Shen looked at him for a long moment. Finally, he nodded. “Cool.” He started to walk away, then, but at the last second he stopped and said over his shoulder, “Not all women are like Kendra, you know.” And then he kept walking before Chris could even formulate a response.
Maybe Shen was right, but Chris wasn’t willing to take a chance.
Chapter Six
All the way home from Phantom Studios, Minh had been thinking about the piece she’d written on the fly. She hadn’t missed how Chris had mocked it. Called it sedate and expected. Like she’d composed it from a manual.
Technically excellent, but lacked artistry.
It hurt, to hear it from him. Not just because it was the same message she’d gotten from those other rejections, but because she’d been able to hear it too. For the first time, her mind and her heart felt like they were more in sync than they had been in a long time. Maybe Chris’s brash manner wasn’t completely ineffective. The way he pushed her was changing her, making her understand more about herself whether or not she wanted to.
It wasn’t easy to face what he had shown her. This song she’d just written had been pretty. It had been great for the scene. But…
Had it been boring? The other guys seemed to like it, but for some reason, Chris’s words were getting to her. He made her long for the wrong things—the memories of that brief, reckless time in her life before she’d learned that her parents had been right all along. She didn’t like the strange sensation she’d had every since that night she’d met Chris—was it just three days ago? She rubbed her hands over her arms. That confused, turned around feeling that wouldn’t leave her alone, the worry that maybe…she was missing something.
But she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She’d been down that road before and didn’t miss the pain that had followed. She had a good life now. Friends, an apartment, caring parents, and a job that let her work just enough to pay for her living expenses but not so much that it left her without time to rehearse and compose.
She’d just walked in the door when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number, but before she answered it, she quickly crossed the room and slid her violin case onto the shelf where it belonged, like she always did as soon as she came home, then answered the call on the third ring.
“Hello?”“Minh, it’s Chris.”
Her pulse kicked up.
What was it with him? He sneered at her and annoyed her and clearly didn’t have any faith in her ability to produce a good score, and yet at the mere sound of his voice, she was already breathing faster.
The entire time she’d sat next to him this morning, she had to keep her hands busy so that they wouldn’t somehow find their way on to his body. The T-shirt he’d been wearing was tight on his athletic body, showing off his tattoos and his muscles and making her crazy with the desire to play that hard body like a particularly sensitive instrument. She’d wondered what kind of sounds she could coax out of him, wondered if he’d be as responsive as her violin.
She wanted to make him feel what she felt. That need.
“Chris. Hi.”
“Listen, I talked to the guys, and they all loved your work. They want you to do the score for the movie.”
They wanted her to do the score? She’d been so certain that, even if his team had loved it, he’d convince them otherwise. Clearly he had more scruples than she’d given him credit for. Not that she forgave his rude behavior. But it was something. It made her feel comfortable enough, at least, to ask him, “What about you? Do you want me to do it?”
The second she’d asked, though, she regretted it. It had come out all flirty and personal, and he wasn’t the kind of guy she should be getting that way with. He didn’t deserve her attention, and yet he was consuming it.
There was a long pause. Finally, his voice came through the line, gruff but also just a little too quiet. “Yeah. I want you to do it.”
Oh, gosh, that sounded dirty. It sounded dirty because all she could think of was dirty things, when it came to him. All she could think about was all the other things he could have said that about. I want you ride my leg. I want you to grab my tight ass. I want you to bite my nipples and open your legs and let me inside of—
“But the offer comes with a condition.”
Oh God what. It had better not be anything too outrageous. Right now, she was not capable of resisting anything he might ask for.
“What is it?”
“Every song you write has to get the okay from all the guys at Phantom. We’re a team.”
If she hadn’t been attracted to him before, she would be now. There was something about the way he said it that reminded her of the Navy philosophy. All the guys under her father’s command were a unit. She’d grown up knowing that everyone had to pull together, that sailors supported one another, and that conformity was critical to survival.
That team aspect…she respected that. Chris wasn’t flashy or showy about it, like he was with his wardrobe, but she’d still seen it.
And damn if it didn’t make her find him even more sexy.
“When do you want to start?”