Where the Jasmine Grows

Mira Suthichai learned young that survival meant never depending on anyone who could take things away from her - a lesson her immigrant family's restaurant taught her long before Alexander "Xander" Whitmore ever sat down in her assigned seat. What starts as class-fueled contempt slowly, stubbornly becomes something neither of them can walk back from: real love, a family of their own, and the terrifying vulnerability of finally letting someone in.

But when a fabricated betrayal and a decade of his family's quiet cruelty tear them apart, Mira is left to hold unto a secret alone - armored, successful, and certain she'll never need him again.

Years later, a business deal forces them back into the same room, and Xander finally learns the truth about everything he lost. Now he has to prove, action by earned action, that the boy who once let a closed door speak for him has become a man worth trusting with everything he walked away from.