The Billionaire Gets His Way (13 page)

“Thank you, Miranda,” Gavin said. “And thank Chatsworth and Billings, as well. But we did stop for a bite on the way.”

Miranda smiled another one of those noncommittal smiles. “Excellent. This way, then.”

So it was within the realm of possibility for Gavin to be considerate, Violet thought after hearing him thank even the cook…chef…meal creator to billionaires. She didn't kid herself that this was a new condition after her having scolded him that night at the party for treating the bartender so shabbily.

They followed Miranda through the massive front door and found themselves in a massive foyer, off which were a number of massive rooms collected around a massive staircase that spread up to a massive gallery on the massive second floor, all of it massively luxurious. Violet wasn't sure,
but she thought even her shallow breathing echoed through the miles of open space surrounding them. It was into one of the massive rooms to the left of the staircase that Miranda led them, a space that was crowded with ornate antiques, a half-dozen marble sculptures and several paintings on easels.

“As I said, this is a sampling. The pieces Mr. Whitehall is interested in selling are tagged, and are representative of approximately two dozen others. This should give you a vague estimate of the undertaking and its value.”

Vaguely, Violet was going to guess it was worth about eighty billion dollars.

“Thank you, Miranda,” Gavin said. “We'll take it from here.”

Oh,
we
will? Violet wanted to ask. Like she had any idea what she was doing here.

His word was evidently good enough for the housekeeper, because, with another one of her no-emotion smiles, she told Gavin to call her if he had any questions or needed any assistance. Then she was gone, leaving Violet alone with Gavin. With Gavin and eighty billion dollars' worth of art that didn't belong to either of them.

Suddenly, she was too terrified to move. What if she accidentally knocked something over? Or what if one of her buttons got caught on something? Not only would she lose her hundred-dollar damage deposit at Talk of the Town, but she'd be out eighty billion dollars more for Chatsworth's art collection.

“You don't have to be frightened, Violet,” Gavin said, this time reading her reaction exactly. “Everything is insured.”

Of course it was. And the deductible was probably only eighty billion dollars, so that would save her a bundle.

“I'm just going to go sit over there,” she said, pointing
toward what looked like a simple, if very ornate, dining room chair. “It doesn't look that expensive.”

“That chair dates back to the court of Louis the Sixteenth,” Gavin told her. “It's worth more than you can imagine.”

Wow. And she was someone who could imagine eighty billion dollars.

“Then I'll just stand by the door. Or maybe I should go out to the car,” she further suggested.

He grinned at that. “Stick close to me. You'll be fine.”

Oh, right. That was the most dangerous place of all for her to be.

In spite of that, she—very carefully—made her way to his side and stuck there like glue. In fact, to make sure she didn't accidentally bump into anything, she looped her arm through his and leaned into him. He went rigid at her action, but when she looked up at his face, his expression was anything but. He started to say something, then evidently thought better of it. Instead, with his free hand, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and began taking photos of the pieces closest to them.

That task completed, he began to take a step toward another grouping. But he didn't get far, because Violet had planted her feet too firmly in place, and he ricocheted back toward her. Instead of recoiling from him this time, however, Violet found comfort in his nearness. This place really was a little overwhelming. But somehow, for some reason, Gavin wasn't.

“It's just a house, Violet,” he said quietly, again reading her correctly. “Just a house and some furniture and some things to make a place nicer, just like anyone else's.”

“Oh, please,” she said. “You know better than anyone that that isn't true. This house isn't like anyone else's and neither are the things in it. This is the kind of house, the
kind of furniture, the kind of
world
you've always wanted desperately to be a part of and will do anything to keep living in. The one you want to preserve above all else. If this house were in my neighborhood and filled with the kind of furniture in my apartment, you wouldn't have anything to do with it.”

He looked as if he were going to deny it, then must have realized she would know he was lying. “You're right,” he agreed, surprising her. “But look at it, Violet.” He spread his arms wide to encompass the entire room. “Look at this place. Look at these incredible things. Wouldn't you rather live someplace like this than where you're living now?”

Involuntarily—or maybe it wasn't so involuntary—she lifted her chin in defense. “I like where I'm living just fine.”

“But wouldn't you rather live here?”

She surveyed her outrageously luxurious, outrageously expensive, surroundings before replying, to make sure she replied honestly. The place was gorgeous, no question. And being surrounded by such beauty and extravagance was indeed a privilege. To be here every day, knowing it all belonged to her?

She shook her head. “I don't know, Gavin. As beautiful as it all is, this is an awful lot to be responsible for. The more you have, the more you risk losing, you know?”

Instead of taking a moment to consider what she had meant to be a ponderous question, he immediately beamed at her. “Exactly. That's exactly my point.”

“What is?”

“That this is so much—too much—to give up. That's why I want to protect my lifestyle. Because no one in their right mind would want to live any other way.”

“No, that wasn't what I—” Then the rest of what he'd
said began to sink in. “So then, I'm not in my right mind if I prefer to live more modestly? Is that what you're saying?”

His smile fell. “No, that wasn't what I meant.”

“It's what you said.”

“But it's not what I meant. Violet, I've worked so hard to win cachet into society like this. It's been my dream since I was a kid. Do you know what it's like to have a dream that long? Do you know what it's like to have it come true?”

She remembered her cozy little cottage in the suburbs, with its roses and wisteria and porch swing. “I know exactly what it's like to have a dream like that,” she said. She couldn't answer the second question, however. She still hadn't realized her dream. But she figured it probably felt pretty amazing to make a dream a reality. Someday, she hoped she would know for sure.

Her opinion of Gavin shifted a little with that. Maybe they weren't so different from each other at their core. They'd both come from meager beginnings and struggled for something better. Yes, his idea of
something better
was way beyond her own, but they'd still both been striving to make a dream a reality. How would Violet feel if she'd been living her ideal life in her ideal cottage, then someone came along who threatened to jeopardize it? She'd do whatever she had to protect it, the same way Gavin would.

The difference, however, was that she wouldn't walk over people to do it. She wouldn't insult them. She wouldn't tell them they didn't count. But then, that was the way it was, wasn't it? The more you had, the more you risked losing it. And the greater the risk, the greater the fight. And the greater the fight, the more ruthless the fighter.

She was glad she would never have to fight as much or as hard as he did. She was glad she would never have to pick and choose her loved ones—her friends, she hastily corrected herself—based on how much they were worth or
what their origins were. She was glad she wasn't ashamed of where she came from or who she was at her core. Who she would always be, no matter what path she followed in life.

She gazed at the riches surrounding her again and decided maybe they weren't worth eighty billion dollars after all. A small cottage in the suburbs, with wisteria and roses and a wicker swing, was worth way,
way
more than all of this. And being able to fall in love with whomever you wanted, no matter where they came from or who they were or where they were going? Well, there wasn't a price that could be put on that at all. So much for Gavin's high society. So much for his success. So much for his wealth. Because if he thought living like this was what it took to be someone in the world, then he was wallowing in greater poverty now than he ever had as a kid.

G
avin sat across from Violet in the dining room of his Lakeshore Drive penthouse, watching her push her food around on her plate and avoid his gaze. He'd hoped inviting her to dinner at his place would alleviate some of the sullenness that had come over her at Chatsworth's estate, but she seemed even more subdued now than she had been then. It had taken every wheedling and cajoling gene he possessed to even get her to agree to have dinner with him. All she'd wanted after he'd concluded his business was to be taken home.

He had thought she would enjoy lunch at the restaurant he'd chosen. Not only was it was one of his favorites, it was bloody hard to win a table there, so high in demand was the place. Only the cream of society had the cachet to eat there, something he'd made sure Violet discovered via their waiter by calling ahead and promising an exorbitant tip. Gavin had thought she would enjoy the Whitehall estate even more.
Who wouldn't? It was like a museum, filled with beauty and history and riches unrivaled by any other private collection in the country. He had thought Violet would be dazzled. He had thought she would better appreciate the kind of world he lived in now versus the one he had left behind. He had thought she would begin to understand what was at stake for him, what he had to lose if he lost face with his friends and colleagues. Instead, she'd seemed kind of sad.

So he'd invited her to dinner here, thinking… Well, okay, thinking pretty much the same thing he thought when they were at the estate. That by seeing his home from something other than the pages of a magazine, she might again be better able to understand why he was so determined to protect his lifestyle. All modesty aside, his penthouse was pretty spectacular, too—maybe not Chatsworth Whitehall spectacular, but still pretty damned impressive.

It encompassed the entire top level of the high-rise and was surrounded on all sides by panoramic windows that offered magnificent views of nighttime Chicago, from the Hancock Tower to the north to Navy Pier to the south. The dining table, tucked against one such window, allowed them to see both, along with the glitter and spectacle that was the rest of Chicago, along with the black expanse of Lake Michigan, which was dotted with lights of its own thanks to the yachts and freighters making their way across the inky water. Even having lived here nearly five years, Gavin was still stunned by the beauty of it all, still had trouble believing he had risen so far from the stunted, blighted roots from which he had sprung. Why couldn't Violet be as awed by this place as he still was?

And where Chatsworth's house might have looked like a traditional art museum, Gavin's looked like one for modern art. The inner walls were dotted with twenty-first-century abstracts while a few easels scattered about held more.
His furnishings were sleek and contemporary, in muted neutrals so as not to detract from the splashes of color in the paintings.

His place was amazing, he thought, surveying it again, putting modesty aside. He had, after all, paid one of the city's top decorators a pile of money to make it that way, and one of the city's top real estate agents to find it for him. And before leaving Chatsworth's, he'd called his favorite restaurant in the city and ordered a five-star meal to be delivered a half hour after his and Violet's arrival, complete with server and cleanup crew. That, too, was a perk he enjoyed with the kind of life he led—the kind of power he wielded in both his social and professional worlds. He'd figured Violet would be as impressed by the meal as she was by her surroundings. But nothing had shaken her from her funk.

“Is it the chateaubriand?” he finally asked. “Is it under-cooked? Overcooked? Cold?”

Her head snapped up at the question, and she looked a little confused, as if she were just now remembering where she was and what she was supposed to be doing. Although he was still dressed in the suit he'd worn all day, she'd shed her ultra-conservative jacket after their arrival to reveal a shimmery top beneath that was almost the same color as her eyes. The pale amethyst against her creamy skin made him think both were made of silk, and the color only brought out even more expression and emotion in her eyes. Unfortunately, that expression wasn't delight, and the emotion wasn't happiness.

“I guess I'm not very hungry,” she said halfheartedly. “That was a big lunch we had.”

“Eight hours ago,” he reminded her.

She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “Slow metabolism,” she said, as if that would explain it.

Yeah, right, Gavin thought. He remembered well the night they'd spent at her apartment. Scarcely a day had gone by when he hadn't remembered it well—okay, so maybe he'd been hoping other things would happen, too, if he brought her to his place tonight. And he knew there was nothing about Violet's, ah, metabolism that could be even marginally compared to slow. Not to mention she'd been full of vitality and exuberance when she'd been speaking at Northwestern earlier in the day. Whatever had extinguished that exhilaration had happened since he had caught up with her.

“Did you not enjoy the day then?” he asked.

Another one of those tepid shrugs. “Sure. It was great.”

Great,
he echoed to himself. That was just…great.

He stood and moved to the other side of the table, curling his fingers over the back of her chair. Maybe he needed to point out the obvious.

“Okay, up you come,” he said as he pulled her chair away from the table.

She seemed surprised by the turn of events. “What? Why?”

“If you're not hungry, then there's no point sitting here playing with your food. Come on. I'll take you on a tour of Chicago.”

“Gavin, please. It's getting late. Not only do we not have time for a tour of Chicago, I grew up here, remember? I've seen everything there is to see.”

He grinned and held out a hand. “Not like this, you haven't.”

She expelled a weary sound and, with clear reluctance, placed her hand in his. Gavin folded his fingers over hers gently, then tugged her to standing, putting just enough effort into it to pull her body flush with his. Immediately,
he dropped his hands to her hips and dipped his head to hers. But he couldn't quite bring himself to kiss her—as much as might want to.

And he did want to. Very much.

For a long moment, she only gazed at him, her fingers curled gently against his chest, as if she were making a not-very-serious attempt to keep him at bay. Her scent enveloped him, something flowery and sweet and utterly appropriate for her. Something he found very hard to resist.

Once again, he began to lower his head to hers and, for one hopeful, infinitesimal moment, she started to tip hers back for him. Then something darted across her expression, something shadowy and forlorn, and he made himself stop.

Stop and say, “To your left, we have the Hancock Tower, the tallest building in Chicago.”

Violet studied him in silence for a second, then blinked a couple of times, as if she'd awakened from an enchanted slumber. “The Hancock Tower?”

He nodded, making himself pull away, and point out the window at a building in the distance that looked, in the nighttime, to be constructed of ebony and diamonds. “And over there,” he said, pointing at an illuminated ribbon to the right of the Hancock Tower, “is Michigan Avenue's celebrated Miracle Mile.”

Instead of looking out the window toward where he was pointing, she continued to gaze at him in confusion. So Gavin gripped her hips more resolutely and turned her entire body around, so that she was facing away from him and out at the sparkling city sprawl beyond the window. He didn't let her get far, however. In fact, when he moved to stand behind her, he made sure he was even closer than he'd been before.

He dropped his head until his mouth was right beside
her ear, then murmured softly, “And down there is Navy Pier. Surely you've visited that a time or two.”

He felt, more than saw, her nod. “Only once, actually,” she said softly. “When I was ten. For about three months, I lived with a couple who had taken in six of us. It was the best place I lived back then. They were genuinely good people who honestly loved the kids they cared for. They took all of us to Navy Pier one day, and we stuffed ourselves with corn dogs and cotton candy and rode all the rides.”

“Even the Ferris wheel?”

She nodded again. “The Ferris wheel was my favorite.”

“Then you should go back and ride it again.”

Still in her dreamy voice, she said, “Yes. I should.”

Very tentatively, Gavin added, “In fact, you should go back and ride it with me sometime.”

Had he not been standing so close to her, he wouldn't have been able to tell she stiffened the way she did at his comment. Unmistakable, though, was the way she pulled her head to the side, away from his.

“That would work well for you, wouldn't it?” she said, her voice considerably cooler than it had been before.

Both her behavior and her question confused him. “What do you mean?”

When she turned to look at him, he saw that her sadness had fled. Unfortunately, instead of being replaced by the happiness he'd sought to instill in her, what she seemed to be feeling now was anger.

“Navy Pier would be someplace your friends would never see you with me, wouldn't it?” she said, her words clipped. “I don't imagine too many Gold Coast folks find their way to places like that. And on the Ferris wheel, it would just be the two of us. A piece of cake for you to hide me from your friends.”

It was the last reaction he had expected from her. He'd spent the entire day doing exactly the opposite. Trying to invite Violet
into
his world. Trying to help her see it through his eyes. Trying to make her understand what it was like to be a part of it and why he wanted so desperately to protect his position in it.

“Violet, that's not what I—”

“Isn't it?” she asked. “Why did you drive up to Evanston today, Gavin? Really?”

There was no reason to sidestep the truth. They both already knew the answer to that. “I came to see you,” he said. Hell, he'd told her that when she'd asked him the first time.

“But why Evanston?” she asked. “You could have easily picked up the phone and met me somewhere here in town.”

“I didn't think you'd talk to me if I tried to call. Not after the way we—” He didn't bother to finish the statement. Neither of them could have forgotten that night. So he only said, “I'm glad you gave me a second chance today.”

Her expression went dark again at that. “Yeah, well, I'd kind of hoped earlier that maybe today would be different from the last time. But it's ending exactly the same way, isn't it?”

His confusion compounded. “What do you mean?”

“That night, you made clear your disdain for people who come from the same background you do, and tonight—and today, too—you made clear you haven't changed your mind at all. You could have tried to see me anywhere in the city, but you chose to wait until I was miles away.”

Because all the places in the city hadn't been the kind of places he'd wanted her to see. Not until bringing her to his place to finish the day off. “Evanston offered a good opportunity to—”

“To see me again without risk of your friends seeing me with you.”

It finally dawned on him, what she was trying to say. “You think I'm ashamed to be seen with you?”

“Aren't you?”

“Of course not. I spent practically the entire day with you.”

“Yeah, at places where no one you knew would be present.”

“That isn't true,” he said, his own defensiveness rising. “Chatsworth Whitehall is an old friend who—”

“Wasn't home,” she finished for him. “And you didn't counter his housekeeper's assumption that I was one of your
associates.
”

That was because he hadn't wanted to embarrass her by trying to define what her role in his life was. Not to mention he didn't exactly know what her role in his life was. He'd been hoping maybe today would make that clear. But he had no idea how to tell her that.

When he said nothing, she asked, “Why did you invite me to your place tonight?”

Gavin was really reluctant to answer that one. He would sound shallow if he told her it was because he wanted her to see what a great place he had—and, okay, maybe that was shallow, but he had hoped to make a point. And considering the direction this conversation had taken, there was no way would he would admit he'd been hoping to seduce her.

His continued lack of response, however, only seemed to make Violet more resolved that her suspicions were right. “That's what I thought. You were hoping we could repeat that night at my apartment. Then you could take me home under cover of darkness without any of your friends being the wiser that you're spending time with and sexing up someone they wouldn't approve of.”

Something inside Gavin felt as if it were crumbling into bits. “Violet, we spent the entire day togeth—”

“Yeah, but we spent the day alone,” she pointed out. “You might want to spend time with me, Gavin, but you don't want to do it in front of your friends. Because you know it would bring you down in their eyes.”

He had no idea what to say to dissuade her of that idea. Which only cemented her belief that what she had said was true. With one final, shallow nod of her head, she strode to the sofa where she had dropped her jacket and purse and collected both. Then, without looking at him, she crossed to his front door. With a single, desolate glance at where he still stood motionless, she was gone, closing the door firmly behind herself.

By the time he found the presence of mind to follow her and jerk open the door, the elevator doors in the foyer were closing on her. The last thing he saw was the distressed expression on her face, and the last thought he had was one he didn't have time to put voice to.