By the time the rancher saw the stagecoach coming over the western rise, he had already decided the entire idea had been a mistake.
The thought arrived before he saw the woman.
Before the coach stopped.
Before the driver climbed down and pulled the door open.
Before the woman who had agreed to become his wife placed one boot on the dusty step and looked across the tiny Wyoming settlement for the man whose letters she had been carrying for three months.
The rancher stood beside his wagon with one hand resting against the rear wheel and the other shoved into the pocket of a coat that had been patched so many times he could no longer remember which part was original.
He was thirty-four.
Old enough to know desperation usually charged interest.
Young enough to keep making choices as though maybe it would not.
The fifty dollars was gone.
That was the part his mind kept returning to.
Fifty dollars.
Almost every dollar he had managed to put aside after selling three thin yearlings and an old saddle.
Money that should have gone toward feed.
Or fencing.
Or the mortgage payment waiting in the bottom drawer of his kitchen table.
Instead he had answered a matrimonial advertisement.
Then another letter.
Then another.
Finally, after months of correspondence, he sent the agency fee and stage fare.
The woman had agreed to travel west.
They would marry after meeting.
That had seemed almost reasonable in the middle of a lonely winter when the ranch house felt too quiet and every task seemed designed for two people.
Now, watching the stagecoach arrive, it seemed like the decision of a fool.
The driver opened the door.
A gloved hand appeared first.
Then a broad-shouldered woman stepped down.
She was not what the rancher had imagined.
That truth embarrassed him immediately.
He had not realized how detailed the woman in his head had become until the actual woman failed to resemble her.
In his imagination, she had been narrow-waisted, light-footed, built like the ranch women he remembered from childhood who seemed capable of carrying flour sacks while barely disturbing the dust beneath their shoes.
The woman standing in front of him was heavyset.
Full-figured.
Strong-looking in a way he had not expected.
She had broad shoulders, full arms, a thick waist, generous hips, and a softness to her figure that her plain gray traveling dress could not hide.