In the chaos of Christmas 2024, I happened to be visiting with my sister’s mother-in-law. She was telling us about some interviews she had done for her town’s history, interviewing Italian brides who had been married by proxy.
You see, back in the mid-1900’s, women couldn’t travel on their own. The town had a lot of men who had come to find work, but they wanted women from the Old Country. Sometimes the marriages were arranged. In other cases, they were childhood friends or at least known from their home village. A male relative would stand in for the groom, who remained in Canada, and marry the bride ‘by proxy.’
As a romance novelist, I. WAS. FASCINATED. I immediately knew I would have to figure out a story where a couple was married by proxy.
And so I did. Poor Spiro wakes up from a coma to discover he is married–very legally married–to Alia. His brother had good intentions, but Spiro is not impressed.
From there, things go off in typical Harlequin Presents shenanigans. I hope you love it!