The Stranger in the Wedding Dress (Brides West)

Wyoming Territory, 1882. She ran from one groom—and accidentally invented another. Sadie Peterson flees her own wedding in a white dress with three hundred dollars sewn into a hidden pocket and no plan beyond escape. She doesn’t know where she’s going. She only knows she will not marry Horace Blooming, no matter what her father has promised, signed, or demanded. The first train west is bound for Wyoming. Wyoming will have to do. On the journey, Sadie meets Rose, a genuine mail-order bride traveling to meet her intended in the tiny town of Ledlow Hills. When Rose innocently asks who Sadie is going to meet, Sadie panics and invents a fiancé of her own. John. Just John. A rancher, she claims, who signs all his letters simply John. There is only one problem. Ledlow Hills has exactly one unmarried John. Dr. John Calloway is a former Union Army surgeon who came west to leave Virginia—and its memories—behind. He has no interest in marriage, mail-order brides, or the beautiful stranger who arrives in a travel-stained wedding dress insisting there has been a terrible misunderstanding. But he can’t quite bring himself to send her away. Two weeks, they agree. Sadie will work at his clinic. John will ask no questions about New York. She will ask none about Virginia. Then two weeks become three. Shared meals become lingering conversations. And the man Sadie invented begins to feel dangerously like the man she might have chosen for herself. But the life she fled has not finished with her. When a well-dressed gentleman steps off the Thursday train accompanied by a hired inquiry agent, Sadie realizes three hundred dollars and two thousand miles were never going to be enough. Because someone back East needs her brought home—and the secret he is protecting could destroy the new life Sadie has built ... and the man she has finally begun to love. A warm, witty historical romance about a runaway bride, an accidental fiancé, and the unexpected courage it takes to choose your own happily-ever-after. Read more