Completely Smitten by Kristine Grayson Page B

don’t look old enough to be grandfathered in.”
    He had forgotten how he looked. He made himself shrug. “What I meant is that they don’t tear down existing buildings. They just don’t let anyone build new ones.”
    “Oh.” She leaned back against the pillow.
    He needed to change the direction of the conversation. “Want anything to drink?”
    “What’ve you got?”
    Anything she wanted, but he couldn’t tell her that. “Some pop, wine, beer—you name it, it’s probably here. But the refrigerator runs on a generator, so I really don’t want to hold the door open while considering.”
    “One generator?” she asked. “Doesn’t a refrigerator use a lot of power for that?”
    Caught. He had put in the regular refrigerator because he hated to be without one—refrigerators were one of the best things about modern civilization, he thought—and he maintained it with his own magic, without thinking much about it.
    “There’s more than one generator,” he said.
    But she didn’t seem to be paying much attention. She was tapping a forefinger against her lips. “I’d love a glass of wine. Do you think that would be a problem?”
    “Why would it be a problem?” he asked. “All I had to give you was Advil. Wine would probably be good for you. This place has a great wine cellar. Just tell me what kind you want and I probably have it.”
    She smiled. “I’m not a connoisseur. I just like it. So bring me something red, heavy, and cheap.”
    “Sorry, no can do, ma’am,” he said. “We don’t have cheap around here.”
    But he didn’t have to leave the kitchen to get her wine. He already had a nice cabernet breathing on the counter. Or he did the moment she said “red.”
    He poured them both a glass, then carried hers through the archway into the living room. He’d never appreciated the openness of the design of this place as much as he did right now. He wasn’t used to having company, so he had forgotten what it was like to entertain a welcome guest.
    He didn’t think of Cupid that morning as a welcome guest.
    Darius bent down to hand Ariel her glass and as he did, she looked up at him. A jolt went through him. In the depths of her emerald green eyes he saw something he didn’t want to see.
    Ariel had a soul mate.
    “Son of a bitch,” he said. The Fates had given him the ability to see whenever someone had a soul mate by looking directly in that person’s eyes. He hadn’t been looking before. He really hadn’t been looking now, but he had seen it.
    He didn’t know who her soul mate was. He just knew she had one.
    And that changed everything.
    She blinked and leaned away from him. He got the sense she would have stepped away if she could. “What?” she asked.
    He had to cover, and fast. “Don’t you smell that? I think dinner is burning.”
    She smiled and took her wineglass from him. “I’m sure it’s fine. Sauce usually only burns on the bottom.”
    It sounded as if she were speaking from experience. He hurried toward the kitchen as if he really thought something were burning, even though leaving her side was the last thing he wanted to do.
    He wanted to make certain what he had seen in her eyes was true.
    She had a soul mate. And he was required to find that soul mate.
    It was the last thing he wanted to do.
    Ariel ate with gusto. She hadn’t realized how much she missed food made from fresh ingredients. Dehydrated meal packs took care of her hunger, but they weren’t satisfying like this meal was.
    She had never had spaghetti sauce this good. The tomatoes tasted fresh. The sauce had a number of vegetables in it which she wasn’t used to, and it also had some kind of spice that she didn’t recognize.
    Darius had served her food to her on a lap tray, complete with a rose in a bud vase on one corner. When he had set the tray before her, he had smiled.
    “Such service,” she had said to cover her nervousness.
    “I normally make my guests do everything,” he had said, “but since