Читать книгу Hill Country Courtship - Laurie Kingery - Страница 4
Оглавление“Mr. MacLaren—” Maude began.
“Do you think you might call me Jonas?” he dared to ask. “At least when ’tis just us?”
Her eyes bore a guarded glint now. “I’ll call you Jonas if you wish,” she said, in that delicious Texas drawl that made everything she said land pleasantly on his ears—even what she said afterward. “But, Jonas, what do I know about you, really? You’re a man of secrets—you keep more than you give up. How am I to trust you?”
He saw it as she must see it—he was asking her to trust him without any basis in truth, without any transparency on his part.
“Trust doesn’t come easily for a MacLaren,” he said. “Not after what we’ve been through.”
“Without trust there can be no honest caring,” she told him then. “If you don’t trust me enough to show me your true self, how can I know who I’m caring for in return?”
The idea that some part of her, at least, wanted to care in return gladdened his heart, if only for a moment. But how could he bare his soul to her, knowing that if she knew everything, she’d whirl away from him in horror and disgust?
