When Joseph first went out to Heart Lake for a much needed vacation, the last thing he expected to find was a run away bride still wearing her dress. Virginia is desperate. The man she was slated to marry had just tried to rape her minutes before the wedding. Her Pa had insisted she get married before her 18th birthday as it was an embarrassment for a woman her age to live alone with an unmarried man, even if it was her own father. It just wasn't done in 1910. With only three days to go; when she literally runs into the single, lonely homesteader, she knows what she must do. Make him a deal he can't refuse. He marries her and she'll be the kind of wife he wants. The forever kind that will cook, clean, sew, help him around the homestead and eventually bare him a passel of children. Who needs a messy thing like love anyway when the only alternative is life on the streets?