Read Trust Me for Free Online Page A

watched him go and looked at her parents with a
shaky smile. “Are you two ready to go?” 
    Her mother pulled her into her arms. “Yeah, baby,
let's go for dinner.”
    The next day Alaina met her father for lunch, a
meeting that she had expected would be even more difficult than the
first.  However, Tom Simmons was a determined man.  He insisted he
wanted to become his daughter's friend and that in no way did he ever think he
would replace Stanley Warner as her father.  He realized that he had
forfeited his right to fatherhood long ago but he hoped, he told her, that it
was still possible for them to develop a friendship.
    Tom's persistence and Alaina's own deep need to get to
know her real father resulted in their being able to build a relationship after
years of separation.  It didn't happen overnight, on the contrary the
relationship gradually evolved.  However, Alaina acknowledged, it
certainly wouldn't have happened at all had it not been for Tom's consistent
pursuit of her company.  Wherever she was, he made the effort to visit
with her, which had been quite a difficult task since she had spent the year
after graduation working as a research assistant to a law professor, and as a
result had traveled extensively across the country.  Tom had met her in
places like Santa Fe, Pittsburgh, and Denver while she was working.  Of
course he had always told her he was there on business, but she knew that he
would often arrange his business schedule to meet hers.  He was lucky he
had told her often, that being a sales representative for a computer company
gave him a great deal of flexibility in how he scheduled his business trips.
    Tom Simmons' efforts to win his daughter's affection
did not go un-rewarded.  Alaina gradually felt her anger dissipate and was
able to put the past behind her as she grew to like Tom more and more.  He
was charming, funny and a good listener and despite her initial animosity at
his unexpected return to her life, Alaina found herself valuing their new-found
relationship.
      Two years after his unexpected arrival
into her life, Tom Simmons died of cancer, leaving a grieving daughter
behind.  Shortly before he passed away he told Alaina that he had been
diagnosed with bone cancer two years before.  It was this news that had motivated
him to contact her, his estranged daughter, to salvage their relationship
before he died.   Alaina was grateful for the time she had with her
father, but regretted he hadn't contacted her sooner.
    At the funeral in Seattle, Alaina met his second wife,
Delia Simmons.  Delia looked every bit the aging hippy: her hair was long
and gray, she wore an oversized black t-shirt with a long flowing black skirt,
and on her feet were sandals.  Initially, Alaina thought she and Delia
would be able to console each other in their grief, but much to her dismay
Delia had displayed nothing but open hostility towards her.  The reason
for this became apparent at the reading of the will.  Tom had very little
in the way of monetary endowments to leave behind, but the guardianship of his
records relating to his involvement with the OAS appeared to be highly valued
by Delia.  She was furious that Alaina had been given the responsibility
to oversee access to Tom's documents.  At the time of the reading of the
will, Alaina did not realize how problematic the guardianship of her father's
papers was going to be.
    Shortly after her father's funeral, Delia contested
the Will and sued her for the custody of Tom's papers and lost.  Now the
FBI, in the midst of their investigation of numerous bombings that had occurred
in the previous two years across the United States was attempting to use those
same papers to prove that both Tom Simmons and the OAS had been responsible for
the crimes.  Although Alaina still did not believe that her father had
been involved in any terrorist activities, she was beginning to wonder what was
in those documents that made everybody so intent on