Chapter One
When Frank first looked at the website, he was just an ordinary guy looking for love. At least, that’s what he put in his profile.
He didn’t want to seem like some creep who was only after an underage looking Thai bride.
He’d heard some real horror stories about this kind of thing and it didn’t exactly have the best reputation so it was safe to say he didn’t really mention it to his friends. Ha. Friends. Chance would be a fine thing.
That was another thing he lied about on the website. Hobbies and Interests. He’d listed one of them as “going out with my friends”. Once upon a time maybe, but not so much anymore. He’d lost touch with his three closest buddies, and that wasn’t something he was willing to talk about in a hurry. There were times when he really missed New York…more than he was willing to admit. But he couldn’t go back there now. It was too late. Everything had changed.
These days, he mostly just kept himself to himself, which was fairly easy living on a ranch out in the middle of nowhere in Texas. The nearest town was a two-hour drive away and the nearest neighbor could be seen in the distance on a clear day, if you had good eyesight. To say it was remote was an understatement.
He did occasionally talk to Kevin and Carol – his nearest neighbors. They were a nice enough couple, mostly retired now, with some grown up kids who had left the ranch and moved to the big cities to make more of their lives. They still had a bunch of horses and occasionally they had people make the trip out for riding lessons, but most of the time no one even drove past this part of the state and Frank could easily go for days without seeing a single soul.
His ranch wasn’t a working one. He didn’t need to work. He was rich. He’d only moved here to get away from people and keep his head down, and he’d ended up getting used to the life. These days, he wandered around with a Stetson and a pair of cowboy boots, just like a regular Lone Star. It hadn’t always been that way, but it was the way it was now. He’d even started to pick up the accent just from speaking to people around town when he went in once per week for provisions; that slow, Texan drawl. He didn’t mind it.
There were times though, when he felt lonely, and at forty-four years of age, when most guys were settled down and married with kids, he was still single and living the bachelor’s life in a massive, empty ranch house. He’d tried dating locally, but his local town was only small, and the number of single women very limited as a result. Plus, it was so far away. He couldn’t exactly go out for a few drinks with a woman and then drive the two-hour trip back home. Well, he could. There were never any cops around here and it wasn’t as if there was much to crash into either, but although he’d condoned many other things in his life, drink driving wasn’t one of them.
At least he had the internet where he lived, because most times that was what stopped him from completely losing his mind, especially in the early years before he’d gotten used to the isolation.
He’d tried internet dating. That was the in thing these days. He’d heard about people making their matches and finding their life partners through these online websites so he saw no reason why he couldn’t do it.
Again, that hadn’t really worked out for him. He’d made profiles on various websites, chatted to a few women here and there, but he’d never really clicked with any of them. He wasn’t even sure what it was. A mix of different things, he imagined. There were some of them he felt no physical attraction to from their pictures; and there were others who were gorgeous but he had no connection to intellectually. He wasn’t claiming to be some clever ass, but it was important to have things in common with someone if you were going to date – and ultimately marry – them, and so most of the conversations had fizzled out after a few months, or even weeks, feeling forced and unnatural, as if they were just keeping up the chat to try and be polite with each other. He hadn’t felt a spark with anyone, and he was almost close to giving up altogether when he stumbled across this other website.
They didn’t call it “mail order brides”. They had some other fancy, more politically correct name, but Frank wasn’t stupid. He knew that was basically what it was. It was a special website offering an international marriage broker service to hook American men up with women from different countries. He soon discovered there was a whole host of these types of websites, essentially offering the same service with different options and prices. This time, he didn’t just go for a scatter gun approach and sign up for all of them; he spent some time doing research and reading up about it before he decided which website would suit him best.
He also spent time reading some success stories about other guys who had met and married women through this method. After all, what was leading him to believe that this approach would be any different from the other dating sites he’d been on? Well, for a start, the previous times he’d only been looking at women within a 200-mile radius of where he lived, and while that widened out the area somewhat from his small town, it was still very limiting, but he figured there was no point looking for women in California or New York, or even other Southern states, because they would be unwilling to travel to Texas to go on a date with him. This, on the other hand, was very different. This was essentially made for long distance. A relationship would be fostered and built online, then his ideal, perfect bride would be flown out to move in and live with him forever.
The website he chose in the end was a reputable one with lots of good reviews, and a security system in place to make sure that both parties were genuine. He had to upload a copy of his ID to verify his account, and also give an estimate of how much capital he had. These kinds of deals weren’t cheap, and the men were expected to put up a set chunk of money up front to help broker the deal, as well as pay for the flights. He assumed that the women in question were often from poorer countries and wanted to move to America for a better life, although he soon realized that, while true in some instances, it was also something of a cliché. Yes, the women were keen and willing to move to America for their matched husband, but not all of them were poor, and not all of them came from second or third world countries. Amazingly, there were actually a great number of them from England. Frank had always had a thing for an English accent.
***
Sammie had always had a thing for American guys. In particular, guys with a slight Southern drawl; not the really strong one, the more subtle variety. Even when she was a kid growing up, she enjoyed watching cowboy movies and listening to them talk, admiring the way they looked in their tight, dusty jeans, boots and hats. She didn’t realize back then of course, but it was the start of a lifelong fantasy and fetish. She just wanted to be a cowboy’s girl. Kind of a stupid fantasy, she told herself, seeing as she lived in England, and there weren’t any cowboys around here.
For the most part, she’d just pushed it to the back of her mind and gotten on with life; almost forgotten about it completely in fact. She’d dated a couple of boys at school, then another couple once she got to university. It was never anything serious though and didn’t normally last longer than a few months.
After graduating with a degree in art history, she’d got a job at a gallery. It wasn’t her ideal career. What she really wanted to do was sell her art, but she’d also been fascinated in history and had been advised by her grandmother to go for a more academic degree than just art or design.
It was her grandmother who had brought her up, after both her parents had died in an accident when she was very young; too young for her to remember them. Her grandparents had shown her pictures, and it was interesting to hear about their lives and what they were like, but she felt no real loss over their deaths, unlike how she’d felt when her grandfather had passed. There was a sort of sadness there though; when she’d been growing up and heard other kids talking about their mums and dads, making them Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards. There was a part of her who wished she could have experienced that, but she never allowed herself to dwell on it for too long.
The job at the art gallery paid the rent and she was finally able to move out of the family home and get a small place to herself. She didn’t require much and had always lived rather frugally, so saving wasn’t an issue either. She put some money away each month in a separate account, so that she could save up for something nice, and before long she had a sizeable amount stored up.
When she wasn’t at work, she focused on her art, honing her skills, sketching, drawing, painting, doing everything she could to improve, even learning about graphic design and all the modern methods of producing art. She started a little online website to sell what she produced, and began to make some extra money on the side.
As a result of this though, she very rarely had time to go out or socialize, as all her time outside of work was spent on her art, and on a Sunday, she would go back home to visit her grandmother and have a hearty Sunday dinner and a catch up. They were still incredibly close, having spent all Sammie’s life together.
It was hardly a surprise then, given everything she did in her busy life, that she didn’t have time for boyfriends.
Her last one had been at her university, and since then, her love life had been very dull and quiet indeed. One evening, when she’d finished her painting for the night and was winding down before bed, she decided to check out one of those online dating sites.
Her experience was not dissimilar to that of a lonely, handsome American man in his forties, hundreds of miles away in Texas – disappointing, fruitless.
After a few ‘matches’ that went no further than brief conversations that fizzled out, until Sammie had all but given up. It was a stupid idea anyway. She didn’t have time for a relationship with her job and her art and besides, none of the local guys even remotely captured her interest, and she didn’t want a long-distance relationship. That would be too upsetting, not being able to see them. She wanted someone she could actually interact with and spend time with.
Weeks went by and she forgot all about it, then one night she was browsing online, doing a bit of shopping for some art supplies when an ad popped up.
International Marriage Broker. We will find your dream partner in any country!
It had exotic pictures of men and women in different countries, all looking excited and happy as if just waiting to find that one special person.
She wasn’t exactly sure what it was that made her do it. Perhaps it was curiosity more than anything. A “marriage broker” sounded strange and rather official. She wanted to find out a bit more about it.
She read through the ‘About’ section of the website and was even more intrigued. As a woman, it was free to sign up. It was the men who had to pay to secure the ‘deal’ once a match had been found. There was something oddly traditional about its values that she found appealing. Chivalrous men courting their women and paying for everything. Maybe it wasn’t as deep as that, she chuckled, laughing it off. They probably just had a shortage of women.
All she had to do was sign up and verify her details, input what she was looking for into her profile and she would apparently be matched by a wealthy eligible bachelor in any country in the world. As she went through the sign-up forms, and filled in her profile, she discovered she could actually choose a preference as to her apparent future husband’s country. She clicked United States, filled out everything else, added a picture, and hit enter.
She’d signed up for many dating sites in the past. She wasn’t really expecting this one to be any different, but at least it was a little more unusual.