Chapter 1 - THE BARGAIN IN THE SNOW
Cora had two nickels to her name when the mountain man walked into her boarding room and offered her a marriage with absolutely no love in it. Yesterday, the schoolhouse had burned to the ground. This morning, the town council fired her. By the end of the week, she would lose the miserable room above the cooper shop. And winter was already coming down from the Colorado mountains.
Then Wyatt appeared in her doorway. He was enormous, smelling of pine pitch, wet leather, and horse sweat.
“I got two boys,” he said. “Seven and ten. Their mother died four years ago.”
Cora folded her arms. “And?”
“They’re turning feral.” He said it as calmly as if he were discussing damaged fence posts. “They need teaching. They need a mother.”
Cora gave a bitter laugh. “And you came to town to buy one?”
Wyatt didn’t even blink. “I need a woman who can raise my sons. You need a roof, a fire, and enough food to keep from freezing. I’m asking you to marry me.”
Cora wanted to slap him. Instead, her empty stomach growled loudly enough for both of them to hear. Wyatt didn’t smile. That somehow made it worse. He promised her a separate room, food, safety, and a stone-and-timber house on three thousand mountain acres. And one more thing: “I won’t expect wife duties. Not unless you want them.”
It wasn’t romance. It was survival.
So less than an hour later, Cora packed everything she owned into one battered trunk. By sunset, she was legally married to a man she barely knew. Then she met his sons. The boys came out of the trees looking less like children than small wild animals. Ten-year-old Caleb stared at her with open hatred. Seven-year-old Seth wiped his filthy nose on his sleeve, then deliberately spat into the frozen dirt at Cora’s feet.
That first night, she burned supper so badly the corn bread was black underneath and nearly raw inside. Seth looked at it, then at her. “Looks like cow shit.” Before Cora could answer, he picked up the bread and threw it across the table.
Something inside her snapped. She slammed the cast-iron skillet down so hard both boys jumped. “I did not ask to be here,” she said, shaking with fury. “I do not want to be here. But I spent an hour scraping your filth off these plates. So you will eat the burnt bread, and you will shut your mouth, or I will let you go hungry until you beg for it.”
Silence fell. Cora immediately realized what she had done—she had screamed at two motherless boys. She waited for Wyatt to throw her out. Instead, the huge mountain man calmly cut off a piece of the burned bread. He chewed, swallowed, and looked at his sons.
“Bread’s burnt,” he said, picking up another bite. “Eat your dinner.”
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Neither boy challenged her again that night. But three weeks later, one of them disobeyed a far more dangerous rule. And when Cora heard his scream outside the cabin, she ran into the snow without even grabbing her coat. Blood was already spreading across the white ground.
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