PART 2 — THE WOMAN HE CHOSE

For three long seconds, Alyssa Lewis could not move.

Willie Reyes stood before her with his hand extended, while the entire Bitter Creek dance hall watched.

Nobody laughed now.

Alyssa stared at his hand.

“Mr. Reyes,” she whispered, “I think you’ve made a mistake.”

“I rarely make them.”

“You meant to ask my sister.”

“No.”

“But everyone knows—”

“I know what everyone knows.” His voice remained calm. “I also know what I saw.”

Coraline stepped forward, her cheeks burning.

“Willie, surely you don’t mean this. Alyssa has never even been courted properly.”

Willie turned toward her.

“And whose fault is that?”

Coraline opened her mouth, then closed it.

Alyssa felt the heat of a hundred pairs of eyes. She wanted the floor to swallow her. She had spent years being the person behind the scenes, the one who carried the baskets while Coraline received compliments.

She had never imagined being chosen in front of everyone.

Especially not by a man like Willie Reyes.

“I cannot dance,” she said quietly.

Willie looked at her.

“Then we shall walk.”

He offered his arm instead.

After a moment, Alyssa accepted.

They walked past the musicians, past the curious townspeople, and straight out onto the wooden porch.

Behind them, Coraline’s voice rose.

“This is ridiculous!”

Willie did not turn around.

Outside, the night air was cool. Lanterns swung above the street, and distant horses shifted in their stalls.

Alyssa pulled her shawl closer.

“Why?” she finally asked.

“Why what?”

“Why me?”

Willie leaned against the porch railing.

“Because I watched you repair that wagon.”

“That was nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing. You noticed the axle was cracked before the driver did. You kept the horse calm when everyone else was shouting. Then you fixed the wheel without asking anyone to praise you.”

Alyssa looked down.

“Most people only notice that I’m large enough to do the heavy work.”

“I noticed that you knew what you were doing.”

She had no answer.

Willie continued.

“I need someone who understands a ranch. Someone who can make decisions when I’m miles away. Someone who won’t collapse because a winter storm destroys a fence or a shipment arrives late.”

“You need a manager,” Alyssa replied. “Not a wife.”

“Perhaps I need both. But I won’t pretend they’re the same thing.”

His honesty surprised her.

“Do you expect me to marry you immediately?”

“No. I expect you to think about it.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I’ll accept your answer.”

For the first time that evening, Alyssa looked directly into his eyes.

He meant it.

That frightened her more than the laughter had.

The following morning, Bitter Creek was buzzing.

At the general store, two women whispered that Willie had lost his senses. At the church steps, a ranch hand joked that Ironclad Ranch would need a wider front door.

Coraline made certain everyone heard her version.

“My sister has always been desperate for attention,” she told a group of women. “She must have trapped him somehow.”

Alyssa heard every word.

She kept walking.

When she returned home, she found her father sitting at the kitchen table with a letter in his hand.

His face was pale.

“Your sister told me what happened,” Hyram said.

Alyssa placed her basket on the counter.

“I didn’t ask him to choose me.”

“Do you understand what this could mean?”

She glanced at the letter.

The red seal belonged to Josiah Caldwell, the banker who held the mortgage on their farm.

Hyram pushed it across the table.

“He wants payment by the end of the month. Three hundred dollars, plus interest.”

Alyssa read the words twice.

“If we cannot pay?”

“He takes the farm.”

The farm.

The land where her mother had planted peach trees. The barn Alyssa had repaired with her own hands. The small room where Coraline had learned to read.

Everything.

Hyram rubbed his forehead.

“Willie Reyes could pay that debt without noticing the money was gone.”

Alyssa stiffened.

“You cannot ask him to buy our farm.”

“I wasn’t suggesting—”

“You were.”

Her father looked away.

Before he could answer, the front door opened.

Coraline entered wearing a new blue dress.

“I have an idea,” she announced.

Alyssa turned.

“What idea?”

Coraline smiled, but there was something cold beneath it.

“You should marry Willie.”

Alyssa stared at her.

“Yesterday you called me an ox.”

“And today I’m being practical. If he wants you, let him have you. Then you can persuade him to help Father.”

“I won’t marry a man just to pay a debt.”

Coraline shrugged.

“Then perhaps you don’t care whether this family loses everything.”

Alyssa felt those words land harder than the laughter at the dance.

That afternoon, a rider arrived from Ironclad Ranch.

He carried a sealed envelope addressed to Alyssa.

Inside was a handwritten invitation.

Willie wanted her to visit the ranch and see the operation for herself.

At the bottom, he had added one sentence:

I would rather you know what you are choosing before you give me an answer.

Alyssa read it three times.

Then she folded the letter and placed it inside her apron pocket.

She had no idea that, across town, Josiah Caldwell was reading a very different letter.

One bearing the name of Willie Reyes.

And one that began:

If you intend to marry Alyssa Lewis, we need to discuss what her father owes me—and what I know about your ranch.