A Matter of Trust by LazyDay Publishing Read Free Book Online Page B

huge
difference.”
    “ I’m very happy for you,
Eva, truly. Have you set a date yet?” Trish smiled at her friend
with genuine happiness and well wishes.
    “ Not yet, but we’re
talking about it. We want something small. Sometimes I can’t
believe I’m taking the plunge again. I told Josh not too long ago
that I’d move in with him, but I didn’t want to consider marriage
for awhile. He’s been so great about it. He’s let me set the pace
from the beginning, and he worked hard to earn my trust. I thought
I was ruined, but it turned out that everything was repairable. He
fixed me.”
    Trish raised her water bottle in
salute. “That’s great, Eva, but I don’t need to be fixed. I’m doing
fine on my own, and I like it that way.”
    “ I respect that, Trish,
but I can’t help but think you’re still living some kind of
nightmare, and that’s why you refuse to consider getting together
with Jake. You don’t have to tell me if that’s the case, but if you
ever want to talk about it, you know where to find me.” Eva reached
over and patted Trish’s arm.
    “ Thanks, Eva. You’re a
good friend.”
    ****
    As soon as the men got clear of the
main house, Cade and Josh started in on Jake.
    “ So, you and Trish, huh,
bro?” Josh smiled smugly.
    “ Don’t start that shit
with me, Josh.” Definitely on the grouchy side of things, he wasn’t
ready to talk about this with anyone.
    Cade looked from Josh to Jake and
smiled broadly. “I told you, Josh. If there was nothing going on,
Jake wouldn’t be all up in your face after a simple question.
Callie and Eva were right. There’s definitely something going
on.”
    “ Fuck you, Cade.” Both men
had a good laugh at Jake’s expense.
    “ So, how serious is it?”
Josh leaned his forearms across the corral fence and waited for his
brother to reply.
    “ It’s not. Yet, anyway,”
Jake scowled.
    “ Yet being the key word,
bro?” Cade crossed his arms across his chest.
    Jake finally let down his guard and
faced the two men who were his brothers. “I’m hoping so. But she’s
so damn stubborn, I’m having a hard time talking her into just
considering the possibility of being more than friends. Hell, the
only time she’s even been open to the idea was last night when she
was drunk off her ass.”
    Josh looked at him with some
compassion. “I know about that. It took me a long time to even get
Eva to stop flinching when I touched her, much less allow for
anything else. You think maybe someone abused Trish,
too?”
    Jake thought a minute and said, “Hell,
I don’t know. Maybe. Something sure happened in her marriage to
turn her off of men. She’s never been skittish like Eva in the
beginning, but Pete burned her in some way for sure.”
    Cade jumped in. “Maybe she’s still
grieving for her husband.”
    “ That’s what I thought at
first, but she said some things last night that dispelled that
theory. She told me she’d filed for divorce right before Pete died.
She said something else about Pete having a hidden side to him. She
didn’t make a lot of sense.” Jake ran a frustrated hand through his
hair.
    Josh added, “Eva thinks she’s carrying
some scars from her marriage, too, although she doesn’t think it’s
necessarily from physical abuse. She’s tried to get her to open up
about it, but so far, no go, bro.”
    “ Callie thinks something’s
there, too, but she has no idea what it is. She said Trish said
something about Pete making some bad investments which led to her
declaring bankruptcy. I don’t know if that’s part of it.” Cade
shook his head in sympathy for Trish.
    “ Whatever happened
affected her ability to trust in other people. She only trusts
herself and her parents and probably Eva and Callie. She doesn’t
trust me as far as she can throw me, which is frustrating as hell.
It’s not that she thinks I’d try to do her any harm, exactly. It’s
like she can’t trust me, like she’s waiting for me to let her down.
She