Chapter One
Marshall
Sunlight warms my face, and I groan. I haven’t slept past dawn in years. Not since before my time as an Army Ranger.
The apples and pears won’t pick themselves. Nor will the vegetables in the west pasture. I need to harvest the green beanstoday if I want to have them ready for the farmer’s market down in Crescent Ridge.
I roll out of bed, this time with an audible groan as my prosthetic tangles in the sheets. My stomach rolls and I lay still until the bout of nausea passes. Last night went way beyond the two beers that me and the guys agreed on. The faint memory of Scott dropping me off on his way home lingers at the edge of my mind.
We served together and he’s a reliable sort of fellow. He got married a few years back and his wife, Victoria, is a keeper. Her eyes light up whenever he enters a room and she still stares at him with the biggest green puppy dog eyes. He’s a lucky man, that’s why he’s the designated driver more often than not, watching the rest of us drink our sorrows away. Or maybe that’s just me. We all served but our time overseas took a little more from me than the others.
I can’t believe I forgot to take off my prosthetic. It’s already bothering my skin.
“Just to the bathroom,” I promise myself.
I can’t afford to spend the day lounging on the couch with the antihistamine cream my doctor prescribed for skin irritation. No one else is going to work those fields. I can take it off for breakfast but then it’ll have to go back on before I head out the door.
The ten steps to my bathroom are more humbling than usual. My foot catches on the board that I’ve been meaning to nail down for months sending me stumbling into the door frame.
“Fuck!” I shout, immediately regretting it when my head begins to pound.
My morning starts slow. As much as I’d like to leave my prosthetic on and get to work, I can’t. I’ll pay for it later. A lesson I learned the hard way. Soaking my leg in warm water helps ease the swelling and soreness. The pain killer I take for my headachehelps a bit too. It’s noon when I finally hobble my way out to the field.
The orchard will have to wait. The beans are a higher priority today.
It’s only after I’ve finished picking beans that I check my phone.
There are the usual messages in the group chat. Nothing groundbreaking or jaw dropping about Jason waking up in Bramble in some strange woman’s bed. Then my phone buzzes with a new notification.
It looks like a scam at first. The red outline of two hearts interlinking reminds me of the cheesy astrology charts girls in high school used to swoon over daily. Then the text catches my eye.
Tabitha Carter has accepted your proposal
What the fuck? Must be a cheap roleplaying game, like Mark and Jason's sister plays on her computer. For a moment, my head continues to spin, and I can’t think of what it’s called.
A dating simulator. That’s it. I must have drunk more than I thought to download that crap to my phone last night.
I open the app out of curiosity while I wait for my lunch to heat up in the microwave. My jaw does drop when I realize it’s not a gaming app.
It’s a dating app.
The microwave beeps but I don’t move to get my food. I stare at my screen in shock as I peer down at a woman’s profile. She’s gorgeous. Dark curly hair pinned up in a ponytail with the warmest green eyes I’ve ever seen highlighted by a pair of rectangular glasses.
Dr. Tabitha Carter. A woman I’ve never met, but I’ve proposed marriage to on this app. I don’t message her. What could I even say to this woman? Sorry I matched with you while I was drunk,but I’m not interested in an intelligent successful beautiful woman like you? I would sound insane.
A fucking matchmaking app for mail order brides. The name, Pearl’s, scratches at my brain and I realize why it’s familiar. It was all the rage a few years ago when most of the local men signed up. It’s legit.
The microwave beeps again, but I'm too focused on the app to care. I’ve passed the background and identification checks, and I even linked my bank account.
“This is insane,” I mutter to myself when I see the transaction in my banking app.
It’s not even pending. It went straight through. I’ve paid for the service and for my fiancée’s plane ticket.
“Not again,” I say to the empty air. “I can’t do this again.”
My leg no longer bothers me. My headache is a distant memory. Rubbing at my chest I can’t ease the ache no medicine can touch.
I should message her and politely rescind the proposal. She probably has twenty other men messaging her and doesn’t need me randomly hopping into her inbox with an unsolicited offer of marriage. Then my eyes slide back to the notification bar I haven’t bothered to clear.
