Chapter 1 - The Morning He Gave Me a Choice
My father did not shout.
That would have been easier.
He stood beside Roman’s black truck with his coffee going cold, watching the man who had just carried his only daughter around a dance floor.
“Put her down,” Dad said.
Roman did.
Carefully.
My remaining boot touched the gravel first. Then my bare foot landed on a folded jacket Roman had dropped beneath it.
Even drunk, I noticed that.
“I appear to have become engaged,” I told my father.
“You appear to have had enough wine.”
“Both things can be true.”
Dad did not smile.
Roman stepped back, leaving space between us.
“She needs water and a ride home,” he said. “Not an argument.”
Dad’s eyes narrowed.
“I know what my daughter needs.”
“Then we agree.”
Tess materialized beside me with my missing boot and the expression of someone preparing to remember this evening forever.
I let her help me into Dad’s truck.
Before he shut my door, Roman bent slightly.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “you can tell me whether you still want that dance.”
“Wedding,” I corrected.
His mouth moved at one corner.
“Start with breakfast.”
I slept badly, dreamed of polished shoes, and woke with a headache that felt personal.
Downstairs, my mother was making pancakes.
Dad sat at the table.
My phone lay beside his coffee.
On the screen was a photograph Tess had sent.
Me on Roman’s shoulders.
One arm raised.
His face turned upward, smiling.
“Oh, no,” I whispered.
Mom glanced over.
“Depends which part you mean.”
Dad pushed the phone toward me.
“Roman Belandi.”
“I heard that much.”
“You know the family?”
I knew rumors.
Trucking companies. Warehouses. Private security. Land holdings across three counties. Men who lowered their voices when the name came up.
At twenty-seven, I was old enough to recognize that rumors sometimes exaggerated danger.
I was also old enough to know they sometimes made it sound smaller.
“He didn’t hurt me,” I said.
“That’s a low standard for a husband.”
“I’m not marrying him.”
Mom turned a pancake.
“Excellent. Perhaps tell him before I order flowers.”
At nine, someone knocked.
Roman stood on the porch holding my grandmother’s empty mason jar.
No guards beside him.
No flowers.
Just a man in a dark sweater looking strangely uncomfortable beneath our sagging porch roof.
Dad answered.
The silence between them could have frozen the orchard.
“I came to return this,” Roman said.
“And?”
“To apologize if last night embarrassed your daughter.”
I stepped into the hallway.
“You didn’t make me drink peach wine.”
“No. But I encouraged an audience.”
Dad looked between us.
Finally, Mom called him into the kitchen with a firmness that had ended thirty years of arguments.
Roman remained outside.
I joined him on the porch.
In daylight, he looked less like a dangerous legend and more like a tired man who had forgotten to sleep.
“I remember what I said,” I told him.
“I assumed you might.”
“I was drunk.”
“Yes.”
“So it wasn’t a real proposal.”
“No.”
The quick agreement surprised me.
“What about no take backs?”
“That was a joke, Daisy. Not a contract.”
Something inside my chest loosened.
He held out the jar.
“You don’t owe me breakfast. Or a dance. Or another conversation.”
I took it.
“What if I want breakfast?”
“Then I’d like that.”
We went to a diner twelve miles away.
I drove myself.
He arrived alone.
For an hour, nobody discussed his reputation.
He asked about my degree.
Not the inn.
Not whether I could cook.
My degree.
When I told him about the Seattle cooperative, he asked why I had turned it down.
“I haven’t turned it down.”
“How long have they been waiting?”
“Eleven months.”
He nodded slowly.
“That’s a long time to leave a door open.”
I disliked how accurately he had found the bruise.
“You always talk like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like somebody hiding a useful thought inside an insult.”
He laughed.
There it was again.
That surprising warmth.
Over the next three weeks, we had breakfast twice, walked the orchard once, and argued about whether expensive shoes belonged anywhere near livestock.
He did not offer to buy the inn.
He did not send men to repair our roof.
When I asked why, he looked at me.
“You haven’t asked.”
I began to understand how much of my life had been arranged by people who assumed they knew what I wanted.
Dad remained watchful.
One evening, after Roman left, he found me stacking breakfast plates.
“Be careful,” he said.
“I am.”
“No. You’re being hopeful. They aren’t the same.”
I set down the plates.
“What do you know about him?”
Dad looked toward the dark window.
For a moment, I thought he would answer.
Instead, he said, “Some men bring weather with them.”
I should have asked what storm he remembered.
Instead, I looked outside.
May you like
Roman was standing beside his truck, waiting to make sure the porch light stayed on.
And I waved.
