Page 46 of A Convenient Heart
Jack could relate to the boy in the story, except Jack had no one to come crawling back to…
Merritt.
There’d been a moment this morning, while she was talking, when his selfish nature had roared to life, and he’d known—this woman, this life. She was what he wanted.
Ever since he’d arrived in town, he’d told himself she wasn’t for him. But he was so tired of fighting?—
And he’d given in. Taken the kiss he shouldn’t have. Taken the adoring way she’d looked at him when he’d drawn back.
He’d been fighting with himself all day, trying to figure out if there was a way he could stay in Calvin, build a life with Merritt.
He didn’t know any way of supporting himself other than gambling. He’d spent his teenage years working on the Farrs’ farm, but he didn’t know how to manage one.
And there was the matter of Morris, and Jack’s past catching up to him.
He’d come here tonight to ask if she’d be willing to wait. Wait until he figured some things out. He’d brought up her parents to see whether that might buy him some time.
He hadn’t expected what she’d shared.
“Come on,” she said with a little laugh. She was still standing nearby, watching him expectantly. “It’s a gift, not a rattlesnake.”
He kept his eyes on the box he held in his hands. “I’ve never been given a Christmas gift before.”
He slipped the lid open as he said the words, and found a dark-brown wool cowboy hat inside. Nearly the same as the one he’d lost, only brand-new.
He had to clear his throat of emotion before he could speak. “It’s a fine hat.”
His hand trembled slightly as he took it out of the box.
She was looking at him with shadowed eyes. “How is it possible you’ve never received a Christmas gift before?”
He stood, overwhelmed with emotion he shouldn’t be feeling, and tipped the hat onto his head. Turned away, because it was too difficult to look at her in this moment.
I don’t want secrets between us.
Her words from this morning echoed in his mind, and everything he was keeping bottled up boiled inside him, like a pot with the lid ready to blow off.
She’d figure it out if he stayed, if he married her. Merritt was smart.
“I’m not the man who wrote those letters.” The words tasted like ash in his mouth. This was the moment she’d tell him to get out, to leave and never come back. The pain of it tore through his gut.
But when he turned to her, she was looking at the hat, and then her gaze trickled down to the rest of him.
“I’ve already pieced together some of it,” she said softly, no judgment in her eyes. “You wrote certain things, trying to present yourself in the best light.”
I’m not John!
She didn’t get it, and the words to tell her so were right there on his lips.
But he chickened out. Told her a different truth instead, delaying the moment when he’d reveal his identity.
“I never knew my parents.”
He couldn’t watch her, quailed under the compassion in her gaze and turned to look out the darkened window. Blinked at the reflection of himself in that hat.
“My first memories are of sleeping in a dormitory in a Chicago orphanage. Eating meals that never quite filled me up at a table so long and so filled with kids just like me that I never could see the end of it.”
Those were the good memories.
