His Accidental Colony Wife

Nadia Karim took the only job in her field that would have her: two years as a field botanist on a colony that has not had a good harvest in eleven. She did not read the marriage clause closely enough. The settlement matches arriving women to unmarried colonists by lottery, and a clerical error puts Nadia's name beside Bram Tallow, a widowed terraformer who has not held a full conversation with anyone since his first wife died of the same mineral deficiency that is killing the colony's soil. Nadia moves into his prefab because the alternative is a breach-of-contract charge and a one-way ticket back to nothing. She spends a season with a man who communicates in chores, diagnosing the soil, building a lichen amendment, and proving the company agronomist wrong. Bram spends the season pulling her out of dust storms and standing behind her at hearings. Neither of them mentions the marriage clause until it becomes the only thing either of them wants to keep.