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

by Erin Wright

  “Which isn’t a ringing endorsement of our educational system, that’s for sure, but Declan, it is a ringing endorsement of your coping skills.”

  She took his hand and walked him over to the couch and sat him down, staring at him intently. She felt like if she could just drill her eyes straight into his, he could truly understand what she was about to tell him, and take it to heart.

  “They’ve done studies of twins, and even with one twin having dyslexia, the chances of the other twin having it too are only about 60% or so. Dyslexia is right in there with brain injuries – the scientists know more about what they don’t know, than what they do know. The more they learn, the more they realize what they still have left to learn.

  “The important part that you need to worry about, Declan, is that it isn’t a life sentence. It isn’t any indication of your intelligence level. It’s simply your brain pathways not connecting correctly. You didn’t screw up. You’re not stupid. And you don’t have to hide it. It simply is what it is.”

  “I’ve always hated that saying,” he said in a tremulous whisper.

  “Me too,” she admitted with a grin. “With a passion. Knowing that something was out of my control? Worst feeling ever.” She sobered up and asked quietly, “So your whole song and dance about Millers being row crop farmers, not pig farmers…you were intimidated by the idea of learning something new?”

  He nodded, his chocolate brown eyes growing even darker. “My dad taught me how to grow crops. I’ve been trained for this career my whole life. And if a new question pops up, I ask Austin or a seed salesman or my brothers. I don’t have to learn anything new, not from the ground up, that is. It’s…terrifying to think about learning about something so completely different.”

  “But you want to.” She said it as a statement, not a question, but he nodded anyway.

  “Pigs are so damn smart. Way smarter than I’ll—”

  She whacked him upside the head.

  “They’re really smart animals, just like me,” he finished dryly.

  She grinned at him. “You’re getting better by the minute. Any day now, you’ll actually realize that you’re one of the smartest men I know.” He shot her a doubtful look and she winked. “After all, you had the smarts to fall in love with me.”

  He laughed and his arms shot out to pull her close against him. She tumbled against his plaid button-up shirt-covered chest, breathing in the scent that was masculine and amazing and all Declan.

  “I’d love to help you learn about pigs,” she said, muffled against his strong chest. “I could sit and read Pigs for Dummies out loud to you while you cooked dinner. This seems like a fair division of labor to me!” She could feel his laughter vibrate through his chest.

  “I should’ve known that getting out of cooking was going to end up in this conversation somehow,” he groused jokingly. He held her tight against him, stroking his hands through her hair lightly.

  “It was so tough, growing up dyslexic,” he said softly into the quiet room. “I don’t know if I could bear to put a child through that.”

  “Well,” she said, pulling back a little and looking him straight in the eye, “first off, we’ll know to look for the signs, instead of just letting the kid flounder. Second, although your kids will be genetically more likely to be dyslexic than if they’re born to parents without dyslexia, it really isn’t a for-sure thing. All of us have positives and negatives that we’re going to pass on to our kids. I mean, just think – some poor kid is going to be ‘blessed’ with my sense of direction! They’re gonna get lost at every recess.”

  He laughed quietly at that, and she grinned back at him. Her heart swelled so big, she wasn’t sure it’d stay contained in her chest. “Declan Miller, I love you. All of you. Your thoughtfulness, your work ethic, your moral code, your huge heart. And your brains. I don’t know that I’ve ever met someone as good as you at dealing with the shitty hand life gave you, and still continuing on with a smile on your face.”

  He let out a roar of laughter and she jerked back in surprise. “What?” she asked, cocking her head to the side in confusion.

  “You…” he gasped. Finally, he sat up straight and reached out to cup her face in his hands. “Iris, I could say exactly the same thing about you – word for word.” She opened up her mouth to argue – after all, her injuries only happened in the last year; she hadn’t been cursed with them her whole life like he had – but he placed a finger against her lips to stop her. “I know you don’t see you the way I do, or hell, the way the rest of the world does. But please believe me when I say that you are truly something special, Iris Blue McLain.”

  He fumbled around in his pocket for a moment, until he finally found something and pulled it out.

  A small, felt-covered box.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God…

  He scooted off the couch and onto the floor, dropping to one knee and looking up at her. “I bought this ring a long time ago.” Breathe, Iris, just breathe… “Back when we were at college together, actually. I know it seems like if I’d had this ring for that long, I could come up with a more elaborate proposal than this, but Iris, I’ve finally realized that none of that matters. All that matters in this world is that you love me. Iris, will you marry me?”

  She threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him again and again, crying tears of joy as she whispered, “Yes, yes, yes,” between every kiss.

  Finally, she was home. She was where she wanted to be.

  She was in Declan’s arms. And that was all that mattered.

  Chapter 37

  Declan

  Declan shifted from one foot to the other impatiently, waiting for Iris to show up. She’d been damn mysterious in her text messages, asking him to meet her at The Glade at one o’clock, and his curiosity was growing stronger by the minute.

  He’d known what she’d meant by The Glade, of course. In high school, when they’d been caught one too many times by parental figures in some…pretty heavy duty make-out sessions, they’d started trying to find new places to neck.

  Ones where parents were less likely to stumble in on them.

  It had been a search for just such a place when Iris had caught her foot on a tree branch and had fallen down a ravine, breaking her leg.

  Whoops.

  As soon as her leg healed, they were right back at it. They’d finally found this place – a beautiful clearing in amongst the pine trees with a small creek bubbling past – and had christened it on the spot. It was where they’d lost their virginity to each other, actually.

  Yeah, he wasn’t likely to forget about The Glade any time soon.

  It was three weeks until the wedding, and Declan was also deep into planting and taking care of his new piglets. In other words, they had about three seconds to spare per day for each other, before falling, exhausted, into bed each night. Maybe Iris was feeling neglected, and wanted some alone time with him.

  He shifted on his feet again. He was happy to give her what she needed, but she also needed to show up. If he didn’t see a head of gorgeous red and golden hair making its way towards him in the next five minutes, he’d be forced to go back to work and try this again later.

  But just before he gave up and started the long trek to his truck, he saw the glow of her hair and grinned to himself. She’d made it. He headed towards her, jogging through the underbrush to make it to her side quickly. She stopped and grinned at him when he finally made it. “Are you that…quiet while hunting?” she asked dryly. “If so, may I suggest some changes to your hunting strategies?”

  He laughed.

  “Some prey have already been caught,” he informed her pertly, and then leaned down to give her a quick peck on the lips.

  Well, what he intended to make a quick peck on the lips. Minutes later, he finally made himself pull away. Her eyelashes fluttered open and she looked at him with a dreamy smile on her face. “Hi,” she breathed.

  “Hey,” he whispered back. He took the
blanket and small basket from her arms, leaving her with just her handmade walking stick, and together, they wandered towards The Glade. A part of him wanted to push her for information – to have her tell him right away what was going on; why she insisted on doing this now – but even he realized that letting her sit down and get comfortable before he started peppering her for info would be a good idea.

  No matter how curious he was.

  He laid out the blanket on a patch of soft green grass, just poking up into the spring air, and helped her settle in before opening the basket up to peer inside. He found containers from Betty’s Diner and a couple of small ones from The Cupcake Man.

  “I see you’ve been cooking again,” he teased her.

  She threw her head back and laughed. “I make a shitastic farmer’s wife-to-be, don’t I?” she said dryly. “I think I’m going to have to skip the pie baking contest for the county fair this year.”

  And every year.

  But he decided to keep that particular thought to himself. Finding someone who could cook was easy. Finding someone who made him as happy as Iris did? Impossible.

  He should know. He tried to do just that for 15 years, and failed miserably.

  They settled in, dishing out the food and then mumbling to each other about how good it was around bites of it. Finally, they’d cleaned out the two dessert containers – which had contained chocolate cheesecake for her and apple pie for him – and there was nothing left to do but tackle the elephant in the room.

  Or glade, as the case may be.

  “So,” he said quietly, and he could feel the air change around them when he said it – the easy, relaxed atmosphere instantly morphing into stiffness and worry. He plowed ahead anyway. This had to be big enough to make it worth it to push through. She wouldn’t have pulled him away from farming; she wouldn’t have pulled herself away from her business and from planning their wedding, if it wasn’t truly dire. “I’m guessing you wanted to chat with me about something?”

  She sent him a weak smile. “Am I that transparent?” she asked quietly.

  “As Saran Wrap,” he confirmed.

  She grimaced.

  He laughed.

  “I’ve…been telling myself to talk about this for a long time,” she started out quietly. His chest tightened in panic. Maybe she’d changed her mind about dyslexia. Maybe she’d done more research and had decided that dyslexia really does make a person stupid and she really shouldn’t marry him, and–

  “We need to talk about why we broke up all those years ago.”

  His panic instantly changed directions. This wasn’t the topic he’d been panicking about, but it might as well have been. He didn’t want to talk about this either, because…

  Well, because it was an awful time in his life. He didn’t exactly want to think about it very hard. Why was it that girls wanted to talk about things so much? Couldn’t they just forget about stuff and move on? He—

  She put her hand out on his arm, jerking him out of his thoughts. “I know this isn’t an easy topic to discuss. There’s a reason why I’ve held off talking about it until now. I am a giant chicken, and I wanted to just forget and move on. But Declan, we lost 15 years of our lives that we could’ve spent together but didn’t, because of whatever it was that caused you to break up with me, and I can’t help but worry that whatever it was will rear its ugly head again.”

  She drew in a deep breath. “What if I accidentally step in it – just splash around in the deep end and cause all sorts of problems, without even knowing that I’m doing it? I can’t risk it. I can’t risk our marriage by ignoring this between us. If I don’t find out what caused you to break up with me before, then I can’t keep it from causing you to divorce me in the future.”

  That wasn’t possible, of course. What had happened before…well, it was literally impossible to be a repeat event.

  But the bigger issue…

  Well, he knew she was right, dammit all. As much as he hated to admit it, she was. Why did she have to make sense all the time?

  He closed his eyes and groaned.

  “Is it really that bad?” she asked quietly. Her hand was stroking its way up his arm and he reached over with his other hand to take it into his.

  “Yes.”

  It was silent then, with only the distant bubbling of the brook and an industrious frog croaking out its thoughts. He opened his eyes and stared at her for a moment.

  He had no choice. He had to tell her.

  Even if she hated him for it.

  “I killed my mom,” he said into the stillness.

  Chapter 38

  Iris

  She stared at Declan, her eyes round, her mouth a perfect O. She didn’t know what to say to that. She wasn’t quite sure there was anything to say to that.

  He couldn’t mean that he took a gun and shot her, obviously. Declan would never do that. Her mind scrambled to remember the details. His mom had died in a car wreck outside of Boise. Declan had been at home with Iris in Pocatello when he’d gotten the call. He couldn’t have killed his mom. He wasn’t within 200 miles of her when she died.

  “I don’t understand,” she finally whispered, when it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything else.

  He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, looking twenty years older. Haggard.

  “I told her about being dyslexic,” he said, so quietly, she almost couldn’t hear him above the water and the frog and the light rustling of the leaves in the wind. “I was struggling. Do you remember that? Even with your help, I was just pulling in a D in a couple of my classes.”

  She nodded. She did remember that now. She’d forgotten – lost in the mists of time. He’d made jokes at the time about how Ds get degrees. She’d known he was trying to cover up his frustration about not doing well – that he was using humor to play it down – but she hadn’t realized just how much it was really bothering him.

  He truly was gifted at hiding his worries, if that could be considered a gift.

  She wanted to tell him that he should’ve told her what was going on, that she would’ve wanted to know so she could help even more.

  But now was not the time for that. He needed to get this off his chest. It was his time to talk, and her time to listen.

  “I called my mom, and I whined,” he said with a small smile. “I was 20, and maybe some people would consider me to be an adult, but I wasn’t. Not really. You know that Mom and I were always close. Closer than Dad and I ever would be. Dad had Wyatt, and then years later, Stetson. He taught me how to farm, but Mom…she taught me how to be. How to be an adult. How to be a gentleman. How to love.

  “And when I called to vent my frustrations, it just sorta slipped out. I hadn’t meant to tell her, but I did, and…she went into mom mode. She told me that I was smart and kind and all of those things moms are supposed to tell their kids, and then she decided to surprise me. She made a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies – my favorite of course – and packed them into the car and took off. I’m not even sure if she gave Dad a chance to say yes or no to the idea. She was going to come over to see me – drive across the state to bring me cookies – and…just be there for me.”

  He stopped. He grew so quiet for so long, Iris wasn’t sure he was going to start talking again, but finally, he continued.

  “I didn’t know what she was doing until I got that phone call from Dad. He was frantic. The police had just called to let him know that she was being life-flighted to Boise, and he wanted me to come help him take care of things. You were there. You know how that conversation went.”

  She nodded slowly. How quiet Declan had been that day after she got home from her classes. How he’d answered the phone with a smile, and then how that smile had faded away into a frown and then full-blown panic as the conversation continued.

  She’d been so confused, watching him. What was happening? She couldn’t hear his dad’s voice clearly enough to know what he was saying, but she could tell that whatever was g
oing on, his dad was upset. It wasn’t a very long conversation, but…

  It changed everything. She didn’t want to make his mother dying all about her, of course, but that day cost her Declan. She didn’t know it at the time, but he’d never be the same around her again. It wasn’t too much after his mom’s funeral that he broke things off with her.

  “Declan, you told your mom that you were dyslexic. You didn’t kill her. There’s a—”

  “Don’t you think I’ve told myself that? I know the truth. Logically. Up here.” He tapped the side of his head, the pain etched across his features. “But…”

  He just sat there, the weight of it all physically crushing him down.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.

  “And kill you, too?” He let out a short laugh. “I’d just killed my mother by admitting weakness to her, and you think I should’ve fixed that by admitting weakness to you, too?”

  He stood up and strode around the glade, stomping through the bright green grass, shoving his hands into his hair. “I didn’t even tell my brothers what happened. My dad never did ask why Mom was so hell-bent on making it over to see me that day. His whole world had just been destroyed by the hoof of a deer. He didn’t have the mental capacity to ask me questions, and for that, I was glad. I don’t know what I would’ve told him if he’d asked.”

  The hoof of a deer…

  Iris had forgotten that detail. The deer had hit the grill of the car and twisted, sending the right front hoof straight through the windshield and into Declan’s mother’s forehead. The chances of that happening…if the deer had just twisted a little further to the side…

  The whole thing was an awful story, too awful to be real.