Plot Summary

Platonic friends Riley Smith and Nate Fisher have just received their MBAs from Stanford University. They go on a bender together to drown their different sorrows, and awaken the morning after in bed together in a Las Vegas hotel room--and discover that they got married. Riley had hit the drink because the corporate job offer she had in Los Angeles fell through for reasons not of her own doing, and she is deep in student-loan debts. They plan to get their marriage annulled, Nate offers Riley a job with his family's struggling business in small-town Cedar Falls, Tennessee, and dyed-in-the-wool West Coaster Riley ultimately accepts--if only temporarily while she gets on her feet financially. What she doesn't expect is that Nate tells his family of their marriage, thinking they'd accept her working in the business if she's family herself. Riley also makes several discoveries in town. First, the reason for Nate's bender was that he was about to propose to his high-school-sweetheart girlfriend Emily but she broke up with him, feeling neglected, and ran off with quarterback Andrew. Second, what Riley assumed was a small mom-and-pop "Fisher" business is instead the nationwide "Bynam" (Nate having used his mother's maiden name of Fisher in college in not wanting to coast on the family name) discount big-box retailer, Buy Rite. Riley has always used Buy Rite's corporate philosophy to illustrate how not to operate a business. The company has been struggling ever since Nate's mother passed, she the corporate brains with Nate's father Buck Bynam, a "my way or the highway"-type man, espousing the bottom line in the simplistic mind set of minimizing expenditures while maximizing revenues. Buck doesn't trust Riley, thinking she's just a gold digger after the Bynam money, but the real reason for his dislike of her is that he's scared of any change that could jeopardize his position. However, Nate's grandmother, family and company matriarch Faye Bynam, quietly sees in Riley just what the company needs. And third, the man Riley made a connection with when she first arrived is Nate's brother, Rhys Bynam, who has always had an issue with Buck but has returned to town to help get the company back on its feet. Riley and Rhys fall for each other with the obvious obstacle of Riley and Nate's "marriage."—Huggo