The Marriage Pact

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

WAS TRIPP GALLOWAY 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.