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She only stared at him. “I didn’t ask you for this, Griffin. What I told you was a dream. Idle imagination.”
“And now it’s not.”
This wasn’t going at all the way he’d hoped it would. He knew she’d be pissed, of course, but he’d thought that seeing the kitchen of her dreams right there in front of her would take the sting out. And okay, yeah, he’d expected her to thank him for going to all the trouble of making sure she got what she damn well deserved.
“It wasn’t up to you to do this, Griffin,” she said, and her voice was softer, lower, as if most of the anger had drained away. But her eyes belied that supposition. They were still flashing, still furious.
“Look, it’s done.” And even he wasn’t sure why it had been so important to him to give her this. He only knew it had been, and now that it was done, he wanted her to enjoy it. To cook in it every day. To remember him every time she walked into the room.
Griffin frowned as that thought flashed in his mind. Where had that come from? Shifting uncomfortably, he ignored the truth he’d just stumbled on and asked, “Why don’t you at least take the time to look around?”
“Yeah, uh,” Lucas said, gathering his clipboard from the shining granite countertop. “I’ll be going. You two work this out, and let me know who wins.”
Nicole shot him a look that should have curled his hair. But clearly Lucas was accustomed to dealing with furious women. He just gave her a smile and slipped out of the room like a damn ghost. So much for family loyalty, Griffin told himself. Who knew a King could be a coward?
Well, fine. He could handle Nicole on his own. He’d been doing it for almost three weeks, right? He knew her, body, heart and mind, and he knew damn well that underneath all of her protests, she wanted this kitchen.
“Go ahead, Nicole. Look.” Even God was on his side in this, Griffin thought, since the late-afternoon sunlight washed across the dream kitchen in a sweep of gold. The pale-oak cabinets looked as golden as the light. The floor gleamed, and the granite countertop shone like a mirror.
He ran one hand over the granite and her eyes were drawn to the motion. “It’s exactly as you described it,” he said softly.
She swallowed hard and scooped up Connor when he would have scuttled out of the room. “I know. And it’s even more beautiful than I imagined it would be.”
“And the stove.” He moved toward the professional-grade appliance. “Six burners, and they all work.”
A smile teased at the corners of her mouth, but disappeared way too fast. “It doesn’t change anything, Griffin—”
“The fridge I had to guess at, since you didn’t really say one way or the other.” He pulled open the doors and let her stare into the interior. Boxes of Connor’s favorite juice drinks were on the top shelf, and in a wine rack was a bottle of champagne he’d planned to spring on her later.
He watched her expression, and in spite of the anger still churning inside her, he could see how much she loved her new kitchen. Her gaze swept over the tile floors and across the freshly painted walls and landed, for just a minute, on the rooster teakettle he had cleaned up. An unexpected emotion rushed through him and caught Griffin by surprise.
This had started out as a way to pay her back for what he’d done to her house. Then it had become a way to please her, more for his own sake than anything else, he could silently admit. He had wanted the fun of giving her something she hadn’t expected. But now it was more than all of that. He wanted her to have it because he knew how important it was to her. The dream she’d described had been too detailed to be just idle wishful thinking. Watching her eyes as she’d told him had convinced him that this dream meant more to her than even she had known.
And besides all of that, he realized now, he’d wanted her to have it so that she’d never forget him. So that his presence would be stamped on her house. Her world. He wanted her to remember him long after he was gone, because Griffin knew he wouldn’t be forgetting her.
“It’s really beautiful, Griffin,” she said on a sigh. “But that’s not the point.”
