Wife For a Week

Wife for a Week is a 2006 Harlequin Presents romance by Kelly Hunter, published as a 219-page paperback by Harlequin Mills & Boon. The book runs on a contract. Nicholas Cooper requires a wife to complete a business deal, and Hallie Bennett needs money, so they agree on a week of appearances together under rules he sets in advance, the first being that affection belongs in public view.

Nicholas is thirty and has decided that a convincing wife is a business requirement rather than a personal one; Hallie is twenty-four, Australian and presentable enough to make the performance work. Their arrangement is a transaction with terms, and the pleasure of the novel comes from watching the terms erode, since holding hands in front of an audience proves simple while keeping apart afterwards does not.

Hunter wrote this for the Presents line, which specialises in short, high-intensity romances with a powerful male lead and a heroine who has agreed to something she did not design. The clock is the week itself, and the ending has to settle whether Nicholas keeps his contract wife as a real bride. It is a clean modern instance of the marriage-of-convenience form in corporate dress.