Allison Leigh - Married To A Stranger

He nodded, not replying. His long fingers wrapped around the cup and he tilted it, as if to drink. Hope automatically reached for the coffee pot and refilled his cup. “Did you want to see a menu?” She ignored the fact that she was due at her friend’s house in less than ten minutes. She’d promised to watch Evan, Jolie’s son, while Jolie and Drew Taggart drove to Gillette.

“I remember when Ruby used to just write the specials on that chalkboard over there.” Tristan glanced at the square board that was propped on a high corner shelf.

“She still puts the specials on the board.” Hope pulled a menu from beneath the counter and slid it across to him. “But we offer more these days. I could fix you a sandwich or something.”

“Coffee, tea or me?” Tris wanted to retract the suggestive words as soon as he said them. But they were already out there and hectic color was staining the waitress-teacher’s cheeks. Personally, he found the blush charming. How many women did he know anymore who blushed?

But he’d obviously embarrassed her.

“No. I guess not.” He was oddly disappointed. She wasn’t at all his type of woman. Hell, she looked barely old enough to vote, much less be a teacher. Besides, the only energy he had right now was expended simply by lifting the coffee cup to drain it of its life-giving liquid. He set the empty cup down, closed the menu and pushed to his feet, dropping a few bills on the counter as he did so.

He wondered when he’d become so jaded that he couldn’t recognize a naive girl when he met one. Not that he expected to see her again. He had a week to catch up on his brothers’ lives, then there was the wedding to get through. After that, he was due to meet Dom to finish up the case that had kept them all occupied far longer than anyone had expected, thanks to the mess made by a love-sick fool on their very own team. He didn’t have time to dwell on Hope’s innocent appeal. “Thanks for the java.” He headed to the open door. “It was just what I needed.”

“You’re quite welcome.”

He looked back at her painfully polite words. Her ivory cheeks were nearly as pink as the uniform-dress thing she wore. Behind her gold-rimmed glasses, her eyes were wide and so violet they looked like crushed flowers from the lilac bushes that bloomed around the big house at the ranch. If it weren’t for the glasses, he’d have figured that she was wearing some colored contact lenses to achieve that vivid color. But they were obviously the genuine article.

He cupped his hand tightly around the metal edge of the glass door as his attention drifted from her eyes to the rosy fullness of her lips. To the gentle, rounded curve of her jaw and the smooth line of her throat where the delicate links of a fine gold chain disappeared beneath the ill-fitting uniform. Behind him, a dog barked and he reeled in thoughts that could get him arrested in some states. Apparently, he wasn’t as beat from the last week as he’d thought. “Give my regards to your grandmother.”

“I will.” Her tongue peeped out, leaving a distracting glisten on her lower lip. “It was nice meeting you.”

“You too. Hope.”

The color in her cheeks flared again, but she smiled. And he found himself smiling back.

Then he heard his name being called, and turned to see his oldest brother, Sawyer, standing on the street a few yards down. He absently waved at his brother, still looking back inside the café. Feeling disappointed that Hope had turned away, busy with something at the counter.

“Thought you were coming in next week.”

Realizing that he was wondering how far her toffee-brown hair would reach down her back if it weren’t twisted into that thick, roping braid, Tris deliberately stepped away from the doorway toward Sawyer. Okay, so he took one more look into the café before he did. What was the harm in looking? He was a man. She was a woman.

And his brother was the law now. Tris felt a smile growing on his face as his brother walked closer. The only indication of Sawyer’s new status as the sheriff was the star fastened unobtrusively to his leather belt. Except for the billed cap with a naval insignia that he wore, Sawyer looked much the same as the other men in the small rural town he now served. Well-worn blue jeans and a work shirt. “I was,” Tris finally answered with a grin. “You’re missing the Stetson and spurs.”

Sawyer shrugged, tucking the bow of his dark sunglasses in the collar of his shirt. “Left the spurs at home. Rebecca likes ’em, you know,” he said blandly.

Tris chuckled. “You wish. How is my newest doctor-in-law?”

“My wife is beautiful and totally in love with me. You can save your charms for someone else.” Sawyer leaned his back against the hood of a pickup parked at the curb. “You’re early.”

“So you already mentioned.” Tris looked back toward the café when he heard the soft jingle of a bell. All he saw, though, was the door closing. The blinds had been drawn across all the windows. “Cafe still closed during the afternoons?”

“Regular as rain.”

“She didn’t tell me,” he murmured.

“Ruby?”

“Hope.” He felt his brother’s look. “What?”

Sawyer just shook his head. “What do you do? Some kind of chant that brings women running?”

“All I had was a cup of coffee.” Ordinarily, Tris would have shrugged off his brother’s taunt without feeling a shred of defensiveness.

“Yeah, well, I know you. Hope teaches at the elementary school. Everyone in this town looks on her as their daughter, or their sister. So keep your mitts off.”

The fact that his brother seemed to think he needed the warning burned. “Thanks for the enthusiastic welcome home, bro.”

Sawyer’s expression didn’t change. Because he was the oldest of his brothers? Because he was the sheriff? Because he was one of Squire Clay’s sons and had picked up an endless amount of Clay nosiness along the way?

“Hope Leoni is,” sweet, unbearably sexy and way too innocent, “of no interest to me,” Tris said dismissively. Maybe if he said it with enough conviction, he’d make it true.

Hope’s fingers crushed the paper bag holding the rolls she was taking out to the Taggarts, when she heard Tristan’s voice, easily carried around the side of the café on the warm summer breeze.

She yanked open the door of her little green car and tossed the sack onto the passenger seat. “Of course you’re of no interest to him,” she muttered under her breath. She tossed her braid over her shoulder and pushed the key into the ignition, starting the engine with a roar. She threw it into gear and zipped around the side of the café, jouncing out onto Main.

In her rearview mirror she could see Tristan and the sheriff standing on the sidewalk talking. “Men like Tristan Clay don’t have interest in women like you.” Men in general don’t have interest in you. Most of the town still considered her Ruby’s “little” granddaughter.

She was a fully qualified teacher. She’d moved into her own house and, despite the barely hidden reluctance of the school board, obtained the teaching position at Weaver Elementary. She didn’t know what was worse—still being thought of as a teenager, or knowing that every move she made was measured and compared against the actions of her mother who’d had the temerity to be an unwed mother, twice, or her sister, who’d had to leave high school because of her wild ways.

Maybe she should accept the next time Larry Pope asked her out. He wasn’t a bad guy, after all. In fact, as the math teacher at the high school, he was respected and well liked. Maybe if she dated him a time or two, the town would see that she wasn’t her mother or her sister.

But surely that wasn’t a good enough reason to go out with a man? To prove she could date without bringing shame to her grandmother the way people seemed to believe her mother and sister had? Larry was nice, yes. He just didn’t make her forget her own name when she looked into his…his…what color were Larry’s eyes? Whatever color they were, they weren’t the deep blue that Tristan Clay’s were.

She made an impatient sound. Yes. The next time Larry Pope asked her out, she’d accept. It wasn’t as if there was a line of men beating down her door. It wasn’t as if she was “of interest” to any male other than Larry Pope.

She hit the brakes abruptly, nearly passing the turn-off to the Taggarts’ place.

Several minutes later, she pulled up in front of the partially completed log home that her friends were building. As soon as she stopped the car, the door flew open and Evan tumbled out, racing toward her. “Auntie Hope,” he squealed, launching his five-year-old self with considerable enthusiasm at her legs. Hope laughed, swinging the boy in a circle, before settling him back on his feet.

He beamed, gap-toothed, back at her. There was another male who was interested in her after all, Hope thought wryly. Only he was seventeen years her junior and had a seven o’clock bedtime. “Come on, you,” she said cheerfully. “Let’s hustle your folks along so we can finish writing your surprise story for your mom’s birthday.”

And maybe, while they were at it, she could rid herself of foolish thoughts about Tristan Clay.

“Here. Hang these bows from the banister there.”

Tris heaved a sigh and lowered his arm that he’d laid across his eyes in a vain attempt to block out the light. “I didn’t think it possible, but marriage has actually made you more bossy,” he complained, looking up at his sister-in-law, Emily Clay. She’d been raised with Tris and his brothers after her parents had been killed when she was little. But she’d legally become a Clay when she’d married his brother, Jefferson. And now they even had two kids.

“And time has only made you more lazy. Move it.” Emily nudged him with her foot. “What are you doing lying here in the living room on the floor, anyway?”

“Trying to sleep,” he muttered. “So stop sticking your foot in my ribs.”

She crouched down beside him, propping her arms on her knees. Her long brown hair slid over her shoulder, rich and dark as coffee. A thought which immediately brought to mind Hope Leoni of the pink cheeks and sweet smile. He squelched a groan and concentrated on Emily, who was speaking to him, her eyebrows raised with curiosity. “You’re trying to sleep on the floor here in the living room because…?”

“The couch is hard as a rock.” He yawned and dropped his arm over his face again. “And because Gloria’s daughters are using the guest suite downstairs.”

“What about your old bedroom upstairs?”

“Full up with packing boxes from Gloria’s house. I’m told they were going to be gone by the time I was expected to arrive next week, but I have my doubts.”

“The couch in Matthew’s office?”

“Too short. And the rec room downstairs has paper doves and bells on every surface.” He flexed his fingers. “Doves, for God’s sake.”

“It’s for a wedding shower, ding dong. You could have stayed with Jefferson and me, you know. We’ve got room, even for a big dope like you.”

Tris knew that. He also knew that he could have bunked with Daniel or Sawyer, too. But staying at the main house of the ranch, the “big house,” as they all called it, had seemed the easiest choice. Whether or not his father ever said so, Tris knew that staying at the big house was what Squire expected. Available bed or not.

He sat up, rubbing a hand across his jaw. He needed a shave. He’d stayed at Sawyer and Rebecca’s place in town until nearly midnight. “What time is it? Where’s Squire?”