The confrontation happened on the third day, over a locked door — and this time, it was Damon who found her first.

She'd told herself she was looking for a bathroom. She'd told herself that even as she crouched at the handle of the door at the end of the west hallway, testing the lock with the particular focus of someone who'd broken into worse places for far less reason.

"That's a very committed way to look for a towel."

She hadn't heard him approach — she never did — and she'd stopped being surprised by it, only wary. "It's locked. I was curious."

"You were investigating." He said it without heat, which was somehow more unsettling than anger would have been. "I had someone look into you the morning you arrived, Wren. Before the storm. Before the roads went. Wren Castellan, freelance appraiser, doesn't exist in any licensing database in this country."

Her heart slammed. There was nowhere to run to — no car that would start, no road that would hold, no version of this where the truth didn't have to come out eventually. She'd known that from the first night. She simply hadn't expected to feel almost relieved when the moment finally arrived.

"I was hired to find out what you're hiding," she said. "I don't know what it is. I don't know who wants to know. I take the job, I find the answer, I deliver it. That's all this was supposed to be."

He studied her for a long, silent moment, and something in his expression shifted — not surprise. Recognition, the particular satisfaction of a man who'd already suspected the shape of the truth and simply wanted to hear her say it herself.

"That," he said quietly, "is the first thing you've told me since you arrived that I believe completely."

"It won't be the last."

"No," Damon agreed, stepping closer, close enough that she had to tip her head back to hold his gaze, close enough that the locked door behind her stopped mattering entirely. "Because you're not leaving this house until I've had every true thing you've got, Wren. Not the appraiser. Not the lie. All of it. I find I've lost my patience for anything less."

"That's not your decision to make."

"Isn't it?" His hand came up, not touching, hovering at her jaw with a restraint that felt more dangerous than if he'd simply taken what he wanted. "You lied your way into my house in the middle of a blizzard that's stranded you here with no way out and no one coming to help you. I could do a great many things right now, and calling the authorities isn't remotely at the top of the list."

"Are you threatening me?"

"I'm telling you what's true." His voice dropped, low and certain. "You belong to whoever hired you until this job is finished — that's how you've built your life, isn't it? A means to someone else's end. I find I have no interest in sharing you with them. Not now. Possibly not ever again." His thumb finally grazed her jaw, feather-light, deliberate. "You're going to stay close to me for the rest of this storm, Wren. Not because I'm forcing you. Because some part of you already wants exactly that, and we're both going to stop pretending otherwise."

She should have pushed him away. She should have found the fury this deserved, the fear that would have been reasonable, earned, entirely justified. Instead she stood there with her back to a locked door, pulse wild, and felt something in her chest answer his claim with a want so sharp it frightened her more than he did.

"I haven't agreed to anything," she managed.

"You will." He stepped back, finally, putting air between them that did nothing to slow her heartbeat. "I'm a patient man, Wren. I can wait for you to stop lying to yourself about that too."

He walked away, and she stood alone in the hallway for a long time afterward, less afraid of the danger she'd come looking for than of how badly, how instantly, she wanted to let him keep her.