A Gift of Trust

www.BOROUGHSPUBLISHINGGROUP.com

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events, locales, business establishments or persons,
living or dead, is coincidental. Boroughs Publishing Group does not
have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author
or third-party websites, blogs or critiques or their content.

A GIFT OF TRUST
Copyright © 2014 Emily Wright Mims

All rights reserved. Unless specifically
noted, no part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, known or hereinafter invented, without the express
written permission of Boroughs Publishing Group. The scanning,
uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any
other means without the permission of Boroughs Publishing Group is
illegal and punishable by law. Participation in the piracy of
copyrighted materials violates the author’s rights.

ISBN 978-1-941260-49-4

To the Spirit of
Christmas

Chapter
1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
About the Author

Chapter One

Christmas was definitely in the air in Verde, Texas.
Christmas lights adorned the windows of the shops and offices
facing the old stone courthouse and winked on and off upon a
towering old pine tree that guarded the front door of the stately
red brick courthouse. Christmas trees could be spotted in the
windows of most of the shops and offices facing the town square,
and everything from stuffed Santas to small manger scenes
accompanied the trees. On a makeshift stage in the courthouse
parking lot, the various community churches took turns providing
choirs, carolers, and manger scenes, and out in front of the
hardware store, Santa, sounding suspiciously like Betty Cleburne’s
husband Joe-Bob held court for the little ones. Later in the
evening, as soon as the sun went down, the high school band would
lead a Christmas parade through the streets of the cheerful little
town. All in all, Verde was geared up and decked out to deliver the
Hill Country Christmas that dreams were made of.

Lisa Simmons wished it would all just go
away.

Lisa whisked to the pass-through window
joining the kitchen and the dining room of Gus’s Hill Country Café
and peered at the plates waiting on the ledge. “Gus, this is only
half of the Briscoes’ order. Where’s Ryan’s burger?”

“I’m plating it now,” Gus said as he quickly
assembled a child-sized burger and added it to the chicken-fried
steak plates on the ledge. “Tell the newlyweds ‘hi’ for me,
willya?”

“Sure thing,” Lisa said as she deftly loaded
a tray and maneuvered through the crowded café to where Jack,
Caroline, and Ryan Briscoe were seated. She smiled at the
happy-looking couple and their precious little boy as she served
them their meals. “So, Ryan, what is Santa bringing you this
year?”

“A bull and a puppy,” Ryan said happily.
“Daddy said a puppy and mommy said bull.”

Jack Briscoe snickered and Caroline turned a
little red. “Said more than that, didn’t you, Caroline?” he teased
as Lisa laughed out loud.

“Never mind,” Caroline said as she too
started to laugh. “Santa will be taking good care of Ryan. Say, I
heard Santa took good care of you, too, Lisa.” She glanced around
the room and at the We aim to please button Lisa sported on her
sweater. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Lisa said. “We signed the papers
last week. I’ve always wanted to own a small restaurant, and a
chance to go part-owner here was just too good to pass up. And I
think my grandfather would approve my use of the nest egg he left
me.”

“I’m sure he would,” Jack said warmly. “He
would be so happy for you.”

So, why wasn’t she happier for herself? Lisa
wondered as she wished the Briscoes a good day and went to take the
next order. Thanks to her beloved grandfather’s generosity, she had
already achieved one of her major goals in life; Gus’s Hill Country
Café was half hers, and when Gus retired in five years she would
own it outright. She lived in a terrific little town and had the
muscle car of her dreams and all kinds of good friends and a sister
in Austin who loved her to pieces. So, instead of being thrilled
with what life had sent her way, why was she envying a couple who’d
had to fight their way back from hell? That made her ashamed of
herself. Caroline and Jack deserved every little bit of happiness
that came their way, and she needed to get her attitude adjusted.
It was Christmas, and Christmas was the season to be merry.

On the other hand, maybe she would just wait
a half an hour or so for that season of good cheer, she thought
sourly as Deputy Sheriff Rory Keller pushed open the café door and
stepped through. Clad in his tan winter uniform, with his Sam
Browne strapped around his waist, his Glock in his holster, and his
uniform Stetson riding low on his forehead and covering his thick
dark hair, he looked around the café for an empty table. The
impassive expression in his dark brown eyes cooled even further
when the only one he spotted was in her area.

He waited a bit impatiently as she finished
taking an order and edged her way through the crowded café to the
front. “One menu or two?” she asked tersely as she picked up a
fresh roll of tableware.

“Just me,” Rory said, his voice equally
clipped. “And I don’t need a menu.”

Lisa shrugged and led him across the café.
She set his place while he stopped and spoke to several families,
including the Briscoes, his face lighting with a smile as he
chatted with old friends.

Damn his hide
anyway,
Lisa thought as she remembered a time when she would
have gotten that smile or an even larger one from him. But those
days were long past, dead and buried on an early spring morning
nearly a year ago when, at least from her point of view, Rory had
done the unforgiveable, and now they were reduced to chilly
exchanges that were barely civil.

Rory finally made it across the café and
collapsed tiredly into the chair. In the past Lisa would have asked
him how his day was going and coaxed a laugh or two out of him
while she took his order, but today she waited silently.

“Double cheeseburger, sweet potato fries, and
coffee. Lots of coffee.”

“Coming right up,” Lisa murmured, staring
without meaning to at Rory’s broad shoulders stretching the fabric
of his winter uniform shirt and remembering what those broad
shoulders felt like hard and naked beneath her fingers as she
looped her arms around them. Or how his lean, wiry maleness felt
next to her, the soft hair on his chest gently tickling her bare
breasts as she arched beneath him; whimpering softly as he stroked
deftly into her body. Or how—

No, she wasn’t going there anymore, she
thought as she firmly pushed those thoughts away. Rory might be
dynamite in bed and as lust-worthy as they came, but he had other
attributes also, attributes that she abhorred in a man, attributes
she’d promised her mother on her mother’s deathbed that she would
never put up with in a partner.

“Promise me, Lisa,”
Claudia Simmons had begged as she lay dying of cancer and a broken
heart.
“Promise me that you’ll never marry a
jealous man. Promise me that you’ll never marry a man who doesn’t
trust you.”

And Rory had proven himself to be that man.
“Damn it, Lisa, explain yourself!”
he’d
roared into her face early that April morning.
“What the hell were you doing here all night in that cabin
with him?”

Oh, she could have explained, she thought as
she hung Rory’s order up in the window and took another table their
meal. She could have told him that the situation was completely
innocent, that she and playboy Russ Riley had not been alone in the
cabin all night. But her mother’s words rang in her ear that
morning as she stared up into his fury, and she pictured herself
spending the rest of her life trying to placate Rory the way her
mother tried time and time again to placate Howard Simmons’s
jealousy and something inside her froze.

He should have trusted her and he hadn’t. So,
instead of explaining everything to him, she looked at him long and
hard and turned on her heel and walked away. But even though she
knew what she had done was right, when she walked away she’d left
Rory Keller with a piece of her heart.

Lisa yanked her thoughts back to the present
and continued her shift, ignoring Rory the best she could. The
lunch crowd gradually thinned. Much to Lisa’s annoyance Rory took
his time eating, and the café was almost empty when Judge Willis
Riley, ‘Wily Riley’ to friends and foes alike, came into the café
and rather than wait for a table made a beeline for Rory. The
wizened old judge was practically a legend in Verde County, both
for his unconventional rulings and occasional tirades from the
bench, and for his uncanny ability off the bench to persuade folks
to do the things he wanted.

Lisa hid an inward smirk at Rory’s uh-oh
expression as she took Judge Riley a menu, but her inward snicker
faded quickly when the little judge pulled out the third chair at
the table and motioned for her to have a seat as well.

“Glad I caught you both this afternoon,” he
said smoothly. “I have a huge favor to ask that involves both of
you.”

Lisa looked around, hoping to use the crowded
tables as an excuse even though she knew they were mostly empty.
She could have begged off anyway, but Judge Riley had been one of
her grandfather’s best friends and she genuinely liked the old man,
so she motioned for the other server to finish up her tables and
sat down across from Rory, who looked just as unhappy to be here as
she did.

“So, what do you need for us to do for you,
sir?” she asked as the judge looked from her to Rory and back.

“Well, it’s like this,” Judge Riley said. “My
niece Holly is finally out of rehab and is coming here to live for
a while in that little house of hers.”

“Hey, that’s wonderful,” Rory said, a genuine
smile lighting his face. “She’s had a long, tough fight back.”

Judge Riley shook his head. “I’m not sure she
sees it as all that wonderful. She just found out last week that
her permanent injuries are such that the Army is retiring her
whether she likes it or not, and she doesn’t have a clue what to do
next.”

“Oh, that’s awful,” Lisa said. “According to
Russ the Army is her whole life. She’s not a hundred percent
yet?”

“No, she isn’t, and she never will be.
Therein lies the problem. That house of hers has been shut up for a
year and a half, and I’m willing to bet it needs a good bit of
attention to get it ready for Holly to move in on Sunday. At this
point there is no way Holly can clean it up herself. Her left arm
is pretty much hanging there, and she’s still working on her
walking. Her brother and sister were going to come clean it up for
her, but Russ got called away on an unexpected temporary-duty
assignment and Emily’s got a doctor’s appointment—something about
getting an insulin pump—so neither of them is available. I know
it’s a lot to ask, but is there any,
any
way the two of you could get in there and get it to where she can
move in on Sunday? I’d be happy to share a bushel of pecans with
each of you as a thank-you.”

Lisa gulped and looked across the table. The
two of them? Stuck in that little tiny cabin together all day? No
way. Not even for Judge Riley.