Allison Leigh - Married To A Stranger

She stared out the window and banished thoughts of Tristan and showers.

He hadn’t turned on the radio. It was just the two of them and the sound of the tires. And Hope felt more tongue-tied than she’d ever felt in her life.

Considering she’d spent most of her life tongue-tied, that was quite a feat.

“Would you like to grab some dinner?”

She turned and looked at him, her lips parting soundlessly.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

He wasn’t asking her for dinner. He couldn’t be. Why would he? He was only driving her home because he’d been going by to see Drew anyway. “I don’t…ah, no. Thank you.”

“Why?”

She stared fixedly out at the passing landscape. “Excuse me?”

“Why won’t you have dinner with me? We could grab a steak at Colbys.”

“Why?” She glanced at him long enough to see the corner of his lips deepen.

“That was my question.”

She folded her arms. She didn’t like being teased. “I have plans.”

“Big date?”

Her cheeks burned. “Is that so hard to believe?”

He smiled faintly. “Not at all.”

It ought to be, she thought silently. The last time Hope had been on a date, she’d still been in college. And she may have entertained thoughts of agreeing if Larry Pope asked her out again, but that occasion hadn’t actually occurred. “I have to wash my hair.”

He raised his eyebrows. “In other words, you’re not interested.”

“No,” she blurted. “I mean, I…I do have to wash my hair. Church is tomorrow.”

His smile widened wryly. “Naturally. It’s been a while since I’ve been thrown over for shampoo and conditioner.”

Hope closed her eyes and wished for the drive to be over.

When they finally entered the official outskirts of town, Hope started to tell him where she lived, but without any prompting at all, he drove straight to the cozy little house she rented across the street from the park and the high school.

“Sawyer told me,” he said, as he parked in her narrow driveway.

Hope shoved open the car door, just glad to be home and certainly not willing to wonder why Tristan and his brother had even discussed the whereabouts of her home, but Tristan caught her arm before she could escape. Her throat tightened and she looked over her shoulder at him. “I appreciate the ride.”

Because he couldn’t help himself, Tris looked into her eyes.

They were the purest violet he’d ever seen, so dark he could barely distinguish the pupil from the iris. And the whites were whiter than any white that had ever existed. Annoyance and amazement churned inside him. A few days’ dalliance with this girl-woman was out of the question. He knew it. So why did he ask her for dinner? And why did it bug him to his core that she’d refused? “Eyes as clear as yours just don’t exist,” he murmured.

Her eyebrows popped up. “Excuse me?”

“I’ll bet you’ve never had a hangover. Never crossed the street against the light. Never stayed up later than you should.”

Color suffused her cheeks. “I have been to college.”

“Sweet pea, compared to the places I’ve been, that doesn’t mean diddly.” His voice lowered. “Never had an impure thought.”

Her eyes flickered and she hurriedly climbed from the car. Her thick braid bounced in counterpoint to her hasty steps as she walked away from him.

Let her go.

He swallowed an oath along with the common sense that told him to leave well enough alone. He caught up to her as she pushed open the front door of her little white house. The place was as neat and tidy as she was, with precise rows of summer flowers in the beds lining the sidewalk. He closed his hand around her elbow, pulling her up short before she could shut the door in his face.

“Wait.”

Her chin tilted, but her eyes wouldn’t meet his.

“Why? So you can make fun of me some more?”

“I wasn’t.”

She didn’t answer. The way her soft lips twisted was answer enough.

He frowned. The bones in her elbow felt fragile. He slid his hand up her arm, curving around the taut flesh, feeling the flex of healthy muscle. Of skin that was smooth as satin against his fingertips. “I have to go back to Paris after the wedding.”

She blinked. Hesitated. “Congratulations.”

“It’s business,” he dismissed. “I travel a lot.” Too much, he thought vaguely. “I’m not going to be here for long. Why won’t you have dinner with me? I’m harmless.”

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?

“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?”