Bridget looked at him, and he looked at her. And wasn’t he a sight to behold?
Everything they had ever done together in their entire lives came flooding back to her, almost like having an out-of-body experience. The good and the bad—it was there, flashing before her eyes.
She tried to remember to breathe, to swallow, to behave like a normal human being. Why was it that no matter how hard she tried to extricate him from her life, he kept coming back? She swallowed past a lump in her throat.
Whatever he had done, however he had treated her, the honest truth was that she wanted him back.
* * *
“WELL, MOTHER, you may not think you’re dying anytime soon, but I think you may be surprised.”
“Excuse me, dear?”
“Because I’m going to kill you myself,” he said savagely. “With my bare hands.”
“Oh, Tripp, settle down. Now, I admit, I shouldn’t have done what I did, but it all turned out beautifully, didn’t it?” Kitty Belle bestowed her most magnanimous smile upon them. “You got Bridget, and I got Frank. What could be lovelier?”
Except that he didn’t have Bridget. “This is disgraceful,” he muttered. He strode over to where his mother and Frank sat so complacently. “You have behaved so badly, Mother, that I can’t even find the words to tell you.”
“For someone who has trouble confronting people, you’re sounding pretty good here,” Bridget put in from the side.
He ignored her. If he looked at her, he would see all of his failures right before his eyes. He had made all kinds of promises to Bridgie, and they had all turned to dust.
Trust me. How many times had he said that? And how many times had he stomped on her trust? He knew she and Philpott had called it quits, and he knew why. Because of him. He’d ruined her life, and ruined his own, and he had no one to blame but himself.
“I think the thing that makes me the angriest is how you’ve treated Bridgie,” he said, glaring at his mother. “She was the best friend I ever could’ve asked for, and you bad-mouthed her, you belittled her and then you manipulated both of us. How any father who gives a damn about his daughter could hitch up with you after what you’ve done... Well, it seems like a pretty pathetic way to be a father.”
“Now just a minute,” Frank Emerick bristled.
“Save it for someone who gives a damn.”
“Tripp,” Bridget admonished. “This is so unlike you. Yelling at two parents in one day.”
“I guess I just got fed up.” He jammed his hands in his pants pockets and glared out the window, into the garden. His mother’s garden. Pretty to look at, snobby, with only the best seedlings allowed, that garden was the perfect symbol for Kitty Belle. “My mother has been on Bridgie’s case for so long for not having the right bloodlines, it seems pretty rich for her to be hooking up with those same bloodlines now.”
“What’s this all about?” Bridget’s dad asked.
“Oh, it’s my fault,” Kitty Belle admitted with a wave of one hand. “I admit, at first I didn’t think Bridget was the right girl for you, Tripp, but that was years ago.”
“Years ago? You were still singing that tune when you told me you only had months to live. What’s it been? A month and a half?”
“Oh, I made that up,” she insisted. “Actually, by that time, I thought Bridget would be perfect. She’s always been in love with you—any fool could see that. Plus she’s very sensible and smart.”
Bridget was sitting there with her mouth open. Looking at her, Tripp thought he knew exactly how she felt.
“But I knew,” Kitty Belle continued, “that if I pretended to disapprove, you would like her even better. A little reverse psychology.”
“Do you feel as much like a prize chump as I do?” he asked, offering Bridget his hand.
But Kitty Belle refused to be daunted. “There was no harm done,” she contended. “Now that everything’s out in the open, you don’t have to stay married anymore. Not unless you want to, of course.”
“As it happens, Mother, I would love to. But Bridget has already turned me down,” he said bitterly.
But he saw the look on Bridget’s face. Sorrow, love, hope, and a burning need for another chance.
What had Kitty Belle said? She’s always been in love with you—any fool could see that.
Except one fool—him. Was it possible she really did want to stay married?
“Bridgie, we need to talk,” he muttered, and before anyone had a chance to protest, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her out of his mother’s house.
“Where are we going?” she puffed, but he just kept walking, until he hit the town square.
There was a pavilion there, a small place that was just perfect for band concerts in the summer. Right now, it was empty, and it was private, and that was all he asked.
“Bridgie, look,” he said, pushing her onto a bench. He hovered there, over her. “I screwed this up the last time, and I don’t want to do that again. So here’s the thing. I’m going to say this right up front, okay?”
“What?” she demanded. “What are you going to say?”
“I love you.”
His declaration hung there in the air. She seemed frozen.
Maybe he’d already blown it, but he had to press on. “I love you, and I loved being married to you. It was the happiest I’ve ever been.” He set his jaw. This stuff did not come easily to him, but he was doing his best. “Basically, the thing is, I’ll do anything I have to do to make it all real, all official, all honest and sincere and genuine. I want to be married to you, for real.”
“You love me?” she echoed, in total disbelief.
“Of course I do.” As she hesitated, Tripp threw thirty-four years of good breeding and manners to the four winds. “The hell with it,” he said, and he grabbed her and kissed her. “You love me, Bridgie. I know you do.”
She hung on to the kiss, and her lips were as sweet and warm and tantalizing as he remembered. He could feel her beginning to surrender. But then she smacked him on the shoulder and vaulted out of his arms.
“You idiot!” she shouted. “Of course I love you. I’ve always loved you. Anybody who wasn’t completely blind would’ve seen it a long time ago.”
“You never told me!”
“I didn’t know,” she admitted. “Jay told me, your mother, my father... But I didn’t see it.”
“Me, either. But I’m not blind anymore.”
And right there, in sight of the statue of the first Thomas Michael Trippett Ashby, in sight of several curious citizens of Ashbyville, Tripp got down on one knee.
He brushed a kiss across the back of her hand, he gave her the full benefit of his hottest gaze and he took a deep breath.
“Will you marry me, Bridgie?” His lips curved in a reckless grin. “Will you marry me all over again?”
And her smile took his breath away. “If I do, we have to do it right this time. I’ve got someone to give me away, and I’ve already got the perfect dress. Oh, and I have the perfect idea for where to go on our honeymoon.”
“Anywhere everybody else is not,” he said firmly.
“There’s this cabin at Lake Tahoe...”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8294-0
Once Upon a Honeymoon
Copyright © 1994 by Julie Kistler
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Copyright
Once Upon a Honeymoon (Harlequin American Romance) Page 21