Power Play

All Nyra wanted was to get through the charity gala without a crisis.What she got was six feet of Korean-American hockey player who’d been asking her out for months, and who saved her whole event by improvising centerpieces when everything fell apart.Worse? He wasn’t just helpful. He was good at it. Suspiciously good.Even worse? He’d been secretly studying her entire profession. For months. Because of her.Nyra Moss has a struggling design studio, a flower-shop landlady who slips cash under her door, and a long history of making herself smaller to fit inside a charming man’s orbit. She is done being somebody’s supporting act.Sterling Matthews has a rising career, a contract he is terrified he has not earned, and a bone-deep belief that the people who love you leave the moment you stop being impressive. So he never stops being impressive. For everyone. Especially her.Falling for each other is the easy part. Building something without one of them vanishing into it, that is the hard part.Because the brighter Sterling’s spotlight burns, the smaller Nyra makes herself, and the smaller she gets, the harder he chases the only kind of being-wanted he has ever trusted.By the time they understand they have become each other’s undoing, the damage is already done.What comes after is not about who gets to be the star. It is about whether two people can stop performing long enough to actually choose, and be chosen.She is terrified he might be exactly what she needs.This could cost Nyra everything she has built, or become the greatest design of her life.