The first time Josephine touched my face, I forgot that I was fifty-four years old.
Her hand was warm against my weathered cheek, her fingers disappearing into the gray strands of my beard as she looked up at me with those extraordinary hazel eyes. The fire behind us crackled softly, filling my little mountain cabin with golden light, and the last snow of winter glittered on the peaks beyond the window.
"You're too young to love an old cowboy like me," I whispered.
Josephine didn't smile. She studied my face as though she were trying to understand a wound I had carried for so long that I no longer noticed it.
"Then why," she asked softly, "does your touch feel like the first home I've ever known?"
I wanted to answer her. God help me, I wanted to tell her that I had spent twenty years convincing myself love was something a man received only once, and that when it disappeared, he was supposed to endure the rest of his days without asking for another chance.
But the words wouldn't come.
She was twenty-five, beautiful, stubborn, and full of a courage that put men twice her age to shame. I was a weather-beaten cowboy with aching knees, a shoulder that complained whenever rain approached, and enough scars to remind me of every foolish decision I'd made since turning sixteen.
There were other differences between us that neither of us pretended not to see.
Josephine weighed close to four hundred kilograms. She had an extraordinarily large, full figure, with broad shoulders, powerful arms, a soft rounded face, and a body that occupied considerably more space than the delicate women celebrated in fashionable illustrations. Her size made traveling and ordinary movement difficult, particularly on the unforgiving mountain terrain, but it had never diminished her intelligence, humor, pride, or determination to direct her own life.
That evening she wore a beautiful dusty-rose gown trimmed with ivory lace. The enormous skirt spread across the reinforced wooden bed I'd built for her, while soft chestnut curls framed her face and fell over her shoulders.
She looked at me like I was the only man in the world.
And that frightened me more than any storm I'd survived.
"Hiram," she whispered, "I didn't ask you how many years you've lived. I asked whether you want me to stay."
My left hand tightened around the worn leather travel bag I had packed for her.