A soft knock sounded on her door. No doubt it was Quinn coming to awaken her as he did every morning. Dashing the tears from her cheek, she called, “I’m awake. You—”
The door opened.
“—don’t need to come in.”
Seeing she was awake, Quinn stopped in his tracks. “Sorry, I didn’t— Hey, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She threw back the covers then splashed her face with water from the pitcher and bowl on her nightstand to remove the traces of tears from her face. “I just had a bad dream.”
“It must have been pretty awful. You look...shaken.”
She met his gaze in the mirror as she patted her face dry with a towel. For a moment, the whisper of his words from the dream seemed to fill the room. Damaged. Damaged. Damaged.
She couldn’t seem to stop the tears from filling her eyes again, so she closed them. She felt his hand on her arm an instant before he turned her toward him and enveloped her in his arms. She rested her cheek on his firm chest, allowing the reality of his strong arms around her to chase away the sinking feeling in her stomach. Of course, if he knew the truth about her, his reaction might be closer to what it had been in the dream. Or, at the very least, closer to Thomas Coyle’s.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” His deep voice rumbled in her ear. “That always seems to help the children if they have a nightmare.”
She shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”
He pulled back enough to look her in the face. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” she said, though she avoided meeting his gaze. “I’d better get ready. Are you putting in the new windows today?”
“Yep, Rhett is coming by to help me with it this afternoon.”
“That’s good.” She gathered clothes for the day and saw her finished response to her parents sitting on the desk in the corner. Thomas’s letter was still in the drawer where she’d tossed it. Perhaps that’s what had brought on the dream. That letter she hadn’t read. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to read it now. “I’d like to mail the response to my parents’ letter today.”
He scratched the shadow he’d yet to shave from his cheek. “I, uh, haven’t written mine yet. I probably won’t have time to do it until after I install the windows.”
“That’s good. You can mail it when you pick up the children from school, then.”
He nodded. “Well, I’ll let you get dressed.”
For an instant, she thought she saw a pensive look on his face. She turned to question it, but he was already out the door, so she let it go and focused her attention on getting ready for the day. Hopefully, it would only get better from here. How could it get any worse?
* * *
That odd feeling was back—the one he’d had after Helen had explained why she’d become a teacher. Of course, anyone who’d seen her after the nightmare she’d had this morning would have come to the conclusion that something was bothering her. Whatever it was, she wasn’t telling. Not that Quinn had any room to be offended by her secrecy since he was currently holed up in the tack room with her parents’ letter. Still, he was concerned and it was distracting him from a very important task.
“Anything else you want me to add to this letter?” Rhett sat on a stool in front of the thin workbench where he worked as a somewhat reluctant coconspirator in the mission to keep Quinn’s illiteracy a secret.
“I’m not sure.” Quinn left his post near the door where he was supposed to be keeping watch to look at the piece of paper his friend had been writing on. “You’re using your best penmanship, aren’t you? Helen’s folks are fancy people. I want to make a good impression.”
Rhett seemed genuinely confused. “I thought you wanted me to be as sloppy as possible so they wouldn’t want to write you again.”
“Not funny.”
“You asked for it.”
“Save the jokes for later. Can you read what you’ve written so far?”
“Sure.” Rhett leaned his elbow onto the workbench for a closer look at the letter.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. McKenna, Thank you for the letter. It was kind of you to welcome me to your family. Helen and I accept your invitation to visit—
The distinctive sound of the barn door closing made them both jump. Quinn’s heart skipped a beat then made up for lost time by pounding in his chest. He rushed to the partially open tack-room door to peer into the barn. No one was there...which meant someone had been. Maybe Trent had been wandering again. But if so, the boy would have come right into the tack room. That meant the person had probably been... “Helen.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but I’d better find out.” Quinn jogged through the barn then into the barnyard. The children were playing in the nearby meadow and Helen was walking at a fast clip toward them in a direct line from the barn. Dread slammed into his chest with enough force to ease the air from his lungs in a groan. The sound made Helen hesitate then stop. Slowly, she turned to face him. He swallowed hard, forced himself to close the distance between them, all the while controlling the urge to run the other way.
Use your head, man. Play it safe. Maybe she didn’t hear everything. Maybe you can explain it away. He couldn’t quite make himself meet her eyes, so he stared at the ground between them. “Were you in the barn just now?”
Her voice was soft. “Yes.”
“Did you need something? I was in the tack room. You should have called out. I would’ve—”
She placed a hand on his arm, mercifully stopping his flow of word. Feeling his jaw tighten, he finally lifted his gaze to meet hers. The surprise and confusion lingering in hers told him she’d heard more than enough to know the truth. “Why didn’t you tell me, Quinn?”
“I...I never tell anyone.” He gestured toward Rhett, who was giving them wide berth en route to the children. “Well, I had to tell Rhett because I needed someone to read the Bachelor List for me.”
“You couldn’t read the Bachelor List.” The tone in her voice and the widening of her eyes told him that she was finally beginning to understand the immensity of his limitations.
“No, I couldn’t.” He stepped backward out of her grasp. “Well, now you know.”
Turning away, he strode toward the field. Be it pity, disgust, disillusionment or outright laughter; he didn’t want any part of whatever might come next from her reaction. At least, not right now. Not while he felt so naked, so ashamed.
“Quinn, wait.” That was all the warning he had before she caught his arm and slid in front of him. He stumbled into her and had no choice but to pull her close to keep them both from going down. She frowned up at him. “You’ve got to stop walking away from me when we have a problem.”
He shook his head. “This isn’t your problem. It’s mine.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll face it together. Please, don’t walk away from me.” Her plea ended in a near whisper as her eyes glistened with unshed tears.
He stared at her in disbelief. How could it be that after finding out the truth about him she had run toward him rather than away? It didn’t make sense. Yet, she stood before him looking concerned and hurt. He wasn’t at all sure how to respond. “Helen, I need to walk. I need to think.”
She looked at him for a long moment then gave a single nod before releasing him. He walked a few steps alone then took a deep breath and did one of the bravest things he’d done since asking her to marry him. Turning toward her, he held out his hand. “Are you coming?”
Chapter Twelve
Without hesitation, Helen slipped her hand into Quinn’s grasp. Relief softened his features, prompting a hint of a smile on his lips. She followed his troubled gaze to the wooded hills surrounding the farm. The trees bedecked in sable, orange and yellow leaves contrasted sharply against the somber gray sky. She knew neither of them was truly conc
erned with the view and merely needed time to gather their thoughts.
The wail of Rhett’s harmonica sounded above the wind, reminding Helen of why she’d gone into the barn in the first place. She’d wanted to find out if the men would play together for the children. She hadn’t been trying to eavesdrop. However, it had been impossible not to hear what Quinn and Rhett were saying as she’d approached the tack room.
Momentary shock had rooted her in place long enough to grasp a full understanding of the situation. Needing time to figure out what she should do next, she’d left the barn only to have Quinn follow her.
She had many questions but didn’t want to make the situation harder for him by asking them. She was relieved when he broke the silence between them, even if his tone was defensive. “I can’t read. So what? Not everyone can. I’ve managed just fine until now.”
If it didn’t bother him that he couldn’t read, he wouldn’t have kept it a secret. She knew that from experience. However, it would hardly help the situation to make him admit his obvious fear and embarrassment. “I know that not everyone can read and write, but why can’t you?”
The question seemed to catch him off guard, so she waited while he mulled it over. She saw the moment he settled on an answer, for his features clouded with pain then resignation. He stopped walking, took her other hand in his and looked her in the eye. His voice deepened in all seriousness and sincerity. “Well, Helen, the truth is...I’m just plain stupid.”
Her mouth fell open. She stared at him, blinked, shook her head. “What? You don’t really believe that.”
“I know it. Granted, I’ve gotten pretty good at hiding it over the years, but I am not a smart man. That’s just a fact.”
“That is not a fact.”
He released her hands to comb his through his close-cropped curls. “Look, you’ve got to accept—”
“No, I don’t, and neither do you, because it isn’t true.” She started walking again. “No, there has to be another explanation.”
He sighed as he caught up with her. “There isn’t. I just couldn’t figure it out.”
“What do you mean? No one just figures it out. You have to be taught. Did you go to school?”
He grimaced. “Yeah, I went a couple of times. That was enough for me. I hated it.”
“Why?”
“After my ma died, Pa couldn’t seem to find the strength or will to take care of himself or his sons, so I was a ragged, dirty little thing when I first started going. The other children picked on me incessantly because of it. Meanwhile, the teacher seemed to take an instant dislike to me. Once she discovered reading didn’t come as easy to me as arithmetic, she began making pitying remarks about my ‘lack of intelligence.’ She’d finish my lessons for me because I was ‘too slow’ even if I was going at the same speed as the others. The other children picked up on it and it only made the teasing worse.”
“That’s just...abhorrent. As a former teacher, I can’t imagine doing that to one of my students.” Helen shuddered at the thought. Yet, hearing his story gave her insight as to one of the reasons why Quinn had been so passionate about taking proper care of his nieces and nephews. He didn’t want them to experience what he had as a child. That brought to mind Reece’s attempts to protect Clara from being teased. “What about your brother? Did he try to stop them from teasing you?”
“My brother was six years older than me and had already had his fill of being teased at school himself by that point. After a couple of weeks, I followed his example in refusing to go. That worked until my grandmother came to live with us. She fussed some sense into Pa, cleaned us up and sent me back to school. Nothing at the schoolhouse had changed, so I started skipping again. Pa eventually figured out what I was doing and said if I didn’t go to school I’d have to get a job, so I went to work.”
Concern furrowed her brow. “How old were you then?”
“Eight or nine.”
Her eyes widened. Their lives had been so different. At that age, her only concern had been what dessert the cook would serve at dinner or how to convince her parents to have a tea party with her. Meanwhile, Quinn had been taking on the responsibilities and work ethic of a grown man. “And you never went back to school?”
“Never set foot in one again until the children came to live with me. My brother taught me a bit more arithmetic, but I refused to even attempt the reading and writing. My grandmother tried to teach me when I was older. She couldn’t see too well by that point, so I ended up more confused than I’d started out.”
“See?” She lightly nudged his arm with her shoulder while not even attempting to temper her triumphant smile. “I told you it didn’t have anything to do with intelligence. The problem is that you’ve never studied with a proper teacher.”
It was as plain as the scowl on his face that he knew exactly where she was going with this. “I suppose you think you’re the proper teacher for me.”
“Well, I am certified to be a teacher even if I wasn’t one for very long. As for being proper...” She tilted her head and shrugged. “I do believe you’ve described me that very way several times in the past.”
He caught her arm and, with gentle force, turned her to face him. His pure blue eyes deepened as he searched hers—for what she wasn’t sure. However, what she found in his was unmistakable. She saw the pain of old wounds hidden but unhealed, shame at a past foisted upon him then adopted as part of his identity and a desperate hope for something unattainable. In his eyes, she saw a reflection of herself. Yet, even in the face of his compelled honesty, she dared not reveal just how much she could empathize with his struggle, for there was one major difference. He had the ability to change his circumstances. She did not.
Still, he held back, though his scowl softened to a frown as he shook his head. “I appreciate the offer, but nothing doing.”
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t work.”
She tilted her head as she considered him. The decision to learn had to be his or he would have neither the confidence nor the will to succeed. “Quinn, not once in my weeks of knowing you and living with you has the word stupid even crossed my mind concerning you. Don’t cheat yourself into thinking that’s only because you were good at hiding it. I would have seen the signs of that just as surely as I did for this, even if I didn’t know how to interpret them.”
He frowned. “You were suspicious?”
“No, but I probably would have been soon enough.” She paused, wondering if she’d been inadvertently giving away hints that she had a secret, as well. At least there was little chance hers would be revealed so long as Quinn continued sleeping in the living room. She displaced the thoughts with a quick toss of her head. “That is neither here nor there. What matters is that I’ve seen you just as you said you’d seen me the night we— The night of the storm.”
A worried look returned to his face. “What do you see when you look at me, Helen?”
“I see an intelligent man.” She dared to smooth the worry lines from his brow. “A man who is steady, kind, self-sacrificing, talented and...”
He must have noticed the color she felt warming her cheeks, for he cocked his head and edged slightly closer. “And what?”
The word handsome hovered on her lips, but she replaced it with a secretive smile before settling on a different word altogether. “Brave. Brave enough to face the mountain of illiteracy and make it a mere stepping stone. I can help you do that if you’ll let me.”
Though obviously listening intently, he’d glanced away to stare into the distance while she spoke. He released a heavy breath. Finally, he met her gaze again. Reluctance had changed to a hunger she suspected would only be sated by knowledge. Whether he knew it or not, he’d just reached a decision.
* * *
If he didn’t get his nerves under control, Quinn was sure he was either
going to pass out or lose his supper. The sight of Helen spreading out her teaching supplies on the kitchen table sure didn’t help his efforts to calm down. He reminded himself that he needed to man up if only because he couldn’t take another blow to his pride after being found out yesterday. That on top of needing to ask Rhett for help again and needing Bible lessons from his wife... Well, come to think about it, he didn’t really have much pride left to protect. What little was left probably wouldn’t survive the night.
Helen had been eager to get their reading lesson under way once the children had fallen asleep. The reading lessons he’d agreed to for reasons he couldn’t fathom. As if her knowing about his illiteracy wasn’t bad enough. Now she was going to experience his lack of intelligence firsthand. Her words to the contrary had been sweet and inspiring if not entirely accurate. The ways she’d described him had bolstered his courage—perhaps a little too much. Particularly that talk about being brave, since he was pretty near sure she’d been about to say something else entirely.
He couldn’t get that secretive little smile or her blush out of his mind. It wrestled for dominance with all the memories of the times he’d tried to learn to read and failed. Well, he hadn’t tried that many times, but that was for good reasons. Reasons Helen seemed bent on discovering as she slid a piece of paper and pencil his way. He stared at them. Quinn hadn’t asked God for anything since he’d been given Helen. Now might be a good time to try out what he’d recently learned about God’s giving nature.
He closed his eyes. God, I don’t think Nana was wrong about You knowing my every thought, even if she was wrong about some other things. The Bible says You give good things to those who ask. It would be a real good thing if You could give me some help...or a way out. I’m not choosy. Please, Lord, I’m asking You to help me.
He took a deep breath and felt his pounding heart begin to slow to a more relaxed rhythm. This wasn’t the end of the world. It was just learning with a new teacher. He could do this. He would do this. At least until Helen gave up.
The Texan's Inherited Family (Bachelor List Matches) Page 13