The Counterfeit Bride / Nancy Parra 188p.

This title was on a list (Booklist? LJ?) spotlighting historical romance. Lillian is a beautiful redhead in a Colorado mining town whose only path to self-sufficiency lies in fabricating a husband away in the military. This gives her the freedom to open a dry goods business in his name, which works well for her until a strange man turns up in town claiming to be this fictitious spouse. Parra has the building blocks here for a good read, including enough reasonably plausible backstory to make the characters' actions credible. She's hobbled here by a small page count (I suppose this is a standard length for these series?) and an editor who has a poor grasp of grammar, is lazy, or isn't allotted enough time to do a decent job. Too bad.