A Gift of Trust (4 page)

His mind whirling, Rory stepped aside and let
her get into the car. She was wrong, he thought bitterly. She
did
owe him an explanation that morning.
He couldn’t be expected to see what he had and not come to the
conclusion he reached. Trust had to be earned, didn’t it? How could
he be expected to just take it on faith?

Chapter Three

Rory watched as Lisa’s Charger turned the corner at
the end of the street before he tiredly trudged back to Holly’s
house. He would have just escaped down the street to his own little
cabin but he had Holly’s house key in his pocket and figured that
at least one of them should wish the Riley siblings a proper
goodbye. It wasn’t going to be Lisa.

He found Holly settled on the sofa with a
remote in her hand and Russ and Emily in the kitchen unloading
groceries into the refrigerator. “You and Lisa have a nice
discussion out there, Rory?” Russ asked dryly as he pulled a bottle
of wine out of the sack. “Hell, how does Holly think she’s going to
get this bottle open with just one working hand?”

“If she wants to drink it badly enough she’ll
figure it out,” Emily said blithely. “So you thought your lady
hooked up with my brother, huh? Gotta love those horny
soldiers.”

Rory ground his teeth together. “I gather you
heard us. And this is your business because?”

Emily pointed to the open window. “Everyone
on The Point probably heard you, so if you don’t want everybody and
God knowing your business you really ought to have your heated
discussions behind closed doors. And it’s our business because Lisa
got in trouble with you for coming over here and helping us.”

Rory shrugged. “Fine. Make it your business
if you want to. Besides, this is Verde and everybody already knows
my business. It hasn’t escaped notice that Lisa and I aren’t
exactly together anymore.”

“Yeah, and that’s a damned shame,” Russ said.
“Because Lisa is about as fine a young woman as you’ll ever
find.”

“That very well may be, but she’s the one who
stood there and stared me down that morning when I asked her what
was going on,” Rory snapped.

“Did you ask her? Or did you get up in her
face like you did just now and start yelling at her?” Emily
asked.

Rory could feel his face turning red. “I
guess I yelled at her, yes. But what would you think if you saw
your brother’s truck in front of the house and your girlfriend
coming out the front door first thing in the morning? I mean, no
offense meant, but Russ is a known playboy.”

“And proud of it,” Russ piped up. “But you
know what? I wouldn’t have passed judgment based on ‘the horny
soldier.’
I
would have had the sense to
trust my lovely lady, who probably never did anything to warrant my
suspicion and who most likely deserved my trust. If I still thought
I had to ask, I would have at least been nice about it. Keller,
you’re a fool if you think you can’t trust Lisa Simmons. The girl’s
pure gold.”

“She should have explained,” Rory said
stubbornly.

“You should have trusted her,” Emily
said.

“But why wouldn’t she just tell me?” Rory
said. “I would have believed her if she’d just explained what she
was doing here.”

Russ and Emily looked at one another and
shrugged.

“Maybe because her daddy was a mistrustful
bastard who made her mother’s life miserable. Those stories I
remember. About Howard Simmons.” Holly limped into the kitchen with
a sour look on her face and motioned to the wine bottle. “The
mother was as good a woman as they come, but she finally had enough
and left. Took the girls with her, and her granddad barely saw
anything of them growing up.” Holly painfully lowered herself into
a chair, and Russ handed her a full glass of wine. “The mom made
the girls promise on her deathbed that they wouldn’t ever put up
with a suspicious bastard like their daddy. Her grandfather told
Uncle Willis that Lisa took the promise to heart.”

Russ whistled under his breath. “And Rory
here played right into her fears. Good going, Keller.”

Holly downed half her wine before facing Rory
across the table. “Most women would have explained, probably. Not
her. And I can understand why.”

“But how was I supposed to know if she didn’t
tell me?” Rory looked to the three of them in genuine
bewilderment.

“Why did you assume the worst, Rory?” Emily
asked quietly.

Rory clamped his mouth shut and shook his
head. No way was he airing his family’s dirty laundry to the
Rileys. “Never mind.”

Holly looked knowing. “Rory, not all women
are like your mother. Yep, I’ve heard those stories, too,” she
added when Rory’s face turned a deep shade of red. “If you give a
damn about the girl you better learn to trust her, and learn it
fast.”

“I don’t know about that,” Rory said. “Trust
has to be earned, doesn’t it?”

“No, it doesn’t, even though a lot of people
think that way, men and women alike,” Emily said. “Rory, unless and
until a woman demonstrates to you that she isn’t worthy of your
trust, your trust is a gift to be freely given. I’ll bet in all the
time you dated Lisa she never did anything to justify withholding
that gift, did she?”

Rory shook his head. “Not once.”

“Then you should have trusted her that
morning. She should have had the gift of your trust.”

***

Lisa tiredly gathered up the dirty plates and
utensils of Wade and Angie and asked if they wanted any pie for
dessert. It was late, and thankfully the Baxters were the last two
people in the café. Lisa could hardly wait to clean up their table
and deal with the register and go home for the night. Between
cleaning Holly’s house all day and filling in at the last minute
for an employee with the flu, she was exhausted. And emotionally
wrung out on top of the fatigue, she admitted as she recalled both
the steamy kiss they shared and the very public shouting match with
Rory in front of Holly’s house.

Spending the day with Rory had been a
bittersweet kind of torture, as she had remembered all they shared
the months they had been together. A part of her, the part that
still loved Rory Keller, had hoped that maybe, just maybe, they
could find their way back to one another. But their argument pretty
well made it clear that wasn’t going to happen. For whatever
reason, Rory was determined to think the worst until proven
otherwise. Lisa refused to live like that. She had seen what her
father’s mistrust did to her mother, and there was no way a man,
even a man she loved, was going to do that to her.

She carried the Baxters’ dirty dishes to the
back and brought Angie her change. Wade had already kissed his
mother goodnight and disappeared, and Angie pulled out the chair
and motioned for Lisa to sit down.

“You look as tired as I feel,” the woman said
as Lisa sank into the chair and toed off her shoes.

“That’s right, you cleaned all day too.”

“But I didn’t wait tables all night or have a
fight with my ex-boyfriend on top of it.” Angie’s eyes danced with
amusement as Lisa groaned out loud. “Apparently everybody on the
Point was listening, and I’ve already heard three versions,
including one where you threw mop water on him.”

Lisa shook her head in exasperation. “No mop
water, no mop, no weapons of mass destruction. Just some public
red-faced screaming on his part and loud-mouthed sneering disdain
on mine.” Her eyes filled and she felt her lower lip trembling. “It
all boils down to trust, Angie. He doesn’t trust me and he sees no
reason why he should.”

Angie was quiet for a moment. “So, what did
happen, Lisa? All anybody really knows is that you quit seeing one
another.”

Lisa summarized the situation quickly. Then:
“I don’t know, maybe I should have just explained the situation to
him that morning, but I could see myself with him up in my face
every day for the rest of my life explaining each and every little
thing and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t start the pattern of
behavior that destroyed my mother. He really punched my buttons
that morning, Angie.”

The woman looked across the table with
compassion in her eyes. “What did you do?”

“I just stared him in the face with my best
go-to-hell look and got in the car and left.”

“Hoo-boy,” Angie said. “I guess you felt you
really had to punch his buttons, too, didn’t you?”

“Punch what buttons?” Lisa asked. “I didn’t
say a thing to him. I just gave him a go-to-hell look and
left.”

“And that right there is what you did to
punch his buttons. The disdainful silence while he demanded an
explanation.”

Lisa shrugged. “And that would punch his
buttons because…? I didn’t argue, I didn’t say a word, I didn’t
call him an ass like I wanted to. I just stared him down.”

Angie thought a minute. “I guess you wouldn’t
have known about Evelyn’s famous stares, would you. That’s right,
you never met Rory’s mother. You wouldn’t know what she used to
do.”

“No, I never met her. She’d already drunk
herself to death when I moved here. So tell me about this woman and
the staring and why that would seem so awful to Rory.”

“Evelyn Keller used to look at Rory’s father
like that when she’d slept with another man. She would just look
him in the eye and dare him to say a word.”

“What?”

“Yep, that’s exactly what she would do to
him. And how do I know this, you are wondering?” Angie’s lips
tightened and she shook her head. “Because Evelyn would come in to
get her nails done three sheets to the wind and laugh about it.
Thought it was funny to do the poor man that way right in front of
his kids. And Barney was such a weak puppy that he put up with it
instead of taking his boys and leaving. That had to make an
impression.”

“And then I stared Rory down the same way,”
Lisa said thoughtfully. “He was conditioned by his mother to think
the worst and then I stared him in the eye and he immediately
jumped to the wrong conclusion. Well, hell. I guess I did punch his
buttons.”

A sympathetic smile touched Angie’s lips.
“Well, at least now you know where he’s coming from. And maybe Rory
needs to know where you’re coming from, too.”

Lisa thought a minute and shook her head. “It
wouldn’t make any difference. If anything, knowing about his mother
makes it just that much worse. Angie, if he couldn’t trust me after
all the time we spent together and what we meant to one another,
then his mother ruined him and he isn’t capable of trust. And
Evelyn Keller or no, I am not going to live like my mother.” She
lifted her chin defiantly. “I’d rather live with no man at all than
live the life my mother did.”

“I get that,” Angie said quietly. “But don’t
be so quick to write the young man off, Lisa. Rory’s a fine man in
many ways, and take it from me, good men like him aren’t just
growing on trees. Surely there’s room for compromise in there
somewhere, isn’t there? Now, don’t just say no,” she added when
Lisa started to speak. “Just think about it for a while. Maybe talk
to Rory again before you give up entirely. Promise?”

“Okay, I promise.” And she would think about
it since she’d promised Angie. But as far as Lisa was concerned, it
would take a miracle for Rory to learn how to trust, and Christmas
or not, miracles were few and far between.

Chapter Four

Lisa glanced at the clock on the café wall and
breathed a sigh of relief. Thirty more minutes and thankfully they
would be done and could go home.

All but one of the takeout turkey dinners had
been collected, and the last of the diners who preferred eating
their Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve in the café were finishing
up their meals, squaring away their bills and hustling out the door
to make it to one of the several Christmas Eve services offered by
the local churches. Lisa had planned to attend one of them herself,
but her head hurt and her feet were killing her and all she wanted
to do was go home and watch a rerun while she packed her duffel for
the drive to Austin in the morning. Besides, she didn’t know which
of the church services the Keller family planned to attend, and the
last thing she wanted tonight was to run into Rory. She hadn’t seen
him once since the shouting match in front of Holly’s house, and it
would further ruin her Christmas by having to deal with him—or,
more accurately, the love she felt for him and the hopeless
situation she found herself in, loving him deeply and at the same
time totally unwilling to spend her life with his mistrustful
nature. At some point she would have to deal with her feelings, but
tonight she just wanted to put everything on hold and try to
salvage what was left of the season.

“Hey, Lisa! Betty Cleburne’s on the phone.
She’s forty-five minutes out and wants to know if she can still
pick up her turkey.” Gus held out the phone from behind the window.
“I can wait if you don’t want to.”

“Not a problem. I can stay,” Lisa assured
both Betty and Gus, especially now that she wasn’t going to a
service. She finished up with the last customers, making a point of
thanking them for sharing part of their Christmas with her, and
made quick work of cleaning up the front and counting the
register.

She was sitting at a booth checking her email
on her phone when Betty Cleburne, the county social worker, rushed
through the front door looking uncharacteristically harassed. “Of
all nights for Eugene Schaefer to lose it and whip up on Marcie
again,” she said disgustedly. “He’s in jail, and Marcie’s in the
hospital, and I had to find a foster family to take Jeremy. Not an
easy task on Christmas Eve. Thanks for waiting.”

“Not a problem,” Lisa assured her. Then she
helped the woman get the boxed turkey and sides packed and out the
door.

She was putting the last sack in Betty’s
trunk when Rory’s cruiser whipped around the corner and screeched
into a parking place in front of the café. As he leapt out of the
car she asked, “What’s going on?”