Returning for Love: A Western Romance Novel (Long Valley Book 4)

by Erin Wright

  No one needed her. Not anymore. Not like they did before, when she was a nurse and could help others. Now she was the hopeless one.

  And it was slowly starting to drive her insane.

  Chapter 17

  Declan

  He stared down at the loan document in front of him. God, he hated reading. He hated paperwork.

  He especially hated reading paperwork.

  He closed his eyes and rubbed them hard with the palms of his hands. If he just concentrated hard enough, he’d be able to read this. He could make it happen.

  He opened up his eyes and stared down at the loan paperwork. The words swum around, letters going every which way.

  He went back up to the top and started with the first word. “This.”

  Okay, this was good. He was making progress. One word at a time. That was his mantra. He could read any document, one word at a time.

  He struggled to the end of the first (stupidly long and convoluted) sentence and realized he was covered in sweat. He might as well have run a marathon. He would’ve at least had the endorphins from the exercise.

  As it was, he just felt like shit.

  He sat back in his chair with a groan. A large part of him just wanted to give up and sign the damn things. He needed seed for next year. He needed to upgrade his combine; his current one barely made it through the season. Declan had never been as happy as he was to see the combine drive off the field one last time. It’d made it through, helped along by a lot of cursing, oil, and thumping with a wrench.

  He didn’t want to upgrade, of course. The newer ones had enough features on them that he was quite afraid that if he pushed the wrong damn button, he’d launch a rocket ship into space. He didn’t need GPS and a seat warmer and a back massager built in.

  Realizing that even he couldn’t make his current combine last another year, though, he’d spent yesterday talking with a salesman down at the John Deere dealership, picking out a stripped-down model that, you know, harvested wheat.

  No rocket ships or back massagers included.

  But now came the dreaded part: The loan paperwork from the bank. He opened up his eyes and glared at the papers spread across his dining room table. His father had taught him how to grow crops and by God, Declan Miller could grow crops. He learned all he needed to know from his dad on the topic, and if he had any questions, he could always ask a seed salesman for help and ideas.

  But loan paperwork? His dad hadn’t taught him some simple work around for it. He was stuck with it, whether or not he wanted to be. Whether or not he could even read it.

  He toyed with the idea of calling Stetson or Wyatt. They didn’t know that he could barely read, of course. That wasn’t something that you just went around telling everyone.

  Or, in Declan’s case, that he went around telling anyone. Anyone ever, except his beloved mother.

  And look at how that turned out.

  The idea of telling his brothers he needed help made his stomach clench with a toxic combination of fear and panic. A real man just did what he needed to do. A real man didn’t need help reading his goddamn loan paperwork.

  A real man didn’t have dyslexia.

  Of course, Declan didn’t know for sure if he did. He’d made sure to stay far, far away from any tests that would have diagnosed him as such. It was bad enough to guess he had dyslexia. It’d be so much worse to know.

  He’d made it through school by the skin of his teeth. And through the help of Iris, although of course she didn’t know either. The idea of telling her sent ice thrumming through his veins. That was a terrifying idea. He figured he’d rather swallow hot lava than tell Iris that the man she’d loved and dated for so long was dumb as a pile of rocks. She was so damn smart; valedictorian of their class. Scholarship to Idaho State University. Top scores on her SAT. If she knew the truth about him…?

  Well, he just wouldn’t let it happen. Ever.

  He had a second chance with Iris. He’d been stupid before, letting the panic and pain of losing his mom affect him so irrationally. He wouldn’t be stupid again.

  Well, at least not stupid when it came to giving up Iris. He was obviously stuck with the stupidity of not being able to read. That was a condition that he was stuck with for life.

  The best he could do was make sure no one ever knew.

  He sat up, grabbed his pen, and signed the paperwork at the bottom. Whatever it said, he’d just have to live with it. He’d used Freddy down at the bank since the beginning. He'd trusted him thus far. What was one more loan?

  He shoved the paperwork into an envelope and stood up. Time to deliver it to the bank and cross his fingers that he wasn’t getting screwed over.

  If he wanted to be a farmer, he didn’t have any other choice. And really, what else was he going to be? An employer would expect him to be able to read, so it wasn’t like he could go to work for someone else.

  And if he wanted to raise farm animals instead – like pigs; oh, how he wanted to raise pigs! – he’d have to figure out how to deworm them and feed them and how to buy a sow and how to breed them and when to take them to the butchers and…

  Impossible. Just impossible. The idea of that much reading made his right eye twitch with panic.

  He was a row crop farmer for life, and that’s all there was to it. He had no other choice.

  Chapter 18

  Iris

  Iris pulled to a stop in front of the optometrists and stared up at the cheerful sign – Mor-Vision, with the slogan, Wouldn’t you want to see mor…? emblazoned below it.

  She didn’t want to be there. She rather figured she would choose to be anywhere but there if she could get away with it.

  It wasn’t that she minded Dr. Mor. He was fine and all. He gave her her first eye exam when she was ten; helped fit her for her first pair of glasses when she was fifteen. She’d long ago started wearing contacts, and he’d fitted her for those, too.

  No, it wasn’t Dr. Mor, or even the idea of spending money on glasses, although God knows she didn’t have much room left in the budget for them. Spending significant amounts of time in the ICU at the hospital with a brain injury did tend to put a damper on checkbook balances.

  No, it was the idea that she was about to admit defeat. And she really, really hated to admit defeat.

  She was pretty sure she was going to break out into hives simply by walking through the front door of the Mor-Vision.

  She made herself climb out of her car and slowly make her way up to the front door of the business.

  I can do this. I can do this.

  What if he says you can’t be a medical coder anymore?

  Too damn bad. I’m going to be one anyway.

  Nothing like getting into a knockdown, drag-out fight with yourself…and losing.

  She pushed the glass door open and the doorbell tinkled, alerting Mrs. Mor to her presence. As Dr. Mor’s wife and receptionist, the pair had worked together in the same office for coming up on fifty years. Iris figured that meant that someone somewhere deserved a medal, if only because they’d managed not to kill each other in all that time.

  “Hi, Iris!” Mrs. Mor said with a warm smile. “Nice to see you back at home, dear.” Her eyes skittered to Iris’ cane and back up to her face, but she thoughtfully kept mum on that topic. “I’ll tell Dr. Mor you’re here.” She stood up with a sweet smile to Iris, turned toward the examination room, and bellowed, “Iris is here! Where are you?!” She turned back around and gave another sweet smile towards Iris.

  “He’ll be right along,” she said pleasantly, as if Iris couldn’t hear everything that had just happened.

  Iris did her best to hold in her giggles and just forced a pleasant smile instead. Inside, she was dying with laughter. She figured that if a couple worked together for 50 years, maybe they deserved an eccentric habit…or seven.

  She relaxed a little bit, the panic she’d been feeling out in the car de-escalating from nuclear meltdown to low-pitched pulsing. Being back in here was a bit
like coming home. Some things really didn’t change.

  “Iris,” Dr. Mor said, coming out of the exam room with a warm smile on his face. “So good to see you, dear.” She noticed that they’d both called her “dear.” She wondered if that also came with the territory of working together for years on end – the same nickname for everyone. “Come on back.”

  He held the door open for her as she maneuvered into the room, past him and into a waiting chair. She sank down into it with a happy sigh. It never failed to surprise her how exhausting it was to move. She remembered working twelve-hour shifts in the ICU, hardly sitting down for a break, and thriving on it.

  That Iris was long gone.

  He sat across from her, his long tufts of white hair sticking out every which direction from his head. She wondered why Mrs. Mor wasn’t in there, combing his hair down. She was always fussing over him but today…he looked a little more frazzled than normal.

  “I heard that you got in a car wreck,” he said, with a nod towards her cane. “Is that where that came from?”

  She nodded. “I’ve been out of the hospital for about six weeks. Mom and Dad moved me into that little apartment behind their house.”

  “That’s a good call. Good to have someone who can watch over you in case something happens. Now, is it damage to your leg or spine that is causing you to need a cane, or something else?”

  “Something else. I have a traumatic brain injury that affects the nerves in my head,” she swirled a hand around her head, as if Dr. Mor couldn’t locate it on his own, “and keeps the messages from my feet from reaching my brain, basically. The technical term is sensory impairment, but the long and short of it is, I have to retrain my brain to rely on my eyesight and my inner ear for balance, rather than on being able to tell what’s going on because my feet are telling me what I’m doing.” She shrugged. “The doctors think that I’ll get better over time, but…it’s been a slow slog.”

  “Are you doing physical therapy?” he asked.

  “Yes. Thankfully, they’re able to send a nurse down here to the Long Valley Clinic twice a week so I don’t have to drive to Boise for it.”

  She wasn’t sure what she would’ve done if she’d had to make the 90-minute drive to Boise twice a week. She only just barely trusted herself to drive across town to the optometrist and to the grocery store. The long, windy road to Boise?

  No way.

  “Good, good. So, tell me why you’re in here today. Are you wanting a full eye exam? Are you thinking your prescription may have changed because of the accident?”

  She shifted in her chair uncomfortably. Despite his kindly voice and his oversized ears that had caused her to nickname him Dr. Dumbo until her mom heard her and washed her mouth out with soap, she wanted nothing more than to make a run for the door.

  Or at least a really fast waddle.

  “My eyes have been hurting a lot,” she said carefully. “I wasn’t sure if the prescription had changed, or something else.”

  “Are you squinting in order to read books close up, or at signs far away?”

  She shook her head.

  “Are your eyes just aching, like you’ve been working them pretty hard?”

  She slowly nodded her head. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

  It was like he’d been an eye doctor for fifty years or something.

  Just like that.

  “I see,” he said noncommittally. “You’re wearing glasses today, but you usually wear contacts. Are you wearing the glasses because of your eyes hurting?”

  “No, I just thought they’d be easier to remove for an eye exam.” She pushed the bulky glasses up her nose. Other people could make coke-bottle glasses adorable, she was sure.

  She just wasn’t one of those people.

  “Let’s go ahead and do that exam now and see where we’re at. Take off your glasses and put them on the counter.”

  He quickly and efficiently ran her through the exam, asking her endless rounds of “Which one looks better – this one or this one?”

  Finally, he sat back and looked at her straight on.

  “Iris, I think you’re pushing yourself too hard after your accident.” She opened up her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand to stop her excuses and explanations trembling on the tip of her tongue. “Are you going to school? Working? What are you doing to keep yourself busy every day?”

  Drooling over Declan Miller.

  The thought popped into her head and she bit back a groan at herself. Now was not the time to go off into la-la land.

  “I am almost done with my classes through Hermingston Medical College. I’m becoming a medical coder through their online program.”

  “Weren’t you an RN before the accident?” he asked, his brow wrinkling as he tried to remember back.

  “Yeah, so I figured being a medical coder would at least use my medical knowledge, plus I can do it from home.”

  “A smart choice. Except, Iris, I’m afraid the computer screen is hard on your eyes. Have you been staring at a screen a lot lately?”

  She nodded so slowly, someone might be forgiven for thinking that she was simply moving her head around casually.

  He was even better than she’d feared he’d be.

  “How long have you been enrolled in this course?”

  “About four weeks.”

  He settled back in his overstuffed antique office chair with a sigh. “Iris, the problem is that if you continue to strain your eyes like this, you could cause permanent damage to them. With a brain injury, you aren’t capable of working an 8-hour day like other people can. At least, not right now, and certainly not if that 8-hour day includes a lot of screen time.”

  And then, it happened. What she’d feared. What she hadn’t wanted anyone to say to her, ever.

  “Have you thought about going on to disability? At least for the short term? Then your body could recuperate. I would be happy to write–”

  “No, thank you, Dr. Mor,” she broke in. She normally would never interrupt someone like that, at least not an elder, but she didn’t want him to say it.

  She didn’t want to hear it.

  “I just came today because I need to know if there’s a trick I can use.”

  “A trick?” He stared at her as if she’d sprouted a limerick in ancient Greek.

  “Yes. You know, some way for me to not get eye strain from staring at a computer.” She’d googled that question but none of the suggestions had worked. She figured if anyone knew a special trick, it’d be Dr. Mor.

  “Don’t stare at a computer so much,” he said bluntly. “Iris, your eye strain isn’t a case of ordinary eye strain. It’s stemming from your brain injury. The harder you push your body, the worse it’ll get. The trick is to not push your body.”

  She nodded stupidly and then grabbed her cane to push herself to her feet. She had to go. She had to go right then. She couldn’t quite breathe right and there was definitely dust in the air, because somehow both of her eyes were irritated and filling with tears.

  Damn dust.

  “Thanks, Dr. Mor,” she said around the lump in her throat. She cleared it impatiently. The dust level was getting out of control, truly. Now it was causing large lumps in her throat. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  And then she turned and limped towards the door, moving as fast as her off-kilter mind and off-kilter body would allow her to.

  Which wasn’t nearly as fast as she wanted to move.

  Chapter 19

  Declan

  Declan knocked on the door and then stepped back, a grin on his face. Iris was going to love today’s present.

  She opened the door and he held up a large paper bag. “Fresh catnip,” he said proudly, in lieu of a greeting. “My neighbor has a patch that is out of control, and the neighborhood cats all seem to think that her flowerbed is their new home. She practically threw the catnip at me and told me to make a run for the truck.”

  Iris busted out laughing, and Declan felt pride and happiness swell in hi
s chest. He’d made her laugh. He felt ten feet tall.

  She stood back and let him past her and into the apartment, closing the door behind him quickly. “It’s getting to be that time of year,” she said, burrowing down into her sweater. “I can’t believe Halloween is almost here.”

  “Which just means that it’s a perfect time for us to go to the Harvest Festival together.”

  Just then, Oreo and Milk came streaking out of one of the back bedrooms and came to a stop in front of him, their eyes staring up at him eagerly.

  “It’s like they know that’s catnip,” Iris said dryly.

  “Yeah, just like that,” he said with a grin. “You two ready to become very, very happy?” He took the catnip out and sprinkled it on the floor, and they began rolling around in it ecstatically. “I think I’m making your cats high,” he said with a wink at her. She blushed, and he figured that was just as good of an invitation as any to get a hello kiss. “While the kids are occupied,” he said in a low growl, and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her to him. She melted into his arms and tilted her head up, offering her sweet lips to him.

  As their lips melded together, moving with an urgency that made…certain parts of him south of the belt line come alive, he wondered anew at finding Iris again. Having her in his life again. Her brilliant red hair brushed his shoulders and he breathed in deeply. She smelled so damn good.

  He wondered if she realized how beautiful she was.

  Knowing her, probably not.

  Finally, he forced himself to pull away and instead contented himself with nestling her against his thighs. She felt so perfect in his arms.

  While the cats yowled and purred their way through the pile of catnip, he sniffed the air. It smelled…off. He pulled away from Iris and breathed in deeply. “Are you…cooking something?” he asked hesitantly. Iris had never been much of a cook, but that sure smelled like snickerdoodles.