The Bride He Underestimated

By Nicole Ashton

An arranged marriage. A clash of worlds. One unexpected beginning.

He thought she was ugly. She thought he was impossible.

Michael Tyrone has everything a man could want—money, success, and a reputation so sharp it scares people into silence. But when his parents force him into an arranged marriage with Nicole Williams -  a woman he'd never seen, the quiet, bookish woman he's been told isn't much to look at, he decides it's nothing more than a business deal. A duty to fulfill, nothing else.

Nicole, on the other hand, has learned to stop expecting kindness. She knows exactly what people see when they look at her—and she's done trying to change their minds. But marrying a man like Michael, with his rules and coldness, is more than she ever planned for. She just wants to survive it with her pride intact.

Then the wedding day comes. And Michael is left speechless.

What starts as a marriage built on pride, fear, and misunderstanding slowly becomes something neither of them expected. Between London boardrooms and quiet kitchen mornings, control gives way to curiosity, and strangers begin to turn into something like home. But love doesn't bloom easily where trust has been broken, and both will have to choose between who they've been and who they could become together.

Now they share a roof, a name, and a thousand unspoken truths. If only they can face the one secret that's been standing between them all along. What could possibly go wrong?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicole Ashton
• Release date: Oct 26, 2025
• ISBN: 9798232772536

Nicole Ashton

Nicole Ashton writes love stories that feel like movies — full of emotion, slow tension, and the kind of moments that stay with you long after the last page. Her stories often begin with heartbreak and end with healing, exploring how people find love again after losing it, and how one unexpected moment can change everything. She believes love stories don't have to be perfect to be powerful — they just have to feel real. Whether it's two people pretending not to care, someone coming back from the past, or a lie that turns into something true, Nicole writes about the quiet, messy, beautiful parts of falling in love. Her books include They Said It Was Fake, Borrowed for Revenge, and The Ten Dollar Boyfriend — each one a cinematic journey of emotions, second chances, and the complicated ways people find their way back to each other. When she's not writing, Nicole loves getting lost in films, long walks that turn into daydreams, and quiet coffee shops where she builds the worlds her characters live in. She writes for anyone who still believes love can surprise them — even when they've stopped looking for it.

Book preview

1

DAWN CREPT OVER LONDON like a whisper. Not gently—nothing about this city was gentle at five in the morning—but with the kind of deliberate precision that turned glass towers into knives, each one catching light and throwing it back sharp enough to cut.

Michael Tyrone's penthouse sat forty floors above the noise, suspended in that strange space where wealth creates its own atmosphere. Up here, the city's chaos was just a hum. Distant. Manageable. Irrelevant.

His alarm sounded at 5:47 AM.

Not 5:45. Not 5:50.

5:47.

Precisely.

Because even sleep, especially sleep—required optimization.

The sound was clean, digital, engineered not to startle but to summon. Michael's eyes opened immediately, no grogginess, no lingering in that soft space between dreaming and waking. He simply—transitioned.

On. Awake. Operational.

He sat up in a bed that cost more than a car, sheets with a thread count he'd never bothered to memorize because the interior designer had assured him they were the best. The room around him was a study in control: chrome and marble and clean lines that refused to accumulate clutter or sentiment or anything that might suggest a human being actually lived here.

Michael Tyrone didn't live in spaces.

He occupied them.

He moved through his morning routine with the efficiency of choreography performed so many times it had become muscle memory. Feet on heated floors—imported Italian tile, probably, he'd signed off on it but never really looked. Shower set to exactly 39 degrees Celsius because anything hotter dried out skin and anything cooler failed to wake him properly.

Seven minutes.

Not six. Not eight.

The water pressure was perfect because everything in Michael's life was required to be perfect, and the things that weren't got fixed or replaced until they were.

He dried off with a towel that felt expensive because it was, dressed in the walk-in closet where his suits hung in a gradient from charcoal to navy to black—organized not by preference but by the subtle psychology of power dressing he'd learned from men who'd built empires before him.

Today: charcoal.

Assertive without being aggressive. Confident without trying.

The suit jacket settled across his shoulders like it had been designed for this exact moment, because it had. Bespoke tailoring from a place in Savile Row where they kept his measurements on file and called him Mr. Tyrone with the kind of deference that money bought and maintained.

His shoes—leather so fine it almost felt like sin—cost more than most people paid in rent. He knew this. Everyone knew this. That was the point.

Not to flaunt.

But to establish.

To draw a line in the sand that said: I belong here, at the top, and you can see it in every detail I've curated.

Michael moved into the kitchen—if you could call it that. It was more a statement about kitchens, all stainless steel and marble countertops that had never seen a crumb because Michael Tyrone didn't cook. He optimized. He delegated. He consumed.

The espresso machine sat on the counter like a piece of modern art. Italian, naturally. A DeLonghi that had required a YouTube tutorial and cost more than some people's monthly salaries.

He pressed a button.

The machine hummed to life, its red light glowing like a warning, like the eye of some mechanical god that demanded tribute in the form of perfectly ground beans and filtered water.

Michael watched it work.

Watched the dark liquid drip into a cup he'd bought in sets of twelve because buying things individually felt inefficient.

The sound of the machine; hissing, grinding, extracting—was the only noise in the apartment.

No music.

No television murmuring in the background.

No sounds of another person breathing or moving or existing in his carefully calibrated space.

Just—mechanical hums.

The currency of control.

He took his espresso to the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the eastern wall of his living room, the ones that turned his apartment into a floating observatory above a city that never quite slept but sometimes pretended.

London sprawled below him.

Thousands of buildings. Millions of lives. All of them smaller from up here.

All of them manageable.

Michael studied his reflection in the glass—sharp suit, sharper jawline, eyes that had learned not to show anything that might be mistaken for weakness. He looked successful. He looked powerful. He looked exactly like the man he'd spent fifteen years becoming.

He also looked—

Alone.

The thought arrived uninvited, the way thoughts do when you're standing in silence with nothing but your reflection for company. Michael dismissed it immediately, the same way he dismissed anything that didn't serve a purpose, didn't advance a goal, didn't fit into the carefully constructed architecture of his life.

Loneliness was for people who hadn't learned that solitude was a choice.

That control required distance.

That the moment you let someone close enough to matter was the moment you gave them the power to hurt you.

Michael Tyrone had built his entire existence on a simple principle: Control is the only currency that matters. Lose it, and you lose everything.

He'd seen it happen.

Watched his father; brilliant, accomplished, respected—crumble when Michael's mother threatened to leave during a rough patch in their marriage. Watched the man who'd negotiated billion-pound deals with heads of state reduce himself to begging, to pleading, to sacrificing dignity for the possibility of keeping someone who'd already mentally checked out.

Michael had been sixteen.

Old enough to understand.

Old enough to decide: Never. Never me.

He'd dated, of course. Relationships that looked right on paper, women who understood the world he occupied and didn't ask for more than he was willing to give. But nothing that went deep. Nothing that required vulnerability. Nothing that might compromise the empire he was building.

And it had worked.

God, it had worked.

At thirty-four, Michael Tyrone was everything he'd set out to be. CEO of a tech investment firm that turned startups into unicorns. Net worth that fluctuated with the market but never dipped below eight figures. Invitations to events where Prime Ministers made small talk and billionaires compared notes on their third homes.

Success.

Quantifiable. Undeniable. His.

So why did this apartment—this perfectly curated space that had been featured in Architectural Digest and praised for its minimalist elegance—feel less like a home and more like a museum?

Why did he sometimes catch himself standing at these windows, coffee cooling in his hand, wondering what it would be like to hear someone else's footsteps echoing on these expensive floors?

Michael's jaw tightened.

He was thinking too much.

That was the problem with routines—they freed up mental space, and sometimes that space filled with things you'd rather not examine.

His phone buzzed on the marble countertop behind him.

Once. Twice.

Michael turned, already knowing what he'd find.

Two voicemails.

Both from the same number.

His mother.

He stared at the notifications, his finger hovering over the screen. Lillian Tyrone didn't leave voicemails unless something was wrong or she needed something, and in his experience, those two categories overlapped more often than not.

He could listen.

Should listen, probably.

But the tightness in his chest—the one that appeared whenever he saw her name on his screen—suggested this wasn't going to be a pleasant conversation. And Michael had learned that the best way to handle unpleasant conversations was to delay them until you'd had time to prepare.

Control the timing. Control the terrain. Control the outcome.

He deleted both voicemails without listening.

But his jaw stayed tight.

And his reflection in the glass—isolated, untouchable, perfectly groomed and profoundly alone—looked back at him with something that might have been dread.

Or maybe just recognition.

That the life he'd built so carefully, so deliberately, so successfully—

Was about to be disrupted.

Michael finished his espresso, rinsed the cup, placed it in the dishwasher with the kind of precision that suggested even his dishes had assigned positions.

He grabbed his keys, his wallet, his phone—all arranged the night before on the console table by the door because mornings were for execution, not decision-making.

He had a meeting at seven. Another at nine. Lunch with investors who needed to be charmed into writing checks. An afternoon of back-to-back calls with portfolio companies that required his particular brand of strategic ruthlessness.

A full day.

A productive day.

The kind of day that would fill the hours and quiet the questions that sometimes surfaced in the silence. Michael Tyrone walked out of his apartment, letting the door close behind him with the soft, expensive click of German engineering.

The elevator descended.

The city rose to meet him.

And somewhere—in a house in Kensington where his mother was probably already dressed and waiting, where his father sat reading the Financial Times with the same expression he wore in board meetings—a conversation was being prepared.

A summons that couldn't be deleted.

A future that couldn't be controlled.

Michael didn't know it yet.

But his perfectly calibrated life—the one he'd spent fifteen years building, the one that required nothing from anyone and promised nothing in return—was about to be dismantled by a promise made before he was born.

By parents who believed they knew what was best.

By a woman named Nicole Williams who was, at this exact moment, probably sitting in a cramped flat somewhere in this same sprawling city, drinking tea that had gone cold and wondering how her life had become something she no longer recognized.

They hadn't met yet.

Didn't know each other's names or faces or the shape of their respective loneliness.

But they would.

Soon.

Whether they wanted to or not.

Because some things—no matter how much control you thought you had, no matter how carefully you constructed your defenses—were simply inevitable.

And Michael Tyrone, who had built his entire existence on the principle that everything could be managed, everything could be optimized, everything could be bent to his will—

Was about to learn otherwise.

The hard way.

— ✦ —

The office tower where Michael's firm occupied the top three floors was the kind of building that made architectural statements: all glass and steel, angular and aggressive, reflecting the sky back at itself like a mirror held up to ambition.

He walked through the lobby—marble floors that echoed with the footsteps of people who believed themselves important—and took the private elevator that required a key card only partners possessed.

The ride up was silent.

Michael checked his phone.

Three new emails. One text from his assistant confirming today's schedule. And—

Another missed call from his mother.

No voicemail this time.

Just the notification. The digital evidence of her persistence. His chest tightened again, that unfamiliar sensation that felt uncomfortably close to anxiety.

Lillian Tyrone was many things—social architect, charity board member, woman who could reduce grown men to apologies with a single raised eyebrow, but she wasn't persistent without reason.

Two voicemails and two calls before 7 AM meant something had happened.

Or was about to.

The elevator opened directly into his firm's reception area—more glass, more marble, a receptionist who smiled with professional warmth and said, Good morning, Mr. Tyrone, like she meant it.

Morning, Claire.

He moved past her toward his corner office, the one with windows on two sides and a view that cost extra in the lease negotiation.

His assistant, Marcus—efficient, unflappable, possessed of the rare ability to anticipate needs before they were articulated—appeared beside him with a tablet and an expression that suggested the day was already more complicated than the calendar indicated.

Morning. Coffee's on your desk. Your seven o'clock is in Conference Room A. Your mother called the main line.

Michael stopped walking.

When?

Six forty-five. She said it was urgent and asked that you call her back before your first meeting.

Michael's jaw worked.

Urgent.

That word, from Lillian Tyrone, meant one of three things: someone had died, someone was getting married, or she needed him to fix something that threatened the family's carefully maintained social standing.

Did she say what it was about?

Marcus's expression remained professionally neutral, but something flickered in his eyes.

Sympathy, maybe.

Or warning.

She said she'd rather discuss it with you directly.

Of course she did.

Michael nodded, moved into his office, and closed the door behind him.

The space was exactly as he'd left it: desk clear except for the laptop and a single leather portfolio, coffee steaming in a mug Marcus had placed on a coaster, windows offering their expensive view of a city just beginning to wake.

Michael stood there for a moment, phone in hand, staring at his mother's contact information.

He could ignore it.

Claim the meetings were back-to-back, that he'd been unreachable, that he'd call her tonight when things calmed down.

He could—

But he wouldn't.

Because Lillian Tyrone didn't take no for an answer, and delaying this conversation would only make it worse when it inevitably happened.

Michael pressed call.

She answered on the first ring.

Michael.

Not hello or darling or even good morning.

Just his name, delivered in that tone that had been correcting his posture and his choices since childhood.

Mother. Marcus said you called.

Three times. I left two voicemails.

I've been busy.

At six in the morning?

I don't sleep much.

Clearly. A pause. Then, with the kind of precision that suggested this had been rehearsed: Your father and I need to see you. Today. This morning, if possible.

Michael's grip on the phone tightened.

I have meetings all morning.

Cancel them.

Mother—

Michael. Her voice shifted, and beneath the usual authority, he heard something else. Something that sounded almost like—

Urgency.

Real urgency, not the performative kind she deployed when she wanted him at a charity function.

This isn't a request. It's important. More important than whatever deal you're trying to close today.

Michael closed his eyes.

Took a breath.

And felt control—that precious commodity he'd spent his entire adult life cultivating—begin to slip through his fingers like water.

What time? he asked quietly.

Nine. The house. Don't be late.

The line went dead.

Michael stood in his office, phone still pressed to his ear, and looked out at London spreading beneath him like a kingdom he'd worked so hard to rule. And realized, with the cold certainty of someone watching a storm approach from a very long distance—

Something was coming.

Something he couldn't delete or reschedule or optimize away.

Something that was going to change everything.

He just didn't know what yet.

But he would.

Soon.

2

THE TYRONE FAMILY ESTATE sat in Kensington like a monument to permanence.

Not the flashy kind of wealth that screamed for attention—no gold gates, no ostentatious fountains, no nouveau riche desperation to be seen. This was old money, the kind that didn't need to announce itself because it had been here longer than most people's family trees had roots.

The house itself was Georgian, all honey-colored stone and tall windows that watched the street with the judgmental patience of something that had seen empires rise and fall and remained, unmoved, through all of it. Ivy climbed the eastern wall in careful patterns, cultivated to look wild but maintained with the kind of precision that required a full-time gardener and a generous budget.

The gardens stretched behind the house—manicured lawns that had never seen a weed, hedges trimmed into geometric perfection, flower beds arranged by color gradient like someone had organized beauty itself into submission.

No wildness allowed here.

No chaos.

Just control, dressed up as heritage.

Michael's car pulled through the iron gates at 8:52 AM, eight minutes early because arriving late to a summons from Lillian Tyrone was a mistake you only made once.

He sat in the driver's seat for a moment after cutting the engine, staring at the house that had shaped so much of his childhood. The place where he'd learned that emotions were liabilities, that vulnerability was weakness, that success was the only language worth speaking.

The place that had made him exactly who he was.

For better or worse.

Michael exhaled slowly, loosened his tie—a small rebellion, something his mother would notice and disapprove of—and got out of the car.

The front door opened before he reached it.

Mrs. Chen, the housekeeper who'd been with the family for longer than Michael had been alive, stood in the doorway with the kind of warm smile that suggested she knew something he didn't and felt sorry for him.

Morning, Michael. Your parents are in the sunroom.

Morning, Mrs. Chen. He paused. Should I be worried?

Her smile turned sympathetic. That's above my pay grade, dear. But I made your favorite biscuits. They're in the kitchen. For after.

After.

The word hung in the air like a warning.

Michael moved through the house—past the formal sitting room that no one ever sat in, past the dining room with the table that could seat twenty, past family portraits hanging on walls in heavy gilt frames, generations of Tyrones staring down with the same expression: prosperous, proper, pleased with their place in the world.

The sunroom sat at the back of the house, all windows and light, designed to be the warm heart of a home that had never quite figured out how to be warm.

His parents were already positioned.

Strategic, probably.

His father, Richard Tyrone, sat in the leather wingback chair near the window, morning light turning his silver hair into something almost holy. He wore reading glasses perched on his nose, a newspaper folded in his lap—the Financial Times, naturally—and the expression of a man about to conduct a board meeting rather than a conversation with his son.

His mother, Lillian, occupied the settee across from him, spine straight, teacup balanced in one hand with the kind of steadiness that suggested she'd never trembled in her life, not even when angry.

Especially not when angry.

She was dressed as if she had somewhere important to be later—probably did—in a cream silk blouse and tailored trousers that cost more than most people's wedding dresses. Pearls at her throat. Hair swept back in a chignon that hadn't moved since 1987.

Everything about Lillian Tyrone was deliberate.

Calculated.

Controlled.

Michael had inherited that from her, along with her cheekbones and her pathological need to win every argument.

Sit, Michael, she said, gesturing to the velvet armchair positioned directly across from both of them.

Not beside either parent.

Across.

Like an interrogation.

He raised an eyebrow but obeyed, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he sat, the fabric settling around him like armor he wasn't sure would hold.

What's this about? he asked, keeping his voice level, giving nothing away.

His father cleared his throat, set down his newspaper with the careful precision of a man who'd spent his career making announcements that moved markets.

It's about your future.

Michael blinked. Is this a will reading? Am I dying?

No, his mother snapped, and there it was—the first crack in her composure, gone as quickly as it appeared. You're getting married.

Silence.

The kind that followed earthquakes. The kind that made you check whether reality had shifted beneath your feet while you weren't paying attention.

Michael leaned forward, certain he'd misheard.

Come again?

Married, his father repeated, adjusting his glasses in that way he did when he was about to deliver news he knew wouldn't be well-received. To Nicole Williams. You remember the Williams family. Old family friends. Her parents are good people.

Michael laughed.

He couldn't help it.

The sound came out hollow, disbelieving, edged with something that might have been hysteria if Michael Tyrone ever allowed himself to feel anything that uncontrolled.

What is this, a plot twist from a period drama? We don't do arranged marriages in 2024.

We made a promise, his mother said quietly, and the shift in her tone—from command to something almost vulnerable—made Michael's stomach drop.

He knew that tone.

Had heard it maybe three times in his entire life, and each time it had preceded something that changed everything.

What promise?

Lillian set down her teacup with the soft clink of china against saucer.

Years ago. Before you were born. Your father and I, and Charles and Margaret Williams—we were close. Very close. We helped each other build our careers, supported each other through difficult times. And one night, over too much wine and too much sentiment, we made an agreement.

What kind of agreement?

That one day, if circumstances aligned, our children would marry. Join the families. Continue what we'd started together.

Michael stared at her.

Then at his father, who was studying his newspaper like it contained the secrets of the universe. Then back at his mother, whose expression suggested she was entirely serious.

"That sounds like something out of The Godfather," Michael muttered, rubbing his temple where a headache was already forming.

They're respectable people, his father said, still not looking up from the paper. Charles was a retired diplomat before—well, before recent troubles. Margaret sits on the board of three major charities. Good family. Old values.

And what about her? Michael asked, hearing his voice rise despite his best efforts to stay calm. This sprite you've picked out for me? Nicole? What about her?

His mother's expression flickered.

Just for a second.

But Michael had spent his entire life reading her micro-expressions, learning to navigate the minefield of her approval and disapproval, and that flicker told him everything he needed to know.

She's—well. She's different.

Michael narrowed his eyes. That sounds like code for something. What are you not saying?

His father finally looked up, and behind the reading glasses, his eyes were carefully neutral.

There have been rumors. Silly things, mostly. That she's quiet. Bookish. Perhaps not very social.

But you're not marrying her for personality, Lillian interjected smoothly. You're marrying her because we gave our word. Because the Williams family needs this alliance. And because— Her gaze sharpened. "Because you've already had your time gallivanting around with women who