The Marriage Pact. Linda Miller Lael

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.

      Then, and it was about time, her natural practicality began to reassert itself. Her closest friends, Melody Nolan and Becca “Bex” Stuart, would be arriving soon for the powwow the three of them had been planning for a week, and, for a variety of reasons, Hadleigh wanted Tripp gone before they showed up.

      The three of them, Melody, Bex and Hadleigh, had serious business to attend to, after all. Strategies to map out. Goals to set.

      And it was none of Tripp’s business what those goals involved.

      Conversely, though, Hadleigh found she wanted her visitor to stay as much as she wanted him to get the heck out of there, pronto, and never, ever return. This despite the fact that he seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the room, creating a deep-space vacuum that just might incinerate her.

      She gulped back another sigh. The heat and substance Tripp exuded both attracted Hadleigh and scared her so badly she wanted to run in the opposite direction. He could be tender, she knew, particularly with small children, old folks and animals, but he was cowboy-tough, too, right to his molten core. Totally, proudly, uncompromisingly masculine, he was completely at ease in his own skin, solidly centered in his heart and his brain as well as his body. He had a sly sense of humor, a mischievous streak as wild and wide as the Snake River and a capacity for stone-cold, cussed stubbornness that could render him out-and-out impossible.

      Once Tripp made up his mind about something—or someone—he was as immovable as the Grand Tetons themselves.

      Well, Hadleigh reminded herself, she could be bullheaded, too.

      This was her house, and she certainly hadn’t asked Tripp to drop in to drink her coffee, dry himself and his dog with her clean towels and calmly proceed to topple the very structure of her life, like some modern-day Samson leveling a temple.

      She had to take hold now, rein in her crazy emotions, or she’d be swept away for sure.

      So she folded her arms and sat back in her chair, eyebrows raised, pointedly awaiting an explanation. If Tripp truly didn’t know why he was there, she reasoned peevishly, he’d better get busy figuring it out, because the proverbial ball was in his court.

      Tripp shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Then he cleared his throat again, but when he opened his mouth to speak, no words came out.

      Hadleigh didn’t move, yet she realized that every tense line of her body gave voice to the silent question “Well?”

      He made another attempt—Tripp was constitutionally incapable of giving up on anything he set out to do—and his voice sounded rusty, even a little raw, as though what he said next had been scraped out of him. “I figure it’s time we came to terms with the past, that’s all,” he told her. “Your brother was my best friend. I’ve known you since you were knee-high to a duck—” He paused, drew a breath and then forged on, his neck reddening slightly as he spoke, his expression grimly earnest. He was groping his way through this conversation; it wasn’t something he’d planned. Or that was her impression, at least. “It’s wrong, Hadleigh,” he went on gruffly. “Our being on the outs for so long, I mean, always avoiding each other, like...like we’re enemies or something.”

      “We are enemies,” Hadleigh reminded him sweetly.

      He glowered at her, shaking his head. “It doesn’t have to be that way, and you damn well know it.”

      “You’re asking me to forgive you?” Hadleigh inquired in an airy tone calculated to annoy him. Maybe it wasn’t the most grown-up thing to do, but after what he’d put her through ten years ago, he could just deal with it. And if Tripp Galloway had to squirm a little, that was fine by her.

      It was so his turn.

      Tripp’s jaws locked briefly, and blue fire blazed in his eyes. He raked one hand through his hair, mussing it even more, and glared at her in pure exasperation.

      Obviously, he was stuck for an answer.

      Good