21/48: Uneven by Every Measure. Balanced Where It Matters.

She is twenty-one, building a life of her own. He is forty-eight, carrying twenty years of secrets he never intended to share. Neither is prepared for what happens when their lives collide.Manhattan, 1979.At twenty-one, Kiara Helmswood is fighting to keep her Manhattan flower shop alive. Helmswood Flowers is small, imperfect, and unmistakably hers. She's learned to stretch every dollar, handle impossible clients, and turn stems and petals into something people remember.What she hasn't learned is what to do with Adrian Knightly.At forty-eight, Adrian is wealthy, controlled, and accustomed to keeping the past exactly where it belongs. He walks into Kiara's flower shop expecting nothing more than an ordinary afternoon.Then he sees her.Twenty years earlier, Adrian lost two people he loved: Kiara's parents. He accepted what everyone else accepted, that their deaths were a tragic accident, that the questions had been answered, and that some doors were better left closed.But Kiara has her mother's face.And she has questions.Questions about her parents. About the money that appeared throughout her childhood. About photographs she was never meant to find. And about why Adrian Knightly seems to know pieces of her life that she doesn't know herself.The closer Kiara gets to the truth, the harder it becomes for Adrian to protect the secrets he has carried for twenty years and the harder it becomes for either of them to deny what is growing between them.Because the twenty-seven years separating them may be the most obvious reason they should stay apart.It isn't the most dangerous one.Twenty-seven years separate them. Twenty years of secrets stand between them. And somewhere in the past, a truth is waiting that could change everything.Uneven by every measure. Balanced where it matters.