Page 40 of Blame it on the Mistletoe
Not going to happen.
Faith stood and put her hand on Pax’s shoulder. “Why don’t you take Sheriff Miller to your room and let him look around? But don’t answer any questions unless I’m there.”
“I know the law,” Logan informed her.
“So do I, Sheriff.”
She waited until they left the room, then met Noah’s gaze, hers pleading for him to be the man he’d promised to be by the creek. “If he’s saying he didn’t do it, then can you trust me when I promise that he didn’t do it?”
“I know this is hard.”
“Hard? You have no idea what this is for me.”
“I can imagine, and it’s tearing me up inside,” he said, and there was so much compassion and concern in his tone, she prayed that what he’d said before had been a mistake. A momentary misfiring, and the Noah she’d fallen for was back. “And I know you want to believe him, believe that he’d never lie to you, but in my experience—”
“He’s my family and I want him to know that his well-being is all that matters to me. I want him to know that family doesn’t assume guilt and apologize later. I want him to know that when you love someone, they believe in you and let the facts reveal themselves.”
“Life doesn’t always work that way,” he said sadly.
“Maybe not, but love does.”
“I’ve seen people’s lives ripped apart by blindly loving. In my experience anyone will lie under the right pressure.”
Wow. The hits kept coming.
This hit, though, this was the one that was going to take her down—later, after Pax was okay and this mess was sorted out. The unexpected impact would shatter so many things inside her.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Noah. Because I would never lie to you. But clearly you lied to me, because if you cared about me the way you said the other night, you would have come straight here when you found out what was going on. You would have walked in here protecting me instead of trying to sweet-talk Pax into confessing to something he didn’t do.”
“What if he did?”
“Then that’s for Logan to deal with. We should have been your main concern.”
“Faith, we’re talking about some stolen toys and a few hundred bucks. When adults ask kids hard questions, sometimes they lie. Especially to adults they don’t want to disappoint. And, angel, youaremy main concern.”
Her heart gave up hoping, because his meaning came across loud and clear and was currently ricocheting around her empty chest cavity. Even if he hadn’t yet realized what he’d said. She had.
And when people tell you who they are, Faith thought it smart to listen.
“I made it clear from the beginning, Pax and I are a package deal,” she said, her voice shaking with heartache. “You’re no different from every guy I’ve ever dated.”
His face went completely blank, giving away nothing. “Are you seriously going to lump me in with those jerks from the past?”
“If it walks like a stocking stuffer and talks like a stocking stuffer . . .” She held open the front door. “Now get out of my house.”
Chapter Twelve
There weren’t many times Noah read a situation wrong. He was fluent in body language, subtext, and all things female. And when those skills failed, he always had his instincts to steer him right. But it didn’t take an Ivy League education to realize he’d missed the mark. By a mile.
No matter how many times he replayed the events of that morning in his head, he came no closer to pinpointing the precise moment things had gone off the rails. He’d promised to never let her down, which was why he’d gone there in the first place—to make things easier on her. In the end, he’d only managed to break her heart.
Noah couldn’t have screwed things up more if he’d set out to make Faith hate him.
Believing in people hadn’t worked out so well for him in the past. But Faith wasn’t people, she was his person, and he should have believed in her. He was so busy trying to remind everyone where the line of right and wrong lay, he’d overlooked the most important thing.
Love and trust were earned. Yet she’d taken a chance on him and he’d reconfirmed every fear she’d had about letting him into her world.
Noah had blown it in a way that only a Tucker could. And that hurt worse than the unwelcome ache in his chest. He didn’t stand a snowflake’s chance in Austin of fixing things with her, but there was no way he was going to let her face this alone.
