The Billionaire Gets His Way(22)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?” she asked dryly as she glanced at the group which, she couldn’t help noticing, was paying an awful lot of attention to them. Way more than one would think they’d give to a man who had pretty much dismissed them all.

Gavin handed her a slender flute of champagne, picked up his own tumbler of Scotch and then—Violet could scarcely believe her ears—thanked the bartender for both. “They don’t deserve an introduction,” he said. “Especially not to someone like you.”

And just like that, the magical evening came crashing down around her. Of course he wasn’t going to introduce her to anyone here. He thought she was a hooker.

He seemed to understand immediately what she was thinking, because he said, “No, Violet, I meant they don’t deserve an introduction because they’re not my friends. They’re awful people. You’re way above them.”

Yeah, because they were awful people. Didn’t take much to be above a man who would grope a woman while his wife was home taking care of infant twins. Even a hooker was above that.

“They saw me with you having a good time,” he continued. “That’s all that matters.”

Sure. That was all that mattered. That Gavin had seemed to be having a good time with a woman he would take home and have sex with, thereby upholding his image as the successful man about town who was in no way the model for the client of a call girl in her memoir, because he would never have to pay a woman to have sex with him. And he had kept her far enough away from them that they hadn’t been able to tell that her dress was a ten-year-old castoff and her jewelry was crap.

Yep, they were having a good time all right. How long before the clock struck twelve?

Seven

Gavin wasn’t sure when the change had come over Violet, but by the time he brought her home—before midnight, as he had promised—she had become downright sullen. As he climbed the darkened stairs of her apartment building—this couldn’t possibly be a safe place for a woman living alone, since…

Waitaminnit. This couldn’t be a safe place for a woman living alone, since the neighborhood was barely marginal, and the building was barely lit. Why would a woman who must have made a mint working as a call girl live in a dump like this?

It was yet another question to add to the hundreds of others Gavin had been asking himself since his first meeting with Violet, many of which had been stirred up tonight. Not just the conundrum of her dress and jewelry, or how she’d treated the hired help. But how could she not know how to dance? That was a major requirement for a woman like her. Call girls didn’t make all their money in the bedroom. When a man was past his prime, for instance, and couldn’t attract the sort of woman he really wanted, he often hired one to accompany him to events so people would think he was still a sexual stallion. And, okay, to have sex with the woman after the event, even if he performed more like a pony at that point.

Anyway, Gavin would have thought a high-priced call girl would be an expert at the tango, never mind at least knowing the box step. How had Violet ever managed to support herself, let alone have enough fodder for a memoir, if she couldn’t even dance?

“Here we are,” she said now, dispelling his thoughts. “Thanks for seeing me home.” When Gavin said nothing in reply, she added pointedly, “Goodbye.”

Translation: Beat it.

There was absolutely no reason for him to hang around. Even if some misplaced sense of chivalry had made him walk her to her door to be sure she made it safely—especially since it went without saying that a woman like her could more than take care of herself—he’d completed the task. He really should beat it. So why did he suddenly want to hang around?

“Aren’t you going to invite me in for a nightcap?”

She hesitated a moment, though whether it was because his question had caught her off guard, or because she was actually considering an invitation, he couldn’t say. “You shouldn’t drink and drive,” she told him.

“I had a drink at the party,” he reminded her.

“Exactly my point,” she replied quickly. “You’ve already had one drink tonight, even if you took your time with that one and had food to go with it. If you have another one, it could go straight to your head.”

“You could feed me,” he said. “And I could take my time with this one, too.”

Once again, she hesitated before speaking, but again, he wasn’t sure if it was because she was surprised by his wanting to spend time with her—not that he wasn’t plenty surprised by that himself—or because she was mentally reviewing her pantry and wine rack to see if she had the proper supplies for entertaining.

Finally, tightly, she said, “Thank you for the evening, Gavin. Even though you didn’t give me much time to prepare for it, and even though you pretty much blackmailed me into going out with you.”

Oh, yeah. He’d forgotten about that. Maybe that was why she wasn’t inviting him in.

“Now that I’ve upheld my end of the deal,” she added, “it’s time for you to do the same. Go home and reconsider your lawsuit. Go home and probably change your mind.”

Right. That was what he had told her he would do, wasn’t it? In spite of that, the last thing he wanted to think about at the moment was the lawsuit he planned to wage against Raven French. Which was beyond strange, because he’d barely been able to think about anything else for the past two weeks.

“I’ll wait here until you get inside,” he said, stalling. “You never know what kind of creep might be waiting for you on the other side of your door.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” she muttered.

He wasn’t positive, but he was pretty sure she’d had someone particular in mind when she said that. In a word, him.

“Go ahead,” he said. “I’m not in any hurry.”

She expelled an impatient sound, but opened her purse and withdrew her keys and started to unlock the front door. But Gavin intercepted her—again with the misplaced chivalry—and deftly took the keys from her hand, unlocking and opening the door himself. Before she could object, he strode past her inside, even though she had left a couple of lights on before leaving and there was obviously no one skulking about in the shadows.

“Oh, good, no creeps,” she said as she followed him inside.

For some reason, the comment made Gavin feel a lot better about himself.