A short silence, as if he weighed his words. Then he spoke, his deep, rumpled voice speaking his unique brand of blunt truth. “You’ve always been a ‘nice girl,’ you did live next door, and yes, I’ve relied on you—but from the moment we met, I’ve never thought of you as my sister, Lissa. Not once. Not ever.”
She couldn’t breathe. Her gaze felt pinned by his, trapped by the power of words she’d never dreamed of hearing from Mitch McCluskey, the beautiful, dark-hearted rebel who was always going to fly away from this hick town. “How…how did you think of me?” Then she swung toward the house, her face burning. “No. Don’t answer that. Would you like coffee? The boys will be home from school in about twenty minutes, and Jenny—”
“Are you frightened of me?”
The question halted her midstride. Slowly she turned back to him, trembling, needing, ashamed. She didn’t want to say it, but she’d never lied to Mitch; she’d only kept
She met his gaze, hers filled with unflinching honesty. “Terrified,” she said softly.
His hands, reaching out to her arms, dropped. “I hoped it was only him who’d wanted me to go that day. I’d hoped you at least still trusted me.”
“I do!” she cried. “I do, Mitch…but I—” She floundered, biting her lip. Haunted by past pain, hemmed in by secrets, by the fear and self-hate that walked beside and inside her, night and day. “It’s just that I— Oh, I can’t explain…but it’s not you,” she finished lamely.
“I see.” His face twisted. “That’s why you keep moving away from me like I’m a monster.”
The pain in his eyes found an echo in her soul. Mitch, oh, Mitch, I wish it didn’t have to be like this!
She owed him the truth. She knew what his life had been before they met, how few people he cared for or trusted since living through the foster system. But he trusted her.
“I learned a long time ago not to believe in everything Tim said or did,” she said, giving him what truth she could. “I never wanted him to say those things to you. I didn’t want you to go out of our lives like that. I’m glad you’re here now. The boys have missed you so much.”
“Thanks for that.” He nodded, as if thinking of something else. “What time does Tim come home from work?” His voice was slow, thoughtful.
“I—” She blinked. “What did you say?”
His brow lifted. “It’s a simple question, Lissa. What time does your husband come home from work?”
Without warning everything shifted focus. She felt dizzy, disoriented, as though she’d stepped back in time to a strange new world where only one truth made sense.
Mitch didn’t know.
Blinking to clear her mind of the unexpected turmoil, she tried to speak, but it came out a harsh croak. “Tim left me six years ago.”
Mitch staggered back, as if she’d decked him. “What?”
She shrugged, seeing no need to repeat herself.
“You’re divorced?” He watched her with an intense gaze, as if trying to make sense of a simple fact. Waiting for her to deny what he’d just heard. “You’re free?”
Lissa flinched. Oh, how she hated the word divorce. It was a word unheard of in the Miller family—until Tim walked out, left her for— “Yes.”
Obviously, he’d seen her expression. He’d been looking at her with all his brooding intensity. “Do you ever see him now?”
“Of course,” she answered, relieved at the change in subject. “He comes to see Jenny, our daughter. She’s five.”
“Did he leave you for someone else?” The question was as grim as the look in his eyes.
She dragged in a breath. At least she could answer that question honestly. “Yes.”
“He left when you were pregnant with his child.”
Unable to look at him, she nodded. If he knew the truth—
“Damn it. I’m going to kill him.”
She blurted without thinking, “How is it any different from you? It’s exactly what you did to Matt and Luke’s mother—except you didn’t even bother to marry her before you did your runner!” She clapped a hand to her mouth, horrified by the burst of anger she hadn’t even seen coming, destructive fury born of twisted jealousy. “I-I’m sorry, Mitch. It’s none of my business.”
Another short, uncomfortable silence, the words he didn’t say hanging in the air between them. “I 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 I hear you made lieutenant in the Air Force, fly-boy McCluskey.”
“Squadron leader, actually. I would have made it my career, but the boys need me home more than the life can give.”
She glanced at him as she poured the coffee, afraid to ask the obvious question. “So what are your plans? Are you still going to work with planes?”
He leaned against the counter, watching her as if refreshing his eyes with her face—just her face. “I’m setting up a country-based courier business here. I have two planes, as well as a Maule bush plane I keep for fun, and I do aid drops for the Vincent Foundation every once in a while.”
She grinned. “Don’t tell me, I’m-Gonna-Save-the-World-Rebel McCluskey. You do all the runs for kids in crisis, and you’ve risked your neck to save a few.”
Mitch laughed at the perception of old friendship. Oh, yeah, she still knew him all right—better than any other woman ever had, or would. He could no more turn down a kid in need of help than he could live without flying—but she, so protected and innocent, would never understand his new, hidden work.
Just as well she didn’t know he’d left the Air Force for the almost two years ago; that his usual job description entailed flying over and into the world’s war zones to smuggle out captives and civilians unwittingly locked inside the unstated boundaries of heated battle. As for his adventure in Tumah-ra, and its potential repercussions with little Hana, if he couldn’t—no. There was no way he’d tell her; he didn’t want to shock her.
But lying to Lissa had never been an option.
He grinned and said, “Guilty as charged.”
She grinned in response, and the sweet warmth of it fired his soul, as well as more intimate places. “You haven’t changed a bit. Still the world’s softest touch for a kid in need.” She bit her lip and shoved him his coffee mug over the counter.
He didn’t touch it, barely noticed it. He knew he was staring at her, but he couldn’t stop. She’d changed from the fragile, hauntingly lovely woman-child who’d married his best mate at nineteen. She’d filled out, matured. She held herself with a quaint, unconscious dignity, standing aloof from the hedonistic angst of the world. But she still had the incredible mouth that made men thank God He made women—and she wore the same unique scent of sunshine and earth and grass and a touch of something wilder, sweeter beneath. Just like Lissa herself—a heady mixture of natural, glowing sensuality and sweet, untouchable purity. Lines touched her face, marks of the woman’s rite of passage: the strength and beauty of pain of childbirth and motherhood, the stress of unspoken sorrow and abandonment.
God, she was beyond beautiful now, but in a way that almost hurt him to look. She was a fairy-tale heroine straight from the mind of the brothers Grimm: a shackled maiden lost in the forest. A figurehead carving they put on the bow of old ships, like the Flying Dutchman. Forever sailing on, standing at the front of a boat flying unstoppably through a world and time she had no control over. Beautiful and cold, so untouchably cold. In those eyes of sweet country mist, shadows ran rampant. Shades of fear. Specters of isolation and emptiness. As they did in her heart. The ghosts of the past owned her soul.
But she was free of Tim—which was a greater miracle than any he’d hoped for—and he’d take her any way he could have her.
And he would have her. He’d fight for her with everything he had in him, every ounce of strength and skill he’d learned. He’d fight clean if he could, dirty if he had to. This time no man was coming between them.
He had to force himself to answer her teasing in the same light vein. “So I’m obsessed with saving kids? Says she who took my kids in for the past five months, no questions asked.”
She stilled, looking anywhere but at him. “Are you going to take the boys away from me?”
He stared at her, shocked by the question, by the way her sweet eyes wouldn’t meet his. Damn it, he should have known it would come to this; but be hadn’t thought it through, thinking she was Tim’s wife. “You don’t want them to go.” It wasn’t a question. “Lissa, surely you know I’d—”
“We love them, Mitch,” she blurted, staring hard at the creamy-tiled wall with hand-painted diamond tiles interspersing the plain squares. “They’ve become my sons, Jenny’s big brothers. They had their troubles when they came. I expected it after the way Kerin died. But it’s settling down. They’re happy here…they have a home and family. They need family stability, Mitch, and they love us, Jenny and me—” She turned to him, pleading in the depths of her pretty eyes. “Please don’t take them away from me.”
Quick as a flash, he made up his mind. “I knew they’d love you, Lissa, and I knew you’d love them. I counted on it. Which is why I came back here to live.”
She kept her gaze on him, eyes wide, pupils dilated. Filled with half-scared questions only he had answers to.
“Matt and Luke need a mother,” he said quietly, formulating his plans with the lightning speed of a man trained to think on his feet, or in the cockpit. “One who’ll be more loving, more stable than Kerin could ever have been. And no woman could be more loving, more stable than you. I know that from experience.” He watched the soft rose flush fill her cheeks, and ached with the need her fresh, countrygirl beauty always set off in him. The need to hold her, run his hands through that shining honey-gold waterfall of hair, touch her silky, golden-brown skin. Shed her clothes and kiss every secret part of her until she was glowing in her earthy sensuality and crying out in pleasure for him—
Oh, how he ached to make her his. But the only emotion she’d shown at all so far was for his kids.
When he spoke again, his voice was harsh with the strain of his never-ending craving for her. “I’ve had constant nightmares since Kerin took off with the kids from school—horrifying visions they’d end up in places I’ve been. But when you said you’d take them, the fear died. I knew you’d love my kids as your own. I trusted you to keep them safe. I can’t take them away from here, from the only real family and mother they’ve known.”
Lissa sagged, gripping the counter for support, white-faced and shaking. Her knuckles were transparent to the bone. “I’ve been so scared you’d take them from me,” she whispered. “I think I’d want to die if I lost them now.”
Oh, bloody hell. He should have seen this coming, should have known his girl wouldn’t just care for Matt and Luke, or love them simply—simple just wasn’t in her nature. She’d taken his sons right into her heart, and she’d hold on to the love with all the tenacious, desperate strength her delicate frame belied. Just as she’d once done with him. And while he’d half-counted on that, it made telling her his plans a whole hell of a lot harder.
But then, nothing was ever simple between him and Lissa. Ever. Not even the unspoken burning in his gut for her.
Especially not that.
He drew in a breath. “But I can’t just leave them behind. They’re my sons, and I love them.” He touched her arm to keep contact with her warmth; he felt so cold with fear, his teeth almost chattered. “You know me, Lissa. You know how I’ve always wanted to be part of a family. I’ve come home to find my family.”
Her eyes fixed on his face, filled with trepidation. Anguish. And, though he hunted as deeply as he dared, he couldn’t see a trace of the longing that filled him for her, body, heart and soul. “What are you saying
He dragged in a breath. “I’m saying I’m home to stay. I want a family—and that includes you and Jenny. If you’ll have me.” He took her hands in his, feeling like a drowning man holding on to a lifeline—and he finally said the words he’d been holding in since the girl he loved started dating his best friend fifteen years before. “Marry me, Lissa.”
Chapter 2
“Wh-what?”
It wa
sn’t exactly the answer Mitch hoped for. Nor was the look on her face. Surprised, yes. Stunned, maybe. Joyful, beyond his dreams. But the one look he hadn’t expected from her was that of a fawn he’d just shot.
Stricken. Bewildered. Betrayed.
So much for dreams and half-hidden hopes. He’d done it again. What a fool. What a heel. The world’s biggest jerk. Come home after twelve years, make conversation for five minutes and what did he do? Propose to her! He shouldn’t have blurted it out like that. He should have taken it slow, courted her with care; but no, he’d gone at her like a bull at a gate, let the dam break—and all he’d accomplished was to shock and confuse her.
He had no option but to go on with it now. He had to try to repair the damage he’d caused. “Think about it, Lissa. It’s the perfect solution for us all.”
She whitened and her eyes went dark like a lamp shattered by stones, bloodless and cold and broken. “No.” She tugged until he released her hands; she stumbled away from him, her breaths harsh and heaving, like she was trying not to throw up. “Don’t say it again,” she finally muttered. “Not ever!”
“Lissa—”
“I said no.” She flung up a hand between them. It was small and delicate, like Lissa herself—yet because it shook so hard, it was as effective a barrier as bricks and mortar, halting his advance. She turned her back on him, picking up her mug, sloshing coffee on the counter as she took unsteady swigs. “The kids will be home from school soon.” She spoke as if nothing had happened. “Matt and Luke will be so happy to see you—but expect hostility from Jenny. She loves her brothers. We’re a family.” The implication was clear: And we don’t need you.
Mitch dragged in a breath, seeing his life’s dream besides flying planes crumbling before his eyes. To him Lissa always had, always would, represent everything good and right and decent in the world. All that was beautiful and precious in his eyes lived and breathed here in Breckerville, on a sleepy verdant farm and in a pair of gentle gray eyes, a mouth made to love his body and a heart that had never known what boundaries were.
Who Do You Trust? Page 3