My Fair Billionaire(29)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

“I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m trying to get you to look at me so I can explain why I did what I did earlier.”

He wasn’t going to leave until they’d hashed this out. So she halted her phony search and slammed the drawer shut, turning to face him fully. “You were trying to get us thrown out of there on purpose,” she said.

“You’re right. I was,” he admitted, surprising her.

He stood in the entry to the kitchen, filling it, making the tiny space feel microscopic. During their walk, he had wrestled his necktie free of his collar and unbuttoned his jacket and the top buttons of his shirt, but he still looked uncomfortable in the garments. Truth be told, he hadn’t looked comfortable this week in any of his new clothes. He’d always looked as if he wanted to shed the skin of the animal she was trying to change him into. He looked that way now, too.

But he’d asked her to change him, she reminded herself. There was no reason for her to feel this sneaking guilt. She was trying to help him. She was. He was the one who had wrecked their afternoon today with his boorish behavior. He even admitted it.

“Why did you do it?” she asked. “We were having such a nice time.”

“No, you were having a nice time, Ava. I was turning into Mary fu—uh… Mary friggin’ Poppins.”

“But Peyton, if you want to get along in—” somehow, she managed to get the words out “—my world, then you need to know how to—”

“I don’t need to know how to take tea,” he interrupted her, fairly spitting the last two words. “Admit it, Ava. The only reason you took me to that place was to get even with me for something. For being less than a gentleman—what you consider a gentleman, anyway—at the Art Institute yesterday. Or maybe for something else this week. God knows you’re as hard to read now as you were in high school.”

Ignoring his suggestion that she’d made him go to the tearoom as a punishment—since, okay, maybe possibly perhaps there was an element of truth in that—and ignoring, too, his charge that she was hard to read since he’d never bothered to see past the superficial—she latched on to his other comment instead. “What I consider a gentleman?” she said indignantly. “News flash, Peyton—what I’m teaching you to be is what any woman in her right mind would want a man to be.”

He grinned at that. An arrogant grin very like the ones to which he’d treated her in high school. “Oh, yeah? Funny, but a lot of women who knew me before this week liked me just fine the way I was. A lot of women, Ava,” he reiterated with much emphasis. “Just fine.”

She smiled back with what she hoped was the same sort of arrogance. “Note that I said, ‘any woman in her right mind.’ I doubt you’ve known too many of those, considering the social circle—or whatever it was—you grew up in.”

She wanted to slap herself for the comment. Not just because it was so snotty, but because it wasn’t true. Right-minded people weren’t defined by their social circles. There were plenty of people in Chicago’s upper crust who were crass and insufferable, and there were plenty of people living in poverty who were the picture of dignity and decency. But that was the effect Peyton had on her—he made her want to make him feel as small as he made her feel. The same way he had in high school.

He continued to smile, but his eyes went flinty. “Yeah, but these days, I move in the same kind of circle you grew up in. And hell, Ava, at least I earned my money. That’s more than you can say for yourself. Your daddy gave you everything you ever had. And even Daddy didn’t work for what he had. He got it from his old man. Who got it from his old man. Who got it from his old man. Hell, Ava, how long has it been since anyone in your family actually worked for all the nice things they own?”

Something in her chest pinched tight at that. Not just because what he said about her father was true—although Jennings Brenner III earned pennies these days working in the prison kitchen, he’d inherited his wealth the same way countless Brenners before him had. But also because Ava still hated the reminder of the way her family used to be, and the way they’d treated people like Peyton. She hated the reminder of the way she used to be, and the way she’d treated people like Peyton. He was right about her money, too—about the money she’d had back in high school, anyway. It hadn’t been hers. She hadn’t earned any of it. At least Peyton had had a job after school and paid his own way in the world. In that regard, he’d been richer back then than she. She’d really had no right to treat him the way she had when they were kids.

The kettle began to boil, and, grateful for the distraction, she spun around to pour the hot water carefully into her cup. For long moments, she said nothing, just focused on brewing her tea. Peyton’s agitation at her silence was almost palpable. He took a few steps into the kitchen, pausing right beside her. Close enough that she could again feel his heat and inhale the savory scent of him. Close enough that she again wanted him to move closer still.

“So that’s it?” he asked.

Still fixing her attention on her cup, she replied, “So what’s it?”

“You’re not going to say anything else?”

“What else am I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know. Something about how my money is new money, so it’s not worthy of comparison to yours, being as old and moldy as it is, or something like that.”

The teenage Ava would have said exactly that. Only she would have delivered the comment in a way that made it sound even worse than Peyton did. Today’s Ava wanted no part of it. What today’s Ava did want, however…

Well. That was probably best not thought about. Not while Peyton was standing so close, looking and smelling as good as he did.

She sidestepped his question by replying, “Why would I say something like that when you’ve already said it?”

“Because I didn’t mean it.”

“Fine. You didn’t mean it.”

Instead of placating him, her agreement only seemed to irritate him more. “Why aren’t you arguing with me?”

“Why do you want me to argue?”

“Stop answering my questions with a question.”

“Am I doing that?”

“Dammit, Ava, I—”

She spoke automatically, as she had all week, when she said, “Watch your language.”

He hesitated a moment, then said, “No.”