The Billionaire Gets His Way (11 page)

Her head did that rearing back thing again. She opened her mouth to reply, even inhaled a breath before speaking, then seemed to think better of whatever she had intended to say and shut it again.

“What?” he asked.

She did the open-then-close-the-mouth thing again, only
this time, she began to tap her finger restlessly atop the stack of papers, too. Finally, she said, “Um, I guess I forgot.”

“Forgot what?” he asked, his confusion mounting.

She sighed heavily, and the finger began tapping even faster. “I forgot how important image is to you. Tonight… There were times at the party tonight, and here, when we…” She dropped her gaze to her lap. “You just seemed a little different tonight, that's all.”

“Different from what?”

Now she looked up at him again. “Different from the guy who's so worried about what other people think of him,” she said levelly. “Tonight, at least for a little while, you only seemed to care about what
I
think of you.”

“I do care about that, Violet. I—”

“But you care more about what other people think, Gavin. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a problem for you that so many people still think
High Heels
is a memoir, not a novel.”

He couldn't quite halt the incredulous sound that escaped him. “Oh, and I guess it doesn't bother you that so many people think you used to be a prostitute?”

“It only bothers me because it's frustrating to keep having to defend myself,” she said. “Or when someone threatens to sue me.”

“You honestly don't care that there are people out there saying—believing—that you used to have sex with whoever was willing to pay you the most money?”

“What other people think of me is none of my business, Gavin. Why should I waste time and energy on something like that?”

“Because image is everything.”

“No, substance is everything,” she immediately countered.

“No one ever gets to the substance unless they get past the image. If you don't present a flawless image, if you're
not perceived as the right kind of person, you'll never get anywhere. You'll never count for anything.”

She nodded at that, jerkily, angrily. “Right. Gotta have that blue-blooded pedigree to be somebody, don't you? Gotta be a part of the right society. The Gold Coast society. Can't be seen running around with riffraff like call girls and poor people.”

“Violet, that wasn't what I—”

“Wasn't it? You're so worried about people finding out you started off poor and disadvantaged, not even caring that it's perfectly acceptable to have come from that—”

“There was nothing acceptable about the place I come from,” he interjected coldly. “It went beyond disadvantaged. Beyond poor.”

“So what?” she asked, echoing the question she'd asked that day at his office. “You're not that person anymore, Gavin. And you're never going to have to go back to that place. And even if you did end up there, it wouldn't change—”

“I will never go back there,” he said vehemently. “I'll do whatever I have to do to make sure of that. And I'll do whatever I have to do to make sure not even the slightest whiff of that stink pollutes the life I have now. I don't want anything to do with the people who live in that world. People who live in that world, Violet, they're…”

He wasn't sure, but her back seemed to go up at that. Literally. “They're what?” she asked.

“They're not like you and me.”

Now her chin seemed to rise a notch. “Oh, aren't they?”

“No. They don't care about anyone or anything. They're uneducated, they're lazy and they're totally content with their lousy lot in life. They don't work hard. They don't
have dreams. They don't rise above. They don't count for anything in this world.”

She gaped at him. “I can't believe you just said that. How can they not count for anything?”

“Because they're invisible. Nobody wants to acknowledge they exist. People like that, the rest of the world wants to sweep them under the rug or hide them behind a door.”

“Then it's the rest of the world who has a problem. Not the people you grew up around. People always count for something,” she stated resolutely. “Except for the ones who are mean and intolerant. Those are the ones who don't count.”

Gavin said nothing in response to that. He wasn't mean or intolerant. He was simply calling it like it was.

“Maybe some of those people you knew in your old world weren't as well educated as you are now, but that doesn't mean they weren't smart. And what you saw as laziness might have been planning—or even dreaming. How do you know what goes on inside anyone's head? You're not psychic.”

“You don't have to be psychic to know when people have given up.”

She shook her head again. “You don't get it, do you?”

Gavin felt his own back going up now. Why was he letting her put him on the defensive when he had nothing to be defensive about? He knew what he was talking about. She didn't. He'd come from that world and knew it firsthand. She knew nothing of it. Tersely, he replied, “Get what?”

“Not everyone has to have buckets of cash to be happy,” she said, with even more vehemence than before. “A lot of people find happiness wherever they can. Like in a blue, sunny sky after days of rain. Or finding out at school one day that there's going to be a surprise trip to the Field Museum, a place you've always wanted to visit but have
never seen. Or having your parents stop screaming at each other long enough to hear a song you love playing on the radio. Or finding a dollar bill stuck in a street grate that you can spend any way you want, like on a Hershey bar because you never get to have those at home. In even
having
a home. A real home where you'll finally be able to—”

This time she was the one to cut herself off. She expelled an impatient sound, flexed her fingers in exasperation, then doubled them into fists again. “Guess what, Gavin? I come from exactly the same kind of world that you do. Maybe even worse.”

He wasn't sure what to say to that. Not only because he couldn't imagine someone like her on the mean streets of his youth, but because, for some reason, it didn't really seem to matter where she came from. It only mattered that she was here with him now.

In spite of that, and because she seemed to need a reaction from him, he told her, “I find that hard to believe.”

The response, however, only seemed to make her angrier. “Why?”

He decided to tell her the truth. “Because, Violet, you're not like anyone I've ever met before. You're not—”

“Like all those meaningless, heinous people who are born into situations they have no control over?”

“That's not—”

“You know what? You need to go.”

“What?” he asked in disbelief. “Go? Why? Violet— What the hell is going on?”

“And you better hurry,” she added coolly, “before any of your friends see you in this neighborhood.”

“Hey, none of my friends would be caught dead in this neighborhood.” Once again, he spoke without thinking, and only when the sentiment was out did he realize how callous it sounded.

Violet evidently thought so, too, because she strode straight to her bedroom, scooped up what was left of his clothing from the floor, then brought it out and threw it at him.

“Get out,” she said. “And don't ever,
ever,
bother me again.”

“Violet, I didn't mean—”

“Get out.”

“Listen to me. I—”

“Get. Out. Now.”

“But—”

“Now.”

Gavin had uttered more than a few callous comments in his day, but he'd never felt obligated to apologize for any of them. He told himself he didn't have to apologize for this one, either. What he'd said may have been callous, but it wasn't untrue. Nothing of what he'd said tonight had been untrue. Besides, he hadn't reached the level of success he had by apologizing for anything. So why did he suddenly want to start now?

“You have ten seconds,” she said. “Nine. Eight. Seven. Six…”

“All right,” he conceded, lifting both hands, palm up, in a gesture of surrender. Funny how the night was cycling to how it had begun. Not funny, however, was the way it was now Gavin on the defensive. Not that he didn't deserve it… But he
didn't
deserve it, he immediately told himself. He'd said nothing wrong. He knew better than Violet did what it was like to come from poverty and need. Maybe she wasn't from the blue blood, Gold Coast society he moved in now, but it was obvious she didn't know the first thing about the sort of place he'd come from. She was too unsullied for that. Too smart. Too happy. Too content.

With as much dignity as he could muster, he put on his shoes and shrugged into his jacket, stuffing his tie into a pocket with one hand as he adjusted his collar with the other.

“Look, Violet, I—”

But she ignored him, marching to the front door and jerking it open. Although it stuck in Gavin's craw to let things end this way, he knew better than to try and talk to her when she was like this. He still didn't know what he'd said or done to warrant such a reaction in her. Still didn't know what to say that might make her come around. So, for now, all he could do was exactly as she'd instructed and leave.

He felt, as much as heard, the front door slam shut behind him, then, as he was making his way down the steps, the sound of something crashing against a wall.

So what? he asked himself, voicing the very question she'd asked him. So what if he'd made her mad? So what if he'd said some unkind things about the facts of life? So what if she'd told him she never wanted to see him again?

So what if he felt like a complete SOB? He was an SOB. He'd had to be to claw his way out of his old life and carve out the one he had now. That was why no one had ever been able to bring him down.

Until this moment.

Because as Gavin descended the stairs of Violet's apartment building, he felt as though he was moving lower in other ways, too. Into shadows. Into solitude. Into cold. Into the same kind of life he'd had before. The same kind of man he'd been before. Invisible. Meaningless. Worthless.

It was the neighborhood, he told himself as he stepped out of the dilapidated building onto the crumbling front stoop and made his way down the cracked stairs. Hell, even
visiting a place like this tainted his newfound way of life. The life he would protect above all else.

So Violet never wanted to see him again? Fine. He didn't want to see her, either. Not if it meant coming back to a place like this. The sooner he got home to his multi-million dollar, professionally decorated, shiningly immaculate penthouse, the better. So what if it was empty? So what if there was no one there to greet him? So what if he'd be going to bed alone? So what?

So what?

 

For a long time after Gavin left, Violet sat on her sofa in her pajamas, staring into her bedroom at the ten-year-old dress and cheap rhinestone jewelry scattered on the floor by the bed. What the hell had happened tonight? From the moment she had looked through the peephole to see Gavin standing on the other side of the door, nothing had made any sense. Not him coming to her apartment, not him blackmailing her into going to the party, not the fact that he had actually been nice to her—at least part of the time—not his finally realizing she wasn't who he'd thought she was after thinking otherwise for so long, and certainly not—

Not making love with him.

No, she quickly corrected herself. What they'd done hadn't had anything to do with love. Not only because they'd barely known each other a week—really, they didn't know each other at all—but because she was no more capable of feeling such an emotion than he was. What the two of them had experienced had been a simply physical reaction to…

Well, okay, she wasn't sure what it had been a reaction to. They'd obviously both been attracted to each other—for her since the moment she'd laid eyes on him. And they'd both shared some heightened emotions over the course of the week. All that anger and resentment and fear had to go
somewhere once they both realized there was no reason for them to be feeling any of those things. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised that they would manifest in such raw, unbridled, steamy sex.

Sex. Not lovemaking.
Sex.

So why did she feel so empty inside? Before, even if it wasn't good sex, Violet had always felt a little better afterward. Satisfied. Unstressed. Ready to move on to the next task, whatever it was. Sex with Gavin—and it had been
great
sex—had had the opposite effect. She felt more anxious now than she had in weeks and in no way satisfied. Instead of moving on to the next task, all she could do was replay what had happened over and over again in her head. It was going to be a long time before she could move on from this.

He thought she was nothing. That, strangely, was the thing she was having the most trouble letting go of. He'd said as much when he'd talked about his own meager background, how people from his old neighborhood had been invisible and hadn't counted for anything. He might as well have been talking about her own origins. She'd come from the same place he had. But she'd never thought anyone from that world didn't count. Especially not herself.

She wondered why she was so surprised by some of the things he'd said. She'd known how he was from the get-go. He'd said himself in his office on Monday how badly he wanted to keep everything from his old past hidden from everyone in his new life. And it wasn't as if he was alone in his opinion of poverty. There were plenty of people in the world who shared it—and most of them ran in his social circle.

What difference did it make how he felt, anyway? She'd told him she never wanted to see him again. And she didn't.