The Marriage Pact. Linda Miller Lael

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.