Married To A Stranger

Hope’s lips parted and she looked down at his fingers circling her arm. Harmless? Hardly. This man was built for harm. Harm of the heart. “I don’t—”

“Want steak. That’s okay. Pizza, then.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Man’s gotta eat.” He didn’t smile. “Woman’s gotta eat, too. What’s your favorite food?”

She frowned. “Chinese. I don’t—”

“We’d have to drive a ways to get that.”

His thumb swirled against her arm. She looked up at him. “Tristan—”

“Maybe I like the way you say my name.”

Her throat knotted. Shivers crept down her spine and broke out on her arm where he would surely feel them. He probably thought she was insane standing there shivering in the warm early evening. “I’m a mess from this afternoon,” she whispered thoughtlessly.

Tris looked at her lips. They were perfectly sculpted, impossibly soft-looking. Everything about her was soft. Her voice, her eyes, her skin. “Take a shower,” he murmured. “I’ll wash your back.” He wasn’t entirely joking, he realized. But he grinned, trying to look harmless despite his thoughts which were miles away from harmless.

“Colbys,” she said abruptly, tugging her arm out of his grasp. “It’ll be a zoo at the pizza place. I’ll meet you there in a half hour.” Then she hastily stepped into the house and shut the door right in his face.

Tris stared at the closed door. “I’ll be damned,” he murmured. Then he laughed softly, feeling better than he had in weeks, and turned around on her postage-stamp-sized porch. Across the street, the park stretched out, vibrantly green. The high school looked the same as always. And down the street and around the corner was the old elementary school. Where, among her students, shy Hope would laugh and smile and teach.

Too bad he’d be long gone from Weaver by then. He’d have enjoyed seeing Hope in her element.

He’d just have to figure a way in the next few days to get her to look him in the eye with those incredible eyes of hers. To scale that mile-high shyness of hers so that when he kissed her—he wasn’t sure when he’d decided it was something he was going to do—she wouldn’t run away.

She’d kiss him back.

The kiss was definitely something he looked forward to. Probably more than was good for either of them. But it would be just a kiss. What would be the harm in that?

Chapter Three

“Would you like wine?”

Beneath the cover of the varnished wood table top, Hope’s fingers twisted together. “No, thank you.” She didn’t drink. Hadn’t ever had a hangover, just as he’d said earlier.

She watched Tristan, who sat across from her in the dimly lit booth. He showed no surprise that she’d declined the drink. Of course he wasn’t surprised.

The only surprise was that she was sitting here in Colbys, which served food but which everyone still considered a bar, with Tristan Clay. Hope had been to Colbys dozens of times in her lifetime. Never once had the booths seemed so cramped. So shadowy. So intimate.

Tristan was reading the menu he held open between his hands. His fingers idly tapped the corner of the padded vinyl folder and Hope closed her eyes for a moment before focusing on her own menu. She shifted and her knee bumped something solid and immovable beneath the table. It wasn’t the table. It was him. She quickly angled her knees away from his and stared blindly at the menu. What was she doing here?

“Decided yet?”

She looked up as Tristan closed his menu and sat back in the booth. “Excuse me?”

His eyebrow peaked. “Do you know what you want to order?”

She nodded and shut her menu with a snap. She didn’t. But she wasn’t going to sit there like an idiot staring at words that her distracted mind wouldn’t read. She chewed at the inside of her lip. Rearranged her flatware and drained her water glass.

He closed the menu and set it to the side of the table, folding his arms over the surface of the table. He seemed suddenly to loom over her from his side, but the portion of her brain that still functioned knew it only seemed that way because he was so tall and his shoulders so wide that he easily filled more than half of the bench on his side of the booth.

A fact that did nothing to prevent her from pressing her spine more firmly against the seat behind her. Or from reaching for the chain at her throat and running an inch of it back and forth between her thumb and forefinger.

His gaze was unwavering, but she was certain that he wanted to smile. She felt her entire body go hot with embarrassment. She dropped her hand to her lap.

She wished that Newt Rasmusson, the owner of the place, would hurry up and take their orders—despite the fact that she didn’t know what she wanted—so at least that interruption would draw Tristan’s focus away from her.

“Want to dance?”

The jangle that shot through her was not a leaping, internal YES! It simply wasn’t. “No one is dancing,” she pointed out faintly. Her fingers sought the chain necklace once again.

“So?”

“There’s no music.”

He glanced down at the table. “If you don’t want to, Hope, just say so.”

“I didn’t mean—”

His lashes lifted and she saw, then, the amusement there. Her lips tightened and she angled her chin up a notch. She gathered up her purse and started to slide from the bench. No matter how breathless she became just from looking at him, she wasn’t going to sit there and be his evening’s entertainment. He’d already found more than enough about her to tease. “This was a bad idea,” she said aloud. Her voice shook, but at least she’d spoken up. “Thank you for the ride back to town earlier.”

Without looking his way, she hurried toward the entrance, bumping her hip against an empty table as she went. She tugged the strap of her shoulder bag higher on her shoulder and blinked rapidly. She pushed through the door, nearly crying with relief when she made it out onto the street without embarrassing herself even more than she already had.

Though how that would be possible, she couldn’t be sure. “Idiot,” she muttered under her breath. She drew in a long breath and started down the street in the direction of her house. It wouldn’t take but a few minutes to walk. No longer than it would have taken her to walk to Colbys in the first place if Tristan hadn’t been sitting on her little porch when she came out, ready to drive them despite her assertion that she’d meet him there.

“I guess you weren’t hungry, after all.”

She whirled, her braid flying. Her lips parted, but no words came. And that frustrated her even more. She shook her head and turned again, but Tristan caught her arm. His fingers circled her elbow; not tightly, but with enough insistence that she stopped again. Or maybe it was the tingling heat spreading out from her elbow along the rest of her arm. Her voice broke free. “Tristan, don’t.”

He stepped in front of her, oblivious to the two cars that slowly drove down the main street. His shoulders blocked the red glow of the setting sun. “Am I so objectionable that you couldn’t stand one more minute of my company?”

Her fingers curled around her purse strap. “I don’t like being laughed at.”

“Nobody does, sweet pea.” He let go of her elbow and brushed his thumb over her white knuckles. “The only one I was laughing at was myself,” he said quietly. “Please. Come back in and have dinner with me. I won’t ask you to dance if you don’t want me to, but I can’t promise not to try talking you into a game of pool.”

She didn’t want to be charmed by him, knowing how easily he could accomplish it. Was accomplishing it. “What about Drew Taggart?” she asked, faintly desperate.

“What about him?”

“You wanted to look him up.”

“I’ll catch up to him later. There’s plenty of time.”

“But you told Jaimie—”

“You’d have been racing down the road with her at the wheel if I’d just told you, flat out, what my reasons were for offering you that ride.”

He didn’t wear boots like most of the men in Weaver did. Not cowboy boots nor heavy work boots. He wore scuffed athletic shoes. She stared at them so fiercely that she spotted the tiny place at the toe of one shoe where the leather had begun to wear through. “And what were they? These reasons that would terrify me so?”

“I’ll tell you, but you have to look at me first.”

Her cheeks heated. She darted a look into his face.

He tsked, and she jumped when he tucked his knuckles under her chin and lifted it. Nervousness knotted in her chest. “I’m looking at you.”

“At my chin,” he murmured. He touched the nose piece of her glasses, inching them back up her nose, and surprise lifted her gaze to his for the briefest of moments.

But it was long enough for her to be caught, unable to pull her gaze from his. They were so blue, his eyes. As if a midnight sky had been trapped in his irises. She suddenly felt warm, her senses trapped in some odd time warp where everything moved slowly. She didn’t even blink when he took a step closer, wrapping his other hand around her free elbow. Her hands brushed his hips and she pulled them back, clasping them together against her chest.

“That’s why,” he murmured.

His thumb was doing that maddening swirl-thing on her elbow. “I d-don’t know.”

“Yes, you do, Hope.”

“No—”

“Don’t be afraid of me.”

“I’m…not.” She swallowed. “I’m not.”

“You’re trembling.”

“I—”

“So am I.”

“Stop this. You’re making fun. You told your brother you weren’t interested in me. I overheard you.”

“I’m interested all right,” he murmured.

She shook her head abruptly. Her protest was as ineffectual as her mushy resistance when he drew his fingertips along her forearms, capturing her hands. He pressed her palms to his chest. And, oh God, she felt his heart. Thundering through the fine cotton of his Hawaiian print shirt as fiercely as her own heart pounded.

“You’re doing that to me, sweet pea.” His soft words stirred the loose tendrils of hair at her temples. “You have been since the coffee in the café. Maybe I didn’t see that it was any of my brother’s business, but that doesn’t mean it’s not so.”

“No.”

“Yes. That’s why I was laughing at myself. I come home expecting nothing but enduring my old man’s long-awaited wedding, and find myself meeting a teacher whose violet eyes could make me forget my own name.”

She felt his breath on her forehead, then closed her eyes and held back a gasp when his warm lips touched her temple. Her fingers curled against his chest, grabbing loose fabric. “We’re standing on Main Street.”

His jaw grazed hers, then he lifted his head, untangling her fingers from his shirt front. “If it bothers you, come back inside with me and have dinner.”

“You said you were harmless. I knew you were lying.” She frowned as another car pulled along the street and turned into the parking lot behind her. “What do you want with me?”

He laughed abruptly. “Are you kidding?”

“You used to date Serena Stevenson.” She pushed out the words.

His eyes narrowed. “So? It was a long time ago.”

“She’s a famous model!”

“Who is now happily married with two kids, neither of whom are mine, thank the good Lord. What’s your point?”

“My face has never stopped traffic.”

“That’s because you’ve probably always been in Weaver where there is no traffic.” He let go of her hands and took a step back. The cool fingers of the evening air slipped between them and Hope shivered.

She hadn’t always been in Weaver and she knew good and well that guys who looked this good didn’t seek out Hope Leoni because of her physical attributes. Only she couldn’t for the life of her think what Tristan hoped to gain by pursuing this.

Which brought her squarely back to the assumption that he was merely amusing himself. His heart may have seemed to thunder in tempo with hers. But in all likelihood it had just been her muddled senses. Which were quickly clearing again, thank goodness.

“I think you should go see Drew,” Hope suggested. “He and Jolie are building a place a few minutes outside of town. I watch their little boy on—”

“Good evening, Hope. Tristan. I’d heard you were back. For the wedding, I presume?”

Hope looked desperately at the sidewalk underneath her feet, wishing it would open up and swallow her. But it stayed dismayingly solid. She wrapped her hands once more around her purse strap and turned around to face Bennett Ludlow, the head of the school board. The man had left his parked car and stood on the sidewalk behind them.

“Yes,” Tristan said abruptly, barely sparing the other man a glance. “I’ll drive you home, Hope.”

His hand touched the small of her back, igniting a warm, melting glow.

“You mean you two were here together?” Bennett’s white teeth smiled, but Hope knew the older man too well not to see the wheels clicking inside his brain. He was undoubtedly wondering the same thing Hope was. Why?

“Not really,” Hope answered quickly. “And I think I’ll walk home. It’s such a lovely evening.” She didn’t dare look up into Tristan’s face again. Every time she looked into his eyes, her sensible brain simply ground to a halt. And the last thing she needed was to look as muddled as she felt with Bennett there to witness it.

She wondered if she’d ever be able to forget that she’d been hired last year as a last resort because no other more qualified teacher had been available.

She smiled vaguely at both men and hurried across the street.

“She’s not your usual type, is she, old boy?”

Irritation bubbled beneath Tristan’s calm as he watched Hope reach the sidewalk on the other side of the street. He looked at Bennett. The attorney was as much a part of Weaver and the surrounding community as the Clays. More so than Tris, in fact. Because Bennett had returned to Weaver after college and Tris had not. Not that they’d ever had a lot to do with each other since Bennett was more Sawyer’s age than Tristan’s. “Should I be flattered you think you know my ‘type,’ Bennett?” he asked lazily. “Didn’t think you cared.”

Bennett’s face tightened. “Before they moved away from Weaver, Gerri and Justine Leoni always were after a nice meal ticket, but I’d hoped that Hope had more sense than her mother and—”

“Go on inside and enjoy a steak,” Tris smoothly interrupted. “Double-C beef, you know,” he added as he started after Hope. “Can’t be beat.”

Certainly not by the failing spread that Bennett’s parents had once run, long ago. They’d sold out to the Double-C more than twenty years earlier. As far as Tris knew, Bennett had hated the Clays ever since. And though Tris didn’t give two hoots and a holler what Bennett thought or said about them, having that cap-toothed blowhard look down his nose at the Leonis—Hope in particular—was more than Tris could stand.

Hope. She was running away from him like the dogs of hell were at her heels. He wasn’t so conceited that he believed all women found him irresistible. But he was wholly aware that Hope felt the same drugging attraction that he did, whether she admitted it or not.

He wanted her. Badly.

Seducing virgins was the one thing over which Tris drew the line. But a kiss was not a seduction.

He wanted to kiss her, and he knew she wanted it, too. But what had him going after her now was not the irrefutable urge to taste her lips, but the hurt in her eyes she hadn’t been able to hide.

He quickened his step and caught up with her just as she was turning the corner toward her house. The hem of her white and purple flowered dress flared out behind her.

“Hold up there, sweet pea.”

She looked over her shoulder once, but kept walking.

He swore silently and lengthened his stride, stepping in her path. She sidestepped, but he wasn’t dancing. He closed his hands over her shoulder and she stopped cold. His gut tightened even more at the silvery trail wending its way down her sculpted cheekbones. “I’m sorry.”

Her chin angled. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

He thumbed away a tear drop. “What are they for?”

“My shoes are pinching my feet,” she said flatly. Red color flooded her cheeks.

Little liar. He hoped she never played poker. That milky pale skin of hers would give her away every time. He looked down at the confection of narrow straps and tiny heels gracing her feet. They were shamelessly feminine, sexy shoes and not at all what he’d expect her to wear with that ill-fitting sack of a dress. He crouched down, circling her ankle with his palm.

“What are you doing?” She pressed her palm to his shoulder, but he still managed to lift her foot and slide off the supposedly offending shoe. That was the nice thing about the element of surprise. He confiscated the other shoe, too, then swept her up into his arms.

She gasped, her eyes as wide as a child’s. “What are you doing?”

“It’s my fault your feet are hurting,” he explained reasonably, looking down into her shocked face. “I said I’d give you a lift.”

“A ride,” she sputtered faintly.

He shrugged and turned up her street. He didn’t dare think about how comfortable she felt in his arms, even squirming and kicking her legs the way she was. “What’s the difference?”

“Well, one is in a car,” she hissed. “Put me down before someone sees us—oh, fabulous.”

“Hope? Is everything all right here?”

Hope smiled back at the openly curious question issued from a very pregnant woman who was watering a row of flowers in her yard. Tris noticed, however, that Hope’s smile was frantic around the edges. “How are you feeling, Brenda? Your baby should be here any day now, right?”

“Next week,” the other woman said. Her eyes were suspicious. “You sure you’re okay?”

“She’s fine,” Tris said easily. “Stepped on a stone.” He kept right on walking.

Even though he held Hope squarely in his arms, he could feel her straining as if to reduce the contact between their bodies. “Brenda Wyatt is one of the biggest gossips in the county,” she muttered. “She’s probably already heading to her phone to spread the word.”

Tris cut across the corner of Hope’s green lawn and carried her up the steps. A glance over his shoulder told him that Hope was probably right. Brenda-the-Blab was gone, and the screen door at the front of her house was swinging in the faint breeze because it hadn’t caught the latch. “People in this town have always gossiped.”

“Yes,” Hope agreed tightly. “And half the time it’s been about one of the infamous Leoni women, whether it was my mother or my sister.” She leaned over and pushed open her front door. “Put me down.”

Tris turned sideways and carried her into her living room. The furnishings were as uncomplicated as he’d expected: long lines and soft pillows, all in soft colors that reminded him of deliciously cool ice cream cones. “The only gossip I ever heard about your mother or your sister was that they were beautiful.” He settled her on the couch where an enormous orange cat slept in a ball. “There. You’re down.”

“They were beautiful. Justine is beautiful. She’s the kind of woman you should take out for steak.”

“How is Justine, anyway? I haven’t seen her in years.” What he remembered about Justine was that she’d been, well, popular was the polite term. Before Justine and her mother had left town, she’d been ahead of him in school several years, but that hadn’t meant that Tris hadn’t appreciated her sultry appeal.

“She’s in Washington State, now.”

“Married?”

“Three times. And the people of this town thought she’d never find a husband with her wild, wicked ways,” Hope quipped, but the sarcastic tone failed and she just sounded defensive. “Of course, she’s divorcing number three, so maybe they had a point.”

Tris sat on the couch, too, and Hope popped up like a golden-crisp slice of bread flying out of a toaster. He stretch his legs comfortably. “What does she do there?”

“She works in a bank. We don’t talk much. She’s older than you are.” Hope had walked across the floor to look through the sheer, butter-yellow curtains that covered the big picture window overlooking her front yard. “Oh, nuts.” She abruptly turned away from the window, drawing her eyebrows together.

“What’s wrong?”

She shook her head and turned on the floor lamp that stood near the window. Bright light flooded the room, banishing the lengthening shadows. “Gram is driving up.”

“Ruby? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

Hope glared at his left ear. “You don’t understand at all, do you?”

Whatever was turning Hope’s eyes to panic, he couldn’t guess. But he understood all too well that the light was shining from behind Hope, turning her white sack dress with the tiny purple flowers into a translucent sack, barely veiling the long legs and hourglass curves beneath.

He ordered his heart to start beating again and inhaled slowly.

Hope’s wiry grandmother walked right into the house without knocking. Her sharp eyes focused on Tris, then turned to Hope. But that one look left him feeling like he was fifteen again and had been caught making out with Suzette Lipton in the alley behind Ruby’s Café. He was relieved he was sitting on the couch with the distance of the entire living room between him and Hope.

“I’ve had five calls at the café, young lady,” Ruby said briskly, “all wanting to impart the news that my granddaughter was seen dancing down the middle of the streets with him. Now, I want to know what is going on!”

Tris laughed abruptly, which earned him another stern look from Ruby. He waited for Hope to explain, to defend herself, to tell her grandmother she was a grown woman who could do what she wanted if she chose, but Hope said nothing. She just stood there, looking at her grandmother with dismay emanating from every pore.

He rose and joined Hope, automatically sliding an arm around her shoulders, instinctively trying to support her. To alleviate the expression of dread darkening her eyes. “I carried her from the corner to this house,” he said evenly. “Her feet were hurting her.” He’d never felt strongly about explaining himself, and he didn’t, even now. But he really hated the look on Hope’s face. Really, really hated it.

It wasn’t a comfortable realization. Because Tris never hated anything. He never hated and he never loved. He never felt that strongly one way or the other about anything. Except, maybe, his work. He was certainly a believer of the passion of the body, but he left all that passion of the heart to others.

Ruby’s lips tightened. She propped her aging hands on her hips and ignored Tris. “Hope, you know how people in this town talk. Why would you do such a thing—right out in the street like that?”

“Ruby,” Tris interrupted. He knew good and well that Hope’s feet had been just fine. “Forget about it. There’s no harm done.”

Hope shook her head and turned away from her grandmother, pulling away from the arm that Tristan had tucked disturbingly around her shoulder.

“Young man,” Ruby said sternly, “have you been gone from this town for so long you’ve forgotten how it operates? The only thing my granddaughter has is her reputation, and you come blowing into town for a few minutes of entertainment and destroy it without blinking.”

“Gram!” Hope fastened her hands around her grandmother’s arm and tugged her gently to the door. “Tristan was only being…kind,” she said. “But he’s going home, now. So you can go back to the café and tell everyone that nothing is going on.”

“Hope, you’re so innocent, girl. You wouldn’t know a wolf in sheep’s clothing if he bit you on the nose.”

“Gram!” She couldn’t bring herself to look at Tristan. She pulled her grandmother out the front door. “You are embarrassing me,” she whispered under her breath.

“Everyone knows he lives in the fast lane—has ever since he earned all that money making fancy computer things,” her grandmother said sternly. “If you’re not careful he could take advantage of you just the way Justine and Gerri were.”

“Tristan Clay’s not the least bit interested in me that way.”