Borrowed Family — Mildred Colvin

Raylene made a deathbed promise to care for her cousin’s children, but keeping the promise seems impossible. She’s never met their father. She lives in New York, and they live over a thousand miles away on a farm in Kansas. Then John, the widowed father of two daughters and two sons, sends for a mail-order bride, and with his oldest daughter’s help, she’s able to fill his request. He doesn’t know he’s marrying his wife cousin, and she puts off telling him because she fears he will blame her for his wife’s death, and she can’t bear to be sent away. Caring for his children is only one reason she wants to stay. There’s also the fact she’s falling in love for the first time in her life. But the most important reason is a secret she hopes to guard with her dying breath.