The Billionaire Gets His Way(43)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Okay, the only dream she’d ever dared to dream when she was a child. There was another dream she’d begun to entertain fairly recently—about eight months ago, in fact—that she would love to see come true, too. But unlike the house in the ’burbs, that dream wasn’t entirely up to her to see fulfilled. Oh, she could do her best on her part, but when a dream included someone other than oneself—especially when that someone else was a man like Gavin—there was only so much one could do to make it come true.

As if she’d spoken the thought aloud, Gavin stirred in his sleep, the arm on her waist flexing, the legs entwined with hers curling inward to bring her closer. Violet loved those few moments when he was between sleep and consciousness, because he was so relaxed and peaceful, so much more himself than he was during the workday. Although, she had to admit, even the CEO Gavin had mellowed considerably since last fall. It had taken months for the gossip about his altercation with Mullins to quiet down, but he had been bothered by none of it.

In fact, when his adversaries in the business world heard about it, Gavin had suddenly found himself with far fewer adversaries in the business world. And he would be featured in next month’s issue of Fortune magazine with an article about how a savvy kid from the Brooklyn docks had parlayed his street-smarts, integrity and grit into a multi-billion-dollar corporation.

In fact, his social status had been elevated in a lot of ways once people found out about his origins. People called him more admirable, more likeable, more real than he’d been before. The same had held true for Violet, once it became more obvious to the public at large that she wasn’t Raven French, or Roxanne, or anyone else fictional. And, too, she’d discovered that being the author of pot-boiling bestsellers had its own sort of cachet that allowed her to move freely in society. She was as sought-after a party guest as Gavin was. In fact, the two of them together had become quite the power couple on the Gold Coast scene.

The two of them together, she echoed to herself. There was her dream again. Funny how much it had been popping into her head the past few weeks.

Gavin’s hand splayed open over her belly, and he sighed softly by her ear, bringing her thoughts out of the future and back to the present—for now. He nuzzled her hair and kissed her ear, then rolled her onto her back to face him.

“Good morning,” he said, his voice low and sleep-husky.

“It is a good morning, isn’t it?”

He smiled and dipped his head, brushing his lips lightly over hers. “Any morning waking up next to you is a good morning,” he told her.

She smiled back. “Then you’ve been having a lot of good mornings lately.”

“Yes, I have.”

Because they had been waking up together a lot lately, either here in her house or at Gavin’s condo in town. It hadn’t always been that way. At first, they’d danced around the overnight thing and had only spent entire nights together when they’d gone out somewhere and stayed too late to make separate trips home convenient. Since Violet had bought the house, however, overnights had become more commonplace, and almost always happened here. It was as if her act of home ownership had sparked something in both of them that drove them closer together. Toward her lifestyle, though. Not his.

That was probably significant, she thought, not for the first time. But she was afraid to think too much further than that.

Gavin levered himself up on one elbow, propping his head in one hand. “So, what do you want to do today?”

Violet thought for a moment, then said, “Nothing. In fact, I want to spend the entire week doing nothing.” She eyed him thoughtfully. “Can you take the week off so you can do nothing with me?”

He shook his head. “’Fraid not. We have a major collection coming in from Italy this week, and I need to be involved. But why do you want to do nothing this week? You have a book coming out on Tuesday.”

“That’s exactly why I want to do nothing,” she told him. “I have a tradition of hiding out for the entirety of the week whenever I have a book out.”

“How can that be a tradition?” he asked. “Before this one, you’d only ever had one book published.”

“Yeah, but I hid out the first week of sale for High Heels because I was so wigged out by the thought of having a book out there in the world, and look how well it sold. Coincidence? I think not. Therefore, I have to make sure that, for the rest of my life, whenever I have a book out, I need to disappear for the first week of sale.” She thought for a moment. “And I also need to wear red socks the first day of sale, since I wore red socks the first day of sale for High Heels.” She thought some more. “And also eat beef Stroganoff for dinner that day, since that was what I ate for dinner the first day of sale for High Heels.”

He was grinning at her again. “Is that all?”

“Let me think.” She did for a few minutes more, then ticked off the other things she remembered doing the first week of sale for High Heels, including getting her hair cut at Misha’s Salon in Wicker Park, buying organic mangoes at Earth Star Foods, going to the Field Museum and renting a nice outfit from Talk of the Town off Michigan Avenue.

“You don’t have to rent clothes anymore,” Gavin pointed out when she was finished. “You’re the author of pot-boiling bestsellers making money hand over fist.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she told him. “I have to make sure I do everything the same way every time a new book comes out in order to ensure its success. Including hiding out.”

He shook his head at that. “You’re a terrible business-woman, you know that? You’re supposed to get out there as soon as a book hits the shelves and get in some face time. Glad-hand the booksellers and jobbers and autograph the stock. Make sure they have your backlist on shelves with the new title and have you face-out on an endcap. You can’t do any of that if you’re hiding out.”

“Signing stock?” she echoed, grinning. “Jobbers? Backlist? Face out? Endcap? That’s writerspeak. Where did you hear all that?”

He shrugged, but there was something a little self-conscious in the gesture. “I’ve been doing some research. Reading articles and checking out some websites.”

Her grin broadened. “And why would you do that?”

“I figure you did a lot of research on me and my work life when you wrote that first book, even if it was inadvertent. I need to be as well informed about you and yours.”