Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is an emerging next generation wireless technology with several applications in wireless environment. However, the lack of physical protection and ad-hoc connectivity between the users not only increases its routing overheads but also makes it vulnerable to security attacks such as packet dropping attacks. Hence, it is essential to design a secure, reliable and stable route in WMN to thwart against packet dropping attacks. To address this issue, a protocol named Trust-Centric Stable Routing (TCSR) is proposed for WMNs which incorporates security, reliability enhancement and integration of payment systems. Here, trusted nodes with forwarding reliability are selected for secured and efficient data transmission by introducing reliable reputation based trust computation algorithm. This algorithm well isolates malicious nodes during route discovery and packet transmission. Payment system uses a system of reward and punishment so that nodes which relay others' packets are given credits and those which send the packets are charged. Thus, by integrating these systems, the proposed system has been able to enforce cooperation among nodes to participate in forwarding packets and successfully identify and isolate malicious nodes in the network. The simulation results prove that TCSR provides optimal network performance in terms of throughput and delay and also provides better security against packet dropping attacks.