Who Do You Trust? by Melissa James Page B

also hugged his brother, in the total understanding that comes with being an identical twin. They might be as different as a kangaroo and a koala, but their bond was unbreakable, their empathy beyond what even the most loving father could relate to; he was just glad they had it. And it was proven again. Luke flushed, knowing he’d acted like a little kid—and Matt immediately said, “Cut out the girl stuff, Dad. I’m hungry! ”
    “Me, too!” Luke wriggled off his hip and bolted toward Mitch’s car, parked out the front. “C’mon, Jen, stop puttin’ girly ribbons in your hair. We wanna eat!”
    “Yeah!” With one of the despised ribbons floating from her hair, Jenny tore out the door without so much as a glance at him. He chuckled as the kids fought over who had to sit in the middle. Oh, Matt and Luke were part of a secure family all right.
    At that moment Lissa emerged from her room next to his. He felt her presence, though she didn’t speak. He slowly turned to her, wondering what she’d say next to stun him—
    He almost reeled back in shock at the sigh
    She was trembling, wraithlike in sudden ethereal paleness. Her eyes, dark and blank with horror, looked at him as if she’d thought he’d sprouted horns in the last half hour. He didn’t need Matt and Luke’s silent form of communication to tell him something was wrong—very wrong. Something connected to him.
    “Lissa?” He started toward her. “What is it?”
    She cringed. Oh, dear God, Lissa literally cringed from him. “We’ll be late for the dinner reservation. We’d better go,” she whispered, as if she couldn’t speak any louder.
    If he weren’t so damn scared he’d laugh in her face at the pitiful excuse. They’d be almost the only people at Bob’s on a Wednesday night, and she knew it.
    “The kids are hungry.” She spoke as if the fact was something profound. Her eyes couldn’t meet his. Her hands twisted around each other, and she bit the inside of her cheek—classic signs with Lissa that she wanted to bolt.
    From him? Simple fear upgraded to sheer terror. “Lissa, you look like a ghost. Are you sick? Let me help you.” In a lightning move, he grabbed her hands before she backed off again.
    She worried her cheek even more but left her hands passively in his. “I’m fine. It…it’s the heat, and the garden’s worrying me. If I don’t harvest enough to sell at the country market at Bathurst, I’ll fall behind in my mortgage on the farm—”
    “I’ll help you. I can harvest fruit and vegetables as easily as you, Lissa. And if we’re late, we can use my courier plane to fly them to Bathurst to make the market.”
    “All right. Thank you.” She looked down and away.
    If anything, the acceptance of his offer made her tense even more. Her sweet spunk of this afternoon was gone, vanished like the Phantom down his tunnels. Her hands were so cold he wanted to shiver…and he wondered when she’d tell him the truth. Or if she would at all.
    He chaffed her hands, trying to inject his warmth into them. “Lissa, can’t you trust me enough to tell me what’s upset you?” he asked softly, wishing, hoping to reach her shielded heart. Her eyes lifted to his for a brief moment, flashing with hot resentment, a fury he’d never seen in her, even after he’d proposed today. Then, as swift as flight, it was gone and so was she, retreating inside herself. The vivid, passionate woman who entranced him half an hour ago was encased again in delicate ice, frozen in time—lovely and pure, cold and lifeless as the ship’s figurehead he’d likened her to before. Lost in the mists of time, with no one to sail or steer her back to port. A dead woman still breathing. “Maybe I’m hungry, too. We should go.”
    He couldn’t leave it like this, even though he knew he was digging a deeper hole for himself. He loved her too much to leave her suffering. “If it’s money you’re worried about, baby, don’t. If you marry me you’ll never