The Billionaire Gets His Way(40)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

He halted before hitting the other man again and turned to look at her.

“Stop,” she said again, more softly. “He isn’t worth it.”

“The hell he isn’t,” Gavin countered. “You heard what he called you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He’s scum. And scum doesn’t count for anything in this world.”

He said nothing for a moment, then nodded his head. Then he loosed Mullins’s sweater and stood.

Unbelievable, Violet thought. Where Mullins was gasping for breath, Gavin was barely breathing hard. Guess you could take the boy out of the street fights, but you couldn’t take the street fighter out of the boy.

Mullins, showing intelligence for the first time that evening, pushed himself up and, with one final, threatening look at Gavin, turned and made his way back to the side of the room—or beneath the trash heap…whatever—whence he had come. Gavin was bleeding, too, Violet noted, from a cut on his cheek, and his knuckles were smeared with what was either his or the other man’s blood. One of his jacket sleeves was torn from the shoulder, and his necktie and collar were askew. His hair, usually so chic and flawless, stuck up on his head from where Mullins had grasped fistfuls of it during the scuffle. Gavin was oblivious to all of it. His only concern, it seemed, was Violet.

By now, everyone in the room was silent, their attention split between Gavin and Mullins—who looked ten times worse than Gavin, Violet thought, taking socially unacceptable satisfaction in the realization. The faces of the crowd, however, didn’t seem to be akin to her own. Their expressions indicated their revulsion that such an ugly altercation had occurred in their rarefied midst. But Gavin didn’t seem to notice any of them. He was too busy looking at Violet.

“I’m sorry,” he told her.

The apology surprised her. She would have thought he would be apologizing to the crowd instead. “For what? Defending my honor? You don’t have to apologize for that.”

He shook his head. “Your honor doesn’t need defending. You’re the most honorable person I know.”

Meaning he thought she was more honorable than anyone else in the room, she thought. Something he’d just announced to the entire room. The entire room of people who, until now, he had indicated were more important than anyone else in the world.

“I’m sorry,” he continued, “for not being here when that…that…” He looked over at Mullins on the other side of the room and shouted loud enough for the man—and everyone else—to hear, another ripe expletive, something that brought a collective gasp from the crowd. Which he didn’t seem to notice. “…sat down. I promise you, Violet, no one like him will ever bother you again. Because anyone who tries, I’ll—”

Again he raised his voice for Teddy to hear. It was thick with Brooklyn now, making the unseemly threats he called across the room sound even more menacing. Violet tried not to swoon at how well he was defending her honor. Even if the crowd did gasp even louder.

Gavin was finishing up when the maître d’, who must have slipped out for a smoke during the melee, broke through the crowd and surveyed the damage.

“I’ll take care of everything, Lionel,” Gavin told the man before he could say a word. The Brooklyn seemed to be retreating, but it was still there. Enough to be unbelievably charming. And sexy. “Any damage to the premises, I’ll cover it.”

“Damage to the premises is the least of my worries, Mr. Mason,” Lionel replied politely but firmly. “Nothing like this has ever happened at the club before. This is insupportable.”

For the first time, Gavin seemed to realize the enormity of what had happened. He’d broken every rule he ever set for himself, had exposed himself to the elite he coveted as one of society’s most common denominators. He had completely shattered everything he’d spent years building, had decimated the image he had worked so strenuously to cultivate and protect. In one rash moment, he had ceased to be Gavin Mason, VIP, and turned into some guy off the street who’d started a fight in an exclusive club and used a lot of bad words to boot.

“This is the sort of thing that could lead to revocation of membership,” Lionel added.

Strangely, however, the maître d’ didn’t sound as if he were making a threat. He sounded as if he would regret it if something like that happened to Gavin.

Violet turned to Gavin, knowing what Lionel had suggested would be the worst kind of punishment he could sustain. Banishment. From the friends and society that meant more to him than anything, and from whom he had worked so hard for so long to keep his real self a secret.

“Well, if that’s what the board decides,” Gavin said, “I guess I’ll just have to live with it.”

Violet’s mouth dropped open at that. But Gavin only smiled at her and tucked her arm through his own. “We can find our own way out, Lionel. Thanks.”

She let him lead her through the club, both of them remaining silent as he collected their coats and helped her into hers before shrugging on his own. They continued in silence until they were on the street, well clear of the club. Finally, though, as if by mutual consent, they halted, just outside the milky halo of a streetlamp. The snow had lightened, but still fell in wisps of lacy white, giving the moment an otherworldly sort of feel. Or maybe it was being with Gavin that was doing that. The last several moments had taken them both beyond the worlds they’d grown accustomed to.

For a long time, he only studied her face as if seeing it for the first time. She looked at the cut on his cheek, thinking maybe she was seeing him—the real him—for the first time, too. She opened her purse and withdrew a tissue, then lifted it gently to the wound. Gavin winced a little when she touched him, but he didn’t pull away.

“You’re bleeding,” she said unnecessarily. “We should get you to a doctor.”

“It’s nothing,” he told her. Impatiently, he took the tissue in his own hand and shooed hers away. He patted the cut with much less care than she had shown, something that made it start bleeding harder.

“You might need stitches,” she told him.

“No, I—”

He seemed to realize about the same time Violet did that they’d played out a scene similar to this one not long ago, at her apartment, with their situations reversed. But all he said was, “I don’t need stitches. It’s not that bad.”