The Marriage Pact. Linda Miller Lael

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СКАЧАТЬ come loose, clinging to the middle of her eyelid like a bug to a windshield—and he laughed.

      A mistake, of course—not that he could have kept a straight face if his life depended on it. He’d already pushed his luck about as far as it was likely to go, by his reckoning. Laughing at a woman this pissed off was downright foolhardy, but there it was.

      If Will was looking on from heaven, or wherever good men wound up for the duration, Tripp hoped he was satisfied. Waltzing with a mama bear would have been easier—and safer—than rescuing Hadleigh from a lifetime spent hog-tied to the likes of Oakley Smyth.

      The air inside that truck was all but electrified. “You think this is funny?” Hadleigh snapped, folding her arms, which took some doing, with all that dress getting in her way.

      Tripp choked back one last chortle. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I do think it’s funny. And I’m betting that someday, you’ll think so, too.”

      “I could have you arrested!”

      “Go ahead,” Tripp said blithely. “Get Spence Hogan to toss me in the hoosegow. ’Course, I’ll be out before you can say ‘poker buddy.’” He paused, frowned thoughtfully. “But now that you mention it, I would like to ask my old pal Spence why you weren’t taken into protective custody and held until you came to your senses and broke it off with Smyth.” Another pause, a shake of his head. “Smyth,” he repeated disdainfully. “Just how pretentious does somebody have to be to spell an otherwise ordinary name with a y?”

      “You think you know Oakley,” Hadleigh protested hotly, “but you don’t.”

      “No,” Tripp argued mildly, “you don’t.”

      “We’re in love! Or, at least, we were until you butted in! How am I supposed to face people after this, Tripp? What about all the planning and the money Gram and I spent on this dress, plus the flowers and the cake and the bridesmaids’ gowns for Bex and Melody? On top of all that, there’s a mountain of presents in our dining room, all of which will have to be returned—”

      She fell silent, and Tripp let things quiet down for a few minutes before he said, “You’re in love with love, Hadleigh. That’s all. And, oh yeah, has it occurred to you yet that a man who loves a woman—really loves her—would at least speak up, if not fight to keep her from being hauled out of church on their wedding day?”

      That reasoning deflated Hadleigh a little, and Tripp felt a stab of regret. The truth hurts. No wonder that saying had been around long enough to turn trite.

      “Oakley’s a gentleman,” she finally replied, with a disdainful sniff. “Not a rough-and-tumble cowboy who thinks he can settle anything with his fists!”

      “You have something against cowboys?” Tripp drawled the question.

      Her cheeks flared again. “Shut up, Tripp. Just shut up.”

      Discretion had never been one of Tripp’s great strengths. “And while we’re at it, why in hell would you glue fake lashes on your eyelids like that?” he asked, with matter-of-fact ease and genuine curiosity. “There’s nothing wrong with the eyelashes you were born with, far as I can tell.”

      Hadleigh gave a strangled squeal of frustration. “Are you through?” she inquired acidly.

      So much for reasonable adult conversation.

      Normally, Tripp would have insisted that Hadleigh put on her seat belt, since he’d just noticed she wasn’t wearing one, but he was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to find it in that burgeoning cloud of virginal white lace.

      Virginal.

      Was Hadleigh still innocent? Or had Oakley Smyth—or some other smarm-ball yahoo—sweet-talked her into his bed?

      The thought galled Tripp through and through, even though Hadleigh’s sex life was purely none of his damn business. Granted, eighteen was young, but it wasn’t that young. Lots of women her age were twisting the sheets with some guy, whether they were married to him or not.

      Tripp decided not to pursue that train of thought, aloud or in the privacy of his own mind, since it would be the equivalent of lighting a match to a fuse.

      He’d concentrate on his driving instead.

      So they cruised along the quiet main street of Mustang Creek, past the post office and the grocery store and the old movie house, the latter having been boarded up two or three recessions back, in incendiary silence.

      Gradually, Tripp relaxed a bit, smiled to himself, remembering days of old, when Hadleigh was a gawky preteen, all scraped knees and bony elbows and piano-key teeth, freckle-faced and wide-eyed, full of questions, tagging along after him and Will and some of their other friends whenever they allowed it. She’d changed a lot since then, of course, but she still had a way to go before she had any business getting herself tied down to one man for the rest of her life.

      What about college, damn it? Hadleigh was smart as hell; her SAT scores were off the charts, and she’d been offered full-ride scholarships to some of the best schools in the country. Besides, didn’t she want to see at least some of the world beyond Wyoming, Montana and Colorado? Try a few different jobs on for size, figure out what she really wanted or simply have a place of her own for a while?

      A horrible thought struck Tripp then, a reason she might have been in a hurry to land a husband and, like a damn fool, he blurted it right out instead of keeping it to himself like he should have. “Hadleigh—are you pregnant?”

      She stiffened as if he’d slapped her, frozen in the process of ripping off her faux eyelashes. “Of course not,” she said. “Oakley and I do—did—plan on having children, but not right away.” Once again, her eyes swam with tears of indignation.

      No wonder she was ticked off and disappointed. After all, this should have been the best day of her life so far—and maybe it was, but at the moment, it had to feel like one of the worst. Tripp was half-sick with relief at her answer, but he had regrouped enough to hide any further reaction to the possibility that Hadleigh, normally sweet, sensitive and predominantly reasonable Hadleigh, might have been carrying another man’s child.

      Especially when that man was likely to break her heart before the honeymoon was even over.

      And Hadleigh was unique. The kind of woman who ought to be loved full-out, even cherished, and certainly protected, along with any baby she might have.

      “If Oakley loves you,” he said, in a gentle rasp, “he’ll stick around. He’ll wait, Hadleigh, until you’re ready to be a wife.”

      Hadleigh looked away, and Tripp saw that she was crying again and didn’t want him to know it. Something clenched the pit of his stomach.

      “Tell. Me. Why.” She said each word distinctly and very slowly.

      Tripp hadn’t thought much further than getting Hadleigh out of that church before she became Oakley Smyth’s property and thereby wrecked her life, but now that it was all over but the shoutin’, he began to consider his options.

      Such as they were.

      He couldn’t take Hadleigh home to the little house she shared with her grandmother, not yet, anyway, because Alice Stevens was most likely still back at the redbrick church, trying to make the СКАЧАТЬ