After debarking from the train, the bride must report directly to the Espousal Alliance Office on Monroe Street, to be appointed lodgings and details about her husband-to-be.
These were the only instructions Anna Winters had received upon getting herself into this mess—or her new life, rather. But the bottom line is she's running, pure and simple, from her warm, protected life as a young woman of upstanding birth in Concord. Now she's about to become bride to a man she doesn't even know, but at least it isn't to that dastardly rake who ruined her for any other good man.
Only, the bigger problem is she's arrived on the wrong date and the office isn't ready to receive her. Also, she has no husband-to-be yet assigned, and there are no lodgings.
William McCoe is the owner of the best saloon in Topeka and he's about to invest in the Santa Fe Railroad as well, which should make him a millionaire by the time he's thirty. His aspirations are larger than his reputation for living fast and loose, so to even things out, he's on the lookout for a woman to toy with. When he sets his sights on a sweet little miss with her nose in the air, his intrigue leads him to open communications, only to discover she's only available if he's in the market for marriage.
Which he absolutely is not. Not ever...
