“Are you asking me to marry you?”
I looked at Clay Hayes, the stranger sitting across from me, and tried not to sound as desperate as I felt.
“Yes. It's practical. You need an identity, and I need a husband.”
At twenty-eight, I had already learned that life rarely went according to plan. My fiancé had cheated on me with my best friend, my coffee shop was on the verge of collapse, and my mother was convinced that marriage was the only way to keep my life from falling apart.
Then I found Clay.
He had been beaten, left alone on a country road, and stripped of every memory that could tell him who he was. He didn't know his name, his family, or where he belonged. Yet there was something unusual about him. Even without a past, he carried himself with quiet confidence, handled difficult situations with remarkable intelligence, and noticed things most people missed.
I gave him a name. A home. And eventually, a proposal.
Our arrangement was simple: we'd pretend to be husband and wife, attend the occasional town event together, and help each other get what we needed. No shared bedroom. No demands. No promises about forever.
But Clay was nothing like the man I expected to marry.
He remembered how I took my coffee, stood up for me when my ex tried to humiliate me, and helped me fight for the business I'd worked so hard to build. Somewhere between the arguments, shared meals, and quiet nights, the lines of our arrangement began to blur.
I was no longer pretending to be his wife.
I was falling in love with him.
And he seemed to be falling for me, too.
But Clay's identity papers were finally being processed, and two mysterious men had already started looking for him. What would happen when his old life came knocking?
Would my husband still choose me when he finally remembered who he was?
