Page 90 of Mail-Order Lady

“It’s not...” She swallowed. “I didn’t have time to rewrite it neatly.”

She held the pages against her chest for a moment, her pulse hammering beneath them. This was her story. Her heart laid bare in ink and paper. What if he didn’t understand it? What if he read it and saw something she hadn’t meant to reveal?

“Clara.” His voice was gentle. “I’ll love it. I know I will.”

How did he always know what she was thinking?

She forced her fingers to loosen their grip and held the pages out to him.

He took them carefully, like a precious gift rather than smudged sheets covered in her messy scrawl. “Thank you.”

The warmth in his eyes made her throat tighten. He really did want to read this. Wanted to know the part of her she usually kept hidden.

“Come sit with me.” He motioned toward the main room with his free hand. “I want to read it properly.”

She followed him across the polished floor, past the stone fireplace where the midday light slanted through the windows. He settled onto the settee, and she snuggled in beside him.

As he began to read, she couldn’t help but study the way his eyes moved across the lines. The way his brow furrowed in concentration. The subtle shift of his expression as he took in each word.

She’d meant to let him read alone, but the pull to see her own words again—to experience them through his eyes—proved too strong. She leaned closer to look over his arm.

Once there was a princess who lived in a castle with two wings like arms that reached out to hold everyone inside.

The familiar opening settled over her like a well-worn quilt. She’d written and rewritten that first line a dozen times before it felt right.

Robert turned the page, but instead of going back to his original position, he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her in closer.

She leaned in as his cheek rested on her head, and let her gaze settle on the familiar words.

She came to a home in the mountains where the air tasted different. Sharp and clean, like breathing ice and pine all at once. The mountains rose around the home as guardians, their peaks touching the sky.

There were brothers who kept the ranch. The eldest watched the horizon with his whole body, as though keeping watch was something he’d been born to.

The second brother laughed easily, but his charm masked a heart that had learned too well what it meant to lose the people he loved.

The third brother worked with steady hands and a quiet strength that reminded her of deep water—calm on the surface but powerful beneath. This was the brother she saw from the very first. Whose patience and wisdom drew her, even before she realized it.

The youngest had a restlessness about him, like a wild horse not quite broken to the saddle. But his smile came quick and genuine, and he made everyone around him lighter.

One day another man arrived at the ranch. One who had come from the sea. A stranger who shared their blood but not their history.

No one knew quite what to do with him at first, and he knew not what to do with them either. But he watched the others like he was trying to learn some unfamiliar craft.

He was ice that had been frozen for so long, it would take time to thaw. But slowly—so slowly the others might not have even noticed—he began to soften at the edges. A word here. A shared task there. Small moments of belonging that accumulated like snowflakes.

Robert’s arm tightened around her, and she glanced up at his face. His eyes had gone soft, the way they did when he looked at her in the mornings before they rose. Like she was the first good thing he’d seen each day.

He turned the page, and she settled against him to keep reading.

As the princess watched the man from the sea, a recognition awakened inside her.

She’d thought she came to the mountains to escape. To find freedom beyond her mother’s locked gates. But the truth was more complicated than that. She’d been searching for a place where she could be herself—all of herself—and not have to hide the parts that made her different. The parts that wanted too much. That felt too deeply. That dreamed too wildly.

And the man from the sea was searching for the same thing.

He’d survived storms and battles and loneliness so profound it had carved deep grooves into his soul. He’d learned to be useful but never beloved. To serve but never belong.

Just like her.