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       One

      Dave Stafford needed a wife, and he wasn’t in any position to be choosy. He was thirty-seven and lived alone, more than thirty miles from the closest town. Buffalo Valley, North Dakota, was nothing to brag about, either. It had been a thriving community once upon a time, but not now, not with the virtual collapse of the farm economy. A lot of people had been forced to leave Buffalo Valley, abandoning homes and property, in search of jobs.

      Dave did all right, though. He owned three thousand acres and grew soybeans, sunflowers and wheat. The work was hard and his days were long, which didn’t leave much time for seeking female companionship. Compared to those pretty boys in magazine ads, Dave figured he wasn’t much to look at; however, he also figured that as a prospective husband, he wasn’t such a bad bargain. He was solvent and reasonably successful. He paid his bills on time and was clean (regular baths), healthy (all that fresh air) and without serious vices. None of that sounded very exciting, and he suspected it might not be enough of an endorsement to attract a woman, but it was all he had to offer.

      That was the reason he’d placed a personal ad in the Farmer’s Newsletter, a national publication. The wording hadn’t been easy. He’d spent almost a week writing and rewriting the few short lines, and in the end, he felt the direct approach seemed best and that was what he’d sent.

      LONELY FARMER SEEKS WIFE OF CHILD-BEARING AGE. PREFER NON-SMOKER. MUST LIKE COUNTRY LIFE. I’M HONEST, FAIR AND DECENT. FOURTH-GENERATION FARMER AND PROUD OF IT.

      He’d tried to fit in a line that stated he wasn’t interested in a woman who’d had parts of her body pierced or tattooed, but couldn’t think of a way to say it. The ad had appeared in the singles column a month earlier, and despite the effort that had gone into writing it, he’d received only one response.

      One. Her name was Emma Fowler, and she was a thirty-year-old woman from Seattle. She hadn’t mentioned how she’d happened upon the ad, but considering everything else he still had to learn about her, that didn’t seem important. Her job—routing delivery trucks for a produce supplier—might have something to do with it. He could picture a copy of the Farmer’s Newsletter lying around the lunchroom and maybe that was how she’d found it.

      What was important was that they were going to meet that very day, late in the afternoon since her plane was getting into Grand Forks around four. Dave’s stomach had been tied up in knots all week as he anticipated this dinner date. Well, he supposed he could refer to it as a “date.” He’d shaved, had his mother take a pair of scissors to his hair and ordered a new shirt. This was it—as cleaned-up as he got. He’d sent Emma his photograph, taken for this purpose by a friend, another farmer named Gage Sinclair. Dave had been standing in front of his farmhouse, which looked a little shabby in the bright light of an April morning. He was six feet tall with wide shoulders and a sun-reddened neck, and he’d been wearing a cap that covered his thick dark hair and shaded his brown eyes. She’d mailed him her photograph, too. She was fairly ordinary in appearance, a little on the short side, but that didn’t bother him. Her hair was dark blond and even from a distance he could tell that her eyes were a pretty shade of green. He wasn’t looking for some stunning beauty—and didn’t expect to find one. What he wanted was a woman with simple tastes, someone who could appreciate quiet, who didn’t need to be constantly entertained and wasn’t afraid of a little solitude. Someone who shared his values, understood the importance of family and community. A woman who’d sit beside him on the porch and listen to birdsong at dawn, watch the sunset, breathe in the good, rich smell of freshly turned earth. Simple pleasures.

      “You ready?” His mother checked him over one last time.

      “Ready as I’ll ever be.” She clearly considered this meeting