My Fair Billionaire(23)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

“In fact,” Ava hurried on, looking back at the painting herself, “it’s the sort of interpretation that might lead to a discussion that could go on for hours.”

Her heart was racing, and heat was seeping into her chest and face. So she made herself do what she’d done in high school whenever she started reacting that way to Peyton. She channeled her inner Gold Coast ice princess—who she was dismayed to find still lurked beneath the surface—and forced herself to be distant, methodical…and not a little bitchy. She was Peyton’s teacher, not his…not someone who should be experiencing odd, decades-old feelings she never should have felt in the first place. She’d never be able to compete with a modern-day Jackie Kennedy anyway. She was the last sort of woman Peyton wanted or needed to accomplish his goals.

“Which is exactly why,” she said frostily, “I don’t want you saying things like that.”

Sensing his annoyance at her crisp tone, she pressed on. She didn’t dwell on how she was behaving exactly the way she had sworn not to—treating him the way she had in high school—but she was starting to feel way too many things she shouldn’t be feeling, and she didn’t know what else to do.

“What I really want for you to take away from this exercise,” she told him coolly, “is something less insightful. That shouldn’t be too difficult, should it?”

“Less insightful?” he echoed. “I thought the whole point of this museum thing was to teach me how to say something about art that wouldn’t make me sound like an idiot.”

She nodded. “Which is why I’ve focused on the works I have today. These are artists and paintings that are familiar to everyone. For your purposes, you only need to master some passing art commentary. Not deep, pithy insight.”

“Then tell me, oh great art guru,” he said sarcastically, “what do I need to know about this one?”

Looking at the painting, again—since it was better than looking at the angry expression on Peyton’s face—Ava said, “You should say how interesting it is that the themes in Nighthawks are similar to Hopper’s Sunlight in a Cafeteria, but that the perspective of time is reversed.”

“But I haven’t seen Sunlight in a Cafeteria,” he pointed out. “Not to mention I don’t know what the fu— Uh…what you’re talking about.”

“No one else you’ll be talking to has seen it, either,” she assured him. “And you don’t have to understand it. The minute you offer some indication that you know more about art than your companion, they’ll change the subject.” She smiled her cool, disaffected smile and told him, “I think you’re good to go with the major players in American art. Tomorrow, we’ll take on the Impressionists. Then, if we have time, the Dutch masters.”

Peyton groaned. “Oh, come on, Ava. How often is this stuff really going to come up in conversation?”

“More often than you think. And we still have to cover books and music, too.”

He eyed her flatly. “There’s no way I need to know all this stuff before my date with Francesca. I don’t need to know it for moving in business circles, either. I think you’re just stalling.”

Ava gaped at him. “That’s ridiculous. Why would I want to spend more time with you than I have to?”

“Got me,” he shot back. “God knows it’s not like you need the money I’m sure you’ll charge me for overtime. I think I’ve got all this…stuff…covered. Let’s move on.”

Well, at least he was abiding by the no-profanity rule, she thought. She decided not to comment on the other part of his charge. “Music,” she reiterated instead. “Books.”

He expelled an exasperated breath. “Fine. I’ve been a huge Charles Dickens fan since high school. How’s that?”

She couldn’t quite hide her surprise. “You read Charles Dickens for fun?”

He clamped his jaw tight. “Yeah.” More icily, he added, “And Camus and Hemingway, too. Guess that comes as a shock to you, doesn’t it? That gasoline-reeking gutter scum like me could have understood anything other than the sports stats in the Sun-Times.”

“Peyton, that wasn’t what I was think—”

“The hell it wasn’t.”

So much for the profanity rule. Not that Ava called him on it, since she was kind of responsible for its being broken. She started to deny her charge, then stopped. “Okay, maybe that was kind of what I was thinking. But you didn’t exactly show your brainy side in school. Still, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed that. Especially in light of what you’ve accomplished since then.”

He seemed surprised—and a little confused—by her apology. He didn’t let her off the hook, though. “And in light of what I accomplished then, too,” he added. “Which was something you never bothered to discover for yourself.”

Now it was Ava’s turn to be surprised. He still sounded hurt by something that had happened—or, rather, hadn’t happened—half a lifetime ago. Nevertheless, she told him, “I wasn’t the only one who didn’t bother to get to know my classmates. I was more than I appeared to be in high school, too, Peyton, but did you ever notice or care?”

He uttered an incredulous sound. “Right. More than just a beautiful shell filled with nothing but self-interest? I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?” she echoed. “Present tense? You still think I’m just a—” She halted herself, thinking it would be best to skirt the whole beautiful thing. “I’m just a shell filled with nothing but self-interest?”

He said nothing, only continued to look at her the way the teenage Peyton had.

“You think the reason I’m helping you out like this is all for myself?” she asked. “You don’t think maybe I’m doing it because it’s a nice thing for me to do for an old…for a former classmate?”

Now he barked in disbelief. “You’re doing it because I’m paying you a bucket of money. If that isn’t self-interest, I don’t know what is.”

There was no way she could set him straight without revealing the reality of her situation. Of course, she could do that. She could tell him about how she had walked in his figurative shoes her senior year. She could tell him how she understood now the battles between pride and shame, and desire and need, and how each day had been filled with wondering how she was going to survive into the next one. She could tell him how she’d listened to her mother crying in the next room every night, and how she had forbidden herself to do the same, because nothing could come from that. She could tell him how she’d stood in the yard of the Milhouse Prewitt School every morning and steeled herself before going in, only to be worn to a nub by day’s end by the relentless bullying.