The Billionaire Gets His Way (9 page)

Yeah, because they were awful people. Didn't take much to be above a man who would grope a woman while his wife was home taking care of infant twins. Even a hooker was above that.

“They saw me with you having a good time,” he continued. “That's all that matters.”

Sure. That was all that mattered. That Gavin had seemed to be having a good time with a woman he would take home and have sex with, thereby upholding his image as the successful man about town who was in no way the model for the client of a call girl in her memoir, because he would never have to pay a woman to have sex with him. And he had kept her far enough away from them that they hadn't been able to tell that her dress was a ten-year-old castoff and her jewelry was crap.

Yep, they were having a good time all right. How long before the clock struck twelve?

G
avin wasn't sure when the change had come over Violet, but by the time he brought her home—before midnight, as he had promised—she had become downright sullen. As he climbed the darkened stairs of her apartment building—this couldn't possibly be a safe place for a woman living alone, since…

Waitaminnit.
This couldn't be a safe place for a woman living alone, since the neighborhood was barely marginal, and the building was barely lit. Why would a woman who must have made a mint working as a call girl live in a dump like this?

It was yet another question to add to the hundreds of others Gavin had been asking himself since his first meeting with Violet, many of which had been stirred up tonight. Not just the conundrum of her dress and jewelry, or how she'd treated the hired help. But how could she not know how to dance? That was a major requirement for a woman like
her. Call girls didn't make
all
their money in the bedroom. When a man was past his prime, for instance, and couldn't attract the sort of woman he really wanted, he often hired one to accompany him to events so people would think he was still a sexual stallion. And, okay, to have sex with the woman after the event, even if he performed more like a pony at that point.

Anyway, Gavin would have thought a high-priced call girl would be an expert at the tango, never mind at least knowing the box step. How had Violet ever managed to support herself, let alone have enough fodder for a memoir, if she couldn't even dance?

“Here we are,” she said now, dispelling his thoughts. “Thanks for seeing me home.” When Gavin said nothing in reply, she added pointedly, “Goodbye.”

Translation:
Beat it.

There was absolutely no reason for him to hang around. Even if some misplaced sense of chivalry had made him walk her to her door to be sure she made it safely—especially since it went without saying that a woman like her could more than take care of herself—he'd completed the task. He really should beat it. So why did he suddenly want to hang around?

“Aren't you going to invite me in for a nightcap?”

She hesitated a moment, though whether it was because his question had caught her off guard, or because she was actually considering an invitation, he couldn't say. “You shouldn't drink and drive,” she told him.

“I had a drink at the party,” he reminded her.

“Exactly my point,” she replied quickly. “You've already had one drink tonight, even if you took your time with that one and had food to go with it. If you have another one, it could go straight to your head.”

“You could feed me,” he said. “And I could take my time with this one, too.”

Once again, she hesitated before speaking, but again, he wasn't sure if it was because she was surprised by his wanting to spend time with her—not that he wasn't plenty surprised by that himself—or because she was mentally reviewing her pantry and wine rack to see if she had the proper supplies for entertaining.

Finally, tightly, she said, “Thank you for the evening, Gavin. Even though you didn't give me much time to prepare for it, and even though you pretty much blackmailed me into going out with you.”

Oh, yeah. He'd forgotten about that. Maybe that was why she wasn't inviting him in.

“Now that I've upheld my end of the deal,” she added, “it's time for you to do the same. Go home and reconsider your lawsuit. Go home and
probably
change your mind.”

Right. That was what he had told her he would do, wasn't it? In spite of that, the last thing he wanted to think about at the moment was the lawsuit he planned to wage against Raven French. Which was beyond strange, because he'd barely been able to think about anything else for the past two weeks.

“I'll wait here until you get inside,” he said, stalling. “You never know what kind of creep might be waiting for you on the other side of your door.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” she muttered.

He wasn't positive, but he was pretty sure she'd had someone particular in mind when she said that. In a word, him.

“Go ahead,” he said. “I'm not in any hurry.”

She expelled an impatient sound, but opened her purse and withdrew her keys and started to unlock the front door. But Gavin intercepted her—again with the misplaced
chivalry—and deftly took the keys from her hand, unlocking and opening the door himself. Before she could object, he strode past her inside, even though she had left a couple of lights on before leaving and there was obviously no one skulking about in the shadows.

“Oh, good, no creeps,” she said as she followed him inside.

For some reason, the comment made Gavin feel a lot better about himself.

She pulled the door open wider behind herself. “Now you can go home with a clear conscience. Which will come in handy while you
probably
change your mind about suing me.”

He really did wish she would quit carping on that.

“Good
night,
Gavin.”

Conceding defeat, he retraced his steps until he stood framed by the door beside her. When she lifted her hand and turned it palm up, he obediently dropped her keys into it. Then he watched her fingers close over them, wondering at the spiral of disappointment that wound through him when she did.

“Thank you for coming with me tonight,” he told her. “I know I didn't give you much choice, but…” He lifted one shoulder and let it drop, then repeated simply, “Thank you.”

She met his gaze levelly for a moment, saying nothing, and in that moment, Gavin noted a tiny scar high on her cheek that he hadn't noticed before. It should have marred the flawlessness of her beauty, but somehow, it only made her that much more stunning. Even something that should have been a defect couldn't detract from the perfection of her features.

Before he realized what he was doing, he was tracing
the pad of his thumb over the blemish and asking, “What happened here?”

Her eyes went wide in panic, and her hand shot up to cover his and move it back down to his side. Then she placed her own hand completely over her cheek, as if wanting to hide the scar that was barely even noticeable. “Nothing major,” she said, sounding a little breathless. “When I was eight, one of my sisters and I were doing the dishes. She was washing, I was drying. She dropped a glass as she was handing it to me, and it shattered on the counter. A piece of glass flew up and cut me. It probably could have gotten a stitch or two, but—” she halted abruptly, then quickly finished “—but it didn't.”

It hadn't occurred to Gavin before now that Violet might have a family somewhere. Parents and siblings and all the baggage that came with them. She'd said
one of my sisters,
so she obviously had more than one. What had happened to estrange her from her family? Because, surely, she must be estranged. Women didn't become call girls if they had close ties to their families. Did they?

“How many sisters do you have?” Gavin asked.

She did the wide-eyed thing again, then dropped her gaze and busied herself with something in her purse. “Well, none, actually. Not biologically.”

“But—”

“Look, it's late,” she said, glancing up again. “You really should be going.”

No need to tell me twice,
Gavin thought. Even if, you know, she'd already told him twice. Maybe even three times.

He suddenly felt awkward for some reason, like a teenager bringing the girl he liked home from their first date. Unsure what to say, he finally stammered, “Well. Good night then. Violet. And thanks. Again.”

He cursed himself for sounding like an idiot and started to turn away. Then, again without thinking, he found himself leaning down and brushing his lips lightly across the scar on her cheek. He had no idea what made him do it. Not only were they supposed to still be adversaries—in spite of the relatively peaceful way they'd spent the evening—but he'd never kissed a woman on the cheek in his life. Even on the playground in fifth grade, when he'd swooped in on Mary Jane Pulaski for the first kiss of his life, he'd aimed for her mouth. So what if he'd missed and kissed her ear? The point was that he'd been aiming for her mouth. And he hadn't kissed her cheek.

Violet gasped as his lips skimmed over her warm flesh, but she didn't push him away the way Mary Jane Pulaski had. She didn't throw a dirt clod at him the way Mary Jane had, either, which was a nice bonus. She did, however, splay her hand open over the center of his chest in a manner that said,
Don't,
and when Gavin pulled back to gaze at her face, he saw that she was blushing. Again.

He had no idea why he did what he did next. Maybe it was sparked by the challenge presented in her hand on his chest, or maybe he was driven by something else he shouldn't think too much about. But he lowered his head to hers again, this time aiming for—and capturing—her mouth, and this time he did a lot more than brush his lips lightly over hers.

He held his breath as he kissed her, waiting to see what she would do, something else he'd never done before. Never had he been uncertain when kissing a woman. Never had he doubted how she would react. It was that doubt, he thought, that made the kiss feel like more than it should. That could be the only reason why a shudder of heat shook him upon contact, why every nerve in his body surged to life, why the earth beneath his feet began to spin.

Why he felt like a kid kissing a girl for the very first time.

It was that realization, and not any resistance on Violet's part, that made Gavin pull away. But when he looked at her and saw how her eyes had closed and the way her lips were still parted, as if she expected him to continue, he immediately covered her mouth with his again. And this time…

This time, nothing else mattered at all.

Vaguely, he noted how the fingers that had been splayed open against his chest curled into the fabric of his shirt and clutched it tight. He registered the warmth of her mouth against his, welcoming him, rubbing lightly against his own. He felt the swell of her hips beneath his palms and knew he must have moved his hands there. She was so soft—all of her—so soft. So warm. So supple. He had never taken the time to notice before how erotic it could be to simply trace a woman's curves, how electric it could be to savor a woman's mouth against his own. So many firsts tonight. All because of Violet.

When he moved his hand up to cradle her breast in the deep V of his thumb and index finger, she gasped again. This time, when she opened her hand over his chest she did push him away. Then she took a step backward. Then another. And another. Her eyes wide with confusion, she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, as if that might negate what had happened.

“Why did you do that?” she asked, her voice scarcely above a whisper.

All Gavin could do was shake his head. Not just because he didn't know the answer to that question, but because a million other questions were ricocheting through his head. And he didn't know the answer to any of those, either.

She moved her hand to her hair—he was astonished to
see that her fingers were trembling—and tucked behind her ear a long strand that had come free from the graceful twist. Had he done that? He couldn't remember. Then she crossed her hands tightly over her chest in a way he could only liken to defensive.

“You have to go,” she said again, her voice as shaky as her hand had been. “Now. You have to go
now,
Gavin.”

He had no idea what made him say the thing he said next. The words simply came out before he could stop them. “You're not a call girl, are you?”

He hadn't consciously planned to say that, but once the words were spoken, he knew they were true. Some part of him must have known the truth, and probably had for some time now. What else could explain this apartment, her plain dress and jewelry, her lack of knowledge about art and dancing…the way she had kissed him, as if it were the first time for her, too?

Not that Gavin thought she was that innocent. But he knew she wasn't that experienced, either.

“You're not, are you?” he asked again.

Now Violet was the one to shake her head. Her expression changed from one of confusion to something akin to relief. “Of course not,” she said softly. “That's what I've been telling you since the beginning.”

“But how…what…why…” Again, the questions bounced around in his brain, too many for him to articulate even one.

“I am mystified as to why everyone seems to think I wrote
High Heels
from experience.”

That comment, at least, Gavin knew how to reply to. “It's that old saying, ‘Write what you know.' That and the fact that you do write very, very well.”

She braved a small smile at that. “Thanks. But you know,
if writers only wrote what they know, the world would be full of boring books. We can't all be Ernest Hemingway.”

Well, no, Violet certainly wasn't him. Something for which Gavin was profoundly grateful at the moment. In fact, there were a lot of things he was grateful for at the moment. But he didn't want to think too much about any of them right now. In fact, all he wanted to do right now was kiss Violet again. So he covered what little distance she'd put between them and did just that.

Violet wasn't sure when the moment went from one of under standing to one of overwhelming. She only knew that in one instant, Gavin had finally accepted the truth about her and the next…

Oh, the next. The next she was feeling something she'd felt for a few brief moments earlier in the evening, when Gavin was teaching her to dance. Something she'd never felt before, only now she was feeling it a million times more strongly. It was the kind of thing that made a person feel…close…to another person. The kind of thing she had been certain she wasn't wired to feel. Feeling it again now, like this, it was as if a door had opened up inside her and let loose something that had been held captive for too long. She wanted to keep feeling it, wanted to see how fast and how far it would go.