My Fair Billionaire(25)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Tea, he reminded himself distastefully. Focus on the fact that she’s making you sit in a tearoom drinking—gak—tea and eating the kind of stuff that no self-respecting possessor of a Y chromosome should ingest. God knew what this was going to do to his testosterone levels.

“Now then,” she said in a voice that was every bit as prissy as her outfit. “Taking tea. This will probably be your biggest challenge yet.”

Oh, Peyton didn’t doubt that for a minute. What he did doubt was that many people actually took tea—he just couldn’t think that phrase in anything but a snotty tone of voice…tone of mind…whatever—in this country. Not any people with a Y chromosome, anyway.

“A lot of people think the art of tea has fallen by the wayside over the years,” she continued, obviously reading his mind. Or maybe his distasteful expression. “But it’s actually been rising in popularity. Hence your need to be familiar with it.”

“Ava,” he said, mustering as much patience as he could, “I think I can safely say that no matter how high in society I go, I will never, ever, ask anyone to—” he could barely get the words out of his mouth “—take tea with me.”

She smiled a benign smile. “I bet the sisters Montgomery would be charmed by a man who asked them to tea. And I bet not one of your competitors would think to do it.”

She was right. Dammit. Two sweet old Southern ladies would find this place enchanting. Crap. Enchanting. There was another word he normally avoided manfully. Where the hell had his testosterone gotten off to?

He blew out an exasperated breath. “Fine. Just don’t expect me to wear white gloves.”

“I suppose we could allow that small concession,” she agreed. “Now then. As Henry James wrote in The Portrait of a Lady, ‘There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.’”

Oh, good. At least this wouldn’t last more than an hour.

“And I, for one,” she continued, “couldn’t agree more.”

Peyton did his best to look as if he gave a crap. “Yeah, well, ol’ Henry obviously never spent an afternoon sharing a case of Anchor Steam with his friends while the Blackhawks trounced the Canucks.”

Ava smiled thinly. “No doubt.”

She launched into a monologue about the history of afternoon tea—all three centuries of it—then moved on to the etiquette of afternoon tea, then on to the menu selection of afternoon tea. She talked about the differences between cream tea, light tea and full tea—thankfully, they were having full tea, since Peyton was getting hungrier with every word she spoke—then she pointed to the selections on the caddy beside them, categorizing them as savories, scones and pastries, even though they looked to him like sandwiches, biscuits and dessert. By the time she wrapped up her dissertation, his stomach was grumbling so forcefully even his Y chromosome was thinking the little flowery cakes looked good.

Unfortunately, as he reached for one, Ava smacked his hand as if he were a toddler.

“Don’t reach,” she said. “Ask for them to be passed.”

“But they’re sitting right there.”

“They’re closer to me than they are to you.”

“Oh, sure, by an inch and a half.”

“Nonetheless, whoever is closer should pass to the person who is farther away.”

Okay, she was definitely going out of her way to be ornery, deliberately to get a rise out of him. Well, he’d show her. He’d kill her with kindness. He’d be as courteous as he knew how to be. And thanks to her lessons, he’d learned how to be pretty damned courteous.

Sitting up straighter in his tiny chair, he channeled the inner Victorian he didn’t even know he possessed and said, “If you please, Miss Brenner, and if it wouldn’t trouble you overly, would you pass the…” What had she called them? “The savories?”

She eyed him suspiciously, clearly doubting his sincerity. But what was she going to do? He’d been a perfect effing gentleman. He’d even thought the word effing, instead of what he really wanted to think, which was…uh, never mind.

Still looking at him as if she expected him to start a food fight, she asked, “May I suggest the cucumber sandwiches or the crab puffs?”

He unclenched his jaw long enough to reply, “You may.”

“Which would you prefer?”

“The cucumber sandwiches,” he said. Mostly because he didn’t think he could say crab puffs with a straight face. Not that cucumber sandwiches was exactly easy. “If you please.”

Before retrieving the plate, she began to unbutton her gloves. Evidently good manners precluded wearing such garments whilst one was taking tea.

Dammit, he thought when he played that back in his head. There was no way he was going to last an hour in this place.

When she finally had her gloves off—a good fortnight after initiating their unbuttoning—she reached for the plate of sandwiches and passed it the three inches necessary to place it on the table between them. Then she poured them each a cup of tea from the pot, adding three sugar cubes—jeez, they had flowers on them, too—to her own. Peyton eschewed them—since no one taking tea would ever blow off something; they would always eschew it—and lifted the cup to his mouth. At Ava’s discreetly cleared throat, he looked up, and she tilted her head toward the cup he was holding. Holding by its bowl having grabbed the entire thing in his big paw, because he’d been afraid he’d break off the handle if he tried to pick it up that way. Gah. After a moment of juggling, he managed the proper manipulation of the cup, holding it by its handle, if just barely. Only then did Ava nod her head to let him know he was allowed to continue.

Man, had she actually had to grow up this way? Had her mother sat her down, day after day, and made her memorize all the stuff she was making him memorize? Had she been forced to dress a certain way and unfold her napkin just so, and talk about only approved subjects with other people, the way she was teaching him to do? Or did that just come naturally to people who were born with the bluest blood in the highest income bracket? Was good taste and polite behavior encoded on her DNA the way green eyes and red hair were? Did refinement run in her veins? And if so, did that mean Peyton’s DNA was encoded with garbage-strewn streets and fighting dirty and that transmission fluid flowed through his veins?

It hit him again, even harder, how far apart the two of them were. How far apart they’d been since birth. How far apart they’d be until they died. Even with his income rivaling hers now, even mastering all these lessons that would grant him access to her world, he’d never, ever be her social equal. Because he’d never, ever be as comfortable with this stuff as she was. It would never be second nature to him the way it was to her. He would hate it in her world. All the rules and customs would suffocate him. It would kill everything that made him who he was, the same way taking Ava out of her world would doubtless suffocate her and kill everything that made her her.