Dreaming of His Convenient Kiss

She’s losing her house. He never had one. A marriage would give them a house to share, but could they learn to love each other and make their house into a home?

Natalie Moody’s house has been condemned and she has two weeks left to move out. When a friend at church offers to let her stay at his brother’s farmhouse while he’s out on assignment for two months, she jumps at the chance.

Denver Barclay bought a farm, but he can’t seem to get himself to want to settle down.

Didn’t help that the girl he dreamed about kissing married his brother.

When he finally makes it home, his house has been invaded, his brother failed to let him know and the woman he thought had married months ago is living in his house.

She’s just as intriguing as she was before and needs a place to stay.

A marriage of convenience would help her get on her feet and she’s willing to help care for the apple orchard he didn’t realize he had.

Could it be the start of a beautiful forever? Or the biggest mistake of his life?

Chapter 1

Natalie Mooney sat at her kitchen table, her divorce papers
in front of her.

The children were in bed, and she didn’t swipe at the one
lone tear that tracked down her cheek.

This wasn’t the way she expected her life to turn out.

When she married Eric, she’d never dreamed she’d eventually
be sitting at a rickety, Formica-topped, metal table, in a termite-eaten farmhouse, in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, staring at the paper that was supposed to dissolve five years of her life.

It contained the ashes of her little-girl dreams.

The memories of late nights alone, wondering where he was.

Early mornings the same, only with their children around.

Hospital stays where she farmed her children out to
neighbors between contractions, because her husband had to take a business
trip.

When she’d questioned him, he’d gotten angry.

It’d taken her years, but when she cleaned out his car, and
found the underwear that wasn’t hers, and confronted him with it, and he’d denied
it at first, but then he let loose with all the things she lacked and all the
reasons he needed to find someone else, she’d made up her mind.

He threatened her with physical harm and shoved her into a
wall, using his fist on her cheek.

The next time he came home from a business trip, she wasn’t
there.

Tapping her finger on the table, she looked at the paper and
the little perfect circle of wetness that had fallen off her cheek and slowly seeped
onto the bottom of it.

Directly beside that, her phone lay on the table, the screen
blank.

She didn’t need it to be on to know what would pop up when she
pressed the button.

Her house was condemned, and she had two weeks left to move.

This place had been dirt cheap. Still, she’d barely been
able to afford it with the telemarketing job she did all afternoon and at night
after the children went to bed.

She hadn’t found another place to compare with the price.

She wasn’t being picky. She’d take anything, anything at all
that would keep her children with her. All five of them.

That’s what had led her to the site that was on her phone
now. Marriageofconvenience.com.

It was supposed to be a Christian site, and everyone was
supposed to be vetted. She’d put her application in. It had taken her two weeks
to be approved, so she thought they were pretty thorough in their vetting.

It was three o’clock in the morning, and she’d spent the
last six hours going through the site.

She’d chosen someone.

There were no names on the site—just nicknames—to preserve
privacy. When they were both comfortable with each other, they’d reach out to
the admins together, and their names would be released to each other. She liked
that added bit of security.

The man she’d chosen had included his email address in his
profile—not all of them had—and she felt like she wanted to reach out that way.

She just wasn’t sure what to say.

Maybe she should wait until morning when she was more
rested, less emotional.

Seeing the finality of her divorce had been more unsettling
than she had thought it would be.

Eric didn’t have any claim on her heart. Not anymore, and he
hadn’t for a long time, but it was more that those papers represented the death
of everything she’d hoped her life would be and had put her into the ranks of
divorcee, had put her children into the ranks of single-parent home, had given
her an “ex,” and rang with a finality she hadn’t expected.

Her body felt painful and numb at the same time. She hadn’t
known it could do that.

Picking up her phone, she pulled up the mail app and typed
in his email address: wilderman@ourmail.com.

The creaks and groans of the little old house didn’t bother her
at all, nor did the blowing of the wind or the quietness of the kitchen.

Outside, Natalie had to be brave. She had five children
watching her.

Inside, she was scared to death.

Her thumbs hovered above her phone. She tried to figure out
how best to word her request.

Dear Mr. Wilder Man,

She looked at that. It seemed a little formal for someone
she was planning to offer marriage to.

She deleted the “Mr.” then put it back in.

His profile said he was a white-collar worker, married once
for five years, divorced, and on good terms with the ex. Two children that his
wife had custody of, and he had two days of visitation every two weeks. She
deliberately looked for someone with a job that didn’t include traveling, and
his did not. Although he hadn’t gone into detail about what he did, just termed
it office worker in finance.

She had no idea what that was. Anything from a bank teller
to an accountant, she supposed.

Regardless, it sounded appropriately boring and did not
involve travel.

Her standards were not high, but she did have them.

She wasn’t doing a repeat of Eric. What was the point of
living life and making mistakes if one didn’t learn from them?

I saw your profile on marriageofconvenience.com. This
email is in regards to that.

You can view my profile HERE, but I wanted to tell you a
little bit about myself and make my case.

I’m faithful and loyal. I will be completely devoted to
you and you alone. I do not need, do not expect, and do not want to be showered
with flowers or candy or gifts or any other silly romantic thing.

I’ve gotten to the point in my life where none of that
matters.

Here, she paused, because she was only 23 years old.

Funny how she felt so much older. So. Much. Older.

She’d gotten pregnant at 15, and instead of learning from
that mistake, she had another baby before her classmates graduated from high
school.

She hadn’t. Graduated, that is. She’d had two children.

Water under the bridge.

She was going to learn from that mistake. And every other
mistake she made in her life. She was done being stupid.

Probably shouldn’t put that in her letter, although she
wanted to. Dear Wilder Man, I’m done being stupid.

She wasn’t exactly selling herself with that.

As she looked back at her phone, her thumbs started moving
again.

Your profile said you wanted a traditional wife, and I
can assure you that is definitely what I intend to be. I will cook for you, do
your laundry, clean your house, I’ll even take care of the yard work and
vehicle maintenance. You will be well taken care of.

She read that over. Did she sound too eager? It was all true—she
wasn’t afraid of working, and she wasn’t afraid to serve someone else if he was
going to provide for her; after all, she didn’t even have a high school
diploma, so what other kind of job was she going to get—so she left it.

You also said in your profile that you intended to have a
real marriage with the intimacies that that entailed. I’m prepared to do that also.

She paused again. That was the one thing she wasn’t sure of.
It was part of being married, and other than that, his profile was perfect.

She shoved her doubts aside. As long as he was kind to her
children, she’d do anything.

As you can see from my profile, I have five children. The
only thing I ask in return is that you’re kind to them and provide us with
basic necessities. Roof, food, and clothes, and I assure you I’m very frugal.

She hadn’t had a choice. Getting pregnant at fifteen, when
she was too young to hold down any type of full-time job, had definitely taught
her to be frugal.

Maybe she should have made some different choices, but it
was too late now. Better to not think about them.

She chewed on a fingernail before she added:

I do have a bit of a time constraint. I need to make a
decision in two weeks.

She hadn’t wanted to come across as desperate, but she felt
like she needed to add that last bit, so he knew he couldn’t mess around with
his response.

I would appreciate an immediate reply, if possible,
because of that time issue. I will not contact anyone else for twenty-four
hours while I wait to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Mom of Five