The Tender Vine (Diamond of the Rockies #3)(13)

Then, taking Cain’s worn Bible from his pack, he sat on one of the two chairs beside the small table as Sam settled at his feet. He laid the book down and opened to the gospel of Saint Matthew. It was the first of the gospels and seemed as good a place to start as any. He was certainly familiar with the scriptures. He’d committed whole books to memory at the instigation of Reverend and Mrs. Shepard, his foster parents. But though he’d memorized the words, he’d never taken them to heart.

Now he looked at the book, wondering if he could learn it differently. He’d read it two nights ago, and that phrase he’d quoted to Carina had jumped out at him from the page as though he’d never seen it before. He closed his eyes. Jesus, show me what you want me to know. Change my heart, my mind, my being. Make me new. Where had that prayer come from? It was as though some power had prayed through him, prayed what he needed even though he hadn’t known what he needed.

Quillan reached into his pack and pulled out the journal in which he’d begun to jot thoughts and writings, mainly in the form of poetry. He found a fresh page and, at the top, wrote the prayer he’d just prayed. Then looking at the words, he read them back, owning them. The constriction in his heart eased, and he read through the gospel of Matthew.

When he finished, he felt as though he had only just begun to know Jesus and his followers, and he wanted to know more, needed to. He wrote: Lord I want to know you, your heart, your mind, your being. Glancing up, he saw Carina watching him. How long had she been awake? He met her eyes and felt the jolting charge of connecting with her. Without touching, they held each other; without words, they spoke. But did she understand? Did she know what she meant to him?

“What is that?” She motioned to the journal.

“My diary. Or something like that.” He flipped back to a page nearer the front, stood, and carried it to her.

She took the open journal and read aloud.

“The Road

A winding gash across and up a mighty craggy crown,

Blasted, hewn, and flattened down to form a ribbon where,

The wheels of commerce rolling forward, forward up and down,

To and fro and back and forth with ne’er a moment spare.

Carcass bleaching in the sun, horse flesh pushed to death,

Stage behind and bed before, and fate trapped in between,

Wears a face both fair and keen that takes away my breath,

If I had known, if I had done, if I had only seen.”

Tears brightened her eyes to dark sparkling pools. They clutched his heart when she looked up, and he stooped beside her, clasped her hand.

She cleared the morning and tears from her throat. “Am I fate, Quillan?”

“Fate, destiny, gift.” Meeting Carina Maria DiGratia in the road had changed his life.

She searched his face. “Whose gift?”

“God’s.” He stroked the top of her hand, so softly the mere touch of it brought him alive.

“Do you believe God put me in your road because he meant us to be together?”

Quillan pondered that. Had he not met Carina stranded on the road, would he have noticed her in town? Would he have looked up long enough to note her face and allowed himself to think about her twice? Had God broken her wheel at just that place to make him stop and pay attention? It was impossible to think he could have cohabited Crystal with Carina and not been swept away by the same force that had him now. But he was not the man now that he’d been then.

“Yes, Carina. I was too boneheaded otherwise.”

She smiled, and he wanted so much to kiss her he almost threw away all of Alan’s advice and just did it. But he stood up instead, taking the journal with him.

“Can’t I see the rest?”

“Sometime, maybe. Some of it.” He smiled crookedly. “The parts about you.”

“I want to see it all. I want to know you.” Her words echoed his own search that morning. Knowing—how deep that word.

“I want to know you, too, Carina.”

She threw up her hand. “You do know me! You’ve known me from the start. I don’t hide who I am.”

His grin deepened. No, she didn’t hide anything. Couldn’t if she tried.

She raised her chin. “But you? You shoot the head from a rattlesnake, drag me from a mineshaft, save me from lynching, and now you’re a poet?”

He spread his hand, helpless to explain.

“You know what I thought the first time I saw you, after you’d thrown my wagon down the mountain? I thought you a pirate. Standing in the hotel with Mrs. Barton fawning, you looked the worst blackguard buccaneer imaginable.”

Quillan laughed. “I wondered what you were thinking. But you were dining with Berkley Beck, as I recall.”

“Not dining. Meeting. Trying to save what I could of my hopes and thinking all the while how I would get back at you for what you’d done.”

Quillan dropped his gaze. She’d succeeded admirably. There was certainly hurt between them.

“Now you show me these words, and they melt my heart.”

His own turned to syrup as he raised his eyes to hers. “I want them to.”

Again her tears came, and he felt stung. Was it so awful for her to think he loved her? He turned away. “I have to go to Fairplay, Carina.” She didn’t answer, and he knew the look he’d find on her face if he looked. “The telegraph wires are down over Mosquito Pass. I have to contact D.C. and know what he wants to do about the mine.”