Who Do You Trust? Read Free

chocolate-and-mud-smeared face rested against the door, her matted hair stuck to the handle. “Sleep well, little darlin’. You’re safe now.” He caressed the slimy bob of hair. He turned the craft southwest toward Darwin.
    He’d done it. The baby girl who’d seen death too young was safe now. So what if he had to face the music over the child’s illegal entry into Australia? That was small potatoes compared with the crazy hell his life had been the past few years since he’d lost the boys.
    The nightmares that chilled his soul had finally gone. Matt and Luke were alive and safe—and they were with Lis
    Soon, very soon, he would be, too. He’d have his sons with him again, where they belonged—and he’d see Lissa for the first time in twelve years. Delicate, haunting, gray-eyed Lissa with hair like a waterfall of shining honey, an unspeakably gorgeous mouth and a smile as beautiful as the home and hearth he’d never had. He’d ached to see her every single day of the past twelve years. To touch her. Craving the peace of soul he’d only known when he was with her. She was the only woman he’d ever wanted or thought of as becoming his wife. The only woman who’d ever held his heart in her hands. But she was another man’s wife—and not just any man’s wife. She was Tim’s wife. Tim, his one-time best friend, who could offer Lissa everything: a home, a family, a real name. All the things he’d never had and would never have.
    So somehow, some way, he had to take Matt and Luke and go, walk away from the only woman he’d ever loved—again.

Chapter 1

    New South Wales, Australia

    “S omehow I thought I’d find you out here.” A shadow fell over Melissa Carroll as she knelt in the damp earth, hand hoeing the fallow patch of ground, ready to lay the next planting of vegetable seeds. “G’day, Lissa.”
    Lissa shivered in half-thrilled trepidation. Mitch…
    After twelve years just the sound of his voice roused so much turbulent emotion in her she felt weak, sick, filled with fears and hopes and dreams forever unspoken.
    What if he’d only come to take Matt and Luke away—the boys she had known only five months, but now loved as her own?
    What if that was all he wanted? What if he just thanked her and walked back out of her life, disappearing again, taking her darling boys with him?
    But the deepest terror of all was Mitch himself. Terror that, after all these years, he could still weave the old Merlin-like power over her soul. Already she could feel the pull. The power of one quiet, complex man, drawing her to him against her will. The boy had wrapped her heart in a darkly glowing, spellbound fascination, holding her in a thrall so deep she’d never truly found her way out. Now that he was a full-grown man, the thought of what he could do to her—heart, body and soul—appalled her.
    A fear justified by one look at him. No, he hadn’t changed. It was still there: the unspoken intensity of soul, the hint of unleashed power, the invisible hunger—for what, she’d never known—and the old, sweet love, exclusive love, a best friend’s devotion to her alone. It wasn’t the sort of love she would once have given her life to have had, but it was close, oh, so close….
    With one look, without even a touch, she was chained again, shackled to him with a wanting she couldn’t conquer or deny. It had nothing to do with his looks, though he was so beautiful to look at he almost blinded her. Tall and strong, with deep, fathomless chocolate eyes, dark-olive skin and careless black curls. Though Mitch knew none of his forefathers, they must have be a big, bronzed race. He was so tall he dwarfed most men, big built and tightly muscled. From the first moment she’d seen him working their neighbor’s farm seventeen years before, he’d robbed her of breath with his stormy male beauty. From the moment they’d met, he’d haunted her with the shadows of unspoken secrets in his eyes, half-shuttered windows to