Days before Christmas, a mail-order bride arrived at a dying ranch with only her father’s hammer — then saved the man who had already given up

Chapter 2

Ezra woke to the sound of metal on metal, and for a moment he thought he was dreaming his father.

He lay still, disoriented, the embers in the fire grate burning low. The sound came again — deliberate, rhythmic, unhurried. Not the loose clatter of something falling. A strike. A working strike, the kind that said somebody knew exactly what they were doing.

He pulled on his boots and coat and went out into the star-faded dark. Smoke rose from the forge. The forge. The one he’d written off as rusted and dead. He crossed the yard, and the glow of it came up to meet him, orange and alive, heat wavering in the frozen air.

Wren stood at the anvil, hammer in hand, working a piece of iron that glowed white-hot. Her sleeves were rolled up past her elbows. Sweat stood on her forehead despite the cold. The forge had been cleaned — tools that had rusted in place for years stood in a line on a bench she must have dragged from the shed. The firebox had been rebuilt with brick she’d scavenged from somewhere. The coal he’d called too damp to burn was feeding a steady flame.

She didn’t look up when he approached.

“What are you doing?” he asked.