The Billionaire Gets His Way(44)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

“Why?” she asked playfully. “Are you planning to write a book about me?”

He shook his head. “No. You planning to write one about me?”

“Not a chance. I’m not sharing you with anybody, ever again.”

She hadn’t meant to speak that frankly. Even after eight months of exclusivity, neither of them had ever talked about exclusivity. Neither had discussed plans for the future. Yes, Violet loved Gavin, and she’d grown accustomed enough to the feeling that it no longer frightened her. Losing Gavin was scary, not loving him. But in eight months, she hadn’t really even feared that.

Until now.

Because now she had let slip something that, if he paid too close attention, would let him know how she felt. How much he’d come to mean to her. How much he’d become a part of her life. How she couldn’t envision living that life without him.

So she hurried on, “Besides, I’m nearly finished with the new book, and there’s no room in it for a grumpy, if disarmingly handsome, curmudgeon.” She deliberately miscast him in such a way—he hadn’t been grumpy for months—in the hopes that he would seize on that for objection and completely not hear the part about her not sharing him with anyone, ever again.

He eyed her warily for a moment, and in that moment, she held her breath. Grumpy curmudgeon, she willed him to say. Forget about…that other thing I said.

But he said nothing at all, only watched her silently some more.

Grumpy curmudgeon, she thought again. Grumpy. Curmudgeon.

Her thoughts strayed off, however, as she gazed at him. The shadows of the lace curtains dappled sunlight on his broad shoulders and mingled with the dark hair scattered across his brawny chest. They’d spent enough time on the beach this summer that a luscious, dusky bronze limned every elegant camber of muscle. His dark hair was rumpled from both sleep and their lovemaking, a thick shaft spilling onto his forehead over eyes made even bluer by the cornflower-spattered sheets. Only a man completely confident of his masculinity could look so…so…so… She bit back an involuntary sigh that erupted from a hot place deep in the pit of her belly. So incredibly manly…tangled up in flowered sheets the way Gavin was.

Still studying her intently, he finally said, very quietly, “You don’t want to share me with anyone? Not ever again?”

Damn. So much for grumpy curmudgeon.

She made herself be honest. “No. I don’t.”

She held her breath again as she waited to see how he would reply. There was another long silence punctuated by his intense scrutiny. Then, slowly, he smiled. “Good. I don’t want to share you with anyone ever again, either.”

Something in Violet took flight at that. “Really?”

“That can’t come as a surprise to you. Can it?”

Really, she supposed it didn’t. Still, she felt incredibly lucky at the moment. There was something about having one’s hopes confirmed that made a person feel lighter than air. “No, I don’t guess it does. It’s just strange to actually talk about…”

“What?” he asked when she trailed off without finishing.

She expelled a restless sound. “About…the future,” she finally said. “A future that includes something besides this house. I’ve never really thought about a future beyond that. About a future with…” She smiled. “With someone else in it.”

He smiled back. “Well, do you realize that if we start mentioning this future together in public, it could make people talk. You know how Chicagoans love to gossip. Especially the social circles we travel in.”

“I do,” she said. “But there’s a way to get around that.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Move away from Chicago.”

He arched his dark eyebrows at that. “You trying to get rid of me now? I thought we had a future together.”

“I didn’t say that,” she told him. “I meant you could live somewhere outside Chicago. Somewhere like… Oh, I don’t know… Here.”

“Here in Evanston?”

“Here in this house. With me.”

Wow. She really hadn’t planned to put that out there like that. Not so soon, even if they were talking about the future. Still, now that it was out there, she kind of liked the way it sounded. She hoped Gavin would, too. A cozy cottage in the ’burbs wasn’t exactly his idea of high society. What would his friends say about such small square footage?

He said nothing for a moment, and, for a moment, she feared maybe she had said too much too soon, or that some small part of him did still care about what people said. Then he lifted a hand to her hair and tucked an errant strand behind one ear very affectionately. “There’s another way to deal with the gossip, you know. In addition to my moving in here with you,” he hastened to add.

The thing that had taken flight in Violet absolutely soared at that. “Is there?”

He nodded. “You could marry me and make an honest man out of me. That would show them.”

Heat splashed into her belly at that, and the soaring thing entered the stratosphere. “You…you want to get married?” she asked softly, a little incredulously.

He grinned. “Well, since you’re proposing anyway, sure.”

Gee, so much for doing nothing today. Not to mention doing everything exactly the same way for her new book’s on-sale week as she’d done for the last one. Getting engaged kinda threw a wrench into all that.

But as thrown wrenches went, that was a really good one.

Her silence must have given Gavin the impression that she wasn’t as keen on the idea as he was, because his smile fell, and uncertainty clouded his eyes. “I mean…” he stammered, “I thought… That is…” He swallowed visibly. “We don’t have to talk about this right now if you don’t want to.”

“No, I want to,” she hurried to assure him. “I just…I’m not sure what to say.”

“You could start by saying you want to get married. To me.”

“I want to get married. To you.”

His entire body seemed to relax at that. “Good. Then I don’t think there’s a lot more we have to talk about. We’re getting married. I’m going to move in with you here.” His smile returned, full force. “And they lived happily ever after. The end.”

“You can’t end it there!” she exclaimed. “That’s too abrupt. The reader would be left feeling cheated.”