A Matter of Trust: Book Blog Tour, Excerpt, and Giveaway #LoneStarLit

Excerpt from A Matter of Trust

Ella Blair could still dismantle him. First, simply from the shock of seeing her as she opened the door. Gage thought his heart had stopped, right there, banging to a halt in his chest. She looked—well, almost like the first version of Ella Blair, the one who’d wooed him with her smile, her laughter on the ski slope. Her amazing hair might be shorter but was just as tangled, just as pretty. A sunburn on her nose, those cherry lips, and she wore pajamas.

He nearly didn’t recognize the woman who’d later dismantled his life. Buttoned up. Lethal.

Seeing her in those penguin-printed bottoms, the tank top and sweater, reminded him that he’d known a different side to Ella Blair.

A kinder, sweeter side.

Yeah, seeing her unsettled him, but it was her words that nearly took him apart. Because sometime after his heart started beating again, after he’d grabbed ahold of his emotions, she’d become the woman that, once up a time, he’d fallen in love with.

 “You’re a good guy, Gage. I’ve always known that.”

And that nearly had him unraveling the tight fist of control he had over his words, his hurt, to hurtle at her the one question he still hadn’t found the answer to.

Why?

He pulled up to the duplex and into the garage, got out, and headed inside, not waiting for Ty.

Who hustled in on his tail anyway.

“Okay, I let you simmer on the way home, but clearly that just built up a head of steam.”

Gage wrenched off his boots, pulled his fleece over his head, hung it on the entry hook, shucked off his snow pants, and headed up the stairs to their main floor.

“You can run, but you can’t hide!”

“Leave me alone.” Gage headed to the kitchen, opened the fridge. Stared inside, for what, he hadn’t a clue.

Mostly for the cool air that wafted over him.

He could nearly feel the way her hair sifted through his fingers, heard her tiny moan when he kissed her—

He slammed the fridge door.

“Dude—take a step back from the appliances,” Ty said, now coming up the stairs in his stocking feet. “Who was that girl? Because, I’m sorry, but you were a royal jerk.”

Gage’s mouth pressed tight, and he grabbed a bag of chips off the top of the fridge and headed into the family room, where he flopped onto the sofa. He picked up the remote. Maybe he’d find a decent western, something that might woo him to sleep without memories of Ella.

In his arms.

Block out the sound of her laughter. The shine in her eyes when he told her stories about the many peaks he’d torn up.

The taste of her lips on his.

He settled on a rerun of The Fugitive.

Ty opened the freezer and pulled out an ice pack, one of the many he kept frozen for his off-duty recuperation. He’d probably spend the evening with his leg up, the pack wrapped around his knee. Gage had noticed him starting to limp as they’d come out of Ella’s condo.

Ty retrieved a can of soda from the fridge, came over, and leaned against the edge of the other sofa. “She knew you, back—”

“Yeah.” Gage reach out, turned up the volume.

“Did you guys . . . ?”

“We barely knew each other. Skied together a few times. It was nothing.”

“So, how terrible would it be if I follow you back to Vermont?” His voice, soft over the flickering candlelight of their dinner table, a private space in the Outlaw resort.

“It didn’t look like nothing. She went white, you looked like you’d been hit by a truck.”

“She prosecuted the McMahon case against me.” He kept his voice light and stared at the screen as Harrison Ford did a header into a waterfall. Not unlike how he’d felt when he’d walked into the hearing to see Ella Blair, the girl he hadn’t forgotten, sitting in the counsel for the plaintiff’s side of the table.

“What?”

“She was a junior lawyer, but . . . yeah. She worked the case, got my manager to testify against me.”

He didn’t take his eyes off the screen as Ty slid into the sofa. “How?”

Gage glanced at him. “You just can’t let this go.”

Ty glanced at the television. “Can you?”

Gage took a long breath, saying nothing, not trusting himself with the emotion roiling through him.

Not when the woman could still take his heart from his chest and grind it into pieces.

Ty finally got up and headed upstairs to his bedroom.

Gage stared at the screen, watching a relentless Tommy Lee Jones drag the river for the body.

He cleaned out the bag of chips until he got only crumbs, then he got up and went to the fridge. After considering the beverage supply, he grabbed a bottled water and returned to the sofa.

On screen, Harrison Ford was tracking down his friend, the one who would betray him.

Run away, dude.

Gage finally picked up the remote and flicked off the television, then stood in the darkness of the room.

No, maybe he couldn’t let it go. But it wasn’t his fault.

A guy just didn’t forget a girl like Ella Blair, no matter how hard he tried . . .

Click here to read all of Chapter One of A MATTER OF TRUST by Susan May Warren!