A Wonderful Fate for Warm Hearts (Preview)

Prologue

The sound of the screen door slamming reverberated through the house so loudly that the window frames through several rooms shook in response. It wasn’t left to sit for long though, not even half a minute passing before it was yanked open and slammed again, left clattering as the sound of loud boots followed the second slam. 

“Ashley Villa, you march yourself back here right this minute!” Mr. Villa hollered, his face growing redder and redder as he followed his daughter from the back door across the kitchen. 

Ashley snorted, her frame going stock still in the doorway leading into the hall. She was madder than a wet hen, but she wasn’t yet mad enough to dare outright disobey her daddy… even if she wanted to. It was obvious that she wanted to with the way she kept her back to him, her shoulders so tense that a book could have been balanced on them. 

The third time that the screen door opened was quieter, though somehow even more jarring because of it. 

Mrs. Villa was a stately woman, with long blonde curls and big brown eyes. The story was that half of Chicago’s eligible bachelors had lined up to try for her hand at her debutante ball, but her husband was always quick to follow it up with the fact that that was only because they hadn’t known what a harsh taskmistress she really was.

Her heels clicking across the wood floor stopped Mr. Villa mid going to holler at his daughter again and it made Ashley freeze even further. Her eyes closed at her mother’s sigh, her fingers curling into fists in front of her as she fought the split urge to either hightail it out of the room entirely or turn and face them head on. 

Ashley had to admit that she was more tempted to hightail it than anything else. 

“Why don’t we all lower our voices before our guests hear us?” Mrs. Villa asked reasonably, the bite hidden just beneath the pleasant tenor of her voice leaving little room for any argument. 

“Our guests are why I’m in here,” Mr. Villa groused, his golden mustache bristling as Ashley finally turned to face her parents with a grim set to her lips. Her daddy took one look at the set of her features and threw his hands up, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he clearly fought his temper in favor of following his wife’s direction. “You just embarrassed your mother and I walking off like that.” 

“I embarrassed you?” Ashley repeated aghast, her blue eyes flashing as they finally met her father’s gray gaze. “You-” 

“Volume, Ashley,” Mrs. Villa interjected, that sweet-as-honey voice sharpening somewhat further as her eyes, so like her daughter’s, narrowed. “Your father, while not approaching this correctly, is absolutely right. How do you think it looks on us for you to leave mid-conversation without excusing yourself?” 

Somehow with just those few words, she put both Mr. Villa and Ashley into their places, her hand lifting and resting on Mr. Villa’s arm almost as if to moderate him through touch alone. 

Ashley looked between her two parents in disbelief, that same outrage and hurt that had made her flee the ‘tea party’ her mother had been hosting in their garden resurfacing even more sharply. “Who’s to say I didn’t excuse myself?” she finally managed to ask, her words stiff from how hard she had to fight from saying anything else. 

“The look on the poor boy’s face was enough, Ashley,” Mr. Villa grumbled, shaking his head as if he were disappointed in her. “You had no right-” 

“I had no right?” Ashley cut him off, unable to hold back the torrent of words that had been knocking about behind her clenched teeth any longer. “They aren’t my guests! I didn’t invite them here! You told me that you were hosting a tea party, that it was a social event to welcome Stacey Evers home, not a breeding ground to introduce me to the eligible bachelors still in town again!” 

She knew that she’d spoken too emotionally by the shuttered expressions of distaste that both her parents seemed to take at her outburst. It was unladylike and presumptuous for her to raise her voice in such a way, and she could hear her mama reminding her of such without her ever having to open her mouth to do so. Emotional outbursts didn’t get her anywhere with her parents and she knew that, but it had just been too much. 

“Oh, calm down, Ashley.” Mrs. Villa sighed, snapping the fan hanging off of her wrist not ‘holding her husband back’ open. “You’re being dramatic.” She wafted the fan in front of her face lazily, eying Ashley narrowly despite how nicely she spoke. 

Mr. Villa didn’t adhere so tightly to the rules of decorum being that they were alone in the house still. “So what if that was the intention?” he rebutted, sounding disparaging at Ashley’s reaction to it. “You are nineteen years old Ashley-”

“Well past the age that looking for a suitable match would be offensive, even by the most liberal of views!” Mrs. Villa tacked on. “I don’t know why you’d accuse us of such a thing regardless. It’s a tea party, there are plenty of families out there-” 

“Plenty of families with young men my age,” Ashley interrupted her mother with a pointed raise of her brows. “Stacey Evers is the only other eligible lady out there and she’s already taken with Billy Vickers. It couldn’t be more obvious! You invited the Broughs, the Kellans, Mr. and Mrs. Johnston! All whose sons attended with them.” 

“Oh, please, Ashley.” Mr. Villa threw his hands up, shrugging out from under his wife’s hold to pace a few feet away. “So what if we had? It isn’t done, this game that you’re trying to play. Dillion Brough is a perfectly acceptable match, and you left him standing out there looking like a fool all because of what? You don’t like that you might still have so many suitors even despite how hard you’ve worked to chase them all away?” 

“So, it was that you were inviting them here because of their eligibility then?” Ashley challenged, her shoulders rounding as she fought to keep her voice even. “Or was it that I’m being dramatic? Which one is it?” 

Mr. Villa lifted a hand, one finger raised in warning as he took a step towards Ashley with a frown, but whatever he had to say to her was cut off by the timely clanging of the screen door a fourth time. 

The younger girl who stood in front of it looked warily between the three of them gathered on the other side of the kitchen, her nose wrinkling as she shifted from one foot to the other. She looked like another younger version of Mrs. Villa as well, but with Mr. Villa’s darker coloring and all the awkwardness of prepubescence besides. 

“Catherine, what is it?” Mr. Villa asked irritably, dropping his hand and straightening. 

“Mr. Tanner was wondering if there were any more of those tea cakes,” Catherine squeaked, clearly not wanting to be in the middle of whatever was taking place between Ashley and her parents. “I told him I didn’t know, that I would ask, but I didn’t see any more outside and I thought I could come to check in here, but I didn-” 

“Tell Mr. Tanner they’ll be out shortly,” Mrs. Villa cut through Catherine’s rambling firmly, but not unkindly. “And straighten your skirts, you look as if you ran the whole way here.” 

Ashley had to bite back a smile at Catherine’s quick grin confirming that she had done just that. 

Catherine only nodded, turning back on her heel and rushing through the door, already running before it had even closed behind her. 

Mrs. Villa gave a world-weary sigh at the sight of it, lifting her hand to smooth the skin between her brows before turning back to Ashley with that same stern look. “You can be as upset as you like, Ashley. I’m sure the whole of Chicago knows your opinion on marriage and the men who have already come calling to court you. Your father is right though, you’re nineteen. It’s high time you put away such fantasies about romance and prince charming. There are plenty of young men out there, and plenty still that didn’t get to make it today.” 

Mr. Villa nodded adamantly with his wife, only looking surprised when she turned while speaking to move back into the kitchen, pulling out a covered tray of what Ashley would dare to guess would be more tea cakes. 

“Stop challenging these boys so much. Stop making them feel inferior and being so rude. Find someone that you like well enough to at least consider the prospect of marriage with… Or your father and I are going to have to decide for you.” Mrs. Villa didn’t even look up as she uttered the proclamation, missing the way that Ashely sagged back into the doorframe behind her entirely. 

“When you’re ready you need to make yourself presentable again and then come outside,” Mrs. Villa tacked on, glancing over at Ashley with a small frown that was quickly smoothed over into a smile. 

Or maybe she was just ignoring it. 

Ashley didn’t know and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to, watching her mother lift a finger to stop her husband from adding anything onto it and instead gesturing for him to get the door for her. She didn’t wait for Ashely to respond, she didn’t even give her proper time to process the very real threat that her words had been… She just took the tray of cookies and Mr. Villa and left Ashley to process it by herself. 

Something that Ashley was finding extremely difficult to do. 

The silence of the kitchen felt even more oppressive than the argument that had come before it. Ashley’s chest tightened as she stared at the still screen on the back porch and tried not to cry. 

It wasn’t romanticism that stopped her from accepting the offers she’d received so far, not in the way that her parents thought at least. Ashley just found the whole idea of marrying and spending the rest of her life with someone for money and status deplorable. Her mother and father had been an odd, lucky match that actually suited one another, but even they weren’t happy. Not in the way that Ashley dreamed of being. 

She wanted the love she saw from Mr. and Mrs. Elbridge in church. The way they held one another’s hands still well into their eighties, a flower always in her hair from him picking it on their walk over on Sunday mornings. She wanted warmth and to be seen. 

The men her parents paraded in front of her as choices saw her well enough with their eyes. They saw Ashely Villa from a well-respected family and known to be a beauty. They saw the girl who played piano at church and sang in the choir, who taught Sunday school, and followed all of the rules. 

They saw the image that her parents had crafted of her to be seen as a good match. 

They didn’t value her wit or her intellect. They found her questions rude and invasive, they shied away from talking about anything of substance, and God forbid she bring up religion or reading. Those were men’s subjects. 

Her chest felt hollow as she stared at the screen door, her vision so focused that it was almost blurred. 

Her parents thought that they were doing her a kindness, that they were taking care of her. It was just how things were done. 

The very words felt acidic even as Ashley thought them. 

She didn’t want to do things how they were done. She didn’t want to force a smile onto her lips and rejoin the party outside as if her entire world weren’t being called into question and her future happiness leveraged off of the choice of others. 

She just didn’t see how she had any other choice but to do so.

Chapter One

Dillion Brough was the kind of man that the young women of Chicago gathered in groups to watch at social events, giggling from behind their hands and daring one another to go up and talk to him. He was charming and tall, with nearly platinum blonde hair and a pair of gray eyes that the girls liked to say always seemed as if they were laughing. He was well-mannered, well-read, and checked all of the boxes for what Mr. and Mrs. Villa would consider an appropriate match for Ashley. 

It was how she found herself seated across from him at the picnic at church the Sunday following her mother’s proclamation. 

She could practically feel the other girls’ eyes on her, envious and shrewd, following her every move- but she didn’t think that a single one of them knew how much more glad she would be to trade places with them than they her. 

Dillion Brough was every girl’s dream. 

And Ashley found him absolutely revolting. 

“So I told him,” he drawled, caught up in the same story she’d tried zoning out of listening to for the past ten minutes or more. “I told him either he paid the man or I’d make him do it,” he said proudly, looking at her as if waiting for the round of excited praise he was used to. 

It was all Ashley could do to summon a small smile, nodding in the hopes that he would accept that as her answer. 

“Did you hear what I said?” Dillion asked her, his frustration beginning to wear through his tone as his gaze narrowed slightly. 

“Oh, yes, of course,” Ashley murmured, tucking a stray wave of her strawberry blonde hair behind one ear as she fought off the yawn tickling the back of her throat. “And did he?” 

“Did he what?” Dillion asked, looking perplexed. 

“Pay the man.” 

Dillion blinked, looking at Ashley almost as if he were questioning her intelligence. “Of course, he did. I told him to.” It was said so simply as if it were just to be expected, but it only further highlighted one of the many reasons Ashley found Dillion to be such a bore. His overly inflated sense of self.  

“Ah…” Ashley trailed off, trying to find anything worthwhile to contribute or even anything that would send him off on another tangent. But she came up short. And what was worse was that he was looking at her as if he were waiting for her to speak again, giving her the floor for the first time since their parents had ushered them to the table together. 

“It’s important that a man’s reputation precedes him,” Dillion said after a moment of awkward silence, once more looking impressed with himself as he reached for his glass of lemonade. “If people don’t know that you mean business…” He trailed off importantly, looking at Ashley from beneath his brows as if waiting for her to swoon. 

She had to fight the urge to grimace instead, forcing her smile to stay on her face for appearance’s sake alone. “What do you think you would have done had he not paid him?” she asked suddenly, impetuousness getting the better of her. 

Dillion’s smile fell, his brows furrowing as if it wasn’t something he had ever considered. “What do you mean?” he asked stupidly. 

“If he hadn’t paid the man, as you’d demanded that he do, what would you have done? You said you’d make him do it. I suppose I’m wondering how you would have gone about that, given that he had a gun and you were unarmed.” She trailed off, her own brows furrowing as she thought about his story in earnest for the first time. Many of the ones he’d told her over the past few years had sounded far-fetched, but none of them had been quite as grandiose as this last one. 

“I would have forced him to pay,” Dillion said, his face flushing somewhat as he became flustered. “Just as I said.” 

“I know,” Ashley mused, resting her chin in her hand as she bent her elbow on the table for support. “I’m just wondering how you would have made him, exactly? What was your plan?” 

Dillion shifted under her astute gaze, his once charming smile a disquieted frown as he shifted on the bench he was sitting on. “I didn’t rightly have one, I suppose,” he said uncomfortably. “It doesn’t matter anyhow, as just my threat of doing anything was enough to make him listen.” 

Ashley nodded, though her face was still troubled as she thought back to his story again, her lips pursing somewhat to the side. “Hadn’t you said that he was from out of town though? And he’d only been here, what, a day? So how could he have heard of your reputation enough to take you so seriously?” 

Dillion’s mood seemed to shift in the space of the breath it took her to take after speaking, his eyes narrowing further and his lips hardening into a thin line. “You know, Ashley, this is why your mother and father had to ask mine if I’d sit with you today. You ask too many questions, always trying to undermine the men who talk to you.” His words were sharper even than his gaze, his eyebrows drawn contemptuously as he looked over at her. 

Ashley sat back in silence, not having meant to offend him, but being reminded all over again why she had been so adverse to her parents seating her with him in the first place. “I was only trying to better understand what you had said,” she answered carefully, trying to keep the bite from her own words where he had failed with his. “And who am I to be upset if someone finds my asking questions to be undermining when I’m just asking to better understand things?” 

“Timothy 2:11-14 says, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet,” Dillion snapped, that ‘laughter’ that all the girls so valued in his eyes becoming sharper and meaner with each passing second. 

“Maybe you should first remember that that very same verse starts with, ‘Let a woman learn’,” Ashley murmured, dropping her gaze to keep him from seeing the daggers concealed within it. 

“In submissiveness!” Dillion argued, flustered once more by the lack of response that she had given him to what he had obviously thought to be an irrefutable argument. 

Ashley’s smile was so sweet it could have been spun from sugar when she looked back up at him, her chin lifting out of her hand as she dropped both of them to her skirts to keep her demeanor as pleasant as she was supposed to. She could feel her nails digging into her palms even through the fabric of her skirts though and it was all that she could do not to tell Dillion just what she thought of him, unfiltered. 

Instead, she took a page out of her mama’s book, keeping her face as serene as possible while she shrugged. “Submission is earned in a marriage, not given to every man that asks for it,” she answered calmly, her smile in place through every word. “I think my mama is calling me over to the drinks table though, if you’ll excuse me for just a moment.” 

Ashley hadn’t ever gotten out of a situation so fast in her entire life, sliding from the bench and hurrying over to her mama, who most certainly hadn’t been calling her, but was standing over by the drink table watching her even before she approached. 

Mrs. Villa’s smile was tight as she took Ashely’s empty glass as she came abreast of her, turning to fill it and allowing Ashley to come to stand beside her with a barely withheld sigh. 

“You don’t seem to be getting along with Mr. Brough,” Mrs. Villa commented quietly as she took the ladle from the bowl and began refilling the glass she’d just taken. “It seemed to be going so well too…”

“Only when he was talking,” Ashley said under her breath, instantly regretting being so forward with her mother as she caught the side-eye her mother gave her for being so. 

“You can’t find something wrong with every suitor, Ashley,” Mrs. Villa said patiently, handing Ashley her cup back and turning back to look at the gathered congregation spread out on the church lawn. 

The children played, running back and forth at the furthest of the crowd, the rest of the young adults and older littered among the tables that had been set up for the occasion. In any other circumstance on any other day Ashely would have smiled to see it, the sun a welcoming sort of warm even as bright as it was. 

“He tells tall tales,” Ashley murmured after a moment, finding the nicest way to try and explain it to her mother. “He’s more interested in listening to himself speak than anything I have to say, and he misquotes scripture to best suit his own purposes. Mama, I’m not just finding problems where there are none. He’s awful!” 

Mrs. Villa listened to it all with a pleasant smile still on her face, looking out over the grounds herself as Ashley spoke and lifting one shoulder as she finished in a kind of half-shrug. “There will always be faults of character,” she offered wisely, though without the censure her earlier words had held. “It’s easier when you’re their ages,” she continued thoughtfully after a moment, nodding over to her sisters Catherine and Justine playing with the other children. “There’s less responsibility then.”

Ashley couldn’t help but agree with her, watching as Justine tugged on one of Catherine’s braids and went running off almost wistfully. There was no talk of suitors or eligibility weighing them down yet. “I don’t want to marry Dillion Brough,” she confessed, her voice cracking from the fierceness of the emotion behind it. 

Mrs. Villa nodded, reaching out and clasping Ashely’s wrist in a surprisingly public show of comfort. “Then don’t marry him,” she said simply, her blue eyes connecting with Ashley’s and seeming to stare straight into her. “Find someone else to talk to, find another suitor who wants to court you to entertain. It’s your decision, Ashley.” 

The hope she’d bolstered with her words fell flat in Ashley’s chest as she continued, her own frown breaking past the pleasantly neutral expression she had been trying to keep. She didn’t want to marry any of them. 

Before she could get so much as a word of that out though, her mother had taken her hand off of her arm. “You’re free to choose your own suitor, Ashley, for now. But what your father and I said has to stand. You can’t remain unmarried much longer here. Your reputation would be ruined, and ours with it. You have two weeks before we need to start deciding for you. Take your time, try to be less rigid.” 

There was a warmth to her words that just missed making its mark with Ashley. She stood as her mother walked off, colder in the wake of her attempt at comfort than she had been before it. What she said was kindly, and very likely good advice, but all that Ashley could focus on were the four words that were rolling around in her head like a barrel. 

You have two weeks… 

She’d thought that their threat was just that, an idle threat meant to make her more willing to cooperate with their matchmaking attempts. To hear that it was a very real thing and with a deadline? 

Ashley stared woodenly after her mother, Dillion Brough and his self-importance forgotten, as she tried to fight the impending panic her mother had brought on in so short of a conversation. 

You have two weeks…

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“A Wonderful Fate for Warm Hearts” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

Beauty seems to be the only social currency Ashley Villa possesses in the eyes of her peers. Her desperate pleas to be seen as something more than just a pretty face fortunately find a sympathetic ear to her friend who offers up an alternative to her parents’ plans. Ashley is all too eager to jump at it as she just knows that even a mail-order bride ad is better than marrying a rich man who never looks past her social worth. Hopefully, the man who answers will overlook her appearance and just let her be…

Could this stranger ever ignore her looks and stare right into her generous heart?

Josiah McKnight isn’t looking for love after his past romantic failures. All he wants is to live a quiet life with his family. When tragedy strikes and leaves him with a niece and nephew to care for, a wife seems to be exactly what he needs. A woman hand-picked from across the country to help him settle the sudden turmoil seems like the perfect uncomplicated solution. However, when he sents off for a helping hand, the woman that arrives at his door appears to have more than that to offer.

In spite of all that life throws at them, can this be a time to bring them together?

With a criminal with a vendetta thrown into the mix and two grief-ridden children, can they even find the chance to find their happiness? Both Ashley and Josiah find themselves drawn to one another, but is that enough? Or will the weight they’re shouldering force them apart instead of binding them together? Can they overcome their differences and reach salvation through love?

“A Wonderful Fate for Warm Hearts” is a historical western romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

Get your copy from Amazon!