The Billionaire Gets His Way(31)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

She was like him, Gavin thought. She’d started off with nothing and nobody and worked hard at whatever job she could find to survive—and succeed. She’d come up from the streets to find herself in high society. Except that where she didn’t seem in any way embarrassed by her beginnings, Gavin had done whatever he could to hide his.

But then, she didn’t have a business reputation or any social status to protect, did she? She didn’t move in the same worlds he regularly did or have to see the same people he did every day. Her lifestyle didn’t depend on keeping her origins a secret. If his colleagues and acquaintances knew the truth about him, they’d never give him the respect or friendship they gave him now. Hell, they wouldn’t give him the time of day. And without professional esteem or standing in the community, Gavin might as well be right back in the gutter where he started.

No way would he let that happen.

He understood now why she had been so angry Saturday night. When he’d said people from poverty counted for nothing, she’d thought he’d been talking about her. She’d thought he meant she was nothing. That she was meaningless. That associating with someone like her would… How had he put it? Oh, yeah. Would make the stink of his old life pollute the one he had now.

With a heavy sigh, he leaned back in his big, executive chair and rested his head against its big, executive headrest. He remembered how she had talked about finding happiness in simple things and realized now that everything she’d listed had been ways she’d found happiness herself as a child. Which, he supposed, indicated she wasn’t much like him, after all. Because he hadn’t found happiness in anything when he was a kid.

It didn’t matter, he told himself. He wouldn’t be seeing her again. Even if he wanted to, she’d made clear that she didn’t want him coming anywhere near her. And he shouldn’t want to go near her. She was a symbol of everything he tried to keep out of his life these days. And even if she wasn’t a call girl, there were plenty of people who thought she was. He had proof he could take to his friends and colleagues that indicated otherwise, and, even if he couldn’t convince them the book was a work of fiction, he could eventually convince them that he wasn’t Ethan.

Yeah, he’d get right on that. Enlist the help of his P.I. to gather the same information Violet had had at her apartment and get it to the proper gossipmongers in society, blah blah blah. In a few months, it would have all blown over anyway, and he’d be back in everyone’s good graces. Going to all the right parties. Landing all the right clients. Dating all the right women.

Inevitably, that made him think of Violet. Who wasn’t the right woman at all. Who shouldn’t have mattered. Certainly no more than any other woman he had bedded, regardless of that woman’s station in society. It had always been easy for Gavin to forget women. Because none of them had ever been particularly memorable. Not the one—he couldn’t remember her name now—who had been the heiress to an industrial empire. Not the one whose name had started with an M, maybe an N—W?—who was a former Miss Illinois. Not the one with the red hair—or had she been a blonde?—whose ancestors had come over on the Mayflower. He’d forgotten them within minutes of dropping them at their front doors. Or climbing out of their beds.

So why was he still thinking about Violet? Why did he need—want—so badly to see her again?

Maybe if she understood what he had to lose, he thought. Maybe if he showed her more of his life, she would understand. She’d seen his office, but so much of what he did was off-site. And few of his real friends had been at the party Saturday night. Of course, that was because he only had a few real friends, but still. Maybe if Violet saw more of how he actually lived, she’d realize how much he had to lose and why it was so important to him to preserve that lifestyle. That was it. If she could just see what his life was really like, then she’d see why he was so adamant about protecting it. That was why he couldn’t stop thinking about her. That was why he needed—wanted—so badly to see her again.

Now all he had to do was figure out how to do that without her slamming the door in his face.

Nine

A little over a week after giving Gavin the heave-ho, Violet sat in a classroom in Northwestern’s castle-like University Hall, listening to one of the professors introduce her as—she tried to contain her glee—a local bestselling novelist. The students in the class to whom she would be speaking were studying Contemporary American Fiction, and she was here today to discuss literary social criticism and the ways in which fiction and the novelist reflected the society and mores of the contemporary real world.

Ah. How refreshing. There would be no questions about sex toys. No questions about lingerie. No questions about fetishes. No, Violet was here to talk about literary social criticism. So she’d rented the most conservative outfit she could find at Talk of the Town, a black Chanel suit she’d accessorized with an onyx pendant and bracelet. Her black hair was wound into a chic chignon, and she’d deliberately kept the cosmetics to a minimum. She was here to be taken seriously. She was here to be an auteur. And looking out at the fifty or so students who had come to hear her, she felt exactly like that.

She spoke at length with great confidence on her topic—she’d spent days preparing and rehearsing her talk—then opened the floor to invite questions from the students.

The first question was about sex toys.

The second question was about lingerie

The third question was about fetishes.

By the time the hour drew to a close, Violet had dropped her head into her hand and was pinching the bridge of her nose to ward off the vicious ache that had begun pounding at her forehead immediately after the question about necrophilia. With a deep, heartfelt sigh, she said, “I have time for one more question.”

“What are you doing after the lecture?”

Her head snapped up at the familiar baritone, and she saw Gavin standing in the far right corner of the room, near its entrance. He must have slipped in when she had her back to the crowd, probably when she was using the dry erase board to draw her hierarchy of gender authority or her timeline of the history of pay inequity. Fat lot of good either had done. No one had even taken any notes. Not until the necrophilia question, anyway, something that gave her more than a little pause about the next generation.

She looked from Gavin to the crowd between them. More than one person seemed interested in her reply. A couple seemed too interested.