It seemed an impossible thing.
Gideon Hayes stood nearly six feet five inches tall, with shoulders broad enough to fill the doorway of his Wyoming cabin. His thick dark hair brushed his collar, his heavy beard was streaked with gray, and the old scars running across his knuckles suggested a life spent fighting weather, wild animals, and the hard demands of the mountains.
He looked like a man who could carry an injured horse through a snowstorm if he decided it needed saving.
Yet as he stood before his new bride, those enormous hands trembled like the hands of a frightened boy.
Lydia sat on the edge of the only bed in the cabin, an old wooden hairbrush resting between her fingers. Her long, dark-chestnut hair spilled in thick waves over her shoulders, and the loose ivory cotton nightgown she wore gathered softly around her full, generous figure.
She was twenty-eight years old, exceptionally large, and painfully accustomed to watching people decide what sort of woman she must be before she had spoken a word.
Some looked at her size and assumed laziness.
Others assumed desperation.
Her first husband had looked at her and seen something he could control.
Now another husband stood before her.
One she had met only hours earlier.
One whose letters had promised food, shelter, honesty, and a place beside his hearth.
And the only thing he seemed determined to give her that first night was the bed.
He had already spread a wool blanket on the floor near the cast-iron stove.
Outside, a blizzard battered the wooden walls. Snow swept past the window in white curtains, occasionally revealing the black silhouettes of pine trees beyond the cabin.
Two enormous mountain dogs slept beside the hearth.
A lantern burned on the shelf.
And the silence between husband and wife had become almost unbearable.
Gideon had just put away his hunting knife after Lydia asked him to stop sharpening it.
He seemed ashamed that the sound had frightened her.
Now he stood looking down at the floor.
"I'll sleep over there," he said quietly. "You take the bed."
Lydia held the hairbrush tighter.
"We're married."
"I know."
"Then why are you afraid to come near me?"
Gideon's eyes lifted.
The question seemed to strike him harder than any blow.
"I'm not afraid of you."
"Then what are you afraid of?"
He looked toward the little window.
The snow rattled against the glass.
Lydia swallowed.
For years, she had learned to speak carefully to men whose anger could change a room without warning.
Her first husband had possessed a terrible talent for making her apologize for questions he refused to answer.
Now she forced herself to ask the question that had been growing inside her since Gideon carried her trunk into the cabin.
"Do you want me?"
The mountain man went completely still.
Lydia's cheeks burned.
She looked away.
"I'm sorry. That was foolish."
"No."
His answer came so quickly that she looked up.
Gideon took one step closer, then stopped as though he had encountered an invisible boundary.
"Don't apologize."
She studied his face.
His gray eyes looked strangely wet.
"I didn't come all this way because I imagined a grand romance," she whispered. "I know what I am. I know what people see when they look at me."
Gideon's brow tightened.
"Lydia—"
"I'm a large woman. I have no fortune. I'm a widow nobody wanted to employ. You asked for a wife, and I needed somewhere to go."
She looked down at her hands.
"I thought I understood what that meant."
Gideon lowered himself onto one knee in front of her.
The movement startled her.
Even kneeling, he seemed enormous.
He kept his hands resting on his own thighs.
"I didn't ask for a servant," he said. "And I didn't bring you here to make you earn your supper."
Lydia looked into his eyes.
"Then what did you want?"
For a long moment, Gideon could not answer.
Finally, his voice emerged rough and unsteady.
"Someone to come home to."
Lydia felt something move painfully inside her chest.
He continued.
"Someone whose footsteps I could hear while I was chopping wood. Someone to tell me when the stew needed salt. Someone who might laugh at something foolish I said."
He lowered his eyes.
"I've been alone a long time."
Lydia swallowed.
"And you want that someone to be me?"
Gideon looked at her.
"Yes."
The answer was almost too simple.
No bargaining.
No qualification.
No mention of her size.
Just yes.
She felt tears gathering again.
"Then why won't you look at me?"
He slowly lifted his gaze.