The Billionaire Gets His Way(29)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

This time she was the one to cut herself off. She expelled an impatient sound, flexed her fingers in exasperation, then doubled them into fists again. “Guess what, Gavin? I come from exactly the same kind of world that you do. Maybe even worse.”

He wasn’t sure what to say to that. Not only because he couldn’t imagine someone like her on the mean streets of his youth, but because, for some reason, it didn’t really seem to matter where she came from. It only mattered that she was here with him now.

In spite of that, and because she seemed to need a reaction from him, he told her, “I find that hard to believe.”

The response, however, only seemed to make her angrier. “Why?”

He decided to tell her the truth. “Because, Violet, you’re not like anyone I’ve ever met before. You’re not—”

“Like all those meaningless, heinous people who are born into situations they have no control over?”

“That’s not—”

“You know what? You need to go.”

“What?” he asked in disbelief. “Go? Why? Violet— What the hell is going on?”

“And you better hurry,” she added coolly, “before any of your friends see you in this neighborhood.”

“Hey, none of my friends would be caught dead in this neighborhood.” Once again, he spoke without thinking, and only when the sentiment was out did he realize how callous it sounded.

Violet evidently thought so, too, because she strode straight to her bedroom, scooped up what was left of his clothing from the floor, then brought it out and threw it at him.

“Get out,” she said. “And don’t ever, ever, bother me again.”

“Violet, I didn’t mean—”

“Get out.”

“Listen to me. I—”

“Get. Out. Now.”

“But—”

“Now.”

Gavin had uttered more than a few callous comments in his day, but he’d never felt obligated to apologize for any of them. He told himself he didn’t have to apologize for this one, either. What he’d said may have been callous, but it wasn’t untrue. Nothing of what he’d said tonight had been untrue. Besides, he hadn’t reached the level of success he had by apologizing for anything. So why did he suddenly want to start now?

“You have ten seconds,” she said. “Nine. Eight. Seven. Six…”

“All right,” he conceded, lifting both hands, palm up, in a gesture of surrender. Funny how the night was cycling to how it had begun. Not funny, however, was the way it was now Gavin on the defensive. Not that he didn’t deserve it… But he didn’t deserve it, he immediately told himself. He’d said nothing wrong. He knew better than Violet did what it was like to come from poverty and need. Maybe she wasn’t from the blue blood, Gold Coast society he moved in now, but it was obvious she didn’t know the first thing about the sort of place he’d come from. She was too unsullied for that. Too smart. Too happy. Too content.

With as much dignity as he could muster, he put on his shoes and shrugged into his jacket, stuffing his tie into a pocket with one hand as he adjusted his collar with the other.

“Look, Violet, I—”

But she ignored him, marching to the front door and jerking it open. Although it stuck in Gavin’s craw to let things end this way, he knew better than to try and talk to her when she was like this. He still didn’t know what he’d said or done to warrant such a reaction in her. Still didn’t know what to say that might make her come around. So, for now, all he could do was exactly as she’d instructed and leave.

He felt, as much as heard, the front door slam shut behind him, then, as he was making his way down the steps, the sound of something crashing against a wall.

So what? he asked himself, voicing the very question she’d asked him. So what if he’d made her mad? So what if he’d said some unkind things about the facts of life? So what if she’d told him she never wanted to see him again?

So what if he felt like a complete SOB? He was an SOB. He’d had to be to claw his way out of his old life and carve out the one he had now. That was why no one had ever been able to bring him down.

Until this moment.

Because as Gavin descended the stairs of Violet’s apartment building, he felt as though he was moving lower in other ways, too. Into shadows. Into solitude. Into cold. Into the same kind of life he’d had before. The same kind of man he’d been before. Invisible. Meaningless. Worthless.

It was the neighborhood, he told himself as he stepped out of the dilapidated building onto the crumbling front stoop and made his way down the cracked stairs. Hell, even visiting a place like this tainted his newfound way of life. The life he would protect above all else.

So Violet never wanted to see him again? Fine. He didn’t want to see her, either. Not if it meant coming back to a place like this. The sooner he got home to his multi-million dollar, professionally decorated, shiningly immaculate penthouse, the better. So what if it was empty? So what if there was no one there to greet him? So what if he’d be going to bed alone? So what?

So what?

For a long time after Gavin left, Violet sat on her sofa in her pajamas, staring into her bedroom at the ten-year-old dress and cheap rhinestone jewelry scattered on the floor by the bed. What the hell had happened tonight? From the moment she had looked through the peephole to see Gavin standing on the other side of the door, nothing had made any sense. Not him coming to her apartment, not him blackmailing her into going to the party, not the fact that he had actually been nice to her—at least part of the time—not his finally realizing she wasn’t who he’d thought she was after thinking otherwise for so long, and certainly not—

Not making love with him.

No, she quickly corrected herself. What they’d done hadn’t had anything to do with love. Not only because they’d barely known each other a week—really, they didn’t know each other at all—but because she was no more capable of feeling such an emotion than he was. What the two of them had experienced had been a simply physical reaction to…

Well, okay, she wasn’t sure what it had been a reaction to. They’d obviously both been attracted to each other—for her since the moment she’d laid eyes on him. And they’d both shared some heightened emotions over the course of the week. All that anger and resentment and fear had to go somewhere once they both realized there was no reason for them to be feeling any of those things. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that they would manifest in such raw, unbridled, steamy sex.