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

nachos, a year or so after Hadleigh had been carried bodily out of the church where she’d planned to marry Oakley Smyth.
    After a few years, with no viable marriage prospects in sight, it had begun to seem that they were destined to be perennial bridesmaids rather than brides, and they were fed up with waiting around for their lives to start, plucking the strings of second fiddles. It was getting old, playing supporting roles in other people’s splashy, romantic weddings, attending bridal showers for everybody but each other and always, always putting on a brave face.
    It wasn’t that they weren’t modern women, not at all. They’d gotten college educations. They had career goals, and they’d accomplished most of them.
    But, deep down, they all knew something was missing.
    They wanted husbands, homes, families.
    Was that so wrong?
    And, furthermore, they’d had their fill of dating little boys posing as grown-ups.
    Damn it, they wanted men. The real deal, testosterone and all.
    So they’d made the pact.
    They’d written the tenets of the agreement on paper napkins emblazoned with Bad Billy’s distinctive horned devil logo—they would support each other in the search for their individual Mr. Rights. They would meet at least once a month as long as they all lived within a fifty-mile radius. Failing that, they would do video conferences. In this way, they figured, they could keep their minds focused on the objective—a full life, no settling allowed.
    It was true love or nothing. That was the agreement.
    So far, there had been none of the former and plenty of the latter.
    But a cowgirl never gives up.
    Hadleigh, Melody and Bex had certainly stuck to their guns.
    If some of the monthly meetings had turned out to be shopping trips, dancing to the jukebox in some cowboy bar or marathon movie watching in one of their living rooms, rather than actual strategy sessions, well, so what? No plan was perfect.
    On other occasions, especially after overexposure to TV, specifically the Oprah Winfrey Network, they’d renewed their efforts, gone so far as to light candles, compose affirmations, refine their intentions, really taken the New Age approach. Why, they’d even made “vision boards,” gluing magazine pictures to poster-size pieces of paper. They chose photographs of spacious houses; churches decked out for glamorous weddings; honeymoon destinations the world over; handsome men in tuxes; numerous healthy, beaming children anyone could see were of above-average intelligence; and, finally, a pet or two. They’d taped these creations to the insides of their closet doors and stared at them on a regular basis.
    Their friends kept getting married.
    Inviting them to serve as bridesmaids.
    The edges of the vision boards had begun to tatter and, eventually, out of embarrassment, they’d burned the lot of them in a barrel in Hadleigh’s backyard.
    Daunted but still determined, they’d signed up for an online dating service, the one boasting the most marriages.
    Although their hopes had been high in the beginning, this idea, too, had quickly fizzled. When they were matched with any guys, they often discovered that they’d grown up with them, right there in Mustang Creek, and the reasons they’d never been keen to date them were all too obvious. The prospects from farther afield acted suspiciously married, or asked to borrow money, or expected sex right out of the chute.
    Losers.
    Still, the Three Musketeers had hung in there. While away at college, they’d attended every party, whether they felt like it at the time or not. They’d gone on blind dates with the brothers, cousins and ex-boyfriends of various friends, friends of friends and those of mere acquaintances, too, as advised by the find-a-man books they shared, devoured and discussed at excruciating length.
    The results of all these efforts, though dismal, had at least left them with a few good stories to tell and a lot of things to laugh about.
    While a less