Allison Leigh - Married To A Stranger

That’s all they’d done.

The irony burned. He’d started out thinking he’d like to taste her soft-looking lips. That was all.

He still hadn’t kissed her. Not really. That quick, off-centered glancing of lips earlier that day didn’t count.

He hadn’t gotten a kiss. He hadn’t “gotten” anything that everybody in town and beyond seemed to think he’d been “getting.” It was almost laughable.

Tris picked up her eyeglasses and leaned forward, handing them to her. But in the end, nothing about this situation was laughable.

Particularly the fact that the young woman slipping the gold-rimmed glasses on her nose had—less than twelve hours ago, stood where he’d long ago vowed never to stand—in front of a minister, promising to “love, honor and cherish.”

He hadn’t gotten a kiss.

He’d gotten a wife.

Eight days earlier.

“I think that’s plenty, darlin’. If you don’t mind.” Hope Leoni blinked, dragged her eyes from the deep blue gaze of the man sitting at the counter across from her. And realized she was pouring coffee all across the counter.

Well, not precisely across the counter. But it was overflowing the thick white coffee cup, the utilitarian saucer beneath it, quickly pooling around the base. Worse, it flowed into a rich brown river that ran straight to the edge of the counter and into the smoky gray sweater the man wore, creating a large spot where he’d been leaning against the counter edge. Now he sat back with a muffled comment.

Her cheeks burned and she hastily set down the glass coffee carafe and grabbed a cloth from behind the counter, mopping up her mess. “I’m so sorry.” She mopped, sopped, wiped and tried not to stare when, with a spare movement, he yanked the sweater over his head and tossed it onto the stool beside him. She dragged her attention from the plain white T-shirt that remained, hugging his broad shoulders, only to realize she was equally distracted by the thick gold hair that tumbled over his forehead. “I don’t know what I was thinking—”

He, the man…the blond god with a face that could make angels weep…put one hand over hers, stopping her motions. “No sweat, darlin’.”

She didn’t know which made her blood flow faster until it zipped along her veins with a fevered frenzy—the touch of his hand atop hers, or the casual endearment murmured in his low voice. The schoolgirl fantasies in which he’d been the star seemed as recent as yesterday. “I, uh, I’m not usually so clumsy. I can’t believe I—”

“Hey.” His long, long fingers encircled hers. Slid around her hand, beneath it; square, warm palm meeting hers. Warm. Dry. Hard.

Every sound faded—the dog that had been barking half the morning from where it was tied up outside the sheriff’s office a few doors down, the tractor mower that somebody was running over at the high school, the music from the radio on the shelf in the corner.

All of that faded. She could hear her pulse, thundering in her ears. Could hear her breath, slowly easing past her lips. She could hear the soft chink of his gold wristwatch as it bumped the counter beneath their hands.

“Relax,” he said in that voice that hypnotized. “Nobody’s going to fire you over a little spilled coffee. Certainly not Ruby, who’s got a heart bigger than Wyoming.”

At the mention of Ruby, owner of Ruby’s Café and, more importantly, Hope’s grandmother, some of Hope’s scattered senses returned. She tugged her hand, relieved and disappointed all at once when their hands separated. She picked up the damp cloth, rubbing her palm against the wet, rough, terry cloth. “I’m well aware of Gram’s generosity.”

“Gram?”

Hope pulled her gaze from his mouth. From the way it tilted at the corner when he spoke as if he were perpetually amused. “Ah…Ruby. You know…she’s my grandmother. I’m Hope. Hope…Leoni.”

He nodded, giving her the impression that he was absorbing every nonsensical syllable she uttered. Which was, of course, ridiculous.

Men who looked like this man didn’t hang on every syllable of the very ordinary Hope Leoni. Only he was nodding, his eyes thoughtful. “That’s right,” he said. “Ruby did have a little granddaughter she was raising.”

“I didn’t think you’d remember that.” Again, she forced herself to look beyond the mesmerizing way his lips shaped his words—to take in the thick, burnished blond hair, the sapphire-colored eyes that even dark circles beneath couldn’t dim, the sharply angled jaw. The astounding width of his shoulders. “You, um, don’t visit Weaver very often.” Hope felt her cheeks heat all over again.

When he’d moved away from Wyoming, she truly had been Ruby’s “little” granddaughter. But that hadn’t kept her or any other girl growing up in Weaver from developing a crush on the Wyoming boy who’d made good.

“Well, I’m here now and it’s nice to meet you, officially, Hope Leoni. Tristan Clay.” He shifted and stuck out his hand, obviously waiting.

Hope swallowed, placing her hand in his. She was almost prepared for the jolt, but still her breath audibly caught and her cheeks burned. “You, too, Mr—ah, Clay.”

His smile widened gently but there was something daunting about his impossibly steady gaze, so intensely blue among thick lashes that were surprisingly dark for someone so blond and golden. “Tristan’ll do.”

She swallowed, far too aware that he still held her hand engulfed in his much larger one. “I suppose you’re here for your father’s wedding. The whole town is buzzing with excitement.”

Finally, finally, his lashes lowered. His thumb brushed across the back of her hand. “This town buzzes with excitement when the lone traffic signal turns red. Do you work here all the time, Hope?”

She knew she should pull away her hand. But his thumb made that gentle little swirl again and she couldn’t bring herself to move. “Yes,” she breathed. “No. I mean, I work here during the summer. When school starts, I’ll—”

His expression didn’t change. “School?”

“I teach at the elementary school. Kindergarten through third.”

“Lucky kids. Married? Engaged? Going steady?”

She swallowed, nearly choking. “No.”

Again that smooth, gentle swirl against her hand, the faint tilt at the corner of his mouth. “Why not?”

Her fingers curved. She tugged again and had the impression that he wanted to smile when she pushed her hands into the front pockets of her pink waitress uniform. “No particular reason,” she answered, hoping that her trembling nerves didn’t show in her voice as badly as she suspected. Except she’d have to be asked on a date again before she could worry about marriage proposals. “You?” His smile widened a bit, and he shook his head. Her cheeks flamed hotly. Of course, in a town as small as Weaver, news would have spread like wildfire if he had settled down with one woman.

He was Tristan Clay, the youngest of the Clay brothers of the enormous Double-C cattle ranch located some twenty miles away from town. He was rich, golden-beautiful and successful even without his family’s holdings, which were reportedly the largest in the state. He’d developed some type of software when he’d been younger than she was now that had revolutionized the industry. Had dated famous women, danced in Europe with princesses and slept in the White House.

When Hope had been in school, every girl in town had dreamed of capturing the interest of Tristan Clay on his rare visits to his family’s ranch. It didn’t matter that he was grown and gone and the schoolgirls were just that—girls. The articles about him in the newspapers or magazines years ago had been clipped, savored in scrapbooks or tacked up on bedroom walls.

Hope had so envied her friend, Jolie, who had been allowed to pin up her favorite articles about her latest heartthrob. Gram had refused to let Hope attach anything to her bedroom walls other than a landscape or a print of the Last Supper. As if by doing so she’d be able to prevent Hope from turning into the wild child her sister Justine had been.

But Gram hadn’t known about the clipping Hope had had inside her geometry book. The one of Tristan, when he’d made the papers about some high-tech espionage he’d foiled. His appearances in the news had dwindled to nothing over the last six or seven years—a fact that had roused its own share of curiosity—but Hope knew, to her everlasting embarrassment, that her private hoard of clippings were still packed away somewhere in her closet.

And now, here he sat, across the counter from where she stood, with his intense blue gaze steady on her face as if there was no place else in the world he wanted to be.

Ridiculous, of course. Tristan Clay was just killing time until he headed out to his family’s place.

Yet, he was here in her grandmother’s café, wearing blue jeans that were washed soft and nearly white. The dark gray crew-neck sweater he’d worn had looked like cashmere. But he’d dumped it on the stool with no regard for the coffee soaking it. And if she wasn’t mistaken, there’d even been a small hole in one of the cuffs that had been pushed halfway up his golden-brown, sinewy forearms.

For a self-professed computer geek, his body looked both lean and hard. Her cheeks heated once again at her wayward thoughts. Since when did she speculate on the hardness of a man’s body? Not since you were a silly teenager, mooning over an article clipping about a man completely out of your league.

Now her ears were burning, too. She swiped a loose strand of hair away from her cheek, nudged up the nose piece of her glasses and made a production of looking at the round clock high on the wall at the end of the counter.

It was three-thirty and the café was supposed to close at two every day until it reopened at six. But Hope had left the front and back doors propped open to take advantage of the lovely June afternoon while she prepared for the supper crowd.

It wasn’t the first summer she’d spent working in her grandmother’s café. It wasn’t likely to be the last. But come the fall, Hope would begin her second year of teaching at Weaver Elementary and her mind had been filled with plans of that. And the relief of it, because she’d known the vote of the three-person school board to keep the school open at all had been terribly close.

She’d come out of the kitchen, her head filled with school projects and ideas, only to find Tristan sitting at one of the counter stools. His arms had been folded across the shining surface, his wide shoulders hunched tiredly. She’d begun telling him they were closed, but he’d looked up and Hope had been lost in the intensity of his eyes.

Tristan had been gone from the area for so long that he probably didn’t remember that Ruby’s Café closed after lunch. Yet telling him that was quite possibly the last thing on this earth that she’d wanted to do.

She now cast around for something intelligent to say. But could only think of the same topic she’d brought up earlier. “So, you’re here for your father’s wedding next Saturday?”

He nodded and shifted on the stool, finally blinking his eyes and glancing away. But only for a moment. One moment when she could breathe normally, and then he looked at her again, and she simply forgot how. She nudged at her slipping glasses, then pushed her hands into her pockets once more. “I’ve met Gloria Day.” She felt the tips of her ears go hot at the way the words seemed to blurt out of her. “She’s very nice. I, uh, hope your father and she are very happy.”