Before the Wedding Period Ends

Marriage first, love later | Powerful man learns to bow his head | Instinctive attraction

Sweet, gentle crochet blogger × scheming, controlling business tycoon

1.

After losing her job and her boyfriend, the heroine returned to her hometown.

In the lively music of a guesthouse, she was jostled off balance, and a strong hand steadied her by the waist.

The man wore a tailored suit. His gold-rimmed glasses accentuated his refined features, and he radiated an unmistakable air of authority.

Rebelliously, she tugged at his sleeve. “Why don’t we… give this a try?”

After one reckless night, Tu Ying fled, only to run into him in the CEO’s office on her first day at her new job.

Zhou Xuli, a rising star in business, came from a family of scholars. He was restrained and courteous in public, but calculating at every turn behind closed doors.

When Tu Ying was desperate, he came to her through the night and offered her a marriage contract.

She needed his power and status, and he needed a wife in name only. Their marriage was a matter of mutual convenience.

2.

Tu Ying planned to go through the motions in a strictly businesslike way for the year, but soon realized Zhou Xuli had ulterior motives.

Every morning, she woke up in the man’s arms. She was baffled; she’d always thought she slept quite well.

Until one night, she discovered that he deliberately pulled her into his arms after she fell asleep.

On his birthday, Tu Ying gave him a fine burgundy cord she had crocheted herself.

The next day during lunch break, he pressed her into a corner of the lounge.

As he raised his wrist, his shirt cuff slipped back, revealing a delicate burgundy thread wound around his pale knuckles and hidden beneath his watch, where no one could see it.

Only when their relationship came to light did he move the cord to the most conspicuous spot on his wrist, silently making their relationship plain for all to see.

Tu Ying thought they would part on good terms when their contract expired, but she never expected his loss of control to shatter their peaceful arrangement.

She exercised her right to end things and handed him the divorce agreement. “Let’s get divorced.”

3.

No one knew that on that noisy night at the guesthouse, Zhou Xuli had fixed his gaze on Tu Ying the moment he saw her in the crowd.

Amid all the commotion, she wore a pink knit sweater, clean and soft, like a strawberry liqueur candy.

He wanted to bite.

From that moment on, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

When she was helpless, he took advantage of the opportunity and drew her into his life with a marriage contract.

He set the one-year term and personally granted her the right to end it, yet every day afterward, all he wanted was to break the contract.

A short scene:

One day, his assistant found the boss, a ruthless dealmaker, studying different crochet stitches with a hook and yarn.

Zhou Xuli picked up the finished piece and asked eagerly, “Would this pass if I turned it in as homework?”

The assistant looked at the crooked thing that could just about be recognized as a star and fell silent.

After a busy day, the boss’s wife still had to grade homework like this… She really had it rough.

Reader’s guide:

1. One-on-one romance, both leads’ first times, happy ending.

2. Neither lead is perfect.

Theme: The self is most precious.