The Marriage Pact (Hqn) by Linda Lael Miller Page A

glass on the table and rising from her chair to head for the fridge, where she’d stashed the pasta salad she’d made earlier in the day. Before Earl was taken away in an ambulance, before she’d inherited a full-time dog, before Tripp had shown up, materializing on the rainy sidewalk in front of her house in the middle of the afternoon. Needless to say, she hadn’t gotten around to baking the cake she’d planned to serve. “Let’s eat.”
    The meal was simple, delicious and, from Hadleigh’s viewpoint, over much too quickly. There was virtually no washing up to be done—just the salad plates and the silverware, and Melody stowed those away in the dishwasher while Bex wiped the tabletop clean and Hadleigh let Muggles out for a few minutes, filled the dog’s bowl with fresh kibble and set it on the floor.
    After a brief interlude, Muggles came back inside, and the three friends gathered around the table again, as in days of old.
    “Since you couldn’t bring yourself to ask him straight out if he was still married, did you at least check for a wedding band?”Melody asked casually.
    The truth? Hadleigh had been too rattled to think of that—or much of anything else.
    Melody sighed when Hadleigh didn’t speak and then answered her own question. “You didn’t,” she said. “Well, don’t worry about it. Nobody else in town seems to know either.”
    Just as Tripp’s return to Mustang Creek had apparently caught everyone off guard, so had his marriage ten years ago. News like that usually got around Bliss County in a flash, even if it was supposed to be a secret— especially if it was supposed to be a secret—but he’d somehow managed to keep that particular tidbit under wraps.
    Until he’d sprung it on Hadleigh in Bad Billy’s Burger Palace...
    “I...couldn’t think,” Hadleigh admitted, uneasy again, even though she’d firmly decided not to let Tripp Galloway get under her skin. All she had to do was stop remembering.
    Fat chance she’d forget.
    “You didn’t even ask Tripp why he came back?” Bex wanted to know. Being Bex, if she didn’t like an answer, she just kept asking, evidently hoping to get a better one through persistence.
    “He grew up in Mustang Creek, just like the rest of us,” Hadleigh retorted. “And he doesn’t need to account for his whereabouts—not to me, anyway.”
    Melody sat back in her chair, regarding Hadleigh thoughtfully. “Spare us the act, Hadleigh,” she said. “This is us you’re talking to, your closest friends. We see all—we know all. You’ve been in love with the man since forever.”
    “I have not,” Hadleigh protested, with less conviction than she’d intended.
    Okay, yes—she’d had a crush on Tripp once upon a time.
    And, yes, she’d stuck to Tripp’s heels like a wad of gum from the first day Will brought him home from school, and she’d even shed a few tears over him.
    None of which meant she was or ever had been in love with the guy , for pity’s sake.
    Tripp was one of the last links to Will, that was all, a connection to the lost brother she’d adored. Except for Gram, of course, Tripp had remembered Will better than anyone, and, at least at first, he’d been willing to share those memories.
    They’d warmed Hadleigh, those recollections, like a bonfire on a cold night. She’d considered Tripp a friend, almost a surrogate big brother. And while she could have forgiven him for making a circus out of the most important day of her life, the fact that he hadn’t bothered to tell her, or anyone else in Mustang Creek, that he had a wife tucked away somewhere—well, that had been a betrayal.
    And she wasn’t over it.
    “The point is,” Melody said, effectively bringing the informal meeting back to order, “Bex and I need to know where you stand on the pact.”
    Ah, yes, the marriage pact.
    They’d made a personal commitment, the three of them, one summer night at Billy’s, sharing an order of his fabled chicken-chili-and-cheese