River's End (River's End Series, #1)(53)

She looked down at Charlie’s hopeful face. Caught in her own horror for not being able to read the elementary school card, she never imagined how her reaction would appear to Charlie. She forced a smile onto her face. “Oh, Charlie, I love it. I’ll treasure it. No one’s ever made me a card before.”

“Never?”

“No. Never.”

Charlie beamed in appreciation, then happily raised his hand. Erin’s smile faded as she realized what Charlie was doing. “Mrs. Gray, we can read ours.”

Allison turned at Charlie’s waving hand and small voice over the crowd’s murmur. The attention of the entire room was fastened on Charlie, and therefore, Erin too, who held the card. She quickly handed it to Charlie. “Go ahead, Charlie.”

He nodded. “Oh yeah; you can’t read, can you? I’ll read it to you.”

She felt every eye shifting towards her. Her face was bathed in red as she blushed uncontrollably. She stared at the desk in front of her without lifting her head. Charlie’s voice rang out over the classroom as he easily read the poem he composed. It was a lovely little poem, a “roses are red” variation. Allison’s gaze was kind toward her as she thanked Charlie for his poem. Finally, the class moved on to the next reader. Erin sunk down into the small chair as low as she could get. She’d had numerous embarrassing situations, when she couldn’t hide her stupidity, but nothing that equaled the humiliation of that very moment. She didn’t taste the cookies or the tea that was served. She didn’t raise her eyes again to look at anyone. She barely mumbled thanks when Allison came around to the tables, chatting to each student and parent again. She accomplished that, at least; Charlie seemed totally clueless that he managed to mortify her in such a way that she vowed to never show her face around the school or valley again.

After the tea and cookies were served and cleaned up, Erin followed and did what the other women around her did, like tearing up the butcher paper and helping to tidy up the classroom.

“Excuse me?” A voice said behind Erin.

She turned to find a tall, pretty brunette in a long skirt and sweater standing there. “You’re Erin? Joey’s girlfriend? Or are you Jack’s? Hard to tell. I’m surprised Jack let you come here with Charlie.”

Erin stepped back. The woman was staring at her and her mouth puckered in disdain.

“I’m sorry; who are you?”

“Who am I? I’m Kara Fisher. I was Lily’s best friend. You know… Jack’s wife. We had our kids together. Charlie and my son, Anthony, are best friends. We were over at the ranch just the other day.”

“I didn’t know Lily.”

“Who are you then? Charlie said you live there now?”

“I don’t live there. I’m staying there for now. My brother worked for the Rydells. He caused some trouble for me, and the Rydells are only helping me out.”

Kara let out a breath with a nod. “Oh. Okay. I didn’t think someone like you would be Jack’s type. Joey’s maybe, but never Jack’s. He and Lily… they were together since we were fifteen, you know. There was never anyone else for either of them. It broke his heart when she died.”

“I honestly don’t know anything about it.”

Kara eyed her up. “Well, I’d just hate to see Jack not do what would be in Charlie’s best interest. He’s had a hard run of it, you know. His mother dead. His grandmother dead; and Jack’s so busy with everything on the ranch that he’s responsible for. I’d hate to see anything else go wrong for them.”

Erin got the insinuation. As in she. She would be wrong for them.

Erin was the first guest to leave. She quickly made it out the corridor with her heels clicking rapidly on the vinyl floor. She opened the door to the school and hurried to her borrowed truck, where she leapt inside and peeled out of the school parking lot. When she reached her coffee stand, she let her head fall onto the steering wheel.

After she finally got out, while wiping at her tears, she undressed down to her swimsuit and opened the stand back up. It wasn’t long before the first fifty-year-old man, towing a trailer full of cows, came through. His eyes never rose above her collarbone as he ordered and paid for the coffee he didn’t seem to care all that much about drinking.

****

Jack waited for Erin to show up that afternoon and got annoyed by how much it bothered him when she didn’t show. He kept glancing towards her trailer, waiting for her to pop out. Her truck was parked just in front of the trailer, so he knew she was there. Why, then, didn’t she come out? She came out to the barn every day, over the last three weeks. Today, she was due to get on the horse; so why wasn’t she there?

“You want me to get her?”

Jack glanced at Ben. He offered to help get Erin on the horse. Ben finally seemed to understand he wasn’t in her league, neither for winning her heart nor her body. He did, however, seem to genuinely like her as a friend. He liked helping her out a lot. She went to Ben with any reading she had to do. He helped her read through the menu at her coffee stand until she learned it by heart. She would have rather crawled into a hole than let Jack or any of his brothers help her. But with Ben? She found him comfortable to ask for help, now that Jack had given his permission for her to do so.

Jack failed to figure out why the hell she didn’t just learn to read. He thought it was incomprehensible that she made it this far in her life without learning to read anything, and worse, why did she never take the time to learn? But she remained closed-lipped about it, as she did with most of her life.