“Tripp?”
No answer.
She sat up, clutching the quilt to her bare breasts. They were sensitive, tender, from last night, and even grazing them with the quilt gave her shivers of remembered desire.
“Tripp?”
Nothing.
“Oh my God!” Flinging the quilt over one shoulder toga-style, Bridget jumped to her feet. “What if it was so terrible, he took off? What if I was so bad at it, he just couldn’t face me?”
It had seemed terrific to her, like the stuff of erotic fantasies and sensuous dreams. But she had very little experience.
What if he knew better?
“Tripp?” she called again, ready to panic.
And he appeared in the hall. His hair was still wet from the shower, and it stuck up in funny spikes, as if he’d been raking his hands through it, again and again. His face was drawn and dark, and he looked very intense, very fierce, very mixed-up.
This didn’t look good. Shower? As in, he couldn’t wait to wash off the traces of their lovemaking? Mixed-up? As in, realizing he’d made a big mistake, and not sure how to break it to her?
Bridget didn’t move.
“There’s something I need to say to you,” he began, in a low, agonized voice she wasn’t sure she’d ever heard from him before.
She took a long, harsh breath. The Grand Canyon was ready to open up in front of her. But she would be brave. She breathed again, deeper still. “Okay.”
“Bridget, I... That is, we...” He wheeled around, hit the wall with the flat of his hand and cursed under his breath. “About last night.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. With all the courage she had, she made her voice sound casual, neutral. “Of course. Last night. What about it?”
“We got so carried away, we didn’t think...”
“No, we didn’t think. That’s very true. We did not think.” She began to pace, flapping her quilt back and forth. “But that’s my fault. I mean, I’m the one who asked. So it’s definitely my fault. And I knew we were leaving in the morning, and that was the end of it, and I went ahead and did it anyway, so you have nothing to blame yourself for, Tripp. Definitely my fault.”
“It’s not anybody’s fault,” he interrupted. “And that’s what I want to talk about.”
“What?” she cried. She was so confused.
“Bridget,” he said, with a note of desperation. Advancing on her, he grabbed her by the shoulders. “We can’t just leave. Not now. Not after what we did. I was hoping you’d see it, too. We have to stay married.”
“What?”
“We got carried away. We didn’t plan on this. But this morning, it hit me.”
“What?”
“Bridget!” he shouted. “For once in your life, will you please listen to me? We were very irresponsible. We didn’t use protection.”
“This is about condoms? Birth control?” Now her head was really spinning.
“We can’t go on pretending that nothing has changed.” He released her abruptly, crashing a hand through his hair. “Everything has changed.”
She felt tears of frustration well up in her eyes. “Will you just spit it out, please?”
“Oh, God,” he muttered blackly. “I am making such a mess of this. This isn’t how I planned to say it all. But, Bridget, we have to do the right thing now. We made love. We might have made a baby last night. And we have to be together, don’t you see? It has to have a name. My name.”
Babies and names. The almighty Ashby name. His mother wanted grandchildren. God forbid any sperm of his should go astray and make a baby he didn’t have control over.
Bridget needed to sit down.
Her mind was whirling. Last night was a transformation for her, a revelation. She’d felt beautiful and loved. She’d felt as if she’d really looked inside herself, for the first time, and saw the love and the passion she had to offer. Forget about changing the world. She looked at Tripp and she wanted to be with him, to let the world fend for itself.
But, no. He looked and he saw babies. He saw duty. Obligation. The burden of carrying on his damn family name.
Everything she had just decided didn’t matter to her in the least.
“I can’t believe this,” she whispered. She shook her head. But he was still there, still intense and fierce and mixed-up.
Still the biggest jackass in the history of the universe.
“I wouldn’t stay married to you if you were the last man on earth,” she declared, just able to stave off the tears. She had some pride, didn’t she? Words were pounding through her brain, and she let it all spill out, not censoring one last, nasty crack. “You’re an idiot, an idiot. If there’s a baby, and it would be just my luck there would be after only one night, we will deal with it later. Much later. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve moved to divorce instead of annulment, but there is still no marriage. Not between us. We’re the worst pair that ever lived. The Stud and the Egghead. What a joke.”
“Bridgie, I didn’t mean—”
“I’ve made a mistake,” she mumbled, pushing past him. She slammed into the bedroom, trying not to hyperventilate. As soon as she could get some clothes on and heave her suitcases in the car, she was out of here.
Chapter Fourteen
The first thing she did was fire her secretary.
It was time to make positive changes, she decided. Out with the old, in with the new. Having cleanly and intelligently ended her engagement to Jay, she decided to bill more hours, stay at the firm until the wee hours every night, provide more service to her clients, get a better, nicer secretary, and maybe she’d even redecorate her apartment in her spare time.
Ha! What spare time?
She had an important job, and all kinds of responsibilities. Who had spare time?
She did. She had minutes and hours, piling up, spilling over her shoulders, dancing across her calendar. She would be looking at a contract, making phone calls, having lunch with a client—it didn’t matter. Whatever she was doing, her attention would lag. She would stare into space. And all she could see was Tripp.
There ought to be a way to fill her schedule so full there was no space left for him, but it didn’t seem to work that way.
“I was wrong,” she said out loud, into the deep quiet of her office.
It would’ve been much better never to have made love at all than to remember so indelibly, and to face the prospect of never feeling that way again.
She put her head down on her desk, just to rest for a second. But her phone began to flash, its red light pulsing over there on the edge of the desk, and she hesitated.
What if it was him?
It wouldn’t be. He’d had plenty of opportunities to contact her if he wanted to. And he hadn’t.
She assumed he was in Schaumburg now, at his town house, with hot- and cold-running blondes. Trust Tripp to bring a cliché to life.
Tapping a finger next to the flashing phone, Bridget considered. It wouldn’t be him.
Without giving herself time to think about it, she picked it up. “Ms. Emerick?” a female voice—definitely not Tripp—said in her ear. It was the temp sent up by the clerical pool. A very dim temp. She was calling from all of ten feet away. “I have a message for you.”
“I’m right here,” she said kindly. “You don’t need to call me if you have messages. You can bring them in.”
“Oh, okay.” Clunk.
Bridget glared down at the receiver. Maybe she should’ve kept Marie.
The new girl flounced in and delicately dropped a small pink slip on Bridget’s desk. As Bridget reached for it, the temp recited, “It was from a Mr. Ashby. He said to tell you that you left some things at the cabin and that he will box them up and mail them. Otherwise, he will contact you when it’s time to file.”
Bridget gritted her teeth. She didn’t know which was more annoying—Tripp leaving personal messages with her secretary, or the secretary chanting them out loudly in her singsong voice.
“File what
?” the girl asked cheerfully. “Like, file your income taxes?”
“No,” she said, already waving her away. “Not income tax.”
File for divorce, of course. He would contact her when it was time to file their divorce papers. She knew what that meant—as soon as Kitty Belle died...
“Wait,” Bridget said, as the girl cleared the door. “Did he say why he was leaving a message, why he didn’t want to talk to me directly?”
“Uh, no. I don’t think so. Sounded real nice, though.”
“Oh, he is,” she said under his breath. “He’s real nice.”
* * *
TRIPP’S PACKAGE ARRIVED a few days later. Her wedding dress.
He really knew how to inflict pain, didn’t he? Just hearing the first rustle as she pulled it out of the box, and she was assaulted with memories.
Whirling in front of Kitty Belle.
It’s simply lovely on you, dear.
Do you really like it?
Standing next to Tripp in front of the judge, promising to love and honor and all that rot, while his blue eyes caressed her through the dress.
And after... There was the sticky part.
He’d peeled her out of that gown like she was a ripe banana. And when she was climbing all over him in her garter belt and stockings, he’d pushed her away.
I can’t do this. Not with you.
That should have been her first clue.
She didn’t actually know what had happened to the wedding gown after that. The last she remembered, she was kicking it unceremoniously to the floor because she was so hot to get out of it. Charming.
But Tripp must’ve rescued it, just in time to send it back and remind her of everything she wanted to forget.
She stuffed it back in the box, fully prepared to send it down the garbage chute, when her phone rang. No one ever called her at home except people trying to sell credit cards and carpet cleaning. So who would it be this time?
“Hello?” she asked warily.
“Hi, sweetheart. It’s Dad.”
“Oh, hi, Dad. This is about Thanksgiving, isn’t it? To tell you the truth, I just don’t think I’m going to be able to make it.” She juggled the dress box with one hand and the phone with the other. “Sorry. But maybe next year.”
“It’s not about Thanksgiving, honey.”
“Oh, okay.” She waited politely. What else could it be?
After a pause, her father said carefully, “I’m in Ashbyville, honey. I’m staying at Tripp’s mother’s house.”
“You’re at Kitty Belle’s? But why?”
“Well, you know, we got to be friends out at Lake Tahoe, and... But we can talk about that later,” he hedged. “Right now, we were wondering if you could drive out here sometime.” He paused. “Sometime soon. She really wants to see you, Bridget.”
“Sure,” she returned quickly. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I can come out tomorrow.”
But as she set the phone back in the cradle, her mind was racing.
Kitty Belle’s condition must have gone downhill fast. They’d been waiting for her decline, watching for signs, and now, all of a sudden, here it was. Bridget dropped to sit on her sofa, with the wedding gown box still in her arms.
It was weird how fond she’d grown of Kitty Belle after disliking her for so many years, and now apparently her father felt the same way. But it sounded like the end was near.
Kitty Belle had asked to see her. She probably knew that Bridget and Tripp were no longer living together, and she was going to try some last-ditch reconciliation with her dying breath.
Bridget closed her eyes. So many lies. So much pretending.
“Tripp,” she whispered.
If his mother really was failing, he was undoubtedly devastated.
Maybe she would see him tomorrow. Maybe she could at least hold his hand a little.
* * *
ASHBYVILLE WAS a very pretty town, with a classic town square and a courthouse in the middle of things. The original Ashby Carriage Company faced the square on one side, as did a hole-in-the-wall café, an old opera house that had been turned into a community theater and a fire station.
Small town, Americana.
On this bright November day, Ashbyville was showing its best colors. The trees weren’t quite bare yet, and the sun was shining, making the bricks and white clapboard of Ashbyville look very spiffy.
Bridget had a little trouble finding the Ashbyville home. She’d only been there once before, for Tripp’s twenty-first birthday party, and he’d driven her out from the city.
That was a very long time ago, and a lot of water had passed under the bridge since then.
But a kind man at a gas station gave her directions, and she followed the main road around to a hill overlooking the rest of the town, and there it was. It had been home to prominent Ashbys for a hundred years, and it looked like it.
The house was imposing, all Georgian brick with fat white columns; Bridget experienced a moment of trepidation as she pressed the bell.
And when the big white door with its magnificent brass fittings swung open, revealing her father, she really did a double-take. “I certainly didn’t expect you to open the door,” she managed. “Or to have made yourself so at home here.”
“Well, that’s part of what we need to talk about.”
“Can you give me a hint?” But all she could think of was that Tripp’s mother had become so enamored of the plumber from St. Paul that she’d changed her will in his favor.
Either that or he’d taken a job as Kitty Belle’s butler.
She couldn’t decide which choice was more bizarre.
Her dad led her down the hall to a sitting room, opening the door, revealing Kitty Belle, perched in a pretty chintz chair. But she didn’t look as if she were at death’s door. As a matter of fact, she looked healthier than ever. Her hair was upswept in its usual elegant golden coiffure, and she was wearing another in her endless parade of tasteful pink suits, with pearls at her ears and her wrists.
“Sit down, dear,” she said kindly.
“But I thought you were...”
“Yes, I know.” Mrs. Ashby exchanged an uneasy glance with Bridget’s father. He sat beside her, on the arm of her chair, and took her hand in his.
As she took the chair opposite, Bridget was beginning to feel like a grade-A stooge. A glimmer of what was really happening wafted into her brain, and she said slowly, “I think you’d better tell me what this is all about.”
Kitty Belle licked her precious pink lipstick. “I don’t know quite where to begin.”
“Come on. Tell her,” Frank Emerick commanded. “No more beating around the bush.”
“Yes, dear.”
Bridget’s eyes widened. Since when did Kitty Belle go along placidly, with a simple “yes, dear”? This was so out of character as to be positively shocking.
Mrs. Ashby’s cheeks were as rosy as her suit, and she definitely seemed to be having problems getting her words out. “Now, before I tell you the whole story, I want you to know, it was with the best of motives. I really did have your best interests at heart.”
“You’re not dying, are you?” Bridget ventured softly.
There was a tiny pause.
“Everyone dies sooner or later, my dear.”
“But you’re not sick, are you?”
Kitty Belle shook her head. “No, I’m not.”
“And you never were?”
“Well, I had a sinus infection a few days before the wedding, but that’s about it.”
“I can’t believe this! We thought you were dying!” Bridget shouted. “We made fools of ourselves because we thought you were sick, and now...”
She shook her head in disbelief. There were so many clues, and yet she hadn’t wanted to see them, hadn’t wanted to believe that she was making a mess of her life based on an even bigger lie than the ones she was telling. Here she’d been worried that her sham engagement, or the fake wedding, would somehow alert the cosmic lie-detec
tor forces to come and punish her. At least she hadn’t told anyone she was dying!
“You knew that the old coot Tripp dug up wasn’t my father all along, didn’t you?”
Shame-faced, Kitty Belle admitted, “Well, yes.”
“And you knew who Jay and my dad really were?”
Kitty Belle nodded. “Your father is very bad at keeping secrets, as it happens. I think it took less than twenty-four hours before he told me who he was. It’s one of the things I love most about him.”
“Love?”
“Yes, Bridget.” Her father clasped Kitty Belle’s hand. “That’s the other thing we needed to tell you. I’ve asked Kitty Belle to marry me. But we wanted to clear this thing up with you, first, so that there wouldn’t be any old baggage between us.”
“Once we decided we wanted to marry, well, I knew I was going to have to fess up.”
“And you, Dad, did you know all along?”
“Actually, no, I didn’t. It wasn’t until we came back here that Kitty Belle confessed what she’d done.” He gave her a stern look, but it was tempered with too much affection for anyone to take it seriously. “And I was very cross with her, too.”
Cooing love birds. It was outrageous. “I can’t deal with this right now.” Bridget was still stuck back on the first betrayal. But her father and Kitty Belle playing at romance—well, that was way past too much.
“I know it’s hard to understand, but it really was for your own good,” Tripp’s mother tried again.
“Oh, please!” Bridget jumped to her feet. “Do you know what you put your son through? He was heartbroken. He thought he was losing you! Did you ever think about what you were doing to Tripp?”
“I had to do it,” Mrs. Ashby maintained. “He refused to get married. Thirty-four years old, and not even a step toward marriage or children—it’s disgraceful. So I had to give him a push.”
Bridget spun back around. She’d just had a terrible thought. “Have you told him? Does Tripp know you’re not dying?”
“He does now,” a voice said darkly.
They all turned. Tripp was lounging negligently in the doorway, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Only the ferociously clenched jaw and dangerous look in his eye gave him away.
Once Upon a Honeymoon (Harlequin American Romance) Page 20