“I Didn’t Come to Marry Anyone” — Until One Cowboy Changed Her Entire Life

Chapter 2

Red Hollow on a Saturday afternoon was a small theater of judgment dressed up as a town.

Evelyn walked its main street with her chin up and her eyes straight forward, aware of every turned head and swallowed comment. That’s the Harper girl. Heard her brother’s sending her away to work. Probably for the best — nothing left for her here anyway. She’d helped these people’s mothers during harvest. She’d brought soup when their children were sick. She’d spent her whole life being useful to this town, and not one of them had offered a single thing in return when the Harpers started going under.

Poverty was contagious in places like Red Hollow. Nobody wanted to catch it.

Mrs. Patterson’s boarding house was different. The older woman answered the door before Evelyn had finished knocking, as if she’d been watching from the window. Her weathered face held the closest thing to genuine sympathy Evelyn had seen in months.

“Come in, child. I’ve been expecting you.”