Heart of a Soldier. Belle Calhoune

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ I’m sure I wouldn’t be feeling this way.” He shook his head, trying to rid his mind of all the jumbled thoughts. “Okay, that’s not true. Or maybe it is. I don’t know how I would feel, Holly. I just feel a little caught off guard. You weren’t straight with me. Don’t you think I deserved to know? It makes me wonder if you were ever planning to come clean with me.” Although it pained him a little to press the point, he felt he deserved an explanation.

      Holly nodded, and he saw a soft sheen glimmering in her eyes. Those incredible blue eyes he’d been dreaming about gazing into were awash in tears. For the first time he noticed how pretty she was, and if it hadn’t been for the wheelchair, he might have recognized her right off. It had thrown him, since he’d never been given a single hint about her condition. And he hated to admit it, but he’d looked right through her. The wheelchair had served as a barrier to the truth.

      He’d been under the belief that there wasn’t a single thing about Holly he didn’t know. She was his champion. His Texas rose. The woman he’d been so wrapped up in for the past twelve months. But when she’d greeted him at the door, the wheelchair had served as a buffer between them, and it made him feel a little small to realize that he hadn’t even really given her more than a cursory glance.

      “Of course you had a right to know, especially when we started discussing the future and meeting one another in person. And I did plan to meet you...on my own terms, when I was ready to tell you everything.” Tears slid down her face. Her chin trembled and quivered. Despite it all, she held her head up high. Her countenance said a lot about her. She was strong. She’d had to be, he reckoned. Being paralyzed at the tender age of eighteen didn’t leave one a lot of choices, did it? He had a hunch Holly had dug in deep and persevered, relying on her faith and family to sustain her.

      “Believe it or not, I’m pretty courageous in most other aspects of my life. For some reason, I just didn’t have the guts to tell you the truth. I kept promising myself I would with each and every letter, but as time moved on, it became more and more difficult to do so.”

      Suddenly, the tables had turned. Just like that, his anger fizzled. Instead of feeling upset with her, he was now feeling badly for Holly. It was confusing, since he was the one who’d been deceived. He was the one who had no idea where he went from here. With no job, four months of rent paid up to Doc Sampson and nothing going the way he’d imagined, his future was seriously in question. All he knew was that he wanted to comfort this woman he’d grown to care about.

      “Hey, don’t cry, Holly. My mama always told me a pretty girl should never cry.” He got down on his haunches beside her chair, then leaned over and brushed her tears away with his thumb.

      “At least you think I’m pretty,” she joked, the corners of her mouth creasing in a slight smile. Her dry comment made him want to grin back at her, even though the circumstances didn’t exactly call for it. Wheelchair or no wheelchair, she still had withheld vital information from him. She hadn’t been half as transparent as she’d seemed on paper.

      Holly was far more than pretty, he realized. Beautiful, even. He started to tell her so, but he stopped, determined not to go down that road. Not today when so many things were up in the air between them. Not when his stomach was tangled up in knots and he couldn’t seem to think past this very moment. The intense feeling holding him in its grip was easily recognizable. It was fear. Because even though he was a decorated soldier who had served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, the thought of Holly being in a wheelchair sent anxiety racing through him.

      And even though he still cared about her, he wasn’t certain he saw a future for the two of them. Call it crazy, but ever since Holly had come into his life, dreams of them together forever filled his head at night as he drifted off to slumber. Although he felt a stab of guilt for even thinking it, he couldn’t deny the doubts coursing through him. He’d just made it home from a combat zone after seeing his fellow soldiers and civilians broken and bloodied and lifeless. He wasn’t sure he was up to any more challenges. Did knowing he might not be able to handle this make him a bad person?

       Dear Lord, please give me some clarity. Holly is such a sweet, warm person, but I don’t want to plunge headlong into a situation I can’t emotionally handle. And I’m still really confused about where we go from here. A huge curveball was thrown at me when I wasn’t expecting it. Life has shown me that everything happens for a reason, yet I can’t fathom why I’m here. And I can’t wrap my head around Holly being a paraplegic. It reminds me so much of everything I left behind in Afghanistan. Am I strong enough to get past this deception?

      “What are you going to do now?” She looked at him sorrowfully, her expression full of regret and a hundred different emotions he didn’t want to analyze.

      Dylan shrugged as reality set in. He really didn’t have anyplace to go. With his mother having recently moved to New Mexico with her new husband, there was no longer anything tying him to his hometown. He’d burned all his bridges with his father a while ago, no longer content with being a dirty little secret. His outside child. The one who didn’t matter. It had been almost six years since he’d spoken to him. He wasn’t even certain his father knew he’d made it back from Afghanistan. Nor did he think he even cared. For too long now, he’d been seeking something from the man that he’d never been willing to give. Acceptance. Unconditional love.

      At the moment he felt like a ship without a rudder. Here he was in West Falls, Texas, as clueless as the day he was born. For so long he’d been running. From his father. From the painful gibes about his paternity. He’d run away from Madden, Oklahoma, straight into the service. At some point he just had to stand still. And perhaps God had placed him here in West Falls for a reason.

      He stroked his chin with his thumb, deep in thought. “My rent is paid up for the next four months, and I really don’t have a lot of options. I need to find a job until I can get on my feet. From what I’ve seen, West Falls is a nice community.”

      Holly’s eyes began to blink, and her mouth was agape. “You’re staying?”

      He was still filled with so much uncertainty, but this decision to stick around was based more on practicality than anything else. In his current financial situation, losing several months’ rent was a big deal. For years he’d been sending the majority of his active-duty paycheck back home to his mother. And even though she’d socked some of it away for him in a bank account, he was still far from being solvent. In order to realize his dreams of owning his own ranch, he needed to keep making positive strides in that direction. Instead of acting impulsively once again, he’d have to stick around West Falls, at least until his lease ran out. And perhaps he could find work to tide him over while he was in town.

      Holly’s gaze was strong and steady. It made him squirm some. Her eyes were such a deep, piercing blue. They pulled him in, and for a moment, all he could do was stare at her. Holly. His pen pal. His more than a friend but not quite a girlfriend. At the moment she was an enigma. As much as her letters had revealed about her life at Horseshoe Bend Ranch, her family and her abiding faith, she’d kept her disability a secret. Surely there were ripple effects in her daily life because of the accident and her being a paraplegic.

      “Yep,” he acknowledged begrudgingly. “It looks like I’ll be staying for a while.”

      Holly’s eyes widened, and her throat convulsed as she swallowed. “West Falls will welcome you with open arms. And it would be fine with me if you wanted to work here at the ranch. With your background, it would make perfect sense.”

      Open arms? For some reason he couldn’t imagine it. His own hometown hadn’t been half as accepting of him and the single mother who’d raised him. No, they’d been considered inferior due to his mother’s unmarried status and the lack of a father figure in the СКАЧАТЬ