Nash stood nearby, watching. She met his gaze, needing, wanting something from him, though she wouldn’t acknowledge it.
“Sleep is good,” he murmured.
Addie nodded.
With Mother sleeping, the kitchen area clean, the dishes washed and put away, she had little else to do. So she picked up her book, rested her back against the wall, and began to read.
Nash sat beside her, his legs curled up, and he opened the book he read. After a few minutes, he put his finger in the book and lifted his head. “I thought David Thompson wrote this book, but it’s written by someone else and tells about his life. It’s amazing to think how much of North America he explored and mapped. He overcame many challenges. His father died when he was young, and at seven, his mother placed him in a school for the disadvantaged. It doesn’t appear he let those circumstances deter him.” Nash tapped the book. “I’m in awe of what he achieved when it would have been easy to idle through life feeling sorry for himself.”
“That’s fascinating.” She didn’t mean only the information about the explorer. Nash’s enthusiasm proved equally spellbinding.
They both returned to their reading.
“Addie,” Nash exclaimed, “the man lost the sight in his right eye, but it doesn’t appear to have slowed him down. What a marvelous life he lived.”
“No room for self-pity?”
“None whatsoever.” His eyes glistened. “I feel like he’s an example of how I should choose to live.”
Addie smoothed the crinkled cuffs at her wrists. “Seems to me that is how you have already chosen, isn’t it?”
“I hope I have. Like you said, we should leave the past and live in the here and now. But to read about someone who did kind of opens my eyes.” One corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Sorry. Guess I’m getting a little enthused about it.”
“I don’t mind.” She gave off fiddling with a fraying thread.
“That’s good. I’ll try not to interrupt your reading again.” He bent over the book, but she didn’t immediately return to her own story.
Nash’s enthusiasm, his determination to be a good man, his—well, everything she’d learned about him so far—filled her with admiration.
Afraid he would catch her staring at him, she continued the story she’d begun before supper. A story about a man and a woman crossing the mountains, much as she currently did. They worked together and were destined to find love.
A sigh escaped her as she read the hero’s words to the heroine. It drew Nash’s attention.
“Something good in your book?”
“I think so.”
“Read it to me.”
If he found the love stuff amusing or even trivial, it would erase the pleasure the words had given her.
“Please.”
How could she resist his gentle pleading? “Very well. But you must promise not to mock.”
“Of course, I won’t. I promise.”
“Very well then.” She settled her spine to the wall. “This is what the young man says to the young lady, ‘I loved you the first time we spoke though I knew it not at the time.’ She replies, ‘Sir, how do you know it now?’”
Addie’s cheeks warmed as she continued to readwords so intimate it felt like she spied on the couple. “‘Now?’ he said. ‘Because you dwell on every breath I breathe, you accompany every thought I think, you reside in every step I take. You are what brings joy to my very being.’” Addie’s voice faded. Would Nash think her foolish to be so moved by the tender words?
He cleared his throat. “That’s nice.”
Nice! That was like saying the rain was damp. And she’d thought him a tender man!
A readinglike that required more than “that’s nice.” But Nash couldn’t find words to express how they’d stirred his heart. He cleared his throat. Opened his mouth and closed it without uttering a sound.
Addie’s eyes narrowed, and she turned back to her book.
