PART 1: Thirty Days to Fall in Love

“I’ll pay you two hundred dollars to be my wife for thirty days.”

Clara Bennett nearly dropped the plate she was washing.

Across the kitchen table stood Nathaniel Cole, the most stubborn rancher in western Montana. He was thirty-four, broad-shouldered, and handsome in a way that made women forget their better judgment.

Unfortunately, he also had the manners of a fence post.

“Excuse me?” Clara asked.

“You heard me.”

“Mr. Cole, I’ve been your cook for exactly eleven days. If this is your idea of a joke, it’s a terrible one.”

Nathaniel placed an envelope on the table.

“My aunt Margaret arrives Thursday. She controls the inheritance my grandfather left me. Forty thousand acres, the northern grazing rights, and the creek that keeps this ranch alive.”

“And?”

“Grandfather’s will says I must be married before my thirty-fifth birthday to take possession of the remaining land.”

Clara folded her arms.

“So marry someone.”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

“You’re asking me to lie.”

“For thirty days.”

“Lying doesn’t become respectable just because you put a deadline on it.”

Nathaniel sighed.

“Two hundred dollars. Half now, half when Aunt Margaret leaves. We’ll sleep in separate rooms. You won’t be expected to do anything except convince her we’re happily married.”

Clara stared at the envelope.

Two hundred dollars could pay her younger brother’s school fees and settle the debts left by their father’s illness.

She hated that Nathaniel had unknowingly named the exact amount she needed.

“Three conditions,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow.

“First, you will never touch me without my permission. Second, you will treat me with respect, whether your aunt is watching or not. Third, when this ends, you’ll tell her the truth.”

“That last part could cost me everything.”

“Then perhaps you shouldn’t begin with a lie.”

For a long moment, Nathaniel studied her.

Finally, he extended his hand.

“Agreed.”

Clara shook it.

Neither noticed how long their hands remained together.

Thursday arrived with a cold wind sweeping across the Montana plains.

Aunt Margaret Cole stepped from her carriage wearing an expensive traveling coat and the expression of a woman who could detect dishonesty from fifty paces.

She was sixty-eight, sharp-eyed, and wealthy enough to purchase half the county.

Nathaniel stood on the porch with Clara beside him.

“Aunt Margaret,” he announced, “I’d like you to meet my wife.”

Margaret looked Clara up and down.

“Your wife?”

“Clara Cole,” Nathaniel replied.

Margaret’s eyes narrowed.

“How interesting. Nathaniel, you neglected to mention a wedding.”

“It was a small ceremony.”

“How small?”

Clara smiled sweetly.

“Small enough that your nephew forgot to invite his own aunt.”

For one terrifying second, the porch fell silent.

Then Margaret laughed.

“Well, my dear. At least you’ve married someone who knows how to handle him.”

That evening, Clara prepared roast chicken, buttery potatoes, and blackberry pie.

Margaret praised every bite.

But the old woman noticed something else.

When Nathaniel reached for the salt, Clara passed it before he asked.

When Clara’s tea grew cold, Nathaniel quietly poured her another cup.

And when Margaret asked how they had fallen in love, both answered at once.

“At the market,” Nathaniel said.

“In the kitchen,” Clara said.

Silence.

Nathaniel cleared his throat.

“We met at the market. Fell in love in the kitchen.”

Margaret smiled into her tea.

“How wonderfully domestic.”

Over the next two weeks, their invented marriage became a strangely comfortable arrangement.

Clara discovered that Nathaniel wasn’t nearly as heartless as he pretended to be.

Every morning, he rose before sunrise to check the cattle. Every evening, he personally visited his elderly foreman, Samuel, whose injured leg had kept him from riding.

He paid Samuel full wages even though the old man could barely work.

“Why don’t you tell people about the good things you do?” Clara asked one afternoon.

Nathaniel shrugged.

“Wouldn’t make them any better.”

Clara began seeing him differently.

And Nathaniel noticed the changes she brought to his home.

She repaired the curtains his mother had sewn. She planted flowers beneath the kitchen windows. She convinced the ranch hands to sit together for supper instead of eating alone in the bunkhouse.

Most importantly, she made his younger sister, Emma, laugh again.

Emma was sixteen and had barely spoken since their mother passed away the previous winter.

One evening, Nathaniel returned from the pasture and heard music coming through the open window.

Clara was teaching Emma to dance.

His sister spun awkwardly across the floor, laughing so hard she could barely stand.

Nathaniel stopped in the doorway.

He hadn’t heard that sound in almost a year.

“Come on, Nathaniel!” Emma called. “Clara says you have two left feet.”

“Clara talks too much.”

“Then prove her wrong.”

Clara extended her hand.

For the first time in years, Nathaniel accepted an invitation to dance.

He placed one hand carefully at her waist.

“You never mentioned dancing in our agreement,” he whispered.

“You never mentioned how terrible you were at it.”

He smiled.

Not the polite smile he gave visitors.

A real one.

And Clara suddenly understood how dangerous thirty days could become.

On the twenty-third evening, a thunderstorm rolled over the mountains.

Lightning illuminated the pasture as Clara stood on the porch, watching Nathaniel struggle to secure the barn doors.

When he finally returned, soaked to the skin, she was waiting with a towel and hot coffee.

“You’re going to catch your death out there,” she scolded.

“You’re beginning to sound like my wife.”

Clara looked away.

“I’m being paid to.”

The words struck harder than either expected.

Nathaniel set down his coffee.

“Is that all this has been to you?”

Clara’s heart pounded.

“You made the arrangement, Nathaniel.”

“I know.”

“You offered the money.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you looking at me like I’ve broken something?”

He stepped closer.

“Because somewhere between your first blackberry pie and the day you made Emma laugh, I forgot you were pretending.”

Clara couldn’t speak.

The rain hammered against the roof.

Nathaniel reached for her hand, then hesitated.

“May I?”

She nodded.

He gently took her fingers.

“Seven days from now,” he whispered, “the agreement ends.”

“I know.”

“What if I don’t want you to leave?”

Clara looked into his eyes.

For one beautiful moment, she thought he might kiss her.

Then the sound of carriage wheels echoed across the yard.

They turned.

A magnificent black carriage stopped before the house.

A driver climbed down and opened its door.

A tall blonde woman stepped out, dressed in burgundy velvet with pearl earrings and a fashionable hat.

She carried a leather document case.

The moment Nathaniel saw her, all color drained from his face.

“Impossible,” he whispered.

Clara glanced at him.

“Who is she?”

The stranger climbed the porch steps and looked directly at Nathaniel.

“Hello, Nathaniel. It’s been a long time.”

His jaw tightened.

“Eleanor.”

Clara felt his hand loosen around hers.

The woman smiled without warmth.

“I see you’ve been busy.”

“What are you doing here?” Nathaniel demanded.

“Finishing what we started two years ago.”

Clara looked between them.

“Nathaniel, who is this woman?”

Before he could answer, the stranger turned toward her.

“Eleanor Whitmore. Nathaniel’s fiancée.”

The world seemed to go silent.

Clara slowly withdrew her hand.

“His… fiancée?”

“Former fiancée,” Nathaniel said sharply. “She left two years ago.”

Eleanor’s expression changed.

“Is that what you told everyone? That I simply walked away?”

She opened the leather case and removed a folded contract bearing two signatures and a crimson wax seal.

“You should have read your grandfather’s agreement more carefully, Nathaniel.”

He stared at the document.

“What agreement?”

Eleanor held it toward him.

“The one your aunt never showed you.”

At that exact moment, Margaret appeared in the doorway behind them.

She took one look at the paper.

Her face went pale.

“Eleanor,” the old woman whispered. “You weren’t supposed to come back.”

Eleanor didn’t look away from Nathaniel.

“According to this contract, your grandfather gave my family the deciding vote over the northern land, the water rights, and the future of this ranch.”

Nathaniel seized the document.

His eyes moved rapidly across the page.

Then he stopped.

“This can’t be right.”

Clara stepped closer despite the ache in her chest.

“What does it say?”

Nathaniel looked up at Eleanor.

“It says you can decide whether I keep the ranch.”

Eleanor’s smile disappeared.

“That’s only half of it.”

She turned to Clara.

“The contract also says that if Nathaniel marries another woman before our original agreement is legally dissolved, the entire northern inheritance passes out of his control.”

Clara felt the porch tilt beneath her feet.

Margaret gripped the doorframe.

And then Eleanor asked the one question Nathaniel had no honest answer for.

“So tell me, Nathaniel… is this woman really your wife?”