate. Just when Hadleigh began to fantasize about stabbing him with her fork out of sheer frustration, he went on, “We have a legend to live down, you and I. I’m the man who carried you out of your wedding before you could get yourself saddled with the wrong husband, and you’re the spitfire bride who fought me every inch of the way. So, naturally, our having a peaceable meal together in a public place is bound to raise some speculation.”

Hadleigh’s mind snagged momentarily on the phrase “the spitfire bride who fought me every inch of the way.” Had she put up a real fight? Or had she been, for all her kicking and squirming and loud protests, well, just a little bit thrilled?

It was a possibility she’d never seriously considered, though of course it had crossed her mind. Gram had hinted once or twice that Hadleigh might actually have been hoping, in some hidden corner of her heart, that Tripp would come to her rescue like a hero in a romantic movie, stop the wedding and carry her off like pirates’ plunder. Next stop: happily ever after.

At the time, she hadn’t been conscious of any such plan.

But what about her unconscious aims?

She frowned. No, she decided. Even at eighteen, she hadn’t been that much of an airhead. For one thing, she’d had no way of knowing how Tripp would react to the news that she was getting married to Oakley—hearing about the wedding, he might well have dismissed Will’s little sister as a dingbat and never given her another thought.

Except, she had known he’d come back to Mustang Creek, she realized with a start, known he’d storm straight into the church and call a halt to the ceremony if it came to that, and have no qualms at all about raising hell.

How had she known? That was no great intellectual leap. Her brother, never a fan of Oakley’s, would probably have done the very same thing. Will and Tripp had always thought along very similar lines, allowing for the occasional loud disagreement, usually over a girl.

Slowly, Hadleigh set her fork down, leaned back in her seat and marveled at how she’d kept herself in the dark about her real motives, both at the time and right on through the next ten years.

Tripp, watching her, stopped eating. “Something wrong with your food?” he asked.

Hadleigh swallowed, shook her head. “I was having a flashback,” she said.

He didn’t seem annoyed, just puzzled. “Look, Hadleigh, I’m sorry if sitting here bothers you—”

She interrupted quickly. “No,” she told him, “it’s not the booth. Or the food.”

“Then what?” It was a patient question, although that didn’t mean he’d let her skate over the issue.

Hadleigh turned her head to see if any of the other customers were watching—they were—and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I can’t talk about it here,” she said. “Maybe I can’t talk about it anywhere, ever.”

Tripp frowned. Now, she could see, bewilderment was giving way to exasperation. “If it concerns me,” he said evenly, “then we’re going to talk about it—whatever ‘it’ is.”

“What makes you think everything in the universe somehow affects you?” It was a lame attempt to make Tripp back off, and she saw right away that it had failed.

“Hadleigh.” That was all he said, just her name.

She tried again. “Really, it’s nothing—”

There was a short, uncomfortable silence.

“Look me in the eye and tell me I don’t figure into whatever’s going on in that beautiful head of yours,” Tripp challenged quietly, too quietly, “and I’ll take you at your word.”

“You...you’d believe me?”

“I didn’t say that,” he replied tersely.

She couldn’t do it, couldn’t lie to Tripp’s face or anyone else’s, and he knew that as well as she did.

Hadleigh sighed, and it seemed to her that she was deflating like a punctured tire.

Tripp waited. And though he held up one hand to signal a passing Ginny for the check, his eyes never left Hadleigh’s face.

Ginny hurried over with the bill. Her earlier glee was gone—she looked worriedly from Tripp’s plate to Hadleigh’s. While Tripp had at least made a dent in his supper, Hadleigh’s salad was practically untouched, and the fact was all too obvious.

“Is something wr—”

Tripp broke in before Ginny could finish her sentence. “Everything’s fine,” he said, flashing a grin at the woman that probably would have made Hadleigh’s clothes fall off, then and there, if it had been directed her way. “We just remembered we’re supposed to be somewhere in a couple of minutes, that’s all.”

Ginny fairly melted at the explanation, beaming and handing over the tab.

After a glance at the total, Tripp took a bill from his wallet and held it out to Ginny with the cash register slip.

“I’ll get your change real quick, since you’re in a hurry and all,” Ginny promised, flushed and eager to please.

Tripp was already out of the booth, on his feet. “No need,” he said, extending a hand to Hadleigh as she slid over the seat, fumbling with her coat and handbag.

Hadleigh ignored his offer, partly because she was watching Ginny and partly because she could still stand up on her own last time she checked.

Tripp leaned in to whisper, his breath warm as it met Hadleigh’s ear. He was fully aware, damn him, that just about everyone in the place was watching them, speculating. “Your place or mine?” he asked.

Hadleigh felt color surge into her face, even as her ear and neck tingled, but her smile was radiant, if a little forced. “Neither,” she said very sweetly. If Tripp could put on a show, so could she. “Our deal was dinner and nothing more. Now dinner’s over—and so is the evening.”

Tripp’s responding smile was like a flood of sunlight parting the clouds after a rainstorm. “Not until we have that talk I mentioned, it isn’t,” he told her firmly. Anyone looking on would have thought the two of them were bound to fall into bed together the instant they were behind closed doors.

As if she’d just tumble onto the nearest mattress for Tripp Galloway! That wasn’t going to happen, and a damn good thing, too.

Mostly.

“We had an agreement!” Hadleigh argued under her breath.

Tripp held Hadleigh’s coat for her. Now it wasn’t just his smile that heated her through and through; the blue heat in his eyes made her so warm she was afraid she’d start sweating or even faint. “Our agreement,” he reminded her, taking her hand, lifting it and brushing his lips ever so lightly across her knuckles, “didn’t cover ducking out early because you don’t want to talk about whatever’s on your mind with so many people around.”

Hadleigh smiled her widest smile. Two could play his game.


Only Tripp was one move ahead, as it turned out. Before she could tell him what he could do with his agreement, he kissed her, the bastard.

Right there in Bad Billy’s Burger Palace and Drive-Thru, with fully half the county looking on.

Hadleigh didn’t exactly kiss Tripp back, but she didn’t push him away, either.

She was lost.

The other diners didn’t even pretend they hadn’t seen what happened. There were fond murmurs, chuckles and a smattering of applause.

Every bit as self-assured as he’d been on her almost-wedding day, Tripp took Hadleigh by one elbow and squired her past the tables and booths and the crowded counter to the main door.

He held it for her, gentlemanly as could be.

Twilight had fallen by then, and the half-moon seemed huge and regal and impossibly bright—so bright the stars couldn’t compete.

“You can let go of my arm now,” Hadleigh told Tripp. “The performance is over.”

Suddenly, Tripp stopped, turned Hadleigh to face him and cupped a gentle hand under her chin. “I’ll ask you again,” he said. “Your place or mine?”