Pulled right from the pages of REAL LIFE! It’s not just a cliched plot device. Marriages of convenience aren’t the stuff of mere fiction. Romance novels DO get it right!
Los Angeles, California (CNN) — A well-known Mexican soap opera star, Fernanda Romero, and her American husband face federal charges of entering a sham marriage so she could get legal residency in the United States.
The government said the fake marriage was exposed when a jilted boyfriend, fashion photographer Markus Klinko, called the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
"This actor should have realized that posing as a bride for immigration purposes could land her a role in a real-life crime drama," Special Agent Miguel Unzueta said.
The 28-year-old Romero appeared in at least 15 television shows and films since 2005, according to the Internet Movie Database, when prosecutors allege she paid Kent Ross, a pizza delivery man and musician, to marry her.
All the necessary ingredients are in place. Gorgeous woman. Lots of money, a villainous jilted boyfriend…Some of you might argue that this is ready-made crust for a wakka-wakka-down-down
Sure, it needs a couple of tweaks; Kent (Hello! Is that a name that screams romantic lead or what?), the Pizza Delivery Guy Husband, needs to be an Heir to a Pizza Empire. It needs to be made clear that he’s only delivering pies because his father thinks it’s a character building exercise and his boy needs to learn the business from the ground up. That in itself is why this real-life drama is tailor-made for 
However, if you want to pull it out of the territory of Harlequin category romance, if you want to make it a single title paperback, then the hero can’t be the Billionaire Pizza guy. The hero has to be the ICE Special Agent. As the fraud case begins to come together, just before Special Agent Unzueta escorts Fernanda to the border, he falls for the Latina heroine. Soon, he uncovers the fact the Billionaire’s Pizza Family (BPF) is involved in organinsed crime. He figures out this is not fraud, the aim was not a marriage of convenience for a green card. It’s a hostage trade and the heroine is a pawn. She’s been traded to the BPF by her brother who is the head of a Drug Cartel South o’ the Border…
Yeah, you can so see it can’t you? In fact, you want to write it.
I wonder how much of this has to do with the assumption that women should want children. I know it’s possible to get pregnant in one’s forties, but it’s relatively rare to have one when over 45. So part of the dearth of older heroines could have something to do with the idea that the happy ending should include babies. Obviously there are some romance heroines who make it very clear that they want to stay child-free (Crusie’s got one of those heroines too, in Bet Me) but there don’t seem to be very many of them.
Of course, this wouldn’t explain the lack of over-forty single-mother heroines or over-forty heroines who get together with a hero who has a child/children. Still, I think it might be a factor, particularly given how many romance readers seem to find romances with babies on the covers ultra-appealing.