“Your accountant?”
He stopped, took a breath and blew it out again. That phone call from Brittany kept biting him in the ass. He hadn’t meant to insult Nicole; he just hadn’t wanted to talk to Brittany any longer than he absolutely had to. And now that he thought about it, he’d given Brittany a diamond necklace. Damn.
“You’re more than that to me,” he finally said.
“Really, what am I then?”
There was that question again, he thought wildly. And he still didn’t have a complete answer. All he knew was, Nicole had touched him on levels he hadn’t even been aware of having before her. Levels he wasn’t entirely comfortable acknowledging even to himself.
He couldn’t give her an answer, so instead, he asked, “Is it so hard to accept that this was important to me?”
Confusion gleamed in her eyes, but at least, he thought, the raw anger was gone.
“Yes,” she said softly, “I guess it is. Why, Griffin? Why was this important to you?”
He shoved one hand through his hair, looked down at the little boy in his arms and then shifted his gaze to the boy’s mother. Something inside him turned over, and heat spilled through him. Not the fiery, lust-ridden flames that had been engulfing him for days. This was a warmth that seemed to slide into every dark and empty corner he possessed. Looking into her eyes gave him more than he’d had before. And even as he recognized that, he knew he couldn’t keep it. Couldn’t risk what he might find if he let his guard down.
Shaking his head, he asked, “Does it really matter?”
Disappointed by his evasion, she looked around her again, then rubbed her hands up and down her upper arms. “Griffin, you really shouldn’t have done any of this.”
Maybe not, but he wasn’t sorry about it. “Yeah, well, I did.”
“And now I have to pay you for it.”
“Damn it, Nicole…”
“No,” she said quickly. “It’s the only way. I’ll make…payments or something, I don’t know. Shouldn’t take more than twenty or thirty years,” she added in a mutter.
He gave an audible sigh. The woman annoyed him as often as she intrigued him, and that was saying a hell of a lot. “Connor, your mother is the most stubborn woman in the world.”
“That’s pretty much pot-kettle territory,” she pointed out.
Well, she had him there. “Fine. You want to pay me back? Do some work for my company.”
He’d surprised her again.
“What? Now you want to hire me?”
He was out of options, Griffin told himself. If he wanted to make this right with her, and he did, then he had to do something. And work was the one thing Nicole completely understood. Her work ethic was as finely honed as his own, so he knew he had her with this one.
“You’re not giving me much of a choice here, are you?”
“No.” She lifted her chin. “I’m not. Okay, I’ll work for you to pay off what you put into the kitchen, but I’m also going to pay you for the deductible.”
“Damn it, Nicole,” he said again and reached out to take her chin in his hand. “That’s one thing we’re not going to argue over. I started the fire, I’m paying the deductible. Deal with it.”
Their gazes locked, tension hummed between them for several long seconds. Finally, though, Nicole nodded. “Okay. You can pay the deductible, but I pay you back for every other expense you paid over the insurance money.”
“Deal. I’m not happy, but it’s a deal.”
She took his fingers from her face and closed her hand around them. “It has to be this way, Griffin. We’re not a couple. You don’t owe me anything. We have to be able to deal with each other on even ground.”
Even ground. Hell, he could buy and sell her a hundred times over. Financially, the cards were stacked in his favor. But he couldn’t argue with her logic. They weren’t a couple and weren’t going to be one. What they had was temporary, and they’d both known that going in. It just fried him to be told he wasn’t a part of her life, but he couldn’t disagree, either. He nodded. “Even ground.”
*
Nicole’s nerves were jumping and tangled up with her anger and, okay, yes, excitement, was a deep sense of disappointment she couldn’t shake. Griffin could color this any way he wanted to, but the truth was, he had done exactly what he wanted to do without a thought for how she might feel about it. An arrogant man with a generous streak. How was she supposed to stand against that combination?
She knew darn well that the King family stormed through life doing what they thought was best, and if that meant mowing someone down…well, they always felt bad about it later. Shaking her head, Nicole realized that she was just the latest in a long line of Griffin’s conquests.
He was so used to women falling at his feet, no wonder he was confused over her reaction to his “gift.” The man was both endearing and frustrating as all get-out. Somehow, he had remembered everything she’d told him about her dream kitchen. How had he found the perfect granite? The tiles she had seen only in her mind?
And her rooster. Her gaze flicked to the silly bird sitting on her new, truly fabulous stove. Griffin had cleaned the soot off the red teakettle until it, too, gleamed as if it was new.
Everything in Nicole wanted to go to him, but first she had to make him see why she was so upset about this.
“You went around me, Griffin.”
“Yeah,” he admitted, “I did.”
“My ex used to do that, too,” she said, reaching up to stroke her son’s cheek. “He made my decisions for me because he thought I was too stupid to do it for myself.”
“That’s not what—”
She held up one hand for quiet. “Whether you meant it that way or not, that’s how it feels.”
He nodded slowly, as if finally understanding what she was thinking, feeling.
“If that’s true, then…” He paused, took a breath and added, “I’m sorry.”
Nicole smiled. “I think that’s the first time I ever heard you say that.”
One corner of his mouth quirked. “I don’t say it often.”
“Then thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Griff,” Connor said, slapping one tiny hand against Griffin’s cheek. “Wanna story now.”
Instead of answering, Griffin looked at her. One dark eyebrow lifted. “Shall we go back? Have dinner, read a story and get Connor ready for bed?”