Nina stood completely frozen in the center of the massive room, her fingers nervously twisting and untwisting the hem of her knit sweater. The silence pressed against her ears, thick and expectant, as if the very walls were waiting to see what she would do next.
She glanced toward the window, then the door, then back again, searching for some anchor in a room that suddenly felt far too large and far too intimate all at once. Everything around her seemed to belong to him… the heavy furniture, the faint scent of cedar lingering in the air, even the shadows that pooled in the corners like they had been trained to obey him.
This wasn't the first time she had stayed in his master bedroom. She had crashed here before when she first came to the Grant Estate, disoriented and exhausted, with nowhere else to go. Back then, the room had felt like a sanctuary, a place to catch her breath before facing whatever chaos waited for her the next morning.
