STILL BURNING Elena Cole has a good life.A career she built from nothing. A beautiful apartment. A husband who never forgets her birthday, never raises his voice and never gives her a single reason to complain.The problem is she has not felt anything in years.When a work contract brings her back to Maplewood — the small town she left at twenty two and never looked back at — Elena tells herself it is just a job. Six weeks. Eight at the most. Then back to her real life.But Maplewood has a way of reminding you of things you buried.Like the way the town feels more like home than anywhere she has lived since. Like the way her best friend Sofia hugs her like no time has passed at all. Like the way Daniel Harte looks at her across a crowded room and every carefully built wall she has spent ten years constructing starts to crack.Daniel was her first love. Her biggest regret. The man she chose her career over and has never fully stopped thinking about. He is still here. Still steady. Still looking at her like she is the only person in the room.And Elena is still married.When her brother Luca arrives with a secret about Marcus that changes everything Elena thought she knew about her own life, and when Sofia accidentally reveals a truth about Daniel that breaks her heart wide open, Elena finds herself standing at a crossroads she can no longer walk away from.Her marriage is comfortable but it is empty. Her first love never stopped waiting. Her family is fracturing under financial pressure nobody wants to talk about. And the life she has been carefully maintaining is coming apart at the seams whether she is ready or not.Some decisions cannot be managed or planned or organised into neatness. Some decisions just have to be made.STILL BURNING is a story about the cost of playing it safe. About the gap between the life we build and the life we actually want. About family secrets, old sacrifices, and the kind of love that does not announce itself loudly but simply refuses to go away.It is about a woman who has been running for ten years finally stopping long enough to ask herself one honest question.What do I actually want?And what happens when she is brave enough to answer it.Genre: Contemporary RomanceTone: Emotional, warm, honestPerfect for readers who love: Stories about second chances, complex marriages, family drama and love that feels completely realSome fires do not die.They just wait.

The People in This StoryKANE ASHFORD, 26 — Heir to the Ashford Group. Brilliant, guarded, loyal beneath ice. Has performed duty so long he has forgotten who he would be without it.SOPHIA REYES, 24 — Daughter of the estate's head housekeeper. Fierce, honest, impossibly perceptive. Was never supposed to matter. Ends up mattering most of all.RICHARD ASHFORD, 58 — Kane's father. Built an empire from nothing. Confuses control with love. The immovable wall his son must eventually walk through.ELENA REYES, 50 — Sophia's mother. Head housekeeper for over twenty years. Carries a secret that connects her to the Ashford family far more deeply than anyone knows. The emotional heart of the story.SERENA HAN, 26 — Kane's arranged fiancée. Poised, intelligent, dangerously patient. Cannot tolerate being chosen second — and will not.ETHAN ASHFORD, 23 — Kane's younger brother. Warm, perceptive, the only Ashford who leads with his heart. The moral compass when everyone else has lost direction.MARCUS PARK, 27 — Kane's best friend and legal advisor. Sharp, loyal, and quietly gathering evidence long before anyone asks him to.