The Tender Vine (Diamond of the Rockies #3)(126)

“Rod.”

“I specifically told you those poems were not for publication. I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Maybe this will.” Pierce held out a bank draft. “In advance of your submission. Royalties, of course, would follow.”

Quillan neither took nor looked at the check. “What’s in it for you?”

“A small percentage from future projects.” At least Pierce didn’t hedge. “And of course the acknowledgment that I discovered you. That goes a long way in my field.”

Quillan laughed. Pierce’s audacity was no small thing. Nor what he offered. Another man might have jumped at the chance for fame and recognition. Quillan just wanted to be able to walk again with two sound legs and Carina at his side. His laugh died.

He sank back and crossed his arms, a motion he hadn’t managed in weeks. He hoped their paltry condition was not evident. At any rate Pierce didn’t look at him like an invalid. Quillan swallowed. “My poetry’s not for sale.”

Pierce gave a dramatic sigh. “Quillan, what can I say to convince you? America needs a voice that so poignantly describes her soul.”

Did he mean that? Did he really think the words that came to him in turmoil, grief, and joy described America’s soul?

Mr. Pierce set the check on the bed stand. “I’ll leave this. Discuss it with your wife. If she’s forgiven my boorish behavior . . .” He glanced at Carina hopefully. “Maybe she can get through to you.”

Not likely, Quillan thought, by the expression on her face.

“Mrs. Shepard, I do apologize. I had scanty information and jumped to a conclusion I should never have drawn. I was desperate and thought to provoke you to reveal something—anything—I could use.”

Quillan wasn’t sure what conclusion Pierce had drawn, but he had certainly provoked Carina, though she had yet to tell him what specifically precipitated her kick. It was obviously scurrilous. Carina crossed her arms, jaw tight and eyes like molten jet.

“Well, then.” Pierce turned back to Quillan. “I’ll leave you to decide.” He started for the door.

“Pierce.” Quillan’s tone was sharp.

Mr. Pierce turned.

“The journal.”

Roderick Pierce drew a breath and released it, then laid the journal atop the check. “Truly, Quillan, you have words that should be heard. It’s wrong to hoard them.”

Quillan met his frank stare, unsure how to take those last words. Wrong, to keep his private thoughts to himself? Mr. Pierce gave a short nod and walked out.

“Oh!” Carina shook her fists. “He makes me want to—”

“Kick?”

She spun on him. “And you can sit there and smirk?”

Quillan squelched a smile. “What exactly did Mr. Pierce say to you?”

“He wanted to know if my ‘lover’ had caused your accident.” As soon as the words were out, she seemed to want them back.

Quillan flinched even though he’d done everything he could to keep the truth from her.

She rushed to the couch and dropped down beside him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

She caught his hands in hers. “I know Flavio did this. He admitted it.”

Quillan raised his brows in surprise. He couldn’t believe the man would actually brag on it. Not after— “Why did you protect him?” Though he looked away, she persisted.

“Did you think I wanted that?”

“No.” He unfolded his arms, dropped them to his sides.

“Then why?”

Quillan turned back to her. How could he make her see? The harm Flavio had done him mattered less than it might. He was used to the worst in people. But in those moments, knowing he was hopelessly trapped, that fire would consume him as it had his parents, as the worst of his nightmares of melting flesh and charred bones . . . From the extremity of his pain and terror, Flavio had freed him. “Because he could have let me die . . . and didn’t.”

“Oh, Quillan.” Carina pressed in close to his chest, nestling her head beneath his chin.

He wrapped an arm around her, then the other. She understood. She knew his demons. She had brought them out of his own personal darkness and suffered them with him. Rose’s diary had brought her tears; Wolf ’s pictures had broken her heart. But it was to the burned-out cabin she had returned again and again, imagining their final agony. She must know what Flavio had saved him from.

She drew a jagged breath. “He hates himself. I found him with a rope tied into a hangman’s noose.”

Quillan turned her face up to see the truth. It was there in her eyes.

“Why?”

“Because of what he did. What he is.”

Quillan looked down at his leg, the leg that might never hold him again. He felt the residual pain in his weakened body. The weeks of helplessness and humiliation, being fed and shaved and bathed while his own hands were bound to his chest. All Flavio’s doing. He closed his eyes, fighting the satisfaction of the man’s torment.

But it was wrong. He’d spent enough years believing himself a flawed man. He would not wish it even on Flavio. And only he could change it.

“Would he come here if you asked?”

Her face came up as he’d known it would, in wonder and confusion. “I don’t know.”