The Little World He Chose

The Whitmore estate outside Savannah was lit for a celebration. Strings of lanterns swept along the veranda, catching the last gold of the evening, and the wide circular drive filled steadily with cars that gleamed like they had never once touched a real road. Somewhere past the hedges, the scent of roses and magnolia hung so thick in the air that it seemed to seep through the walls of the house itself.

Upstairs, in the room set aside for the bride, Mrs. Whitmore stood in a white designer gown of her own, staring down at the wedding dress laid across the bed. It had not been touched. Her hands had begun to tremble before she even understood why.

Her phone buzzed in her palm, the screen glowing with a message she had already read three times. Mom, I can’t marry that old man. I’m sorry.

A few minutes later the housekeeper came hurrying in from the hall, out of breath, her eyes lowered as she leaned close to whisper in Mrs. Whitmore’s ear.

“We searched the whole house, ma’am. Miss Sophie is nowhere to be found.”

Mrs. Whitmore’s legs went weak beneath her. For a moment she thought she might simply fold to the floor.

Where could she have gone? She had run off with someone; that much was obvious. How could she do this? She had given no thought at all to what it would do to this family.

Oh God. All those guests were sitting downstairs at this very moment, and the bride, the one person the entire evening depended on, had vanished into thin air.

Mrs. Whitmore squeezed her eyes shut and let out a strangled breath.

“What are we supposed to do now?" she said, mostly to herself. “What do I tell the Sinclairs?"

“Ma’am, we’ll figure something out,” the housekeeper said gently. “Please, try not to."

She never finished the sentence. A small, uncertain voice cut in from the doorway.

“Where’s my sister?”

Mrs. Whitmore looked up. When she saw the young woman standing there, something shifted behind her eyes, quick and bright, like a light switching on.

She caught the housekeeper’s arm without looking away from the girl in the doorway.

“The Sinclairs only ever said they wanted to marry a Whitmore daughter,” she murmured. “They never once said which one.”

Exactly.

She let her gaze travel, slow and assessing, over the young woman across the room. Bella Whitmore was twenty-two, though she had a way of seeming younger, something in the softness of her face that made people forget it. Delicate shoulders. Neat, arched brows. Lashes so long they nearly brushed the top rim of her round glasses. A small, fine nose and dark hair pulled into a ponytail with soft bangs falling over her forehead. Her skin was pale and clear, and she stood barely over five feet tall, all nervous energy, her wide dark eyes blinking behind lenses too big for her face. She looked, if anything, like a doll someone had forgotten to put away. Sweet and just slightly ridiculous and entirely unaware of it.

“Come here, Bella. Why are you standing all the way over there? What are you even doing up here?”

Bella hovered at the threshold, clearly unsure whether she had the right to step further in. She usually kept to the small room off the kitchen that had once belonged to the household staff, and she knew, without needing to be told, that this floor was not really hers to wander.

“I just came to see Sophie,” she said quietly, twisting the hem of her blouse between two fingers. “She’s getting married tonight, so I wanted to give her this.” She held up a small stuffed rabbit. “I swear, I finished all my chores first. I didn’t even go near the guests.”

Something sharp and resentful flickered across Mrs. Whitmore’s face, gone as quickly as it came. She smiled instead.

“Bella, sweetheart, your sister had to go take care of something. She’s not here right now. She’s gotten herself lost, in a manner of speaking.”

“Oh no,” Bella breathed, her mouth falling open.

“You know how many people are downstairs waiting for a bride to walk in,” Mrs. Whitmore went on. “If nobody comes down at all, can you imagine what people will say about your father? The whole town will be laughing at him by morning.”

Bella pushed her glasses up with one hand, rolling her round eyes in thought, and answered with perfect, guileless sincerity.

“Then we really do need to go find her. Right away.”

Silly girl. Mrs. Whitmore offered a small, private salute to just how little sense the girl had, then let her eyes fill with tears on command.

“Would you do something for me, sweetheart? I know I’m only your stepmother, and I know I’ve never been much to you. But if not for me, then for your father. Please.”

“Me?” Bella asked, startled.

She stared at the woman who had made a habit, nearly every day of her life, of finding some new small cruelty to hand her. And yet some foolish, hopeful part of her still could not quite believe that anyone would use her this way.

Mrs. Whitmore squeezed her shoulder.

“That dress. Do you like it?”

Bella nodded.

A slow, satisfied smile spread across Mrs. Whitmore’s face.

The vows were exchanged that same night, over a video call arranged in a hurry by lawyers on both ends. Bella Whitmore and Ryan Sinclair were pronounced husband and wife before either of them had spoken more than a few words to each other.

A twenty-two-year-old girl who still slept with a stuffed rabbit had just become the wife of a thirty-six-year-old man she had never met.

Within days, once the paperwork cleared and a visa was issued, Bella was on a plane to New York.

It was her first time flying. A strange, fluttering fear sat in her chest, tangled up with something close to wonder, and she kept sneaking looks at the man beside her, a close friend of Ryan’s who had flown down specifically to bring her back.

“So when we land, are you going to do the whoosh whoosh thing?” she asked, sweeping both hands through the air like wings. “Like, take me straight off to some magical land?”

She pushed her glasses back up her nose and turned her wide, dark, sparkling eyes on Leo Hunter, who stared back at his best friend’s brand new sister in law with the expression of a man watching a house catch fire in slow motion.

Exactly like that, she thought, delighted with herself, and had to bite back a laugh.

It was Ryan who had given Leo his nickname years ago, insisting that for a man named after a lion, he sure did know how to fold like a rabbit the moment things got interesting. Watching him now, pinned in his seat while a total stranger cross-examined every button on the armrest, Bella decided the name suited him better than ever.

She was still turning it over happily in her mind when she found something new to investigate.

“What happens if I push this one?” she asked, delighted, already reaching for it.

“Go ahead and find out,” Leo said, mostly just relieved to have something to say.

She pressed her small finger to the button, and a partition rose smoothly between their seats, cutting Leo from view. She gasped, stared at it in open astonishment, then pressed it again and watched it slide away. She clapped, delighted, pressed it once more, and when Leo’s face reappeared on the other side, dissolved into giggles.

Leo spent the rest of that gap trying, and failing, to imagine the look on Ryan’s face when he finally met his new bride. He laughed under his breath more than once over the course of the flight, nearly fifteen hours door to door, during which he heard, in exhaustive detail, the entire story of Bella’s favorite doll’s wedding, followed by an equally passionate account of the C minus she had once gotten in algebra.

The moment they landed in New York, Leo took her straight to a bridal boutique, where she was fitted into a simple white gown, her hair softened, a little color brushed onto her cheeks, red lipstick smoothed over her mouth. When she looked in the mirror, she looked, for a moment, almost like something out of a storybook.

From there he brought her to the Sinclair estate, where the housekeeper, a warm, round-faced woman named Martha, met her at the door and immediately folded her into a hug, cooing over how sweet she was and how pretty, before finally showing her up to her room.

Down in his study, Ryan Sinclair sat with his usual careless, confident elegance, one leg crossed over the other, his gaze cool and unreadable. His dark hair was cut close and neat, his mouth set in its familiar thin, unimpressed line, his brows sharp enough to frame a face that had made better men than his secretary lose their train of thought. He was, by any measure, a striking man and an intelligent one, though at that particular moment he looked distinctly unimpressed.

“Sir. Sophie Whitmore ran off with someone else,” his secretary was saying, laying out the details in a flat, careful tone.

“Ran off,” Ryan repeated, one eyebrow lifting.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then who exactly did I marry tonight?”

His voice had gone even colder.

“Her name is Bella, sir. Mr. Whitmore’s youngest daughter, from a second marriage, he kept quiet for years. Her mother was killed not long after the wedding, and Mr. Whitmore brought the girl home to live with the family after that.”

“Hm.”

At that exact moment, Leo let himself into the study without knocking.

“Bro. You have got yourself a wife who’s a little bit ridiculous but genuinely gorgeous.”

Ryan’s expression did not change at all.

“Sir, will that be everything?” the secretary asked, bowing his head slightly.

“Get out.”

The secretary went. Ryan rose from his chair and started toward the room where she was waiting.

“Bro, every minute counts tonight; better hurry,” Leo called after him, one eyebrow raised in a knowing look.

Ryan had agreed to this marriage as his grandfather’s last wish, more or less the only one he had ever bothered to grant the old man. He hadn’t expected to feel anything about it at all.

He heard something shatter as he pushed open the door. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, both hands folded in her lap, a thin white veil covering her face.

He crossed the room and stopped in front of her, then leaned down and lifted the veil back and looked into a pair of wide, dark, glittering eyes staring straight up at him. Something strange moved through his chest, something he couldn’t immediately name. Two words rose to his lips before he could think better of them.

“Little world.”

She was so young, all wide-eyed and open-faced, watching him with an expression that held no calculation in it whatsoever. Her red lipstick had smeared, more onto her teeth than her lips, and she smiled at him anyway, entirely unbothered.

“Hello there, brother in law!”

Ryan stared at her, certain he had misheard.

“What did you just say?”

She blinked at him and smiled wider.

"Brother-in-law! Oh, and I’m really sorry; I broke your glass.”

Ryan felt the words land somewhere just beneath his ribs, a jolt of disbelief so sharp it stole his voice entirely. He had never once imagined, in any version of his life, that he might end up married to someone so completely, achingly guileless.

He turned, already moving toward the door, when a small, soft hand closed gently around his.