The Billionaire Gets His Way(39)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

“Yeah, whatever. I’ve been trying to snag an interview with you for weeks, but you never call me back. Teddy Mullins,” he finally introduced himself, extending a hand to her that Violet had no desire to shake. “I write for Chicago Fringe magazine.”

The minute she heard that, Violet knew why she hadn’t returned his calls, and now she really didn’t want to shake his hand. Chicago Fringe wasn’t a magazine. It was the kind of publication that gave the tabloids a bad name.

“Um,” she hedged now, “I’m sorry, Mr. Mullins, but all interviews have to go through my publicist at Rockcastle Books.”

“The hell they do,” Mullins immediately countered. “A guy at the Sun-Times said they didn’t have any trouble at all arranging an interview.”

“Through my publicist,” she told him pointedly. “And that was before there was such a huge demand on my time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m waiting for—”

She looked for Gavin again and saw him chatting with yet another group of people. But he was gazing at her, and his expression grew concerned when he saw her talking to someone she clearly didn’t want to be talking to. Immediately, he excused himself and started toward her again. But, again, he was halted by another friend.

In the meantime, Teddy Mullins pulled out the chair across from Violet and seated himself comfortably in it. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a pen and pad of paper along with his cell phone, on which he pushed a few buttons, looked up again and said, “You don’t mind if I record this interview, right?”

“Mr. Mullins,” she tried again, “if you’ll call my publicist at Rockcastle—her name is Marie Osterman—she can set up a time that’s mutually convenient for us, and I’ll be happy to talk with you then.” Key word: mutually. No way was she going to have time to talk that coincided with his.

“Let’s just cut to the chase,” was Mr. Mullins’s reply.

What followed was a rapid-fire line of questioning that included more than a little profanity and rather a lot of sexual innuendo. Thankfully, he kept his voice low enough that no one at the neighboring tables could hear him. But Violet could. And there was no way she was going to engage in any kind of dialogue. Still, she had no idea what to say or do that might shut him up. What was worse, the more she didn’t answer his questions, the more they escalated to meanness and filth until he asked Violet, in the basest language known to humankind, whether or not she enjoyed having a particular body orifice penetrated during sex.

Which was right about the time Gavin showed up tableside.

And when he heard the question that Mullins had just asked, he grabbed the man by the back of his neck, jerked him out of the chair, and then shoved him hard enough to send him sprawling onto the floor.

And then he roared down at the man, “What the—” he spat out an expletive that more than rivaled Teddy’s bountiful vocabulary, sounding every bit at home with it “—did you just say to her?”

Which was when every eye in the room turned to see what was happening.

“How dare you speak to her that way,” Gavin continued, his voice gritty and thready and touched with a hint of an accent that was redolent of the Brooklyn docks. “Apologize to the lady. Now.”

Teddy Mullins laughed at that. “Lady?” he echoed. “Dude. Do you even know who you’re having dinner with here? She’s a who—”

Before Teddy could even finish the ripe comment, Gavin bent down, grabbed him by his collar, pulled him to his feet, and then punched him in the jaw hard enough to send him to the floor again.

A murmur of disapproval rippled through the crowd. The women recoiled, the men shook their heads, and nobody, but nobody, came to anyone’s aid. The people with whom Gavin had only moments ago been sharing pleasantries, now looked at him as if he were a complete stranger. Worse, every member of the media who had been lolling about on the other side of the room had sprung into action at the fracas and were now filming and photographing every physical blow and verbal exchange.

Twelve

Gavin seemed to realize the mood of the crowd then, Violet noted, because he glanced up from the man on the floor, whose mouth he had bloodied, at the hands he had curled into fists. With no small effort, he forced them open and looked at Violet.

At Violet. Not at the crowd. It was her reaction he was worried about. Not his friends’. Even after he did finally look around at his friends—and at the media recording his every action—it was Violet to whom he returned his attention, Violet whose response he was clearly most worried about.

Before either of them had a chance to say a word, however, Teddy Mullins was scrambling from the floor, and charging at Gavin. What followed could have been called a barroom brawl, but the fighting was too wild and unrefined to be considered such. So was the language, for that matter. The moment Teddy lunged for Gavin, Gavin turned into the streetwise bruiser he must have been in his youth, fighting as hard and as dirty as the other man, hurling epithets that would curl a dockworker’s hair, his normally refined baritone moving closer and closer back to his Brooklyn roots with every passing word.

Violet stared openmouthed at the scene, having no idea what to do. Everything had happened so fast, and Gavin’s response was so startling, she didn’t know how to react. One minute, he had been the elegant, mannerly blueblood he enjoyed being, and the next, he was a brawler fighting for his survival.

But then she realized that wasn’t it at all. He wasn’t fighting for his survival. Had he been fighting for his survival, he would have been the picture of civility as he ushered Violet away from the table, then located the maître d’ to politely request that Mr. Mullins be evicted from the premises forthwith. Had he been fighting for his survival, Gavin would have done anything to avoid a fight—especially a ruckus like this—because fighting was much too unseemly an activity among friends like his. And he sure as hell wouldn’t have used profanity. Especially socially unacceptable profanity like that.

What he was doing was fighting for Violet. For her honor. And he didn’t care that his civil, polite, socially acceptable friends saw him reverting to his street fighting ways to do it, or that the entire thing was being filmed for what would doubtless be the lead story on every eleven o’clock newscast in the city.

Mullins was on the floor again, bleeding even more than before, and Gavin was doubling his fist to hit him again, when Violet finally found the presence of mind to cry out, “Gavin, stop!”