Wrong Husband, Right Town

She came home for a will reading. She is leaving as someone's wife.

Maggie Whitfield has spent eight years building a life in Boston where no one knows the smell of her grandmother's kitchen or the name of the man she still blames for her sister's runaway wedding. Then a clause in Eleanor Whitfield's will brings her home to Vermont, and the only way to save Hawthorne House from a developer is to marry the one person in Hawthorne Hollow she has refused to forgive.

One Year. One Inn. One Marriage on Paper.

Beckett Ainsley should never have agreed to it. He has reasons he will not share. Maggie has wounds she will not name. They sign a one-year agreement: separate bedrooms, no public performance, no expectations on either side. Just twelve months in a sagging Victorian on a hill above a town that watches everything. Twelve months of pruning an orchard. Twelve months of quiet Sunday lunches. Twelve months of slowly discovering that the story Maggie has carried for eight years is not the story Beckett has lived.

A Slow-Burn Romance with a Literary Heart

Wrong Husband, Right Town is a small-town marriage-of-convenience enemies-to-lovers romance told in restrained, emotionally precise prose. Readers will find an atmospheric Vermont setting that reads like a character, a layered cast of townspeople with their own quiet stakes, a heritage apple orchard carrying three generations of meaning, a fading father whose clear days hold the weight of the whole book, and a slow-burn romance with closed-door intimacy and the satisfying happy ending romance readers come for. Warm, witty, tender, and deeply felt.

This Book Is For Readers Who...

Love small-town contemporary romance with a strong sense of place

Enjoy enemies-to-lovers slow burns where the conflict feels real

Appreciate marriage-of-convenience storylines handled with emotional depth

Prefer a literary, atmospheric voice over fast-paced banter

Look for found-family themes and multigenerational warmth

Want closed-door heat with deeply felt romantic tension

A Quiet, Beautiful Place to Stay Awhile

If you are ready to spend the year in a Vermont inn with a stubborn innkeeper, a steady carpenter, and a town that refuses to let either of them go, Wrong Husband, Right Town was written for you.