“And everything has its price?”
Darcy would have slapped him, but he caught her wrist in mid-air. “I’m not for sale,” she swore through clenched teeth.
“Calm down, Darcy. I don’t pay for sex. Now, I’m getting hungry. Let’s go inside and have dinner.”
He’d drawn her to her feet before she could break free of his grasp, but she was still angry. “Is it impossible for you to provide a straight answer?”
“On an empty stomach it is.” He slid his fingers from her wrist to her hand and led her into the kitchen. “I hope you won’t mind eating at the counter.”
Astonished by his audacity, Darcy had no interest in food. “I don’t think I can eat.”
She washed her hands at the sink and splashed water on her face to cool down. Griffin might have switched off his passion, but she could barely control hers. She didn’t even want to wonder what really making love with him would be like when she doubted she would survive. She grabbed a stool, sat and knotted her hands in her lap.
Griffin washed his hands then yanked open the cavernous refrigerator. “What would you like to drink? I have wine, soda, tea. There might even be a couple of cans of beer in here.”
“I’ll stick with water.”
Griffin got out a glass, plunked in some ice cubes and filled it with water. She accepted the glass with shaky hands and then dribbled the water down her chin. “Hey, I thought you were enjoying yourself out there,” he said.
“I was,” Darcy admitted, “but a little too much.”
“That’s impossible.” He returned to the refrigerator to hide his smile and quickly removed a roasted chicken and several containers of salad. “We may not have much in the way of ambiance here, but the food should be good.”
Darcy didn’t think she could take a bite, but Griffin served her plate and after she had taken a tiny nibble of chicken, she felt surprisingly hungry. “Thank you. I can’t remember the last time a man made dinner for me.”
“Have I finally done something right?”
The man did everything right, as far as she was concerned, but that would remain her secret. “I’m going to ignore that question until you answer mine.”
Turning serious, Griffin laid his fork across his plate. “The problem is, I’m not sure I can trust you.”
“Then we’re even,” Darcy assured him.
After a long pause, Griffin nodded. “Fair enough. I’m playing as well as I ever have, probably better, but there are no challenges left to me now. I can keep touring until I snap and fly apart in a thousand directions, or I can slow down now to free up the time to compose my own music. If no one likes it, then so be it, but at least I will have given some meaning to my life.
“Now if you really want to hurt me, you’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that I’m suffering from a mid-life crisis and can’t even play chopsticks anymore.”
Darcy swallowed hard, but when she looked at him, it was awfully difficult to concentrate on what she did want. “I won’t tell a soul, but if we lose Defy the World, then Christy Joy and I will be the ones to disintegrate, and nothing you record in our building will be any good.”
“What are you doing, putting a curse on the place?” A slow smile twitched at the corner of Griffin’s mouth.
“Curses, like vampires, probably don’t exist, but if you destroy us, you’ll surely have very bad karma.”
“You’re getting spooky, Darcy.”
Darcy slid off her stool and set her half-eaten dinner in the sink. “I’m going home. It’ll take me a couple of days to work up the watercolor sketches, and then I’ll give you a call. You needn’t walk me out to my truck.”
“Oh yes, I will,” Griffin insisted.
Darcy took her keys from her pocket as they circled the house. She just wanted to get out of there before the evening got any wilder, but she’d no sooner closed her truck’s door than Griffin reached through the window to grab hold of her hair.
Then he leaned in to kiss her.
It wasn’t anything like the tender kiss he’d given her last night. It was long, slow, deep and utterly delicious. When he finally broke away and stalked off to walk in his front door, she needed a full five minutes to get control of her breathing. Everything about the man was magic, but heaven help her, if either of them were cursed, it was she.
Chapter Four
It wasn’t until Darcy got home and put on the new CD that she realized how ridiculous her threats must have sounded to Griffin. Listening to his music was like having him in the room, and she could easily visualize the intensity of his expression and the ease with which his fingers sped over the keys. The man was a musical genius, and she’d warned him to avoid bad karma.