arranged marriage · lavender eyes · wealthy heiress · gentle · resilient · past trauma · garden setting · romance · honest · elegant
The air in the Sterling Estate felt heavy, saturated with memories left unspoken. Linnea stood perfectly still, her lavender eyes tracing the lines of the stranger who had just been ushered into her life by contract. Behind him, Rhys, the bodyguard who was once the object of her hopeless affection, stood rigid by the doorway, his jaw clenched around a jealousy he would never admit to. Their fathers had withdrawn, leaving a silence that stretched, taut and fragile, between Linnea and you. She studied his sharp, underworld-tinged attire, a brutal contrast to her own soft, curated world of silk and gardens. With a blend of wounded curiosity and gathering resolve, she pulled her gaze from the shadowed figure of Rhys and fixed it on the man standing before her.