The Billionaire Gets His Way(26)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Never in her life had she experienced the sensations and emotions Gavin had roused in her, and all she wanted in that moment of spent joy was to experience them again. Soon, she thought. Very soon. Right after she remembered who and where she was…

Eight

Gavin watched Violet sleep, his mind completely at odds with the peaceful picture that she was. Now she lay on her stomach in a shaft of ambient city light spilling from the window on the other side of the room. One hand rested on the pillow near her face, her fingers curled loosely as if she were holding on to something invisible and precious. Which, of course, she was, but Gavin didn’t want to think about that right now.

The luscious, creamy expanse of her back looked silvery and otherworldly in the near-darkness, bared as it was by the sheet dipping low above her delectable derriere. A sheet, he noted, not for the first time, that was decorated with cartoon cats. Never in his life had he dated a woman who put sheets on her bed that were decorated with cartoon cats. The rest of Violet’s bedroom was as quirky, a collection of flowers and fringe, beads and bangles, whorls and whimsy.

He did his best not to wake Violet as he rose, retrieving his shorts and trousers from the floor and silently pulling on both. He shrugged into his shirt, too, but didn’t bother buttoning it, then, with another glance at a still-sleeping Violet, made his way to the bedroom door. Sex always made him ravenous—especially when it was as vigorous as it had been with Violet, and especially when he’d missed a meal beforehand.

When he flicked the wall switch in her kitchen, he muttered irritably at the light that filled the minuscule room. He poked through the cabinets until he found a modest cache of sweets, which were in no way appealing. The refrigerator was a little better stocked, though the bulk of it was staples of the feminine diet—yogurt, fruit, salad stuff. He finally hit pay dirt—sort of—with a trio of cheeses in the dairy compartment. Grabbing a couple of pears, he sliced those along with the Brie, Edam and whatever the hell the other one was and placed all on an oversize plate. A basket on the counter yielded a reasonably fresh baguette for him to slice, and he found a surprisingly good, if inexpensive, pinot noir tucked behind a potted plant near the sink.

Not bad for an impromptu feast, he thought after opening that last. He gathered two wineglasses—neither of which matched the other—from one of the cabinets, then he assembled everything on a tray and headed out. His plan was to serve Violet in bed, but as he passed through the living room, his gaze lit on a candle in a ruby-red votive anchoring a stack of papers on the end table and decided it would add nicely to the arrangement on the tray.

Smiling at his own bit of whimsy, he went to retrieve it, but his hand halted just shy of closing around it. Because the papers it was sitting on were glossy pages that had been torn from a magazine, and the top one featured photographs of a very familiar sight. From a photo spread of the same that had appeared in Chicago Homes magazine a year and a half ago.

Gavin placed the tray of food on the coffee table and sat on the sofa, plucked the votive from the stack of papers, and began to sort through them. In addition to the Chicago Homes piece, there were pages torn from other magazines featuring other people’s homes, along with articles about all things male-related. Or, more specifically, rich male-related. There was information on expensive clothing—including a photo from GQ that depicted a model wearing a twenty-five-hundred-dollar Canali suit—wool and cashmere, of course—and Santoni loafers that would set a man back at least another fifteen hundred. His tie was a silk Hermès and his shirt was a fine cotton Ferragamo.

Seeing that made him sit up a little straighter. It was the same outfit he’d read aloud about at his office, the one in chapter twenty-eight of Violet’s book, where her protagonist Roxanne first met the much ballyhooed Ethan. The ensemble was almost identical to the one Gavin owned himself. Now that he thought about it, he may have even bought the pieces after reading the GQ article himself.

He sifted through other items about cigars, whisky and cognac that highlighted the very brands he enjoyed himself. A story about jazz music featured the very artists he most often listened to himself. There was an article about the Chicago gym where he worked out. There were reviews of restaurants where he ate and bars to which he enjoyed taking potential clients. There were stories about the exclusive men’s shops where he bought his clothes and accessories. And then…

Then there was a small clipping about an exclusive, little-known shop in Alsace that made silk undergarments for men whose designs were completely unique.

He shook his head. Evidently he and Violet had both been modeling characters after the same image. But where she had made hers completely fictional, Gavin had done his best to make his real. To make himself real. Except that, now that he thought about it, he was probably no more factual than Ethan was. He was…

Ah, hell. He was a cliché. Because of his humble beginnings, he’d had to educate himself—the same way Violet had—about what made a successful man stand out in a crowd. He still did that. He probably consulted a lot of the same sources Violet had. That was why he and Ethan had so much in common.

Good God. He really was chapter twenty-eight, Ethan. But it was he himself who had created the character, not Violet. Or, at least, he had created Ethan before she had. Strange that the two of them would think so similarly about something like that.

As he gathered up the sheaves of paper that had become scattered as he’d looked at them, he realized there was more to them than just research. There were also some printed out manuscript pages that bore signs of having been edited. Gavin smiled. Her new book. Had to be. Unable to help himself, he deftly put the pages in order and began to read.

Only to immediately wish he’d left well enough alone.

The passage started far into the book—page three hundred and fifteen—and described a confrontation between a woman who seemed to be the book’s protagonist and a “character” named Mason Gavin who, it quickly became obvious, was a first-class, prime rate, see-exhibit-A SOB. On the upside, at least he was good-looking…

Mason Gavin was a real piece of work. The kind of man who could pass a homeless family in sub-zero temperatures and head into a restaurant for a hot toddy and a slab of steaming prime rib. I’d worked for a lot of egocentric, unaccommodating, chauvinist jerks in my day, but this guy… This guy was their king.

Hmm. Color him alarmist, but it didn’t look like Mason Gavin was going to come out smelling like a bed of roses in this story.