He had sworn he would return rich—or not at all.
That promise had burned in Daniel Harper’s chest the night he left the valley, boots worn thin, pockets empty, pride wounded deeper than he ever admitted aloud. He still remembered how the dawn mist clung to the fields, how the dirt road swallowed his footsteps as he walked away from the only woman who had ever believed in him when he was nothing.
Clara.
She had found him two years earlier—hungry, broken, sleeping in a collapsed barn after the mill closed and the town turned its back on him. Everyone else saw a drifter. Clara saw a man worth saving.
She gave him bread when she barely had enough for herself. She found him work in the fields. She taught him how to plant, how to wait, how to believe that slow growth was still growth.
And Daniel hated that part most of all.
Because needing her made him feel small.
