A Gift of Trust (2 page)

She started to shake her head but looked
across the table at the stony expression on Rory’s face. He was
also going to refuse, and that would leave the little judge in the
lurch. Also, his wounded warrior niece deserved better than
that.

“I’ll be happy to help you, Judge Riley,” she
said quickly. “But I don’t need Rory’s help. I can handle it by
myself. That little house isn’t any bigger than my place.”

“Oh, but it’s a mess, Lisa,” Judge Riley
countered. “The original plan was for Russ and Emily to get Wade
Baxter and Rory’s brother Benny to help, but they’re out of pocket
too. It’s honestly more work than one person ought to have to
handle.”

“I’ll be fine, Judge Riley. Honestly,” Lisa
assured him. “Rory doesn’t have to come.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Rory said, his expression
inscrutable. “Besides, it’s been used a few times recently, hasn’t
it, Lisa?”

Lisa felt her lips tighten at the jab. “Yes,
and it really wasn’t in that bad a shape when I saw it in April,”
she countered sweetly. “I really don’t need any help.”

“Still, it would probably go a lot faster
with the two of you working together,” Judge Riley said. “So, how
about it? You two get the cabin cleaned up so Holly can move in and
I’ll throw in a bushel of pecans from the ranch for each of you.
Deal?”

Damn it, she didn’t have a choice. If she
continued to insist on working alone she was going to seem
churlish. But, cooped up with Rory Keller all day in that tiny
house when they could barely stand to be in the café together? It
was going to be pure hell.

Nevertheless, she nodded. “Deal.”

Judge Riley turned to Rory, an expectant
expression on his face. “Deal?”

Rory didn’t look happy. Like Lisa, though, he
probably thought he couldn’t very well refuse. He stuck out his
hand, and Judge Riley shook it. “Deal.”

Judge Riley smiled at both of them, and Lisa
could have sworn the little man was amused about something. “Okay,
then,” he said. “I left a dining room table full of cleaning
supplies and rags and such, as well as detergent for what little
Holly has there in the way of clothing and linens. Mops and brooms
and buckets and just…whatever. If I forgot something, Jimmy Adamcik
or Angie Baxter can probably come up with it. Or maybe you have it
at your place, Rory.” The judge reached into his pocket and handed
them each a key. “I’ll load up the pecans and bring them by as soon
as I can shake loose. And thank you both so much from the entire
Riley family.”

Despite the inconvenience, Lisa found herself
smiling. “Holly’s a hero. It’s the least we can do to help
her.”

“I agree,” Rory said quietly as his eyebrow
shot up. “I’m sure Lisa is glad to help out the Rileys. All of the
Rileys.”

***

Damn her hide
anyway,
Rory thought angrily as he shut the café door firmly
behind him and strode out to his patrol car. Didn’t she at least
have the decency to be ashamed of herself? My God, he’d practically
caught her in bed with the biggest player in the United States
Army, and instead of at least acting embarrassed by her behavior
she’d acted like she was angry with him, staring him down that
morning like the whole thing was somehow his fault. Did she think
it was all right to cheat on him? Was he not supposed to call her
on it? Didn’t she at least owe him some kind of explanation for
what she did?

Rory slammed the car in gear and, forcing
himself to calm down, pulled out into surprisingly bustling
traffic. So, now he was going to be stuck in Holly Riley’s cabin
with Lisa all day. What could the old judge have been thinking?
Everyone in town knew the two of them were on the outs. Neither of
them had breathed a word about that early morning confrontation
when everything went to hell, but Verde was a small town. It was
obvious that his truck was never parked outside her little duplex
anymore, and they never appeared at the local movie theatre holding
hands, and neither of them had gone to Verde’s legendary Homecoming
shindig.

Rory had been surprised that Lisa didn’t go,
actually; surely lover boy Riley would have taken her if she’d
asked. But, then, he’d been surprised that Lisa spent the night
with Riley in the first place. He and Lisa had been lovers for
several months at that point, and he’d been starting to
care—
really
care—for her, and he’d thought
she was starting to feel the same. She had certainly given herself
to him physically, wrapping her long legs around him as her
shimmering cascade of red hair graced his pillow, her beautiful
face glowing as she arched beneath him and called his name. But
maybe she gave herself to every man who came her way. Maybe that
was just what she did. Maybe that’s what all women did. It was
certainly what his mother had done. Maybe his mistake had been
thinking Lisa was different.

Cursing under his breath, Rory racked his
brain for a way to get out of tomorrow’s cleaning party. He could
volunteer for an extra shift, but Sheriff Waller was tight with
Judge Riley and it could very well get back to him. Could he plead
a family emergency? That would have worked in the past when his
mother was committing suicide by bottle and emergency room visits
were commonplace, but Evelyn Keller had been dead for almost three
years now and his father Barney was a healthy as a horse. No, short
of just plain going AWOL he would be stuck all day in a tiny house
with the beautiful, faithless Lisa Simmons, the woman who still
haunted him day and night after almost a year.

Chapter Two

Lisa turned the knob and gently pushed open the
front door to Holly Riley’s little house. The wind was brisk and
the early morning sun gilded the choppy, churning waves in the
nearby lake, and Lisa turned around and stood for a moment just
breathing in the crisp, cold air blowing off the water. On mornings
like this she longed to leave her duplex in Verde and move out here
to the lakeshore community of Heaven’s Point. When she and Rory
were an item she’d seriously considered it, renting a small
off-water cabin like the one Rory lived in, but once they split
she’d tabled that notion. There was no way she could live in this
tiny community with Rory as close as the next street over.

She stepped inside the cabin, and a wave of
musty air assaulted her nostrils. “Nope, this won’t do at all,” she
said out loud, and she threw the door open wide and started pushing
open the wide windows facing the water. Soon she had all the
windows thrown open and the sweet-smelling, cedar-perfumed breeze
was sweeping out all the musty odor of the closed-up house. She
also opened up the upstairs windows.

She was checking out the dead pill bugs on
the bathroom counter when she heard footsteps downstairs. Taking a
deep breath, she bounded down the narrow staircase to find Rory
standing by the dining room table, his arms crossed, surveying the
cleaning supplies left behind by Judge Riley.

“He forgot a toilet bowl brush,” he said
tersely.

“There’s one in the upstairs bathroom.” Lisa
stepped past Rory and pulled open the door to the miniscule
downstairs bath. She found another bowl brush and thrust it
forward. “Here’s another. Knock yourself out.” Then she picked up a
rag and kitchen cleanser and disappeared into the kitchen.

She’d opened the cabinets and was loading
what few dishes there were into the dishwasher when Rory appeared
in the doorway. “Shouldn’t we come up with a plan?” he asked.

Lisa made herself ignore the way Rory’s tight
T-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders and the lick of dark
hair that fell over his forehead. “That’s easy. You clean anywhere
I’m not.”

Rory’s lips tightened. “Fine. I’ll take
upstairs and unload the woman’s underwear into the washing
machine.”

Lisa threw up her hands. “Whatever. Load up
as many dishes as you can get into the dishwasher and wipe the bugs
out of the cabinets.”

She made to brush past Rory, but he stood
firmly in her way, his arms crossed and his mouth drawn into a
tight line. Lisa stared up into his grim features for a moment
before saying, “Look, I don’t know what your problem is right now,
but either let me by or go unload Holly’s underwear yourself. It’s
not like you’ve never seen lacy panties before.”

Rory’s eyebrow lifted and Lisa could feel her
face turning red, but thankfully he moved to one side and let her
pass. Yes, he had seen lacy panties before, plenty of them, and he
had even torn a few in a frantic effort to get them off of her.
Sadly, those sexy panties were now buried in the bottom of her
drawer, along with the barely-there little bras and see-through
naughty nighties. At this point, with no reconciliation on the
horizon, she wasn’t even sure why she was keeping them. Rory would
never see her in them again, and even when she started dating again
she would not wear them for the next man. Those were for Rory
alone.

Lisa unloaded Holly’s sparsely filled dresser
drawers into the washer and piled the stale-smelling sheets and
towels next to the washing machine for the next load. She was in
the upstairs bathroom cleaning out the shower stall when Rory
called her name up the stairs. “Yo, Lisa! Angie’s here with some
cake for us.”

Smiling wide, Lisa loped down the stairs to
where Rory’s neighbor and Lisa’s close friend Angie Baxter waited
with a foil-covered plate.

“Wade called and said you two were cleaning
out the house. I’d be over here myself helping if I weren’t doing
the same thing this morning over at the shop.” A huge smile
wreathed the little woman’s pretty face. “Angie’s Place opens on
February first.”

“That is so wonderful,” Lisa said. “I’m going
to be your first customer. Are you still making that lavender and
green tea soap?”

“Still doing that cedary-smelling shaving
cream?” Rory piped up.

“Absolutely. They both sell really well.”
Angie put her foil-covered plate down on the table. “Tell Holly
I’ll be over sometime in the next week with a meal for her. Anyway,
gotta run. See you both later.”

Angie sailed out the door, and Lisa and Rory
looked at one another.

“I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get any
breakfast,” Lisa said. “I’m eating.” She rummaged around in the
kitchen and found two plates and forks and a knife. “Care to join
me?”

Rory shrugged. “Why not? Benny said one time
that Wade’s mom was a great cook.” He took the foil off the cake
and cut them both a generous slice. “Wonderful,” he said as he
practically inhaled a piece.

Lisa sank down across from him. Should she
try to engage him in conversation or just eat her cake and go? She
glanced across the table and caught him looking at her with
speculation.

“I heard you used your grandfather’s
inheritance to buy into the café,” he said.

Lisa nodded. “You heard right. Gus and I cut
a deal. When he’s ready to retire in five years or so I will own it
outright.”

“That’s good,” Rory said. “You said one time
that was your dream.”

Lisa nodded. “It is, and every day I bless
grandpa for making it possible. He also made it possible for my
sister and her husband to put a down payment on a sweet little
house just south of Austin. They moved in last month.”

“What about your dad?” Rory asked.

Lisa felt her face darken. The last thing she
felt like doing this morning was talking about her asshole of a
father. “Grandpa didn’t include him in the will.”

“Oh.”

Thankfully, Rory let the topic drop. They ate
their cake in a silence that was more comfortable than not and Lisa
found herself thinking back on the time they’d spent together—not
just the sex, as wonderful as those memories were, but of the meals
they’d shared and the nights they’d partied in Austin and the
movies on the square where they’d held hands and shared a tub of
greasy popcorn, and a stab of bitter regret ripped into her. As
much as she hated to admit it to herself, she had missed Rory,
missed him badly, and even knowing the kind of man he was didn’t
quell the longing inside her to return to those halcyon days when
they were inseparable. Why, she asked herself as she finished her
cake and put the plate in the sink, couldn’t Rory have been
different? Why couldn’t he have had it in him to trust?

***

Rory glanced at his watch and looked around
the tiny cabin. He and Lisa had worked through the morning and into
the afternoon, stopping only once to eat more of Angie’s cake, and
now the little house practically sparkled in anticipation of
Holly’s arrival.

Judge Riley had been right. It would have
been too much for one of them to tackle alone, but with two of them
working they got the job done. Everything in Holly’s dresser
drawers and all of her linens were laundered and put away. Her bed
was freshly made and the upholstery vacuumed. The dishes and
cooking utensils were washed and returned to freshly cleaned
cabinets. Both bathrooms were scrubbed down, and every floor in the
house was swept and mopped, and the cobwebs, dust bunnies, and
deceased pill bugs were a thing of the past. The musty odor was
long gone, replaced by the enticing fragrance of lake water and
cedar and freshly-cleaned house. The little place no longer had
that forlorn air about it; it would now warmly welcome the young
hero home.

Rory glanced up as Lisa loped down the stairs
carrying the last of the cleaning supplies in the mop bucket.

“I’ll just put these under the sink for
Holly,” she said. “Do you suppose she’ll be able to do her own
cleaning, or will she need help?” She moved put the bucket under
the sink.

“No idea,” Rory said, an unwilling smile
tugging at his lips. Lisa’s face was shiny and her clothes bore
remnants of dust and cobwebs, and her hair was coming loose from
her ponytail, and to Rory she’d never looked more appealing.