Verwandte Artikel zu The Marriage Pact (The Brides of Bliss County, 1)

The Marriage Pact (The Brides of Bliss County, 1) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 4: Brides of Bliss County

Miller, Linda Lael

 
9780373778706: The Marriage Pact (The Brides of Bliss County, 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0373778708 ISBN 13: 9780373778706
Verlag: HQN, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

The women of Bliss County are ready to meet the men of their dreams in this classic Brides of Bliss County novel from New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller!

Ten years ago, Hadleigh Stevens was eighteen and this close to saying “I do,” when Tripp Galloway interrupted her walk down the aisle. Now with that disaster firmly behind her, Hadleigh and her single friends form a marriage pact. But she doesn’t expect Tripp to return to Bliss Country and make a play for her heart.

Divorced and eager to reconnect with his cowboy roots, Tripp returns home to save his ailing father’s ranch. He isn’t looking for love—and certainly not with his best friend’s little sister. But he’s never been able to forget Hadleigh. And this time, he might not be able to walk away from her again...
 
Previously published.
 
Read the entire reader-favorite The Brides of Bliss County series:
Book 1: The Marriage Pact
Book 2: The Marriage Charm
Book 3: The Marriage Season

Don't miss author Linda Lael Miller's next heartwarming holiday drama, Christmas in Painted Pony Creek, where a single mom and her daughter find their lives magically changed and filled with the love and kindness of a man who would do anything to protect them.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Linda Lael Miller is a #1 New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of more than one hundred  novels. Long passionate about the Civil War buff, she has studied the era avidly and has made many visits to Gettysburg,  where she has witnessed reenactments of the legendary clash between North and South. Linda explores that turbulent time in The Yankee Widow.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.



"Well, dog," Tripp Galloway said, addressing his sidekick, a cross-eyed black Lab he'd bought as a pup out of the back of a beat-up pickup alongside a Seattle highway the year before, "we're almost home."

Ridley glanced over at him and yawned expansively.

Tripp sighed. "Truth is, I'm not all that excited about it, either," he confided.

Ridley gave a sympathetic whimper, then turned away to press his muzzle against the well-smudged passenger-side windowhis way of saying he'd like to stick his head out, if it was all the same to Tripp, and let his ears flap in the wind like a pair of furry flags.

Tripp chuckled and hit the button on his armrest to open Ridley's window halfway, and the inevitable roar filled the extended cab of the truck. The dog was in hog heaven, while his master wondered, not for the first time, how the hell the critter could breathe with all that air coming at him.

Tripp sighed again. Another of life's little mysteries, he thought.

He could see the ragged outskirts of Mustang Creek just aheada convenience store/gas station here and there, a few lone trailers rusting in weedy lots, their best days far behind them, and more storage units than any community ought to need, especially one the size of his hometown.

It was a sign of the times, Tripp supposed, a mite glumly, that people had so damn muchstuff that their houses and garages were overflowing. Instead of taking a good long look at themselves and figuring out what kind of interior hole they were trying to fill, they boughtmore stuff and rented a place to stash the excess. At this rate, the whole planet would be clogged with boxes and bins full of forgotten belongings in no time at all.

He shook his head, resigned. He was a wealthy man, but he believed in owning one of most things, from watches and pairs of boots to houses and cars. He did make certain exceptions, of coursedogs, horses and cattle, to name a few, but, then, of course, animals weren't things.

Tripp shifted his attention back to coming home. He'd been there intermittently, over the years, returning for the odd Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday, the usual funerals and weddingsone of them particularly memorableand a class reunion or two at the high school. It had been a long time, though, since he'd been a resident.

In the off-season, Mustang Creek was a sleepy little burg nestled in a wide valley, with mountains towering on all sides, but in the summer, when folks came through in campers and minivans on family vacations, taking in the Grand Tetons as they made their way either to or from Yellowstone, things livened up considerably. The second big season, of course, was winter, when visitors from all over the world came to ski, enjoy some of the most magnificent scenery to be found anywhere and, to the irritated relief of the locals, spend plenty of money.

As it happened, he and Ridley were arriving during the brief lull between the sizable influxes of outsiders, that being September, October and part of November, and Tripp was looking forward to living quietly on his stepdad's ranch for a while, doingreal work of the hard physical variety. After several years spent running his small but profitable charter-jet service out of Seattleironically, he'd put in most of his hours behind a desk instead of in the cockpit, where he would have preferred to beTripp hankered for the sweat-soaked, sore-muscle satisfaction that came with putting in a long day on the range.

He'd made some heavy-duty changes in his life, most of them recent, selling his company and all six jets, leasing out his penthouse condo with its breathtaking view of Elliott Bay and points beyond, including the snow-covered Olympic mountain range.

He didn't miss the city traffic, the honking horns and other noise, or jostling through crowds everywhere he went.

Oh, yeah. Tripp Galloway was ready for a little un-urban renewal.

More than ready.

There were some things in his past he needed to come to terms with, now that he'd shifted gears and left his fast-track life, with its pie-charts and spreadsheets, three-piece suits and meetings, not to mention the constant barrage of texts, emails and telephone calls and the decisions that had to be made Now. Or better yet, yesterday.

Out here, in the open country, he wouldn't be able to dodge the stuff that prodded at the underside of his conscious mind 24/7. Losing his mom when he was just sixteen, for instance. Sitting by helplessly while his best friend died, thousands of miles from home. And then there was his short-term marriage, over for some eight years nowhe and Danielle were better off without each other, no doubt about it, but the divorce had hurt, and hurt badly, just the same.

He'd dated a lot of women since then, but he'd always been careful not to get too involved. Once the lady in question started bringing up topics like kids and housesand leaving bridal magazines around, with pages showing spectacular wedding gowns or knock-out engagement ringshe was out of there, and quick. It wasn't that Tripp didn't want a home and family. He did.

He'd been led to believe that Danielle did, too.

Wrong.

When they'd finally called it quits over that disagreement and numerous others, it wasn't Danielle's departure that grieved him for months, even years, afterward, it was the death of the dream. The failure.

Tripp banished his dejectionno sense getting sucked into the past if he could avoid itjust as he and the dog rolled on, into the heart of town. By then, Ridley had pulled his head back inside the truck and was checking out their surroundings, tongue lolling.

Mustang Creek proper was something to see, all right. The main street was outfitted to look like an Old West town, with wooden facades on all the buildings, board sidewalks and hitching posts and even horse troughs in front of a few of the businesses. While a number of the local establishments had saloonlike namesthe Rusty Bucket, the Diamond Spur and so onthere was only one genuine bar among the lot of them, the Moose Jaw Tavern.

The Bucket housed an insurance agency, and the Spur was a dentist's office.

Tripp supposed the whole setup was pretty tacky, but the fact was, he sort of liked it. Sometimes, at odd moments, it gave him the uncharacteristically fanciful feeling that he'd slipped through a time warp and ended up in the 1800s, where life was simpler, if less convenient.

Once they'd left the main street behind, the town began to look a little more modern, if the 1950s could be called modern. Here, there were tidy shingled houses with painted porches and picket-fenced yards bursting with the last and heartiest flowers of summer. The sidewalks were buckled in places, mostly by tree roots, and dogs wandered loose, clean and well fed, safe because they belonged, because everybody knew them by name and finding their way home was easy.

Ridley made a whining sound, probably born of envy, as they passed yet another meandering canine.

Tripp chuckled and reached over to pat the Lab's glossy ruff. "Easy, now," he said. "Once we get to the ranch, you'll have more freedom than you'll know what to do with."

Ridley rested his muzzle on the dashboard, rolled his eyes balefully in Tripp's direction and sighed heavily, as if to say,Promises, promises.

And then, just like that, there it was, the redbrick church, as unchanged as the rest of the town. Looking at the place, remembering how he'd crashed Hadleigh Stevens's wedding, called a halt to the proceedings and then carried her out of there like a sack of grain made his stomach twitch.

It wasn't that Tripp regretted what he'd done; time had proven him right. That pecker-head she'd been...

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Verlag
HQN
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0373778708
ISBN 13 
9780373778706
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Product Safety Manager
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