Chapter 1: The Advertisement

The advertisement in the Billings Gazette was simple enough: “Cook wanted for ranch. Room and board provided. Must be good with children. Apply Jacobs Ranch, 10 miles west of Helena.”

Rebecca Milford had answered dozens of such advertisements in the six months since the bank foreclosed on her late parents’ boarding house. At twenty-three, she was considered a spinster by frontier standards—too old for courtship, too proud to become anyone’s charity case. But she could cook better than anyone in three territories, and she needed work desperately.

What the advertisement didn’t mention—what she wouldn’t discover until much later—was that she hadn’t been hired at all. She’d been chosen, carefully selected not by the stern, weathered rancher who barely spoke two words during her interview, but by his six-year-old daughter who’d been watching from behind the kitchen door with eyes far too old for her young face.

The revelation would come eventually. But on that bright September morning in 1883, as Rebecca climbed down from the supply wagon and surveyed the Jacobs Ranch for the first time, she knew only that she was grateful for employment and determined not to lose it.

The ranch wasn’t what she’d expected.

Most working ranches Rebecca had encountered were rough, purely functional places where beauty was an afterthought to survival. But as the wagon crested the final hill and the property came into view, she saw something different. The main house was a solid two-story structure built from honey-colored logs, with a wide porch wrapping around three sides. Whoever had built it had built it to last.

But what caught her attention immediately were the flower beds.

Roses climbed a weathered trellis beside the front steps. Black-eyed Susans nodded in the September breeze. Marigolds created borders of gold around the porch, their blooms still vibrant despite the advancing season. Someone had loved this place once. Someone had tried to make it beautiful.

“Jacobs place,” the wagon driver announced unnecessarily. He spat tobacco juice over the side. “You sure about this, Miss Milford? Pretty isolated out here. Nearest neighbor’s five miles down the valley.”

“I’m sure.” Rebecca’s voice was steadier than she felt.

She’d left Billings with everything she owned packed into two worn carpet bags—a humbling reminder of how far she’d fallen since her parents’ deaths. The boarding house had been her mother’s pride, her father’s life’s work. Losing it to the bank had felt like losing them all over again. Some nights, Rebecca still woke reaching for the familiar sounds of guests moving through hallways, of her mother humming in the kitchen, of her father’s deep laugh from the front desk.

But that life was gone. This was what remained: two carpet bags, forty-seven dollars in savings, and a job cooking for a widowed rancher and his daughter in the Montana Territory.

It would have to be enough.

Silas Jacobs emerged from the barn as the wagon rolled to a stop. He was tall and lean, probably in his late twenties, with sun-darkened skin and eyes the color of weathered denim. His dark hair needed cutting, and he moved with the careful economy of motion that came from years of hard physical labor. He wasn’t handsome in any conventional sense—his features were too rough, too careworn—but there was something solid about him. Something dependable.

“Miss Milford?” His voice was deep and rough from disuse, as if he wasn’t accustomed to conversation.

“Yes, Mr. Jacobs. Thank you for the opportunity.” Rebecca climbed down from the wagon before he could offer assistance. She’d learned early that accepting help often came with strings attached.

Silas nodded, studying her with an intensity that made her want to fidget. She knew what he was seeing: a woman of medium height with dark blonde hair pulled back in a sensible bun, brown eyes that held both intelligence and weariness. Her simple gray traveling dress had been mended more times than she cared to count. She was plain and practical—exactly what a ranch cook should be.

“Can you start today?” he asked abruptly.

“Of course. If you’ll show me the kitchen.”

A blur of motion interrupted them.

A small girl in a faded blue calico dress burst from the house and skidded to a stop on the porch, staring at Rebecca with wide eyes. She had her father’s dark hair, but someone else’s delicate features. And those eyes—deep brown and impossibly expressive—held a mixture of hope and fear that made Rebecca’s heart clench.