They Sent Him the Plainest Bride in the Catalog—So He Sent All the Others Back

The agency had sent him the catalog with the implicit understanding that a man of his particular situation — the acreage, the isolation, the reputation for being difficult — would take what he could get and be practical about it, and they had been somewhat surprised when he had returned the first three selections with brief notes that gave no explanation and required none since the decision was his to make. By the fourth return they had begun to wonder about him in the specific way that agencies wonder about clients who are not behaving according to the anticipated pattern, and when they sent the fifth catalog they had included, almost as an afterthought, the woman they considered their least placeable — plain in the way the agency meant when it used that word, which was to say not decorative, not immediately striking, not the kind of woman who photographs well in catalog conditions. He looked at her page for a long time and then he set the catalog down and wrote his reply the same afternoon, and the agency received his acceptance with the particular bewilderment of people who have been in the business long enough to think they understand what men want and have just been presented with evidence to the contrary. She arrived on a Tuesday with no expectation of being anyone's first choice because she had never been anyone's first choice and had organized her understanding of herself accordingly, and he met her at the road and looked at her in person the way he had looked at her photograph and said the thing he said, which was not what she had prepared herself to hear. Watch what a man sees in a woman the agency considered unplaceable — and find out what he told her on that road that made her understand she had been chosen first, and specifically, and without reservation. #WesternDrama #FrontierStory #MailOrderBride #SlowBurnLove #CowboyLove #UnexpectedTenderness