Older Man / Mixed-Race Daddy / Marriage First, Love Later / Yearning and Tension / Her Secret Crush Comes True / He Planned It for a Long Time / Status Gap / 15-Year Age Gap / Size Difference
Insecure, low-income college student, a self-effacing little flower × 190 cm scheming mixed-race daddy
Gu Chun never imagined that one day she would marry Shen Tingshen.
At the time, she had just been rejected for the English teaching job she had wanted. Her family had gone bankrupt and was buried in debt. Her mother and stepfather had taken her younger siblings and hidden in a neighboring city, too afraid to show their faces. All the pressure rested on her alone.
Just when she was at the end of her rope, someone handed her a marriage contract.
The other party was wealthy, and his terms were simple:
Marry him for one year, move into a top-tier villa in Yungang, help care for a little girl, and tutor her in Chinese.
After a year, they would divorce. Gu Chun would receive enough money to get her through her current crisis, along with an exceptionally respectable entry on her resume.
Gu Chun thought it was simply a transaction in which both parties got what they needed.
Only on the day they registered their marriage did she see the name of her “husband”: Shen Tingshen.
He was the person she had least dared to dream about during her freshman year, her former English teacher, a man from a distant foreign land who had seemed as far away as a dream.
He was of Chinese and British heritage, with an unblemished face and deep blue eyes. He stood 190 centimeters tall, with broad shoulders and a slim waist. His home was in Kensington, London, an area crowded with old-money capital. Teaching was only one of his many pastimes.
Gu Chun had always known that a man like him would never notice an ordinary, unremarkable student like her, lost in the crowd.
So she had kept that old crush quiet and painfully hidden, never daring to let anyone know.
But now, on their marriage certificate, his name was written right beside hers.
After the wedding, Gu Chun moved into Shen Tingshen's villa.
The little girl, with blond hair and blue eyes and a face as pretty as a doll's, would sweetly call him Daddy. When Gu Chun tutored her in Chinese, she would cling to her side, turn the pages of a picture book one by one, and obediently wait for Gu Chun to teach her the characters.
And the woman who occasionally appeared at the villa was gentle and beautiful, and knew Shen Tingshen extremely well.
So Gu Chun understood from the very beginning.
That was his daughter.
That woman was the one he truly cared about.
And she was merely someone who, at the most miserable time in her life, had briefly moved into another person's world by way of a marriage certificate.
That was why every time he drew close after their wedding, it felt so wrong.
The more considerate he was, the clearer she became.
She knew she shouldn't treat him as her husband, shouldn't take this marriage seriously, and, most of all, shouldn't fall for a man who had never belonged to her during their day after day together.
And yet, little by little, she still fell deeper.
Her heart would tremble when he called her by her English name. Her breath would catch when he stood behind her and quietly corrected the little girl's pronunciation.
And when she was preparing lessons at her desk late at night, he would stand at the doorway and remind her in a low, restrained voice, “Clare, it's past midnight.” She couldn't help indulging in fantasies.
For a while, Gu Chun thought it was all one-sided.
She was using marriage as an excuse to have the most undignified dream.
Until one night, after the little girl had fallen asleep.
The villa was dimly lit. Shen Tingshen undid his shirt cuffs and leaned against the bar, speaking to her softly:
“Clare, you shouldn't look at me like that.”
Only then did she belatedly realize that she had already crossed the line of their marriage of convenience.
And he had never truly been standing on the other side of that line, either.
Later, she discovered that the blond, blue-eyed little girl was not his biological daughter.
And the woman she had thought was “very important” to him had never been his lover.
Every perfectly timed approach, every restrained and considerate indulgence, every intervention and act of possession under the guise of marriage
none of it had been a spur-of-the-moment decision.
It had all been planned for a long time.
A mature and dangerous man had remembered her years ago, then, after they met again, quietly and step by step kept her by his side.
One late night, Gu Chun was held in his arms, her eyes red at the corners, as she softly asked:
“If I hadn't been your student back then...”
“Would you still have married me?”
Shen Tingshen gave a low laugh, his breath falling against her burning ear. His voice was low and unhurried:
“If not...”
“I would have married you sooner.”
Tips:
1. They register their marriage at the start: marriage first, love later.
2. The heroine had a secret crush on the hero when she was young. There was nothing romantic between them during their teacher-student years.
3. The hero planned it for a long time; the little girl is not his biological child.
4. 15-year age gap / status gap / size difference / yearning and tension.
Theme: Your arrival made my dream more than an empty illusion.
