My Fair Billionaire(27)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Bottom line, he just had to get outta here. Now.

“Look, Ava, do you mind if we cut this short?” he asked. “I just remembered a conference call I’m supposed to be in on in—” He looked at his watch and pretended to be shocked at the time. “Wow. Thirty minutes. I really need to get back to my hotel.”

She looked genuinely crushed. “But the tea…”

“Can we get a doggie bag?”

Judging by the way her expression changed, he might as well have just asked her if he could jump up onto the table, whip off his pants and introduce everyone to Mr. Happy.

“No,” she said through gritted teeth. “One does not ask for a doggie bag for one’s afternoon tea. Especially not in a place like this.”

“Well, I don’t know why the hell not,” he snapped.

Oh, yeah. There it was. With even that mild profanity, he sucked some of his retreating testosterone back in. Now if he could just figure out how to reclaim the rest of it…

He glanced around until he saw a waiter—or whatever passed for a waiter in this place, since they were all dressed like maître d’s—and waved the guy down in the most obnoxious way he knew how.

“Hey, you! Garson!” he shouted, deliberately mispronouncing the French word for waiter. “Could we get a doggie bag over here?”

Everyone in the room turned to stare at him—and Ava—in frank horror. That, Peyton had to admit, helped a lot with his masculine recovery. Okay, so he was acting like a jerk, and doing it at Ava’s expense. Sometimes, in case of emergency, a man had to break the glass on his incivility. No, on his crudeness, he corrected himself. His grossness. His bad effin’ manners. Those were way better words for what he was tapping into. And wow, did it feel good.

He braved a glance at Ava and saw that she had propped her elbows on the table and dropped her head into her hands.

“Yo, Ava,” he said. “Take your elbows off the table. That is so impolite. Everyone is staring at us. Jeez, I can’t take you anywhere.” He looked back at the waiter, who hadn’t budged from the spot where he had been about to serve a couple of elderly matrons from a pile of flowered cakes. “What, am I not speakin’ English here?” he yelled. Funny, but he seemed to have suddenly developed a Bronx accent. “Yeah, you in the penguin suit. Could we get a doggie bag for our—” he gestured toward the tea caddy and the plates on the table “—for all this stuff? I mean, at these prices, I don’t want it to go to waste. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“Peyton, what are you doing?” Ava asked from behind her hands. “Are you trying to get us thrown out of here?”

Wasn’t that obvious? Was he really not speakin’ English here?

“Garson!” he shouted again. “Hey, we don’t got all day.”

Ava groaned softly from behind her hands, then said something about how she would never be able to take tea here again. It was all Peyton could do not to reply, You’re welcome.

Instead, he continued to channel his inner bad-mannered adolescent—who he wasn’t all that surprised to discover lurked just beneath his surface. “The service in this place sucks, Ava. Next time, we should hit Five Guys instead. At least they give you your food in a bag. I don’t think this guy’s going to bring us one.”

He figured he’d said enough now to make her snap up her head and blast him for being such a jerk—as politely as she could, naturally, since they were in a public place. Instead, when she dropped her hands, she just looked tired. Really, really tired. And she didn’t say a word. She only stood, gathered her purse and gloves, turned her back, and walked away with all the elegance of a czarina.

Peyton was stunned. She wasn’t going to say something combative in response? She wasn’t going to call him uncouth? She wasn’t going to tell him how it was men like him who gave his entire gender a bad name? She wasn’t going to glare daggers or spit fire? She was just going to walk away without even trying?

When he realized that yep, that was exactly what she was going to do, he bolted after her. He was nearly to the exit when he realized they hadn’t paid their bill, so ran back to the table long enough to drop a handful of twenties on top of it. He didn’t wait for change. Hell, their server deserved a 100-percent tip for the way he had just behaved.

When he vaulted out of the tearoom onto the street, he found himself drowning in a river of people making the Friday-afternoon jump start from work to weekend. He looked left, then right, but had no idea which way Ava had gone. Remembering her outfit, he searched for a splash of white amid the sullen colors of business suits, driving his gaze in every direction. Finally, he spotted her, in the middle of a crosswalk at the end of the block, buttoning up those damned white gloves, as if she were Queen Elizabeth on her way to address the royal guard.

He hurtled after her, but by the time he made it to the curb, she was on the other side of the street and the light was changing. Not that that deterred him. As he sprinted into the crosswalk against the light, half a dozen drivers honked their displeasure, and he was nearly clipped by more than one bumper. Even when he made it safely to the other side of the street, he kept running, trying to catch up to the wisp of white that was Ava.

Every time he thought he was within arm’s reach, someone or something blocked him from touching her, and for every step he took forward, she seemed to take two. Panic welled in him that he would never reach her, until she turned a corner onto a side street that was much less crowded. Still, he had to lengthen his stride to catch up with her, and still, for a moment, it seemed he never would. Finally, he drew near enough to grasp her upper arm and spin her around to face him. She immediately jerked out of his hold, swinging her handbag as she came. Peyton let her go, dodging her bag easily, then lifted both hands in surrender.

“Ava, I’m sorry,” he said breathlessly. “But… Stop. Just stop a minute. Please.”

For a moment, they stood there on the sidewalk looking at each other, each out of breath, each poised for…something. Peyton had no idea what. Ava should have looked ridiculous in her turn-of-the-century garb, brandishing her handbag in her little white gloves, her netted hat dipping to one side. Instead, she seemed ferocious enough to snap him in two. A passerby jostled him from behind, sending him forward a step, until he was nearly toe to toe with her. She took a step in retreat, never altering her pose.

“Leave me alone,” she said without preamble.