The Mountain Man’s Mail Order Dilemma (Mountain Man Sanctuary Season Two)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

SULLIVAN

Three days after burying my grandmother, I find the letter.

It's tucked between a book of half-finished crossword puzzles and a bottle of peach schnapps in the top drawer of her writing desk.

The desk itself is older than me by a decade, solid oak, built by my grandfather before I was born.

Gran kept everything important in that desk.

Tax receipts. The deed to this land. A photo of my mother holding me as a baby, back when she still had the look of someone who planned to stay.

The envelope is addressed to something called Sanctuary Match Services. Return address in Vancouver. There's a second envelope underneath it, already opened, with a confirmation letter dated six months ago.

Six months. She signed me up for a mail order bride service six months before she died and didn't say a word about it.

I read the letter twice because the first time my brain refuses to process what my eyes are telling it.

Dear Mr. Cross, we are pleased to confirm your enrollment in our Sanctuary Match program.

Based on the detailed profile submitted on your behalf by Mrs. Edith Cross, we have identified a highly compatible match.

Your matched partner will arrive on the date specified below.

Please ensure accommodations are prepared.

The date specified below is tomorrow.

Tomorrow. Tuesday.

My hands are shaking. Not from grief, though there's plenty of that sitting heavy in my chest like a stone that won't dissolve. From something closer to disbelief, edged with anger you can only feel toward someone you love too much to stay mad at.

"Gran," I say to the empty kitchen. "What the hell did you do?"

The kitchen doesn't answer. Neither does the rest of the cabin, which has been painfully quiet since the hospital called three weeks ago to tell me Edith Cross had passed peacefully in her sleep at the age of eighty-two.

Peacefully. Like there's a peaceful version of losing the last person on earth who gives a damn whether you wake up in the morning.

Outside, one of the Herefords lows from the south pasture.

The sound carries through the open window, mixing with the creak of the porch swing Gran used to sit on every evening with her schnapps and her crosswords, yelling clues at me through the screen door like I had any idea what a seven-letter word for "obstinate" was.

I did. It was "willful." She taught me that one when I was nine.

The confirmation letter has a phone number at the bottom. Customer service, it says, available Monday through Friday, eight to five Pacific. It's four thirty on a Monday afternoon. Cutting it close but manageable.

I grab my phone off the counter, punch in the number, then lean against the kitchen doorframe while it rings.

The cabin smells like coffee I burned two hours ago.

My coffee has always been terrible. Gran used to say it could strip paint off a barn.

She wasn't wrong, but she drank it every morning anyway.

"Sanctuary Match Services, this is Rebecca, how may I help you today?"

Rebecca sounds pleasant. Professional. Like someone who answers phones for a living and does it well.

"My name is Sullivan Cross. My grandmother apparently signed me up for your service without my knowledge, and I need to cancel."

Brief pause. Keyboard clicking. "Let me pull up your file, Mr. Cross. One moment."

More clicking. The Hereford lows again. My coffee is going cold on the counter because I forgot about it, which is fine because it tasted like motor oil mixed with regret anyway.

"I have your file here, Mr. Cross. It looks like your match is scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning. Is that correct?"

"That's the problem, Rebecca."

"I understand your concern. Unfortunately, our cancellation policy requires sixty days' written notice prior to the scheduled arrival date."

Sixty days. Written notice. My grandmother died three weeks ago. The letter was in her desk. Tomorrow is sixteen hours from now. None of these numbers work in my favor.

"Rebecca." My voice comes out flat. Controlled.

The voice I use on a spooked heifer. "My grandmother, who enrolled me, is dead.

She passed three weeks ago. She didn't tell me about any of this.

I'm standing in her kitchen right now holding a letter I just found, and the match she arranged is apparently arriving in sixteen hours. "

Another pause. Longer this time.

"I'm very sorry for your loss, Mr. Cross."

"Thank you. Now can we cancel?"

"The policy is firm, I'm afraid. Once a match has been confirmed and travel arrangements finalized, cancellation within the sixty-day window requires the matched partner's written consent as well. Your partner has already departed their point of origin."

Already departed. Already on a bus or a train or whatever Sanctuary Match uses to deliver humans to other humans who didn't ask for them.

Already heading toward a town and a cabin and a man who has nothing to offer anyone right now except bad coffee, a freezer full of stew, and enough grief to fill every room in this house twice over.

"This is insane," I tell Rebecca, though the word I actually want to use would get me disconnected.

"I understand this is unexpected. Many of our clients find that keeping an open mind leads to wonderful connections."

"Rebecca."

"Sir?"

"My grandmother signed me up for this behind my back. She's gone. I'm in no position to be somebody's match. Can you call the woman and explain? Redirect her somewhere else?"

"Our ethical guidelines require that both parties meet before any reassignment. The matched partner has invested significant preparation into this transition. We can't simply redirect a person, Mr. Cross. She's not a package."

Fair point. Doesn't make me feel any better about it.

"So what you're telling me is that a woman I've never met is going to step off a bus tomorrow expecting a partner, and there's nothing I can do about it."

"What I'm telling you, Mr. Cross, is that your grandmother went to considerable effort to arrange this.

She filled out a forty-page compatibility profile.

She provided photographs. She wrote a personal letter to your match describing your character, your home, and your community.

Whatever her reasons were, she clearly wanted this for you. "

Forty pages. Photographs. A personal letter. Gran, who could barely send an email without calling me to ask which button was the enter key, sat down and wrote forty pages about me to a stranger.

My throat tightens. The anger drains out so fast it leaves me hollow, and in the space where it was, something worse settles in. The understanding that an eighty-two-year-old woman spent the last months of her life trying to make sure her grandson wouldn't be alone after she was gone.

Because she knew. She knew she was dying before any of us did, and instead of telling me, she called a matchmaking service in Vancouver and wrote forty pages about why I was worth loving.

"Mr. Cross? Are you still there?"

I clear my throat. Push off the doorframe. Look out the window at the mountains going gold with the last of the afternoon light, Gran's porch swing swaying in a breeze that has no business being this gentle.

"Yeah," I say. "I'm here."

"Would you like me to send you a copy of her letter? We have it on file."

"No." The word comes out rougher than intended. "No, just. What time does the bus get in?"

"Nine fifteen tomorrow morning. Crimson Hollow transit station."

Nine fifteen. Sixteen hours from now. A woman with a suitcase and a folder full of my dead grandmother's promises is going to step into the morning light of a town that isn't hers, looking for a man who isn't ready.

"I'll be there," I tell Rebecca, and hang up before she can wish me an open mind.

The cabin settles around me. Quiet. Gran's desk still sits open, her reading glasses on top of the crossword book, pencil tucked in the spine. She was working on a Thursday puzzle. Harder than Wednesday, easier than Friday. She always said Thursdays were the sweet spot.

I close the drawer. Pick up my cold coffee. Pour it down the drain.

Then I go outside to talk to the cattle about it, because they're the only ones left who'll listen.