Widow’s Daughter Only Had $1 for Her Date—Millionaire Cowboy’s Son at Next Table Watched Her, Until…

Chapter 15

Kora met Silas at the oak tree the next morning. The autumn wind was cold, carrying the first sharp hint of winter snow. He was already there, his hands in his pockets, his breath misting in the chill air.

“I thought you would not come,” he said.

“I almost did not.” She stood a few feet away from him, the distance between them feeling like a canyon. “Your father threatened me, Silas. He threatened my scholarship. My family’s home. Everything we have.”

“I know. I was there.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

Silas stepped closer. “I am going to choose you.”

Kora’s heart stopped. “What?”

“I am going to choose you.” He took her hands in his. They were warm, despite the cold. “I do not know how yet. I do not know what it will cost. But I know that I cannot go back to being the person I was before I met you. I cannot sit at my father’s table and pretend that the invisible hands do not exist. I cannot pretend that you do not exist.”

“Silas, your father owns everything. He will destroy you.”

“Then let him.” Silas’s voice was steady, certain. “I would rather be destroyed by choosing what is right than survive by choosing what is easy.”

Kora looked at him — at the boy who had everything and was willing to risk it all for a girl with a single silver dollar. She thought of her grandfather’s words. He is not his father.

“Then we fight,” she said.

She told him about her grandfather’s idea. The scholarship could be challenged, but it could also be defended publicly — the town council would not dare revoke a scholarship that had been earned through merit, not when the whole town knew about the situation. The loan on the cabin could be called in, but there were other banks, other towns, other ways. And if all else failed, there was the Boon name — a name that still carried weight in certain circles, a name that Harrison Montgomery had not anticipated.

“I have an idea,” Silas said, a slow smile spreading across his face. “But it is going to take some courage.”