Nina sat cross-legged on the plush, hand-woven Persian rug in the grand sunlit living room of Grant Manor, quietly helping Ethan assemble a massive wooden animal puzzle.
Dust motes drifted lazily in the shafts of light spilling through the tall windows, and somewhere in the house a clock ticked with patient indifference to the strange, tender little world unfolding on the floor.
It had been two full days since she had stayed at the estate, and today she was planning to return to her small apartment downtown to organize her life and practice her scripts. She had told herself this every morning for two days now, and every morning something… Ethan's small hand tugging her sleeve, Bianca's booming laughter down the hall, the sheer gravity of this strange, beautiful house, had pulled her back into its orbit. But right now, her world was shrunk down to the wooden board between them, and she found she didn't mind at all.
