The Marriage Pact (Hqn) by Linda Lael Miller Read Free Book Online

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 enoughto 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