Who Do You Trust? Read Online Free Page B

could do with a coffee, if that’s all right.”
    “O-of course.” She led the way into the old weatherboard farmhouse, shaking so bad she could barely use her hands to hang her hat and gloves on a hook on the verandah.
    Mitch walked in without waiting for an invitation—but then, he knew he didn’t need one. The Miller farm had been his only real home in all his life. Her parents had become like his own, and he, their son.
    For a little while. Until Tim stepped in and she’d ruined it all by giving in to a girl’s temptation to have a boyfriend—any boyfriend. Fool!
    “The place has changed a bit.” He surveyed the big, open country kitchen, soft and mellow, honey and gold toned beneath the flooding sunshine of the skylight. “It was darker before.”
    “When my parents retired three years ago I bought them out. I sold four hundred acres to the Brownells, keeping just the fifty around the house to grow fruit and vegetables. Mum and Dad live in a cottage by the ocean. They’re in Europe at the moment; Dad wanted to see the Formula One. Anyway, since it’s my place now, I did up the parts I didn’t like. I felt oppressed by the dark floor and bench tops.” She filled the filter with coffee.
    “I like natural floorboards. I did something similar to my place in Bondi before I sold it. It was too gloomy.”
    “Where do you live now?”
    A second’s hesitation, then he said slowly, “I live here.”
    The jug of water slipped in her hands, spilling over the bench. “Here?”
    “Yes, here in Breckerville. I’m buying a place. Let me help you.” He stepped forward, grabbing a towel to dry the mess.
    He’d always been like that. Always wanting to help her, always close to her. Just never close enough. Always the best friend she’d ever had, never the lover she craved.
    Tears of helpless confusion filled her eyes. “I can do it.” She snatched the towel from him, hiding her face.
    Again she felt his gaze on her, sensing her quiet despair. Gentle as a whispering breeze he touched her cheek, turning her face to his. “Don’t be sorry about what you said,on’t ever be scared to speak your mind to me.”
    Unable to stop herself, she drank in the dark, rebellious face whose memory still walked the land outside her window, whose essence still haunted her dreams inside the windows of her soul. “But I am sorry,” she whispered, lowering her gaze.
    Though she couldn’t see him, she could feel the warmth of his gaze on her. “Liss, you know how I feel about my father walking out on my mother when she was pregnant with me, her dumping me at the church steps because she had nowhere to go. Can you honestly see me walking out on a woman having my kids, like I didn’t care that she, or they, might have the life I had before I met you?”
    Shamed, appalled by her unthinking judgment, she whispered, “Tim did.”
    “No, baby,” he answered gently. “No man who knows you at all would ever think you could abandon your child, like my mother did to me. But he hurt you. You loved him, trusted him, and he hurt you. He left you when you needed him the most.”
    His voice was so warm, so tender. He cared for her, and she was answering him with half-truths. But how could she tell him the truth about her marriage? “Yes. Yes, he did.” Well, that much was truth. Tim had left her, the only time she’d needed him.
    “Where does he live now?”
    Hearing the note of grim promise, she felt seventeen again. Mitch had always pounded Tim when he thought his friend wasn’t treating her right. “Not for my sake, Mitch,” she said with a shy, half-hidden smile. “He’s Jenny’s father.”
    Quietly he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me any of this when I asked you to take the boys? My God, if I’d known you were alone, running this farm, a single mother—”
    “Which is why I didn’t tell you. Matt and Luke needed a home and a family, after what happened with Kerin.” She refilled the jug and set the coffee going. “So