The Billionaire Gets His Way (5 page)

She tried to pretend his nearness had no effect on her. Because his nearness really did have no effect on her. None whatsoever. Not a bit. In fact, she had barely noticed how much warmer the air—among other things—became when he was this close. And she had hardly paid any attention to the scant spicy scent of him that teased her nose, or the way the lamplight in the room somehow made his arresting pale blue eyes even paler and more arresting. And no way had she paid any attention to his broad, broad, oh-my-God-they-were-like-a-football-field shoulders or his chiseled, honestly-he-could-slice-gouda-with-those-things cheekbones.

Nope, the only thing Violet noticed was how his nearness had no effect on her. In fact, she noticed that so much that she continued to gaze at the floor, because it was way more interesting than Gavin Mason.

“Ms…. whatever your name is?” he prodded, making her twitch. “You were going to tell me your real name?”

Actually, she still hadn't decided whether she was going to do that or not. Even if she refused to tell him her real name, she was sure he'd find some way to discover it. Not that she was taking any great pains to hide it. It had been the publisher's idea, too, to copyright the book under her pen name. It wasn't unusual for authors who assumed pen names to do that, they'd told her. To protect their privacy, they'd said. In case they made a gazillion dollars with their books and became big celebrities, she'd been told.

Yeah, like that was going to happen with a big lawsuit hanging over her head.

“Violet,” she heard herself say. Oh. Evidently part of her
had
made the decision to tell him her name. Would have been nice if that part of her had informed the other parts. “Violet Tandy.” She started to go one step further and tell him that Violet was a nickname, and that her real name was Candy Tandy, but if he didn't believe Raven French was her real name, he certainly wasn't going to buy into Candy Tandy.

He had started to open the book again, but closed it once more. “Violet?” he asked, his voice reflecting his obvious bewilderment.

Something in his tone made her feel defensive for some reason, and she tipped her head back to look him defiantly in the eye. Doing that, however, only made her defiance crumble. Nevertheless, she squared her shoulders and commanded herself not to look away.

“Yes. Violet. Is there a problem with that?”

He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again. Then he shook his head. “Not a problem. It just doesn't suit you, that's all.”

Violet thought it suited her quite well, but she didn't want to make an issue of it, so she said nothing. Gavin must have thought she would, because he remained silent for a moment more, one dark eyebrow cocked in query. Strangely, he seemed a bit disappointed in her continued silence, but then he opened the book to the page he had marked. And then—
oh, dammit
—he began to read aloud.

“The moment I saw Ethan, I knew he was a captain of industry, the kind of man who had built his business from the ground up. He'd begun with dirty fingernails and secondhand clothes, performing backbreaking labor from sunup 'til sundown to collect a paycheck that barely sustained him. He schooled himself at night, both in the ways of business and the streets, still managing to earn his degrees—yes, he had three of them—”

At this, he took a break from the reading to glance to the left. Violet followed his gaze and found herself looking at three framed degrees hanging on the wall.

“—three of them,” Gavin continued, returning his attention to the book, “earning them in less time than his infinitely more privileged classmates took to earn one. And don't think the realization of that had humbled him in any way. On the contrary. Ethan's feelings of entitlement, authority and superiority were all rooted in those early days and had only flourished since.

“Those days were well in his past, however. When I met Ethan, he was wearing a twenty-five-hundred-dollar Canali suit—wool and cashmere, of course—and Santoni loafers that must have set him back at least another fifteen hundred. His tie, I knew, was a silk Hermès—I'd soon learn that all of his ties were silk, which made those evenings when
he wanted to tie me to the bed with them that much more enjoyable—and his shirt was a fine cotton Ferragamo. I know my men's fashion, dear reader, and trust me. Ethan, more than any of the hundreds of men I've bedded, knew men's fashion, too.”

He looked up from the page, closed the book, and stared straight at Violet. “I'm sorry I don't read out loud with the breathlessness and pretentiousness a passage like this demands, but—”

“Breathlessness?”
Violet interrupted indignantly.
“Pretentiousness?”
she echoed even more angrily. “Roxanne isn't pretentious. Today's readers love all that name-dropping product placement. Didn't you ever watch
Sex and the City?
Jeez. And she's only breathless because her clients pay good money for that kind of thing. They want her to sound like Marilyn Monroe.”

Gavin eyed her steadily, a faint smile dancing about his lips. “I thought you said this was fiction.”

Violet felt her defensiveness rising to the fore again, and she straightened, squaring her shoulders once more. “It is fiction.”

“The way you talk about Roxanne, she sounds like she's real.”

Now Violet lifted her chin an indignant inch, too. “Well, she's real to me. All my characters feel real when I'm writing about them.”

“Maybe because they
are
real? Real people you haven't even tried to disguise except for lamely changing their names?”

“No way,” she stated adamantly. “You ask any novelist worth her salt, and she'll say she feels like her characters are real, even if she knows they aren't.”

“Everything you wrote about Ethan in that passage could be said of me.” He smiled in full now, but there wasn't
anything happy in the gesture. “But then, you already know that. How you know it, I'm not sure, because much of it isn't common knowledge. You must have found someone who knew me twenty years ago in New York and paid them a bundle to reveal the information. Even more than I paid them to keep it quiet.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Violet assured him. “I'd never heard of you before you forced your business card on me.”

Now his smile turned indulgent. Which still wasn't happy. “Okay. Let's pretend you're as ignorant as you say. Let's act as if you really don't know anything about me.”

“I
don't
know anything about—”

“You saw the letters on my card,” he continued as if she hadn't spoken. “GMT stands for Gavin Mason TransAtlantic. I started off working as a longshoreman on the Brooklyn docks, loading and unloading ships for an auction house in Manhattan. Art, antiques, artifacts, that kind of thing. I didn't have much interest in what was in the crates I pulled off the ships. I just wanted to pay for the college classes I was taking at night. Until one of the auction house guys left a catalog behind one day and I saw how much some of that stuff was selling for. Six, seven figures, most of it. And the auction house got a nice bite of the take. Just for moving the pieces from one land mass to another and unloading it for the seller.”

He smiled another one of those unhappy smiles. “Except that they weren't the ones unloading the items. I was. They got to stand in a climate controlled place and push around paper. I was the one lugging crates in the rain and snow. From sunup 'til sundown some days,” he added, quoting the passage from the book. “And all I got was union wages. So I started taking more classes, in addition to studying for my business degree, to learn more about the import business.
And I still managed to graduate in less time than my…how did you put it?” He read from the book, even though Violet was sure he had the words memorized. “My infinitely more privileged classmates.”

“But—”

“And those words
infinitely more privileged
are key here,” he interrupted. “I'm a very important man in Chicago. No one here—no one—knows my background. As far as they're concerned, I was brought up in the same, infinitely more privileged, society they were. I've never gone to bed hungry. I've never lived in a crap apartment where the cockroaches and rats vied for crumbs. I've never had dirt under my fingernails, and I've never wondered which of a half dozen men might be my father.”

Violet's back went up at his words, so full of contempt were they for a life of need. Except for the rats thing, he could have been talking about her own past. “And what's so terrible about all those things?” she demanded. “People can't help the circumstances they're born into. Poverty isn't a crime. I'd think you'd be proud of yourself for overcoming all those difficulties to become the man you are now.” Then, although she had no idea why she would admit such a thing to him, she added, “I don't know who my father is, either.”

“Yes, well, that doesn't exactly surprise me.”

“Hey!”

He ignored her interjection. “I am proud of myself for overcoming my past,” he said fiercely, “but that doesn't mean I want anyone else to know about it. The kind of people I rub shoulders with don't want to know poverty exists. They sure as hell don't want to know anyone personally who came from that world.”

Well, that, Violet knew, was certainly true.

“They think I'm one of them,” he continued. “That's a
big part of why I enjoy the kind of life I do now. I've worked hard not just to get to the top of my profession, but to get to the top of the social order, too. That's meant hiding the facts of my past from all of them. Which I've done very well.” He held up the book. “Until now. Now everyone knows.”

So it wasn't only the damage he thought his image had taken because people were saying he hired call girls that had him so up in arms, Violet thought. He was as angry—maybe even angrier—about people thinking he wasn't the pampered blueblood he presented himself to be.

Well, boo hoo hoo. There was nothing wrong with growing up needy. “Like I said, what's so terrible about that?”

“Breeding is everything with these people,” he answered immediately. “It's not enough to be successful now. You have to come from the right mix of blood—the bluer, the better. Not from—” He halted abruptly. “Not from where I come from. And now, thanks to you, everyone knows where I come from.”

“Well, I don't see how they can assume you're Ethan from that passage,” she hedged. “I wrote that Ethan is a captain of industry. What you do isn't industrious. It's an import business.”

“Industry, import,” he repeated. “The two words are very similar. The same way the names Gavin and Ethan are.”

“Similar sounding maybe, but they're not the same thing at all. The careers or the names.”

“Still, you have to admit, now that you've heard about my circumstances, what you wrote about Ethan's background is almost identical to mine.”

It wasn't identical. Sure, there were some similarities, but a lot of men in Gavin's position could have backgrounds similar to his. Many men like him—and women, for that matter—had started with nothing and built empires. To
do that, of course, they would have had to do everything themselves and learn what they could and fight their way up the ladder. It was all the more proof that the character of Ethan was a blend of many people, someone she'd created after reading books and articles about dozens of self-made millionaires.

“There are a lot of people who built their businesses the way you did,” she pointed out. “That passage doesn't prove anything. Besides, you said hardly anyone knows your history that far back. So why would you think anyone would draw the conclusion that you're Ethan based on that description?”

He said nothing in response to that, and Violet hoped maybe that would be the end of it. Then, without a word, he dropped a hand to the top button of his suit jacket and pushed it slowly through its hole. Then he unbuttoned the other one. As he walked toward Violet again, he began to shrug out of it, something that made a funny little sensation fizz in her belly. He draped the jacket over one arm and went for his necktie next, loosening the knot at his throat enough to unfasten the top two buttons of his shirt, as well.

For a moment, Violet thought he was undressing for…for…for
something
…something he really shouldn't be undressing for, not in his office, and not when she barely knew him, and not when she had already been having thoughts about him she absolutely, unequivocally should not be thinking. But he stopped when a good foot of space still lay between them, and when he reached for her, it wasn't to pull her close. It was to—

Offer her his jacket? But that was such a gentlemanly thing to do, she thought, confused. And he was no gentleman. Besides, it wasn't cold in the office. In fact, it seemed to be getting hotter and hotter with every passing minute.

She shook her head, not even trying to hide her puzzlement. “I don't understand.”

Somehow, he seemed to know the wayward direction her thoughts had taken, because his smile was full of mischief. And wow, when he smiled like that, as if he meant it, he was really kind of…slightly…rather…

She bit back a sigh that came out of nowhere. Breathtaking. That's what he was when he smiled like that.

“The label, Ms. Tandy,” he said. “Check the label in the jacket.”

Her brain still a bit foggy—never mind some of her other body parts that had no business being foggy in mixed company—it took a moment for her to figure out what he meant. “Oh. Right. The label.”

She took the garment from him and turned it until she found the designer's name stitched to the lining beneath the collar. “Canali,” she read. Just like Ethan's.

“And what kind of fabric?”