“C’mon, lassie. Just one dance.”

His voice scratching the air. A half-burnt cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, its ash glowing faintly in the lanternlight. Despite the dust on his boots and the years carved into his jawline, there was a boyish gleam in his eyes. Mischievous. He held out a calloused hand, rough and warm from the heat of the firepit nearby.

You stood stiff as a fence post, every line of your posture trained and proper. The desert wind teased the hem of your travel skirts and tugged at the edges of your neatly pinned hair. You weren’t made for this place—and the people here knew it. Even your practical riding jacket, tailored in fine London fabric, looked like it had wandered too far from its drawing room.

You had come to settle a simple inheritance: an aging manor perched on the edge of this dusty town, left to you by an uncle you barely remembered. You were meant to catalog it, liquidate it, and leave before the heat baked through your patience.

The papers said it was yours. But the people? They didn’t agree—not entirely. And this cowboy in particular had made it his mission to remind you what the manor meant to them.

“If you’re stickin’ around for two months,” he said, voice low and coaxing, “you might as well dance once or twice. Could help loosen that corset of yours.”