Nora and Her Unexpected Billionaire
Nora Ellison has spent her whole life not knowing where she came from. Adopted as a baby, and raised by her grandmother Ruth. Until Ruth dies and leaves behind a tin box containing a birth certificate she has never seen, a letter and a photograph of a woman she does not recognise with the words Chiang Mai, 1998 written on the back.
She flies to Thailand to find answers.
On her first night she locks herself out of her rented cottage, falls into a fertilizer trench in the dark, and ends up stranded on a deserted road in a soaked sundress with nowhere to go. A car passes by and stops.
“What the actual hell do you think you are doing out here looking like that?”
Arlo Reeves is arrogant, sarcastic, and impossibly handsome. She is convinced she hates him. He takes her in for the night anyway.
What Nora does not know is that Arlo was partly sent to Chiang Mai to keep an eye on the cottage she is renting. What neither of them knows is that the secret buried in that cottage is the same secret Nora came to Thailand to find.
As Nora starts her investigation, she and Arlo keep ending up in the same places.
But the closer Nora gets to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes.
When she finally finds it and as the pieces start to fall into place, a hard slap cuts across her face before she can say a word.
“You think you belong here? You were given away. You were never wanted then and you are not wanted now.”
The slap stings and tears fall as she hears those words.
Meanwhile across the city, Arlo Reeves has a choice to make.
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Chapter: What brought you to Chiang Mai? The door clicked shut. Nora stared at it for a second, then turned around. "Rude," she said to nobody in particular as she stepped further into the room. The floors were polished stone, smooth and cool underfoot, and the walls were warm ivory and sage. She gazed around her. The room was definitely decorated by someone different. It was maximalist compared to the rest of the house, but it was beautiful. She would have liked it very much under different circumstances. "What a weirdo! Why would he say that to me like that?" She opened the wardrobe and looked inside without really seeing it. "I hate him." She moved delicately across the room, as though the longer she lingered, the more she would taint the whole place with her smelly predicament. She made her way over to the built-in bathroom and peered into the vanity mirror stretching over a pair of basins, staring at her reflection with a groan. Her clothes were a wreck, her sandals were done for, and a giant smear of what she pr
Last Updated: 2026-07-25
Chapter: Go shower, You stink!When he started the engine she admitted defeat, especially with the rain starting to pour again.She hurried across the garden to the gate, Lilly running alongside her, scared of being left behind, and tapped on the driver’s window. This time she kept the torch just clear of his eyes but angled it enough to get a proper look at his face.He was more handsome than she had registered earlier — well groomed, with neat brows and long lashes that were frankly unfair on a man, and the bright light picked out a small scar along his chiselled jaw. His hair was a deep dark brown, and she still couldn’t determine the colour of his eyes with the torchlight distorting everything.Not that she was looking.“I can’t stay out here all night,” she muttered. “There might not be anyone else passing by.”“Now that,” he agreed pleasantly, “is a great observation. My house is the only other building along this lane. It finishes at my front garden.”Nora stared at him. He had known that and had still been
Last Updated: 2026-07-17
Chapter: Meeting Arlo ReevesA quick, impatient beep of the horn cut through her thoughts, snapping her back to the present.“Do you enjoy standing there?”Biting back the caustic retort that had sprung to her lips, she said evenly, “I appear to have locked myself out. I don’t suppose you’ve got anything in the car I could force the door with?”She swung the torch in the direction of his face as she spoke and saw him flinch as the bright light caught his eyes. “Sorry.” She lowered it immediately, but the brief glimpse had been enough, dark hair, sharp jaw, olive skin.He sat quietly for a moment, then said, “You want me to commit a crime? Breaking down a stranger’s door?” There was a hint of laughter in his voice. Nora had to take a deep breath before she could say sweetly, “I mean, yeah? Can you help?” She was shivering from head to foot and this clown found the situation funny.The absolute nerve of him.“You’re cold.”She hoped it was her shaking he had noticed and not the way her nipples were standing out li
Last Updated: 2026-07-17
Chapter: You snored!Few days later, she fell asleep in a budget meeting.Not a slow drift — a full, head-dropping, snoring herself awake situation, in a glass-walled conference room with nine other people present. She came back to consciousness to find her colleague staring at her from across the table with an expression of barely concealed horror, and her boss Maya watching her from the head of the table.“Okay,” Maya said, after the meeting had ended and the room had emptied. She set a coffee down in front of Nora and sat beside her. “Talk.”“I’m fine,” Nora said automatically.“You snored, Nora.”“I don’t snore. I—” She paused. “Did I snore?”“Just a small one.” Maya chuckled, wrapping both hands around her own coffee cup. She was quiet for a moment. Maya’s silences were never uncomfortable. “You’ve handed in two pieces this month that I had to quietly fix before they went to print. You’ve been late four times and You cried in the bathroom on Friday.”Nora opened her mouth.“Lena told me,” Maya said s
Last Updated: 2026-07-17
Chapter: Why Am I here?She sprang up immediately and hurried toward the gate, peering into the darkness to see who it might be. Perhaps a farmer nearby was coming, she thought hopefully. As the vehicle drew closer, she lifted her phone and began waving the small torch frantically in the air, trying to catch the driver’s attention.Then she hesitated. The realization of how exposed she was struck her suddenly. Alone, soaked, standing by a deserted country road in the middle of the night. Stories about women getting hurt after asking strangers for help drifted uneasily through her mind.The vehicle seemed to approach painfully slowly, though in reality it could not have taken more than a couple of minutes. Bright headlights suddenly washed over the road, overpowering the weak glow from her phone.A large off-road vehicle with heavy tyres rolled past before Nora even had time to react. For a terrible second, her stomach dropped. She thought the driver had missed her entirely. Then the sharp squeal of brakes cu
Last Updated: 2026-07-17
Chapter: A rainy Thailand nightAs the rain began to drizzle, Nora rode her bike faster down the uneven terrain, claws nudging deep into her thighs. That was her cat, Lilly, who at this point was holding on for her dear life, unaccustomed to countryside roads.“Hold on, girl! You’re gonna be fine" Nora shouted over the rain.By the time she reached the cottage, the drizzle had turned into a steady, heavy rain. She yanked at the door, but it wouldn’t budge. She rattled the handle, pushed harder, looking around wildly.“Oh no… no, no,” she muttered, panic rising. The door was locked. Of course it was locked.How could she be so stupid? She had forgotten to read the manual. Those automatic locks that clicked themselves shut from the outside were clearly designed to punish first-time renters.It was unfortunate how today had gone awry. She had imagined this little cottage as a sanctuary, a quiet place where she could sit undisturbed, pore over the documents she had found in her grandmother’s room, and finally catch up o
Last Updated: 2026-07-17
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