A widowed rancher drinking his grief away. A pastor’s orphaned ward sent west to keep house. One Clarkesville church that ordered him a bride.

Lesley Wayne, Boston Pastor’s Orphaned Ward and Hired Housekeeper. Raised in a Boston pastor’s home from the age of five, Lesley is twenty when his widow sends her west to keep house for a rancher. The pastor meeting her train expects a wedding. She wants a wage and a roof, not a family she can lose again. Two motherless children need her at once, and their father comes home after dark smelling of the saloon.

Peter Brooke, Widowed Clarkesville Rancher and Father of Two. Within a year Peter buried his mother, his wife, and a stillborn son. Now he works his eighty acres by day and the saloon by night, while his five-year-old feeds his sister from whatever is left in the kitchen. He wants to be left alone with his grief and his bottle. His pastor has given him a choice: a wife, or the children go to the parsonage.

An agency mistake puts a housekeeper under Peter’s roof instead of a bride, and she bolts her door every night. If Lesley leaves, two children lose the only grown-up feeding them. If she stays, she must decide how far a hired woman may go to bring a man home to his family.

Peter sent east for a bride. The wrong Lesley stepped off the train, and she came to keep a house, not to belong to one.

– clean closed-door western romance — no on-page intimacy

– mail-order bride mix-up — the agency sends housekeeper Lesley Wayne where bride Lesley Wyatt was due

– widower rancher hero — eighty acres, two children, and a saloon stool six months after the funeral

– instant family — a five-year-old and his little sister who decide the housekeeper is staying

– orphaned heroine — a pastor’s ward turned out of the only home she knew

– matchmaking pastor — he ordered the bride, keeps the marriage license, and will not give up on Peter

– tough-love heroine — a bolted door, a wooden pail, and a well full of cold water

– wise ranch hand — Jose sees where this is going long before either of them

Perfect for fans of mail-order bride mix-up westerns, widower rancher heroes with children who need a mama, and housekeeper-to-wife frontier romances with a pastor who refuses to give up.

Begin the In Search of Love series with Book 1 today.

Heat Level: Closed Door (no on-page intimacy)

Tone: Emotional · Tender · Hopeful

Series Type: Book 1 of 4 in the In Search of Love series — each book reads as a standalone

Ending: HEA — Happily Ever After

POV: Dual POV · Third Person

Content Notes: off-page death, grief, pregnancy loss

Inspirational Theme: Christian themes — woven naturally, never preachy