A Matter of Trust Read online

  As an outsider, watching the entire situation without knowing any of the history that had brought that family to this point in time, it appeared to Ben as if Carrie was holding her father and Alice accountable for something. Considering Jack and Alice seemed to be kind and generous folks, Carrie was coming off as a spoiled brat, but Ben had seen her hurt when she mentioned the loss of her mother. He couldn’t imagine what that would do to a person, considering both of his parents were alive and well in Boise. His brother Joe had lost his first wife to cancer at a young age, and it had nearly destroyed him.

  As Ben stood in the doorway of the restaurant, watching Carrie fidget with her purse, a plump, middle-aged woman with dark hair grabbed two menus and started their way. “Carrie…” She hesitated when she glanced up at Ben. Her eyes widened, and he could see the moment that she recognized him. She stopped in front of them and didn’t say another word.

  Ben cleared his throat. “Two for dinner,” he said with a smile, but the woman wasn’t smiling back. What she did was incline her head, and Carrie gave him a withering look as if to say, See? This wasn’t a good idea.

  “Slow night. I’ll put you by the window,” the woman said in a rather brusque and chilly tone as she led them to one of ten tables in the small, older diner.

  “So how’s the food here?” Ben whispered to Carrie when they reached the fifties-style table by the window. He pulled out an old vinyl chair for Carrie, and she sat down.

  “It’s good,” she said, and she smiled up at the woman, who set the menus down. “Thank you, Barb.”

  The look Barb leveled on Carrie had her face heating. Even Ben was smart enough to realize Carrie could take some heat by being with him. He felt bad, of course.

  “I’ll get you some water and be back to take your orders,” the woman said before hurrying away without so much as a glance in Ben’s direction.

  “There’s going to be talk, me being out with you,” Carrie whispered as she leaned forward.

  Ben didn’t know how to ease her worry, so he smiled at her, knowing she really was taking a leap just by being seen with him. “So how long have you lived in town?” he asked. What he really wanted to ask was how long she’d lived in the dump he’d picked her up at. It was a two-story building with ten apartment, at least forty or fifty years old, creaky and run down. Jack had that nice place where he lived outside of town. Had she grown up there? He had a hundred questions he wanted to ask.

  “About a year,” she said just as the waitress returned and set two glasses of water in front of them.

  “The dinner special tonight is Steve’s meatloaf,” Barb said while tapping her pen on the order pad she was holding.

  “Do you have a wine list?” Ben asked. He flipped the menu over, looking for anything other than soda pop, milk, coffee, and tea. He had a sinking feeling as he watched her shake her head.

  “Sorry, this is a dry town,” she replied.

  Carrie set her menu down. “The meatloaf is fine with me.” She nodded up at Barb, who was still frowning.

  “Make it two specials,” Ben added, and the waitress slipped away, taking the menus with her. “Where were you before a year ago?” he asked, turning back to Carrie. There was a flash of something—regret, hurt, another secret—in her expression. She wasn’t all that good at hiding her feelings.

  “I lived in Sacramento, going to school. I always wanted to be a journalist, but I didn’t finish, as Dad had a heart attack.” She said it matter of factly and then took a sip of water, her hands clutching the glass.

  “I’m sorry. That must have been terrifying,” he said.

  She shrugged. “We hadn’t spoken in years.” She tried to offer a polite smile. “You know how it is in families.”

  Ben roughly wiped his chin. “No, actually, I don’t. My family isn’t perfect, and we have issues, but I can’t imagine not speaking to them.”

  “Well, Dad made his choice. He married Alice.” She flushed, and he didn’t miss the sharpness in her tone, as if she needed to dig in on that point.

  “So how did your dad meet Alice?” he asked.

  Her blue eyes connected with his, and he imagined she was thinking of another time. “Alice was Mom’s friend. Dad moved us here when I was twelve. We’d been overseas since I'd started walking, but Mom was tired all the time, so Dad decided to move us back to the US. That was when he bought the place here. He figured it was close to the ocean, and a small Oregon resort community would be a nice retirement spot and could generate some income. They wanted it to be a B&B, but they never got it off the ground, because Mom was diagnosed with cancer. Alice had an old farmhouse just over the hill from where the cabins are, the ones you’re staying in. She was the first person to meet us when we moved here, and she and Mom became good friends…but Alice had set her sights on my dad. If Mom had only known, she’d have asked Alice never to set foot in our house again.”

  “Are you sure Alice and your dad weren’t just two people who came together because they were caring for the same woman, a woman they both loved?”

  For a minute, he thought Carrie was going to get up and leave. She opened her mouth to say something but then leaned forward, putting her hands on the table. “No, she set her sights on my dad, and he didn’t give my mom a second thought,” she hissed. “As soon as the dirt was tossed on her casket, he turned around and married Alice. She was still warm in the ground!”

  “And you left?” Ben said.

  “No, I couldn’t, then. I was only sixteen.” She was shaking her head, but he could tell there was way more to the story.

  “So you waited until you were old enough?” he prompted. What was it she was holding on to? Whatever it was, he realized her entire fight with his oil company had a lot to do with what was going on between her and her dad.

  “No. Dad made a deal with me to stick it out, finish high school, and try to get along with Alice. He said he would pay my way through college if I did.”

  So this was about money? Carrie wasn’t painting a very flattering picture, but then, she’d been just a kid. However, holding a grudge like that and then taking her dad’s money, letting him pay for everything…he wasn’t sure he liked that. He didn’t often misread people, but he’d obviously gotten his wires crossed with Carrie somehow. He leaned back, but she was shaking her head again.

  “I didn’t take his money, by the way. I worked my butt off to get a scholarship and then made my own way,” she snapped. When she looked up at him, that hard, steely coldness in her eyes, the same expression he’d seen when he first stepped onto that tarmac, was back.

  There were very few women who surprised him, and even less who left him speechless. Carrie Richardson had done both.

  Chapter Ten

  She fisted her hands, twisting her sweater between her fingers as the silence lingered like a dead weight. Ben Wilde, a man who had turned her world and emotions upside down in less than twenty-four hours, was behind the wheel of her father’s truck. She was in the passenger side, and she struggled not to stare. His energy filled the space between them, and the power seeping from him was unnerving. The attraction that simmered every time they were together had softened her toward him—not that she believed in him or wanted to rally to his side for this oil project, because she didn’t.

  She had once stood hand in hand with her community, dead set against this pipeline project, but having Ben Wilde here, talking to her, listening to her, inserting himself into her life, had her rattled. For the first time ever, she was questioning her decisions. She wondered, too, if some of what she was feeling had to do with the fact that she had never been allowed to drive this truck. Her father obviously had more faith in this man, this stranger, an enemy to this community, than he did in her. She hated herself for wanting to be around Ben. This entire situation bothered her.

  “A penny for your thoughts?” Ben asked, cutting through the silence.

  She glanced across the bench seat of the pickup, feeling her tongue thicken and her jaw cla
mp shut. She swallowed.

  “You didn’t say much after our dinner arrived.” He looked back at the road and then over to her again.

  No, she hadn’t said another word, struggling to choke down what she could only assume was good meatloaf. She had been drowning in memories of her mother, which had turned every bite to sawdust. She shut her eyes again as a wave of grief washed over her. She remembered her mother’s warm, smiling eyes, her round face. She had been a woman who gave everything of herself to Carrie. It had always been the two of them, day in and day out, when they lived overseas. Her father had worked an eighty-hour week then. To him, his job had come first, and Carrie and her mother had always come second. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just don’t like thinking of all that heartache. It’s water under the bridge, anyway.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you’ve gotten past any of it, Carrie,” Ben said. “Sounds like a whole bunch of grief and hurt and misunderstanding bottled up, not allowing you to move forward.” He rubbed his hand over his jaw, and she could hear the scrape of his whiskers. He needed to shave. The silence created a tension in the vehicle.

  “I suppose someone with a perfect family, whose father never cheated on his mother, may not understand,” she said.

  Ben slammed on the brakes and pulled to the side of the road. The motion had Carrie putting her hand on the dashboard in shock. Ben tossed his arm over the back of the seat, and he seemed to grow a few inches as he moved toward her. All the tension wound up in him seemed ready to snap. She seemed to have a knack for pushing people’s buttons. Maybe she should have been worried, but there was something about Ben that made her want to talk to him, to fight with him. He had a passion she hadn’t felt in another person before. She found it too easy to be around him, though she knew he could hurt her badly.

  “Let’s get something straight,” he snapped. “My mother and father, Olivia and Raymond Wilde, are amazing parents. I wouldn’t trade them for anything, but they aren’t and never have been perfect. None of us are. There were a lot of things said and done that they both regret.” He looked away. “My dad left us.”

  She wondered if her shock showed on her face. She hadn’t expected him to say something like that. He seemed so grounded, as if he’d had the most stable upbringing. Even though her dad had married the other woman, Jack had never left her or her mother. Carrie could only imagine the fear that would have put in a little boy.

  “I’m so sorry, Ben, but your parents are together again?”

  He leaned against his door as if pulling away. “Yeah, they are now, but it was almost a year he was gone. It was hard—hard on my mother.”

  A shadow of something seemed to settle between them in the cab of the truck. She waited, wondering if he would speak again. He was a man who bottled things up, held on to things. Ben Wilde was far from one dimensional.

  “What did your mother do?” she asked.

  He was shaking his head, moving to start the truck, but she reached out and touched his hand to stop him. She realized her mistake the moment she touched his skin. His fingers squeezed around hers, and it nearly took her breath away.

  When he looked over at her, he didn’t seem as affected, staring at her with those intense eyes. She took a breath, her heart pounding. His very male scent was taking over the smell of her father’s truck.

  Ben was still holding her hand when he leaned back. “Mom did the best she could, but with five boys—and we were a handful—it was hard. She at least had Logan, my older brother, to lean on. He, uh…” He smiled as he scratched his head. “He started looking after us when Mom had to get a job in town. He picked up a lot of the slack, and he was the one we turned to, who knocked our heads together when we got into trouble.”

  “How old was your brother?” She wondered if her voice sounded as husky to Ben as it did to her own ears. He let go of her hand. Maybe he realized what he was doing to her.

  “Logan was only fifteen. Then there was Joe, me, Samuel, and baby Jake. He was five at the time.” Ben was shaking his head, and she noticed how he seemed lost in thought. “I forgot how young he was. Logan was the one who would take him to kindergarten. I think that was when Jake started to look to him as a dad. I think we all did. He never let on how hard it was on him, because I know he watched Mom and worried about her. He was always getting after us to leave Mom alone. She had enough to worry about. As a little kid, you know how you feel your parents’ stress and worry even when they try to hide it? Mom did, or she tried to. We just didn’t understand everything then, only that our own world wasn’t as solid as we thought. That’s terrifying to a kid.”

  “And you understand it now?” Carrie asked. She couldn’t stop herself. Maybe she was prying, crossing the line, being way too personal, but he’d opened the door, and he still hadn’t told her it was none of her business or that she was being too nosy.

  “I do.” He clenched his jaw. “You see, my mother was dependent on what my dad would send for money to put food on the table, pay the heating, pay the mortgage, put gas in the car. Dad had been gone for…I don’t know, seven, eight months, maybe, and Mom went out on a date with a farmer up the road. We were shocked and angry, as if she’d done something wrong.” Ben was shaking his head. When he looked over at her, she didn’t miss the change in his expression. “My dad found out, and the next week he wouldn’t pay her.”

  Carrie was stunned. She couldn’t imagine something like that happening. There were laws! Just as quickly, she realized how naive she was being. “So what happened?” she asked with dread, wondering what the boys had had to give up. For a moment, she felt Ben’s mother’s anguish.

  “It was the first time I understood what going hungry meant, but then Logan started cutting school. He and Joe went hunting for the first time—out of season, too. They brought home a deer.” He roughly wiped his face, leaned against his door, and really looked at her. “They broke every law to get food on our table. After that, Mom couldn’t much tell Logan what to do, but I’ll never forget the moment Logan and Joe dragged that deer into the yard, tied to one of the horses. That was the first time that I saw Mom cry.”

  “But your mom and dad are back together?” she said. If a man did that to her, she would never take him back. Letting his kids go hungry…even with all the issues she had with Jack, she knew he’d never, ever do something so awful.

  “Yeah, they worked it out.” The way he said it, she knew there had to be more, way more.

  “And your brother Logan? He sounds like an amazing brother,” she said. Carrie could respect any teenager who would step in like that and do what Logan had done. She wouldn’t mind meeting him one day.

  “Logan and Dad…well, it was rough for a bit. They gave each other a wide berth, but there was no room for two heads of the household. It was a confrontation that had been long coming. I guess my dad had just had enough of all of us boys going to Logan all the time. Old habits, you know? We could always depend on Logan. We knew he would never turn his back on us. You know how there’re just people you know are rocks? There were fights, though, battles between him and Dad. Logan never gave him the respect he had before. On his eighteenth birthday, Logan enlisted in the marines and was gone. It was never the same. He’s still my big brother, though, and every time he had leave, it was us he came to see. It was always us he wrote to. I’d do anything for him.”

  “I envy you having a brother like Logan, all your brothers,” Carrie said. “You must be so close.”

  He started the truck as if letting her know he was done talking about it. “Not as close as we should be,” he said, and he pulled back onto the road to drive her home.

  Chapter Eleven

  The full moon against a clear, dark sky had Ben just staring upward outside his darkened cabin, considering all that he’d shared with Carrie. He was unsettled, and maybe the mystery exuding from the moon only added to that feeling. He didn’t know why he’d told Carrie everything he had about his childhood. Those had been dark times, a past he neve
r shared. The memory was a giant ripple that affected the bond between Ben and his brothers.

  The fact was that they’d come through so much, and his parents were happy now. Those bad times were years past, and he believed his father felt bad for how he’d treated their mother and them. As Ben stared up at the sky, he tried to remember what had made their dad come back to them. He still remembered the day his dad had driven in with his suitcase and his mom had opened the front door. Nothing had been said as they watched each other, and whatever it was that passed between them in those moments had terrified him. But then his mother had taken a step back and let his father in. They never spoke about it to Ben or his brothers, though the boys had wondered, of course.

  Maybe one day Ben could take his dad out and the two of them would sit with a couple of beers and talk. Not that Raymond was a talker—he was far from an open book. He was a quiet man who held everything in, but now Ben recalled something his father had said not long ago: “There isn’t a man around who hasn’t done something he’s ashamed of, and saying you’re sorry doesn’t always work. It’s a start, a way to make things right, but it’s what you do next that makes the difference. It’s actions that separate a boy who knows nothing from a man.”

  Ben hadn’t really understood then what he was saying, but he knew his father carried a world of regrets, and their mother…well, Olivia had only told them that it took two to create a problem, and sometimes the right thing to do was to forgive.