Mail Order Bride: Not What He Expected (Mail Order Brides Book 1) by Annie Boone

Chapter One
     
    Lucy and Patricia sat together in Lucy’s room as they had done for most of their lives. As they pondered the twisting turns of love, romance, and marriage this conversation was slightly different than most of the others they’d had before on the subject. 
    “You’ve already had your wedding, Patricia,” Lucy reminded her dear friend.  “And it was a lovely event. I was honored to be your maid-of-honor. But I’m ready to get married myself. All I need is a handsome groom!”
    Lucy was a larger woman, but she had always had an unshakable confidence in herself. In addition to engaging conversation skills and an extensive array of homemaking talents, it was her confident spirit that had helped her to become a woman that made her family proud.
    Even still, over the years, despite having many friends and being quite popular in her circles, that confidence had become sorely shaken. Before her eighteenth birthday, Lucy was convinced that even though she was larger than most of the other girls her age, her personality and intellect would set her apart from the others. She believed that the man that she was destined to be with would see who she was inside and love her for it. The nosy people in town who did not know her very well often asked when she was going to marry. She usually just smiled in response, but those questions always unnerved her a little even though she knew she was a real catch.
    As her eighteenth year passed, quickly followed by her nineteenth, she was beginning to think that maybe she should have developed a husband finding plan. The men she would consider husband worthy weren’t interested in her.  Worse, they were marrying her friends and other available women in the area. The desirable single man population was most definitely declining.
    After the war, women outnumbered the men. With this shift, the remaining men had far more options than they ever had before. Maybe the war made everyone more sentimental. Instead of playing the field, everyone around her seemed to be getting proposals left and right, with Lucy being left out entirely.
    She began to feel the inevitable public disgrace of becoming a spinster looming. Her parents would still love her, of course, but they’d have to start thinking of reasons for why she was still unmarried. She would have to come up with her own set of excuses and practice them so they’d sound natural. The whole scenario was depressing. And very lonely sounding.
    Since she’d not had a man call on her or even look her way in many months, Lucy thought it was time to consider other options, besides conventional courtship.
    “I think that I need to figure something else out. I have no idea what I’ll come up with, but there’s no doubt it’s not happening for me around here,” Lucy sighed.
    Patricia responded in a most surprising way. “You know how starved the men out in the western frontier are for women. Why don’t you become a mail order bride?” Then she giggled a little.
    “It is not as though there would be any photographs to thwart me…” Lucy reasoned. “The catalogs only contain descriptions. That will help me share all my good qualities before he finds out about my, well, not so desirable attributes.”
    At this, Patricia reached out and held her hand.  She looked Lucy in the eyes and said, “Lucy, you’re a beautiful girl. I know you don’t see it that way, but you are.  And really, I’m only kidding about the mail order bride thing.” Then, realizing how dangerous the conversation had instantly become, she argued, “You don’t really want to leave your family and your life behind to marry a man you have never met. There are risks involved that I am sure you haven’t thought about.”
    Lucy smiled at her and shifted her eyes away, “Forgive me, but what life are you referring to? I have a mother and father, who, sad to say it, are getting up in age and so am I. This might be my last hope to find a relationship that will