Chapter 2
Chris woke up at four each morning to work out. Once he was drenched in sweat from pull-ups and weight lifting, he would go outside to start feeding his horses and cows. First, he would tend to his horses. His horses lived in the barn beside his house. He would groom each other, before releasing them into the pasture beyond his house. He would saddle his favorite old boy, Champ, and ride Champ out to do his ranch work. A lot of ranchers now used four-wheelers or even planes to do their work, but Chris was old school and preferred working from horseback. He looked like a classic cowboy, with his blond hair, blue eyes, and tight Levis.
With his crew, he would then traverse his vast ranch, tossing hay to his three hundred head of cattle. The ranch was dry enough that he could not feed his herds with the grass alone. He also worked almost constantly on pumping water and repairing his many miles of barbed wire fences. Branding and harvesting seasons were also rough times, when he hired tons of temporary hands and worked from dawn to sundown. Now was a down time and Chris enjoyed his days riding his horses, painting, and playing guitar. The work on the ranch was minimal now and he only needed his three main hands.
The morning after Chris had first spoken with Chanda, he got up at the first brush of light from the sun. He caught sight of himself in the dim mirror as he brushed his teeth, and he swept his shock of blond hair away from his forehead to survey the pink scar snaking across his otherwise perfect flesh. The reason he wore his hair across his forehead was to avoid questions. What would happen if things went farther with Chanda? She would eventually notice it. He imagined them lying in bed, and Chanda running her fingers through his hair. “What is this?” she would ask in her sweet, demure voice, stroking the scar tissue with her finger tip.
It had been a really long time for Chris. As the owner of the Stryker Ranch, he was quite a catch. But his past made women run away as if from a nuclear meltdown. For years, he had born his loneliness. Now he was just too weak to go on. He felt a little pathetic, signing up for a mail order bride site, but what else could he do? His earlier attempts at online dating had not worked out so well. There was Karen, who had lasted a total of five weeks and who had mysteriously deleted her site and blocked his number with no explanation. There was a smattering of other girls from across the country who had talked to him briefly then lost interest in favor of other more local guys in their areas.
Sometimes, it felt as if he was completely undesirable and meant to die alone. He hid his billionaire status to avoid attracting gold diggers, but unfortunately, it seemed like his money was all that he had to offer women.
So if he had to order a bride, well, then so be it. He needed someone to love. Someone to be close. Talking to Chanda last night made him feel so good that he didn’t even notice how exhausted he was.
Later that afternoon, when he returned from his ride, he opened up his email and found that Chanda had messaged him. “How are you?” she had asked simply.
It had been so long since anyone had asked him that. It was comforting to find someone who cared, someone who wanted to know about him, someone who felt like he was worth something as a person. He hadn’t had anyone ask him that for years.
“Great. How are you?”
She didn’t reply again until late that evening. “I am very tired from working long day. Today I am off of work,” she responded.
“What do you do?”
“I work in a garment factory,” she replied after a lengthy pause. Then she sent a picture. She was posing at a street-side noodle vendor with another girl, holding up her plate of fried rice cakes sprinkled in chives. “My breakfast,” she wrote.
Chris smile and sent her a picture of the simple hamburger with ketchup that he was eating. “My dinner.”
“I want to try American food,” she responded.
“Do you want to come to America someday?”
“I would like that yes. Cambodia has little for me.”
“I suppose you have family there,” he mused. “That counts for something. I don’t even have any family left. I just have the ranch.”
“Poor thing! How can you have no family?” Then she added, “My father recently died and my mother died many year ago from childbirth.”
“I am very sorry to hear that. Who do you live with then?”
“I live by myself. You?”
“I live by myself too. My parents and my brother all passed away.” Chris hesitated before sending the message. He didn’t want to answer any questions about Jake.
But Chanda was polite and didn’t ask. Instead she expressed her condolences and asked him, “Are you very lonely living alone?”
“I can be at times. Mostly I like it, but I want someone to greet me at the door when I come home. That’s why I’m on this site. I have been looking for someone for a while and I am tired of being alone. I am thirty-two and I don’t have a wife. I’m getting too old for this.”
“You want love,” she wrote back, with several smiley faces.
“Yes,” he replied, with a few smiley faces and a few hearts. It seemed awkward talking about love already, but he realize that Cambodian women probably weren’t as flighty as American ones. Besides, this girl was clearly looking for marriage. Why be shy? “What do you want in a husband?” he went on. “I can offer you a lot. If you want, we can work toward that and get to know each other.”
“I would like that. I am not scared.” She sent a winking face. “I am twenty-five. That is old here, too. I need to leave this place.”
“Would you like to Skype?” he ventured cautiously. The idea of speaking face to face terrified him, but he was also enthused about speaking to this woman as if in real life.
“Sure!” she responded.
She gave him her Skype address, and within a few minutes, he called her. His heart was beating extraordinarily hard. When her pretty face filled the screen on his phone, he couldn’t speak for a minute, he could only drink in how beautiful she was.
“Hello?” she said awkwardly. The nervous trill in her voice gave away that she was as shy as Chris was.
Somewhat more at ease knowing that this goddess was nervous too, Chris manage a smile. “Wow, you are stunningly gorgeous.”
She giggled, pink flushing her high cheeks. “You are very handsome. Like Disney prince.” A picture of John Smith popped into the chat. “This is you,” she said.
Chris shook his head. “But I’m not nearly that handsome.” He was tempted to lift his hair and show her his scar, but decided against it.
“No, it is you. You are handsome. All American men are handsome.”
“I don’t know about that. I know some ugly ones.”
Chanda wrinkled her nose, then burst into laughter. “That is mean to say!”
“But it’s true.”
“You are lucky then. Very good looks.”
“So are you. Are all Cambodian women as beautiful as you?” he teased back. “I bet you’re the prettiest one.”
“No! My cousin Yun is much prettier.”
“I don’t believe that. You are the most beautiful woman I have seen.”
They went on chatting all night. They never seemed to run out of things to say. From that night on, they would Skype every night. Chris’s sleep cycle had become whacked as he worked his day around Chanda’s. The time difference made things difficult, but hearing her voice was more than worth it.
Chris was willing to stay up, since Chanda had to work so much. The long shifts she spent on her feet without breaks amazed him. He thought back to the days when he was a teenager, groaning about taking out the trash, or even now, when he wanted to sleep in after a night of drinking, and he felt ashamed. Chanda was more of a man than he was when it came to work.