The wagon vanished down the frozen road before Clara Whitmore managed to lift her trunk.
For several seconds she stood alone beneath a sky the color of old iron, listening to the wheels disappear through the timber. Snow blew across the trail behind them until even the tracks began to vanish.
That frightened her more than the cold.
Everything behind her was disappearing.
Boston.
The boardinghouse room she had rented by the week.
The church where she had answered a matrimonial advertisement pinned crookedly beside notices for farmhands and lost horses.
The grave where she had stood three years earlier wearing black gloves while a minister told her she was finally free to begin grieving.
And now, somewhere beneath thousands of miles of winter, all of it felt less real than the cabin in front of her.
Clara tightened her fingers around the handle of the small carpetbag hanging from her wrist.
The rest of her belongings were inside the trunk.
Three dresses.
A sewing kit.
Two photographs.
One book.
Her mother’s comb.
Forty-three dollars sewn inside the hem of her traveling coat.
Everything a twenty-nine-year-old widow had managed to preserve from a life that had once filled an entire townhouse.
The cabin door opened.
The man standing there looked large enough to fill it.
Clara stopped breathing.
Ethan Blackwood was thirty-three according to the letters.
The letters had neglected to mention that thirty-three years in the Montana wilderness could turn a man into something resembling the wilderness itself.
He was enormous.
Broad shoulders stretched beneath a dark wool coat lined with black fur. His beard was thick, dark brown streaked faintly with early gray. His hair fell past his ears in waves that looked as if they had not encountered a proper barber in years. Snow caught in it as he stepped onto the porch.
His hands were bare.
Scarred.
Heavy.
Hands that looked capable of breaking a table apart without tools.
Clara’s stomach tightened.
Then Ethan looked directly at her, and something unexpected happened.
He seemed nervous.
“You’re Clara.”
His voice was deep enough to vibrate beneath the wind.
She nodded.
“You’re Ethan.”
He nodded too.
For a moment they simply looked at each other like two people who had signed an agreement before discovering both parties were real.
Ethan stepped into the snow.
Clara instinctively moved between him and the trunk.
He stopped instantly.
The speed of it surprised her.
His hands lifted slightly.
“I was going to carry that.”
“I can manage.”
He looked at the trunk.
Then at her.
The thing probably weighed nearly seventy pounds.
“All right.”
Clara stared.
“You’re not going to argue?”
“No.”
“You think I can carry it?”
“No.”
That almost offended her.
Ethan added quickly, “But you said you can manage.”
Clara studied him.
He looked genuinely uncertain whether he had answered correctly.
The absurdity nearly made her smile.
Almost.
Instead she released the trunk.
“You may carry it.”
Relief crossed his face.
He lifted the trunk as easily as another man might lift a basket of laundry.
Clara followed him inside.
Two enormous dogs rose from beside the stove.
She froze again.
One was gray and black, the other dark brown, both built like wolves that had reluctantly agreed to domestic employment.
Ethan noticed.
“Bear.”
The gray dog looked at him.
“Down.”
The animal lay.
“Juniper.”
The brown one lowered herself too.
“They won’t bother you.”
Clara kept her distance.
“They look capable of bothering anyone they choose.”
“That’s fair.”
He carried the trunk into the cabin’s only bedroom.
Clara noticed the bed immediately.
One bed.
Wide.
Heavy timber frame.
Quilts stacked high.
She stopped at the doorway.
Ethan followed her gaze.
His ears actually reddened beneath his hair.
“I can sleep by the stove.”
Clara turned.
“You live here.”
“Yes.”
“That is your bed.”
“Yes.”
“And you expect me to take it?”
“If you want.”
“What if I don’t?”
His forehead creased.
“I suppose we can both sleep by the stove.”
For the first time, Clara smiled.
Only a little.
Ethan saw it.
The nervousness in his face eased.
He set the trunk beside the wall and immediately stepped away from it, as though even standing too near her belongings might be interpreted as intrusion.