The Billionaire
Gets His Way
Elizabeth Bevarly
The Sarantos
Secret
Olivia Gates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The Billionaire Gets His Way

“Actually, it’s you who owes me,” Gavin said. “And I’m here to give you a chance to make good on the debt.”

Oh, Violet didn’t like the sound of that at all. “I beg your pardon? You want me to go to this fundraiser with you?” she asked incredulously.

“No, I don’t want that,” he told her. “But I don’t have much choice. No other woman in town will be seen with me, thanks to you. And going to this thing alone would only illustrate that fact to everyone there.”

“Well, sorry, but I already have plans for the evening,” she said. “Maybe next time you could call first. Surely if you can figure out where I live, you can locate my phone number. Both are unlisted, after all.”

“I don’t think you understand, Ms Tandy,” he said. “You seem to think you have a choice in the matter. Like me, you don’t. You owe me,” he said again. “And I’m not leaving until you pay up.”

About the Author

ELIZABETH BEVARLY is a New York Times bestselling, RITA® Award-nominated author of more than sixty books and novellas, and she recently celebrated the twentieth anniversary of seeing her first book in print! Before writing, she worked in a variety of jobs, from retail to restaurant work to editorial assistant (never let anyone tell you a degree in English makes you unemployable), but now she happily makes her living writing full-time. She’s lived in places as varied as San Juan, Puerto Rico and Haddonfield, New Jersey, but now makes her home in her native Kentucky with her husband and son and two cats of questionable sanity. (But then, aren’t they all?)

Dear Reader,

When I read an article in my local paper about how women are beginning to rent high-end fashion for special occasions instead of buying it, I was intrigued. Women haven’t traditionally been big renters of clothing. Women traditionally want to own their clothing—especially high-end fashion. (Okay, okay. If they’re like me, they want to own it for the lowest possible price, but that’s beside the point. It’s also part of the fun. But I digress.) I figured women renting expensive clothing and jewelry must have an interesting reason for doing so. I also figured such women must have some interesting stories to tell.

Violet Tandy is the first of three women who will visit my fictional Chicago boutique, Talk of the Town, to rent expensive clothing she can’t afford to buy. And her reason is certainly innocent enough. What isn’t innocent is Gavin Mason’s reaction to her in those rented duds. And boy, does that guy know how to make sparks fly …

Happy reading!

Elizabeth Bevarly

One

All Violet Tandy had ever wanted out of life was a place to call home. A home of her own, not a foster home like the myriad ones where she grew up. The kind of home people had in old movies, with white clapboard and black shutters and full-grown sugar maples canopying the front yard. And a picket fence. Had to have a picket fence. And a broad front porch with a wicker swing where she could reread all the books she’d loved as a child—Jane Eyre and Judy Blume, Lassie Come Home and Louisa May Alcott. Only she’d own the books and not have to return them to the library every week.

Roses and lilac bushes would grow lush and fragrant around the perimeter of her house, morning glory would zigzag up the chimney and wisteria would drip from the eaves of the back porch. She would crochet wispy sweaters and bake cheerful pastries to support herself. She would live and let live and be content with her solitary existence. And she would never, ever harm another living soul. Yep, a tranquil, unsullied life in a comfy, uncluttered cottage all to herself was the only thing Violet Tandy had ever wanted.

Which was why she wrote a memoir about being a high-priced, high-society call girl.

Not that Violet had ever actually been a call girl, high-priced, high-society or otherwise. And not that her memoir was actually a memoir—it was a novel written to read like one, a trend she had noticed was becoming more and more popular with readers these days, herself included. Gracie Ledbetter, her editor at Rockcastle Books, had been so swept away by the story, that when she called Violet to make an offer on the book, she had admitted that if she didn’t know better, she would have thought Violet actually was a call girl, and that her novel—and that was how Gracie had said it, as if she were italicizing it—was actually a novelization—again with the italics—of her real life experiences.

In fact, now that Violet thought about it, Gracie continued to do that—speak of the novel in italics, as if she’d never quite been convinced that the book was complete fiction. Even now, a year after Violet had signed the contract on the completed manuscript and a few weeks after the book’s debut, Gracie still asked things like, “Does the Princess Suite at the Chicago Ambassador Hotel really make you feel like a princess when you’re lying on the bed staring up at the castle mural on the ceiling?”

Well, how would Violet know? The only reason she’d even seen the Princess Suite at the Ambassador was because she’d worked there as a housekeeper and had changed the sheets on the bed. Whenever she reminded Gracie of that, however, her editor would reply, “Oh, riiight. Of cooourse. You worked there as a housekeeper. Not as a … you know,” in a way that wasn’t quite as convincing as Violet would have liked.

And once, Gracie had asked if the croque monsieur with truffle sauce at Chez Alain really could fill up a person for three days as the review of the five-star restaurant had claimed.

Well, how would Violet know? The only reason she’d even tasted the croque monsieur with truffle sauce at Chez Alain was because she’d worked there as a hostess, and all the employees had had a bite or two of new dishes every time the menu changed. Whenever she reminded Gracie of that, however, her editor would reply, “Oh, riiight. Of cooourse. You worked there as a hostess. Not as a … you know,” in a way that wasn’t quite as convincing as Violet would have liked.

No matter. She was certain that the reason Gracie asked such questions was simply because she got so carried away by the—quite fictional—prose. With any luck, the reading public would react similarly, and the book would soar to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, something that would earn Violet enough money to buy the snug little Norman Rockwell house in the Chicago suburbs that she’d always dreamed about.

Her initial advance for the book had actually been rather modest, but thanks to the reaction Gracie’s executive editor had had to the revisions on the manuscript, they’d bumped up its initial print run, changed the title to High Heels and Champagne and Sex, Oh, My! and convinced Violet to take a pen name that sounded a lot racier than her own: Raven French. Although Violet had been hesitant about that last, she’d conceded, and the combination had worked brilliantly. Its first week of sale, High Heels had debuted at number twenty-nine on the list and gone back for a second printing. Then it jumped another four places the following week. Now it was poised to enter the top fifteen and, having gone back to print for a third time, would doubtless climb higher still in the weeks to come.

Which was how Violet-Tandy-slash-Raven-French came to be sitting behind a table stacked with copies of her book at a packed bookstore on Michigan Avenue one sunny afternoon in October. And how she came to be staring into the most extraordinary pair of blue eyes she had ever seen that belonged to one of the most gorgeous men she had ever beheld. He was sitting in the back row and hadn’t taken those blue eyes off her once since seating himself. And his scrutiny, although not exactly unwelcome since he was, in case she hadn’t mentioned it, gorgeous, was beginning to make Violet feel a tad squirmy.

He was just so … intense. So … overwhelming. So … gorgeous. And God, so big. Even though he was sitting, he was head and shoulders taller than all of the women—taller than even the handful of men—who were present, and his shoulders completely eclipsed the chair back. His hair seemed even blacker than her own, but where she’d let hers grow past her shoulders, his was cut short by an expert’s hand. And those eyes. Pale, nearly translucent blue, startling in their clarity and framed by sweeping, dark lashes. Although it was Saturday, he was dressed in a dark suit, something else that made him stand out from the otherwise laid-back crowd.

Even Violet-slash-Raven wore a casual outfit, picked out by the publicist Rockcastle Books had assigned to her. Marie had advised the fashion-challenged Violet on every aspect of her authorial self. Today, she wore a pair of black trousers and three-quarter-sleeve black top with a deep V neckline, coupled with more-strap-than-shoe stilettos. All were, of course, from the finest couturiers, since Violet Tandy … ah, she meant Raven French … needed to look like the wildly successful author she was supposed to be.

Of course, Violet couldn’t afford the expensive labels Raven needed on the rather modest advance for her book. Fortunately, Marie had pointed her toward a boutique off Michigan Avenue that specialized in the short-term rental of haute couture and expensive jewelry for Chicago women who wanted to pretend they were members of the high society that was normally denied them.

For her outfit today, Violet … or, rather, Raven … had opted for clothes by Prada and shoes by Stuart Weitzman. To complement both, Marie had chosen a dazzling Ritani jewelry set—a pendant, earrings and bracelet fashioned of exquisite diamonds and amethysts that matched the eyes that had given Violet her nickname.

Her real name, regrettably, was Candy. Candy Tandy. It was only one of the indignities her mother had bestowed upon her before the final one of abandoning her at the age of three in a discount store with a note pinned to her Smurfette sweatshirt describing her as a problem child that no one would ever be able to love.

But that, along with everything else that had happened in the past twenty-nine years, was the past. These days, Violet thought only about the future. A future in her wisteria-laden house where she would take in strays of all kinds—canine, feline, equine, bovine, she didn’t care. She might even become a foster parent herself someday. But only if she could guarantee that the children in her care would stay in her care and never be shuttled from one place to another, as she’d been. They’d be able to make friends who wouldn’t be taken from them, the way hers had inevitably been, and they’d make emotional connections to other people that went beyond superficial, the way she’d never been able to do.

For some reason, that drew her attention back to the blue-eyed man in the back row. He was still staring at her. Intensely. Overwhelmingly. Gorgeously. He was in no way the kind of person Violet had expected would read her novel. In fact, he seemed more like the kind of person who might have shown up in the book as a character—perhaps one of her fictional heroine’s many fictional clients. Each was an amalgam of men Violet had modeled after the clients and patrons of her former places of employment. Rich men. Successful men. Powerful men. Men who cared more about their images, their reputations and their status in both business and society than anything else—anyone else.

Somehow she managed to tug her gaze free of the man in the back row and drive it across the other people who had come to hear her speak about her book before having their copies signed. Mostly female, these were her real readers. Women who were fascinated by the idea of sex for sale and by female protagonists who were in charge of their own sexuality. Who used their sexuality, the most powerful weapon they possessed, to get whatever they wanted. Who enjoyed no-strings-attached encounters with powerful men who paid exorbitant amounts of money to have women do things to them—and to do things to the women in return—that many would never even consider doing or having done to them during regular lovemaking with their usual partners.

Frankly, Violet wasn’t sure she got that. Not that she was so worldly in her own encounters. Certainly she’d had boyfriends from the time she was old enough to want one, and she’d lost her virginity when she was a teenager. But she’d never quite understood the fascination with sex that most people had. The men with whom she’d been involved hadn’t been all that special—or made her feel all that special. Which, she supposed, was why there hadn’t been all that many. The way she saw it, sex was a normal physical need, like eating or sleeping or bathing. Except needed a lot less often.

A college-aged woman who worked for the bookstore announced it was time to begin, bringing Violet’s attention to the matter at hand. Namely, the gorgeous, overwhelming man in the back row.

No! she immediately corrected herself. To the talk she was supposed to give to the gorgeous, overwhelming man in the back row.

No! she corrected herself again. To everyone who had come to buy her book today—she did a quick count, multiplying the number of seats across by the number of rows deep, adding another fifteen for the people standing and figured the total to be … carry the six, add the eight … around fifty-two—people who had come to buy her book today. Wow.

Ka-ching. She could smell the wisteria already.

She spoke for twenty minutes, having chosen as her topic the aforementioned philosophy of women in charge of their own sexuality and the appeal of having sex without the hindrance of emotion to muck things up. She followed up with the conundrum of how something so physical could even be tied to something so emotional—like love, of all things—in the first place.

She avoided talking about her own life experiences since, one, she was something of a private person in that regard and, two, she really didn’t think anyone would be interested in her poor-poor-pitiful-me background. Instead, she focused on the motivation, goals and journey of Roxanne, her book’s protagonist. She talked about how each of the men who became Roxanne’s clients symbolized some aspect of the human condition, and how her heroine’s submission to each represented another milestone in her personal growth.

Oh, God, she was good.

In fact, Violet … she meant Raven … had organized the book so that each chapter after the first—in which Roxanne was hired by a Chicago madam named Isabella, who herself personified society’s obsession with using sex to promote consumerism—was subtitled by the name of one of the character’s many clients. There was introverted Michael, who represented Roxanne’s need to let go of her inhibitions. And uncompromising William who showed her how following the rules wasn’t always a bad thing. Studious Nathaniel kindled her quest for knowledge, while carefree Jack helped her recognize her capacity to feel joy. And all of them—it went without saying—were lovers of Olympian caliber who gave Roxanne mind-blowing orgasms along the way.

The book culminated in the final chapter, Ethan. Ethan was the idealized notion of the perfect man, the one who fulfilled Roxanne in ways none of the others had managed alone, and who carried her to both sexual and emotional heights that. Well, that didn’t exist, quite frankly. Talk about a work of fiction. Ethan was ultra-masculine in every way, but could still respect a woman for all her strengths, desires and independence.

Yeah, like that was ever gonna happen in real life.

After finishing with her talk, Violet-Raven opened the floor to questions, and a dozen hands shot up. Not from the man in the back, though, she noted, in spite of the fact that he continued to study her with even more intensity than before. In fact, his intensity seemed to have turned into something akin to anger, because those amazing blue eyes narrowed now when he looked at her, and that full, luscious mouth turned down at the corners. She had no idea why he would react in such a way to a talk she’d thought was pretty danged insightful, so she turned her attention to the woman sitting next to him, an owner of one of the hands in the air.

“You there,” she said with a smile as she pointed to the white-haired, apple-cheeked woman in her seventies or eighties.

The woman smiled as she stood, the sort of smile that made Violet feel warm and wistful inside, because she looked like the grandmother Violet had always fantasized about having when she was a child. Someone who would bake cookies and darn socks and say, “Oh, my stars,” and wear sweaters with horse appliqués.

“Is it true,” the woman said in a sweet, gentle voice, “that you’re the one who invented the sexual position called the ‘centerfold spread?’”

Oh, my stars, Violet thought, struggling to keep a straight face. Clearly the woman’s years were so advanced that she’d confused Violet-Raven as the heroine of the book, not its author.

“Um, no,” she said. “That wasn’t me. It was my book’s protagonist, Roxanne.”

Nana’s eyebrows knit in a sign of clear confusion. “But I thought you were Roxanne.”

“No, ma’am,” Violet told her. “I’m, uh, Raven.”

“But didn’t you write the book?”

“Yes, but—”

“And the book is a memoir about a call girl.”

“Yes, but—”

“Then you’re the one who invented the position.”

“No, I—”

“What I’d like to know,” a woman with dark hair who was hipping a baby interrupted, “is exactly how the crème de menthe thing works. Now, did you drink that before performing oral sex on your customers, or was it meant for external use only?”

Violet was vaguely horrified by the personal pronoun used in the question. She’d read about the crème de menthe thing in a magazine. She’d never actually tried it. Why did the young woman assume otherwise?

“Actually, I never—”

But before she could even complete her reply, another woman, this one a college-aged blonde with little black glasses, stood and said, “My boyfriend and I are going to be spending the summer in Italy. Could you talk more about that sex club Francesco took you to in Milan?”

Violet opened her mouth to reply to that, but not a single word emerged. She was beginning to sense a pattern here. Everyone who had asked a question thought she was her fictional character Roxanne. They didn’t seem to realize the book was fiction. Even though the story read like a memoir, the blurb on the cover flap made clear the work was a novel. The reviews had all been in the fiction section of whatever periodical was doing the reviewing. Not to mention the fact that Roxanne’s adventures were so over-the-top, no one could possibly believe they had actually happened to anyone.

Could they?

The sex club/Francesco query evidently reminded a lot of people of questions they wanted to ask, because in the scant moment of Violet’s silence, the crowd erupted into what felt like hundreds of questions. Did Violet really have sex with Sebastian on the roller coaster at Knott’s Berry Farm? What was her real reason for not doing that porno Kevin wanted her to do? Where did she purchase those crotchless panties with the whistle sewn on them that Terrence had liked so much?

On and on it went until the crowd bordered on chaotic. That was when the young woman from the bookstore stepped in and, in a very effective crowd control voice, indicated that the question-and-answer segment had now concluded, and Ms. French would be happy to sign her book, and would everyone please line up in an orderly fashion who wished to have their copy of High Heels and Champagne and Sex, Oh, My! autographed.

Not everyone who had attended the signing got in line, but many did. And although most of those wanted to chat with Violet for a few moments about the book, the bookstore clerk thankfully kept the line moving so that Violet was spared having to hear too many more questions about Roxanne’s exploits being her own. By the time she signed the last available copy—and my, but the fragrance of the roses was mingling with the wisteria at the sight of the empty table—she was battling writer’s cramp and on the verge of exhaustion.

Unfortunately, as she was capping her Sharpie and envisioning her return to her apartment to don her grubbiest jeans and T-shirt and pop in a DVD of Casablanca, someone slammed another copy of the book down on the table in front of her. Hard. Startled, Violet glanced up and found herself gazing into incredible, nearly translucent blue eyes. Blue eyes that had now traveled miles beyond intense, and kilometers beyond anger, to debark at fury central.

“Um, hello,” she managed to say. “I, ah … I’m sorry. I didn’t see you standing there.”

The fact that she had overlooked him—as impossible as that seemed even to her—made him narrow his eyes even more angrily. But he said nothing, only shoved the book across the table toward her. Hard.

Somehow she tore her gaze away from his and forced it to the book, which, she told herself, should have way more importance to her anyway. But her attention fell instead on the hand that had splayed open atop it, obscuring the cover art of black patent stilettos, champagne effervescing in a slender flute and red lace panties and bra tossed carelessly between them. It was a large, masculine hand whose thumb, by its placement, seemed to caress the red lace of the lingerie. A very large and masculine hand, in spite of the elegantly wrought ring that wrapped its third finger, gold inlaid with onyx, that might or might not be a wedding band, since the hand happened to be his left one. But the hand didn’t move from the book, making it impossible for Violet to sign it, so she looked at him again. He stared at her with unmistakable hostility, and her confusion mounted.

She tried to remember if she’d met him somewhere before and unwittingly done something to generate such a reaction. Had she accidentally botched his reservations at Chez Alain or overlooked a smudge in his bathtub at the Ambassador Hotel? Had she messed up the hem of his trousers when she’d been a seamstress at Essex Tailors or sent home the wrong cuff links from the tony men’s shop where she’d been a salesclerk? Absolutely not, she immediately decided. Not only had she never made such mistakes at her previous jobs, but she would definitely remember eyes like those and a man like him.

Since he evidently didn’t want his book signed, she asked, as politely as she could, “Did, um, did you have a question?”

For a moment, he said nothing, but his expression changed, easing up infinitesimally. He looked at Violet almost as if he were the one trying to remember if he’d ever met her before, and what he might have unwittingly done to her. Which she found laughable in the extreme, since a man like him never did anything unwittingly.

Finally, he dropped his gaze to the book and removed his hand from its cover so that he could flip it open. He turned to a page toward the back that he had marked with a strip of what looked like paisley silk ripped brutally from some unsuspecting garment. Then he shoved the book toward Violet and thrust his finger at the heading.

“Chapter twenty-eight,” he said.

That was it. No question, no observation, just the number of the final chapter of the book, the one headed “Ethan.” Which of all the male characters Violet had written about in High Heels, was the one her readers had responded to most. He was the one who was cited in all the reviews the book had received so far, the one who was whispered breathlessly about by talk show hosts who had hyped the book on TV. He was the culmination of all things strong, masculine, confident and rich. When he moved in his worlds of business and society, he was ruthless, arrogant and overbearing. Although his couplings with Roxanne had been earthy, powerful and raw, there had been a tenderness inside him that almost—almost—made her heroine fall head over heels in love.

Which was yet another example of how fictional the book was, and how Violet couldn’t possibly have written it from personal experience. No way would she ever fall in love. She lacked the capacity for such an emotion. She’d learned before she was a teenager not to get too emotionally invested in anyone, because, inevitably, she would be separated from them somehow. Either she’d be moved to a new foster home, or her new friend would be. Sometimes it was the foster parents themselves she lost, either to illness or economics or caprice.

No way was she ever going to risk actually falling in love with someone.

“Yes?” Violet asked the man. “Did you have a question about chapter twenty-eight? About Ethan?”

“Not a question,” he said. “A demand.”

“What kind of—”

“I demand a retraction,” he stated without letting her finish.

Okay, now Violet was really confused. “A retraction?” she echoed. “What for? Why would I need to print a retraction? The book is—”

“Malicious, defamatory and untrue,” he finished for her. “Especially chapter twenty-eight.”

Well, of course the book was untrue, she thought indignantly. It was a novel. Duh. Why did people keep thinking it was an actual memoir? Violet must be a better writer than she’d realized. Still, the rest of his accusation was ridiculous. Novels couldn’t be malicious or defamatory, thanks to that untrue business. So his demand for a retraction was likewise ridiculous.

Nevertheless, she hesitated before replying, not wanting to upset this guy any more by insulting his alleged intelligence. Carefully, she began, “I’m sorry if you didn’t enjoy the book, Mr….?”

Instead of giving her his name, he glared at her some more and said, “My enjoyment of it—or lack thereof—is immaterial. However, I do know for a fact that chapter twenty-eight is libelous and demands a retraction. Just because you changed the man’s name to Ethan—”

“Changed his name?” Violet echoed. “I didn’t change anyone’s name. I didn’t have to. Ethan is a fabrication. The book is a—”

“You can’t disguise a man’s identity simply by changing his name, Ms. French,” the man continued relentlessly, as if she hadn’t spoken. “You described Ethan’s coloring, his profession, his office, his home, his hobbies, his interests, his physique, his … technique … Everything. In precise, correct, detail.” At this, he snatched up the scrap of silk with which he’d marked the page. “You even identified the manufacturer of his underwear.”

Violet shook her head in mystification. She couldn’t decide whether her interrogator was simply a little misguided or a raging loony. She turned to the bookstore clerk, hoping she’d take matters into hand now as she had with the overly enthusiastic crowd earlier. But the young woman was staring at the dark-haired man in openmouthed silence, evidently even more overwhelmed by him than Violet.

So Violet turned back to her, ah, reader, still not sure what to say. Maybe if she played along with him for a minute, disregarding, for now, whether the book was a work of fiction or nonfiction, she could talk him down from whatever ledge he was standing on.

Cautiously, she ventured, “Um, a lot of men wear paisley silk boxers, Mr….”

Still, he didn’t give her the name she’d not-so-subtly requested. Instead, he shook the scrap of silk at her and replied, “Not imported from an exclusive, little-known shop in Alsace for whom this design is completely unique.”

Oh, really? Violet thought. Well, she’d read about the place in Esquire magazine—guess it wasn’t as little known as he realized—and how they employed their own weavers and designers, and probably even their own worms, so that their garments were each utterly luxurious and completely one-of-a-kind. And also outrageously expensive, which was why she’d written that Ethan wore them.

Violet sighed with resignation. “I don’t know what you’re trying to say. Ethan is a character in my novel. The story is fiction. Roxanne isn’t real. Ethan isn’t real. If I described him in a way that resembles someone who actually exists, I assure you it was nothing more than serendipity. There are a lot of men out there who work and play and live the way the characters in my book do.”

“You and your publisher may be marketing the book as a novel, but there’s no question in anyone’s mind that the work is based—and in no way loosely—on your actual experiences as a call girl.”

“What?” Violet exclaimed. “That’s not true! I’ve never—”

“There’s also no question in anyone’s mind about Ethan. You’ve described the man so explicitly and perfectly that everyone in Chicago knows who he is.”

Violet spared a moment to be proud of herself for writing such great prose that she’d brought a character to life—almost literally—for so many of her readers. Then she remembered that this guy had just accused her of being a prostitute, and she got mad all over again. Unfortunately, before she could express that outrage, her assailant spewed more of his own.

“And if you don’t print a retraction to this … this …” He thumped the book contemptuously. “This piece of trash—”

“Hey!” Violet objected. “It’s not trash! It got a starred review in Publishers Weekly!”

“—then I assure you that Ethan is going to sue you for every nickel you receive from its sales.”

“It’s fiction!” she said again. “No one can sue me for anything.”

“Not only that, but Ethan will make certain you never make another nickel in your life, because he will sue you for so much money, your great-grandchildren will be paying his.”

Okay, that did it. When people started threatening her nonexistent family, Violet really got mad. She stood with enough force to make the bookstore clerk squeak like a mouse. Then she straightened to her full five-foot-eight, which was made nearly six feet in the three-inch heels she was wearing. Then she leaned forward and crowded the man’s space as much as she could, narrowing her eyes at him menacingly.

Even at that, however, Mr. Paisley Pants still towered over her. And he looked way more menacingly back at her.

“Oh, and what are you? Ethan’s fictional lawyer?”

He slapped down a business card on the table beside the book, but Violet didn’t bother to look at it. She didn’t care who he was. She wasn’t about to print a retraction for something that wasn’t even real.

“No,” the man said. “I’m not Ethan’s lawyer. I’m Ethan. And I have never had to pay a woman—especially one like you, Ms. French—for sex.”

Two

By the time Gavin Mason slammed the door of his Michigan Avenue office behind himself, his anger had diminished not at all. It hadn’t helped that, barely halfway through the seven-block walk from the bookstore, the sky had opened up and dumped sheets of cold October rain on him. Thankfully, since it was Saturday, there was no one around to see him looking so disheveled. Or to see him hurl the copy of High Heels and Champagne and Sex, Oh, My! across the room with all his might. The hardcover slammed against the wall opposite with enough force to rattle a trio of framed degrees hanging there. Then it toppled onto a pair of hand-blown, and not inexpensive, vases when it fell onto the credenza beneath.

He’d hoped his walk—either to the bookstore or back—would purge some of the rage he’d been harboring for the past week, ever since catching wind of the gossip that had been circling in both professional and social circles of Chicago. And he’d hoped he might find satisfaction in meeting face to face with that … that … that lying, scheming harridan whose blistering potboiler was burning up the bestseller list faster than it was shooting his life down in flames. Seizing control of the situation was the way Gavin handled every situation. He always took matters into his own hands, and he didn’t let go until he felt like it.

But neither the walk nor his confrontation with Raven French had dispelled even the smallest iota of his anger. In fact, seeing her at the book signing, looking so carefree and confident and beautiful—dammit—had only compounded his resentment. Who the hell did she think she was, bolstering herself through the defamation of others? How could she be benefiting financially and enjoying herself by destroying other people’s lives?

By destroying his life?

As he folded himself into the big, leather executive chair behind his big, mahogany executive desk, Gavin noted a light flashing on his personal office line. He had two messages. Although he was fairly certain he already knew what they were about—since virtually every call he’d received on his personal line this week had been about the same thing—he punched the button to replay them anyway.

Beep. “Darling,” a familiar voice greeted him. But where the voice, which belonged to a woman named Desiree, was usually scorching with sexual promise, on the recording it was cold enough to chill magma. “I suddenly find myself facing a dilemma about tonight. I can either attend the Bellamys’ party with you, which would mean sipping champagne and nibbling foie gras and rubbing shoulders with Gold Coast glitterati, or I can babysit my sister’s horrible twins and spend the evening being kicked in the shins, picking food from my hair and being called a poopyhead. Guess which one I’d rather do?”

Under normal circumstances, that would have been an easy one for Gavin. Considering the way his life had been the past week, however, he wasn’t going to go out on any limbs. Sure enough, it was about then that the rest of Desiree’s message kicked in, making things crystal clear. She started with a particularly ripe expletive, segued into a thinly veiled threat of a lawsuit because her health may have been compromised by his consorting with prostitutes, and ended with several suggestions about what he should do with a number of his body parts, at least ninety percent of which were anatomically impossible. That message was followed by another, this time from a woman named Marta, with whom he was supposed to attend a pretty major fundraiser the following Friday night. Suffice it to say that she was cancelling, too, but her reason for doing so made Desiree’s tirade sound like a children’s recital of Mother Goose rhymes.

Gavin debated briefly whether or not he should call both women to reassure Desiree that her health couldn’t have possibly been compromised—well, not her physical health anyway—because he’d always practiced safe sex, and, oh, yeah, he’d never been with a prostitute, and to tell Marta that the thing she’d said about his family jewels had really been uncalled for. Then he decided that doing that would probably only exacerbate an already volatile situation.

He bit back another oath as he deleted both messages and tried not to think about what he’d become in Chicago thanks to everyone’s assumption that he was chapter twenty-eight in a call girl’s memoir. He was a mockery in society, a pariah among women and a joke at work—and it wasn’t good for the CEO of his own import-export company to be a joke. Although each condition posed its own set of problems, it was that last, of course, that bothered Gavin the most. He’d never much cared about his social standing—unless it affected his ability to do business, and being a mockery certainly wasn’t good for that. As for women, he wasn’t picky and could always find more to replace the ones who disappeared.

At least, he had been able to do that before. Now that rumors were circulating that he’d been using the services of a prostitute, and now that he was being ridiculed at every opportunity, the normally teeming pool of willing women was emptying fast. And, hell, he hadn’t even been using the services of a prostitute. Of course, now that the pool of willing women was emptying, he might very well be reduced to such a practice.

Irony, thy name is Raven French.

Not that there weren’t a host of other names he could call her. Not that there weren’t a host of other names he had already called her….

Gavin expelled a long, irritated breath. He grabbed his perfectly knotted necktie with both fists and wrestled out the perfect Windsor knot he’d completed effortlessly that morning. He shrugged off his jacket, unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt and the cuffs of his sleeves, and rolled the latter to his elbows.

Work. That was what he needed. To work and to sue the pants off Raven French. Not that that was what it took to get Raven French out of her pants. Hell, she’d do that for anyone. Provided the price was right.

Inescapably, his mind wandered to the book signing, and he was reminded of how surprised he’d been when he first saw her. He had expected her to be brash and harsh, both in looks and demeanor, with too much makeup and too stylized hair and a voice strained by too many cigarettes, too much drink and too many late nights working. But except for the clingy clothes and mile-high heels, she hadn’t looked like a call girl at all. In fact, she’d looked kind of … pretty. Kind of … sweet. Kind of … wholesome. And her eyes. She’d had the most extraordinary eyes he’d ever seen. Not just the color, but the clarity. The expression. The …

Damn. There was no other word for it. The honesty. Raven French had honest eyes.

All a part of the act, he told himself. Like the wholesome, sweet prettiness. It made sense that a woman who looked like that would be able to make a killing as a hooker. There were plenty of men who would pay top dollar for a woman who looked like the homecoming queen when the lights were on and performed like the class bad girl when the lights were off. Not that Gavin was one of those men. He liked women who performed and looked like the class bad girl. Women who had big hair and full lips and enormous breasts spilling from their too-small confinement.

Women who were a lot like call girls, now that he thought about it. Hmm. Evidently, irony went by more than one name.

He pushed the thought away. In fact, he pushed all thoughts of Raven French away. For now. He’d thrown down the gauntlet along with his card at the bookstore. And if his intentions hadn’t been made clear enough to Ms. French then, they’d become crystal clear on Monday when his attorney contacted her publisher. Really, Gavin hadn’t needed to go to the book signing this afternoon. In fact, his legal department had cautioned him not to. But he hadn’t been able to help himself. He’d wanted to look Raven French in the eye. He’d wanted to see his adversary up close. He’d wanted to make it personal.

Because it was personal. Which made the battle different from Gavin’s usual conflicts, and his adversary different from his usual nemeses. What Raven French had done to him and his reputation was reprehensible and indefensible. It was bad enough that she’d painted him as a man who would flout both the law and morality—never mind that he’d done both of those things on more than one occasion; he’d never been caught doing them. But, worse, she’d revealed things about him that he’d never told anyone. That he’d never intended to tell anyone. How she knew those things about him when she’d never met him before was beyond him. But now everyone else knew them, too.

He pushed the thought away again. He’d come into the office to work, something guaranteed to take his mind off Raven French and her expletive-deleted book. And off her extraordinary eyes. And her surprisingly sweet smile. And the way her black hair had tossed back bits of silver under the lights of the bookstore….

By Monday afternoon, Violet’s anger was still sizzling, in spite of the passage of nearly two days since I’m-not-Ethan’s-lawyer-I’m-Ethan had slapped down his business card and whipped up her resentment. They were two days she’d spent trying to brush off his threat of a lawsuit as ludicrous and unfounded—which it was—and trying to brush him off as ridiculous and harmless—which he was not.

And that, she supposed, was the problem. Her editor Gracie had called Violet that very morning to tell her his attorneys had been in touch with the publisher’s attorneys, and they’d made thinly veiled threats about the material presented in the final chapter of her book. They hadn’t sent anything on paper—yet—or even in email—yet—but they’d made clear they were revving up for the possibility if Rockcastle didn’t do something quickly to address the defamation and slander contained therein.

Clearly, even if Not-Ethan’s lawsuit was frivolous, the man himself wasn’t. Even if the outcome of any legal proceedings would leave Violet cleared of wrongdoing, he could still proceed with his threat to sue her and her publisher. At best, he could ensure she would have to endure legal expenses she couldn’t afford—although her book was selling well, that was money she wouldn’t collect until she received her first royalty statement next year, and until then, she had to subsist on her modest advance. Not to mention this was the sort of thing that could drag on for a very long time, something that could potentially drain everything she made anyway.

And at worst, Mr. Paisley Silk Shorts could conceivably find a judge who was sympathetic enough about his charges to put a halt to the presses and book promotion until the legal battle could be settled. And considering the capriciousness of the reading public—out of sight, out of mind and all that—such a freeze of sales could spell the death knell of her career just when it was starting to take off. What publisher was going to want to stay with a writer who landed herself in legal trouble the first time out of the gate?

Now, as she stood across the street from a steel-and-glass Michigan Avenue high-rise, Violet withdrew the business card from the pocket of her most recently rented designer duds—a crimson-colored Ellen Tracy suit over an ivory shell that, together, retailed for more than a family of five consumed in groceries for a month. Already the man was costing her money she hadn’t planned—nor could afford—to spend by necessitating another visit to Talk of the Town for clothing rental. Had she shown up here wearing something of her own, she never could have convinced him she was the successful novelist she was struggling to be—with no help from him, thankyouverymuch. No, had she shown up in something of her own, the only thing she would have convinced him of was that she was struggling, period.

Gavin Mason, she read from the heavy vellum business card. That was I’m-Not-Ethan’s name. The only other bit of information on the card had to do with something called GMT, Inc., followed by the posh Michigan Avenue address directly across the street. Evidently, Gavin Mason was somebody so important at the company that he didn’t need to include his position or email address on his business card.

Gee, Violet was going to go out on a limb and bet that GMT didn’t stand for Greenwich Mean Time in this case, and probably stood for Gavin Mason Something-that-starts-with-a-T. Training her gaze up, up, up the massive building—since the address on the card indicated GMT, Inc. was on the thirty-third floor—she flipped the scrap of paper back and forth and back again. Technologies? she wondered. Telecommunications? Transnational?

Trouble, she finally decided. Definitely with a capital T. And that rhymed with P. And that stood for—

“Pooh,” she said softly under her breath, forcing her feet to move her in the direction of the crosswalk. Gavin Mason wasn’t trouble. Not with any kind of case on the T. She’d faced worse problems than him in her life. No way would she let a man like that deter her from achieving her dreams. Let him try to charge the unchargeable and prove the unproveable. Hell, the publicity would only boost sales of her book even more.

Ka-ching.

Unless, you know, he did manage to tie her up in legalities indefinitely. Which, she supposed, was why she was currently crossing the street toward his office.

Okay, okay, she relented. So maybe Gavin Mason really was Trouble with a capital T, but it rhymed with C, and that stood for—

“Crap,” she muttered under her breath as she reached his side of the street and her feet began to slow. “Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.”

She wadded up the business card and tossed it into a nearby trash can. Take that, trouble/Trouble. Hmpf. And she tried not to think about how, by hedging on the capitalization thing, she had just assigned Gavin Mason the distinction of double-trouble.

She took a deep, fortifying breath and exhaled it slowly. She could do this. She could go to Gavin Mason’s office and speak civilly to him about this matter. He’d had two days to cool off, as had she, and now they could both be reasonable. She could explain to him how she’d come to write her novel, and make him understand that it was a work of fiction. By the end of their meeting, they’d doubtless both be laughing about it.

Okay, maybe not laughing, she amended as she entered the skyscraper that housed GMT, Inc. Because the building didn’t lend itself to levity, and it reeked of serious big business. The steel and glass of the outside was replicated inside, then made even colder and more solemn by the addition of a black granite floor and fixtures. The elevators were stainless steel outside and more black inside, and Violet rode shoulder to shoulder with people dressed in more black and gray.

It dawned on her then, the appropriateness of Gavin Mason’s name. Seriousness and stone. Like everything else here. The utter opposite of someone named Candy Tandy and then further nicknamed Violet. She suddenly felt even more out of place in her rented duds. Not because of the suit’s chicness and expense this time, but because of its hue. She usually liked bright colors and wore them well. But in this environment, wearing red made her feel as if she were standing in the middle of the bullfighting ring, waving the cape to taunt the biggest, baddest of them all.

The offices of GMT, Inc. were in keeping with the rest of the building, but somehow seemed even more severe. A lone receptionist—another study in gray from her clothing to her hair—sat behind a big black desk, with big black letters identifying the company looming on the white wall behind her. The other walls were bare, Violet noted, and the waiting area held only a quartet of empty and uncomfortable-looking chairs. There was no reading material to peruse for anyone who might be waiting. No music to listen to. Not so much as a charcoal print to ponder. Clearly, Gavin Mason didn’t concern himself with creature comforts.

Then she remembered his paisley silk boxers. Well, not for other people, anyway.

She’d been worried that showing up without an appointment might cause a problem, but seeing the place so empty reassured her. After speaking with her editor this morning, Violet had deliberately decided to come just after lunchtime, hoping to catch the man sated and slowed with a full belly and before he got too tied up for the rest of his day. She hadn’t worried that he wouldn’t be here. He was obviously the kind of man who took his work seriously enough to never leave it. Hell, Violet wouldn’t have been surprised if he lived in the building, too. It suited him, all cold and impersonal as it was.

Now, now, she admonished herself. Don’t go in with that attitude. You’re here to make things better, not worse.

As if cued by the thought, the receptionist glanced up from her computer screen. She apologized for not seeing Violet right away in a voice that sounded in no way apologetic, then asked what she could do for her.

“Hello,” Violet said in as chipper a voice as she could manage. “I was wondering if it might be possible to steal a few moments with Mr. Mason. Gavin Mason,” she quickly clarified. As if that needed clarification.

Obviously, it didn’t, since the moment she’d uttered the first Mason, the receptionist had started shaking her head. “I’m afraid Mr. Mason has a very full schedule today. I’m sorry.”

“I realize he’s a busy man,” Violet said, “and I promise not to take any more of his time than necessary. Truly, just a few minutes would be all I’d need.”

The receptionist smiled mechanically, then dropped her gaze to the computer screen and pushed a few buttons on her keyboard. “Perhaps if you can tell me what this is about, I can make an appointment for you later in the week.”

Which would mean Violet had spent money on her rental clothing for nothing and would have to spend more later in the week. Not to mention stew over Gavin Mason’s threats for another few days.

“Today would be much better,” she said firmly. “I mean, I’m here now, and—” she threw a meaningful look over her shoulder at the waiting area “—and no one else is, and, as I said, it won’t take long.”

“Mr. Mason has a very full schedule today,” the receptionist repeated crisply. “Perhaps if you can tell me what this is about, I can fit you in—”

“Later in the week,” Violet chorused with her, then added politely, “doesn’t work for me, I’m afraid.”

“Well, perhaps if you’d made an appointment …”

Violet tried again. “Maybe if you told Mr. Mason I’m here, he would—”

“Mr. Mason has a very full schedule today.”

“He might—”

“Perhaps if you can tell me what this is about, I can fit you in later in the week.”

There was no way Violet was going to tell this woman she was here because Gavin Mason suspected her of being a call girl who’d written about him in a memoir that was really a novel. But if the only way she was going to see the man was later in the week, then she’d have to settle for that.

“Fine,” she said. “I’d like to make an appointment with Gavin Mason later in the week.”

The receptionist smiled, this time with great satisfaction, lifting her perfectly manicured hands to the keyboard before her. “And your meeting is in regard to …?”

“Public relations,” Violet said off the top of her head.

The receptionist narrowed her eyes. “Can you be more specific?”

“No.”

She narrowed her eyes some more but didn’t push the issue. Instead, she studied her computer screen for a moment and said, “Come back at four-fifty-five on Friday. He can see you for five minutes.”

Violet gaped at that, but didn’t object. How could she? She was the one who had said it would only take a few minutes. A foot in the door, she reminded herself. That was all she needed.

“Fine,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Your name?”

She started to reply with her real name, then realized Gavin Mason wouldn’t recognize it. “Raven French.”

She might as well have yelled that the receptionist’s hair was on fire, so massive was the woman’s reaction. Her hands faltered on the keyboard, she bolted backward in her chair, and when she jerked up her head to look at Violet again, her eyes were wide with horror.

“Raven French,” she echoed. With no small amount of melodrama, too, Violet couldn’t help thinking. Honestly, the woman might as well have been summoning some kind of B-movie hell spawn.

“Ye-es,” Violet said cautiously.

Now it was the receptionist who gaped. But she didn’t say anything, either. Her gaze never leaving Violet’s, she rose unsteadily from her chair and began to back away, bumping into the wall behind herself before flattening her palms against it and sidling to the right.

“Stay right there,” she finally said, her voice going even more Norma Desmond than before. “I think maybe Mr. Mason has a moment right now.”

And with that, the woman disappeared behind the wall. Violet heard the clatter of something tumbling over, followed by a thump and the crash of breaking glass, and a not-so-quietly muttered—nor in any way professional—oath. Then there was the quick rapping of knuckles on a door and an even less-quiet—and even less professional—screech of “Oh my God, Mr. Mason, that horrible woman is here to see you. Here. In your office. Can you imagine the nerve?”

The screeching was then replaced by another clatter and thump, only this time it sounded more like something being thrown than being dropped, and the oaths that followed were the likes of which Violet hadn’t heard since accidentally downloading Scarface from Netflix one night instead of Sense and Sensibility, which she had been so certain was next in her queue.

Then, suddenly, there was silence. And somehow, that was even scarier than Say hello to my little friend!

The receptionist suddenly reappeared from behind the wall. After a few delicate ahems, she said, “Mr. Mason will see you now.”

“Um, thank you,” Violet said.

But she didn’t feel particularly grateful. In fact, by the time she moved around the wall and saw the door to Gavin Mason’s office, her insides were taut with anxiety. As demanding as she’d been to see him, she halted at the threshold, now reluctant to enter. Bending at the waist, she peeked inside, looking left, then right, then left again.

But the room was empty. It was also nowhere near as sterile as the rest of the building, filled with massive, dark wood furnishings scattered atop an immense Persian rug that was woven in rich, jewel-tone colors. The paintings on the walls, too, were colossal, brutally executed abstracts in colors that were even denser than the rug. Clearly whoever inhabited the office was as bold and dynamic and larger-than-life as his possessions, but he hadn’t come to work yet. Thinking she must have approached the wrong door, Violet straightened and began to take a step in retreat.

Then, out of nowhere, a large, capable hand snaked out, wrapping large, capable fingers around her wrist and jerking her through the doorway. Before she could even squeak out an objection, the door slammed shut behind her. Automatically, she spun around, but her revolution was hindered by her trapped wrist, and, unaccustomed to her heels, she lost her footing and pitched forward.

Right into Gavin Mason.

Three

When Anna had told him Raven French was waiting outside to see him, Gavin had been even more furious than he’d been Saturday at her book signing. It was easy—and safe—to defame a man from a distance. But coming to his office like this violated the first primal rule in The Man Handbook: You never challenge a man on his own turf unless you want to get your ass kicked from here to Abu Dhabi.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked by way of a greeting. Doubtless that violated some rule in whatever handbook women used to get by in life—probably something with the word chocolate in its title—since their first rule would almost certainly dictate polite behavior. Which was all the more reason, Gavin rationalized, to be impolite.

To her credit, she didn’t flinch. Even though he had adopted his most menacing corporate bigshot behavior. Even though he towered over her. Even when he deliberately moved forward to crowd her space even more—and was assailed by the fragrance of something surprisingly subtle and even more surprisingly sweet. On the contrary, she met his gaze levelly and smiled. A flimsy, uneasy smile to be sure, but a smile nonetheless.

Men three times her size—who had infinitely more strength and power than she possessed—had practically wet themselves when Gavin had been this intentionally scary. Raven French, however, smiled. Which just went to show how very badly she’d underestimated him.

“And hello to you, too, Mr. Mason,” she said. But her voice wasn’t nearly as steady as it had been on Saturday. When he’d invaded her turf.

He said nothing in response to her salutation, since he was still waiting for an answer to his question. Both simply gazed at each other in silence, as if neither was sure how to proceed next.

Interesting. On Saturday, there had been no hesitation between them, even though they’d been on display in front of a number of bookstore patrons, which should have inhibited their exchange. Now when it was only the two of them, alone, neither seemed to know what to say.

He still couldn’t believe she’d come here. No one challenged him. Ever. He was the challenger in any situation, be it the boardroom or the bedroom. If Raven French had even an ounce of sense, she’d realize that. And she’d give him satisfaction immediately, in whatever form he demanded it, be it a retraction for her ridiculous book or—

Or something else.

A thought started to creep into his brain at that, one he really had no business entertaining, so he tamped it down. That was a form of satisfaction he neither wanted nor needed from her. Even if she did have long inky shafts of hair that made a man want to wind great handfuls of it around his fist. Even if she did have extraordinary violet eyes a man could find himself drowning in. Even if she did have a red, ripe mouth that made a man want to commit mayhem.

That wasn’t why he was here. It wasn’t why she was here, either. Why was she here, anyway?

“Was there something you wanted, Ms. French?”

Immediately, he cursed himself for being the one to give in to their standoff. Damn. How had that happened?

She smiled again, a little less sharply than before, and he knew she had noticed the same thing. Damn. Again.

“Yes,” she said. “I was hoping you and I could discuss this matter more reasonably than we did on Saturday. You could start by releasing me and giving me a little breathing space.”

“What’s to discuss?” he asked. But he didn’t release her. Or give her any space. “You wrote a steaming pile of garbage that included a thinly veiled chapter about me that painted me in a very bad—not to mention false—light. Your book has significantly damaged both my professional and personal lives. And unless you come clean publicly and admit you were lying through your teeth, you’ll have to pay for it.”

She inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly. Then she surprised him by admitting, “You’re right. That chapter is a pack of lies. In fact, every chapter in that book is a pack of lies. I admit it. None of what I said about any of the men in that book is true.”

Gavin arched his eyebrows at that. She was already giving up? Evidently, his reputation had preceded him. But then, it always did. Maybe she really did know what she was up against here.

Reluctantly, he loosened his grip on her wrist and released it. But he was only reluctant because that left her less vulnerable. It wasn’t because he’d actually kind of liked holding her wrist. Well, okay, he’d kind of liked holding her wrist. But only because it gave him the upper hand, that was all.

“You’re admitting you made it all up?” he asked suspiciously.

She nodded. “Every word.”

Now Gavin’s eyebrows arrowed downward. She was saying exactly what he wanted to hear. So why wasn’t he enjoying this more? Oh, right. Because she hadn’t agreed to make her confession public. “And you’re willing to admit that publicly?” he asked.

She nodded readily. “I am.”

“You’ll inform both local and national media outlets? Tell everyone that nothing in the chapter entitled ‘Ethan’ is true?”

“I will.”

Okay, that was what he’d wanted to hear. But he still didn’t feel triumphant. Why was she giving up so easily? Why wasn’t she fighting him?

More to the point, why was he so disappointed that she wasn’t?

Still needing to hear her spell it out, he asked, “You’ll admit, in public, on national television and in the press, that you deliberately defamed me in your book?”

Her gaze skittered away from his and she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Then she crossed her arms over her midsection in a way that could only be called defensive. “Well, um, no,” she hedged. “I won’t do that.”

Ah-ha. That was why he’d been feeling disappointed. Because that last admission was the one he’d really wanted her to make. And now she wasn’t. He suddenly felt strangely happy that they were still sparring. What was that all about?

“You’ll admit it’s all a pack of lies,” he said, “but you won’t admit it’s defamatory?”

She smiled at him, and his confusion compounded. Because her smile was self-satisfied and somehow became her, and there was nothing becoming about a self-satisfied woman. Women were only supposed to be satisfied by the men in their lives, regardless of the nature of that satisfaction. Women satisfying themselves was—

Well, okay, women satisfying themselves was actually pretty erotic, he had to admit. But only when that self-satisfaction was sexual in nature. Even if it was Raven French doing that, it would still be erotic. In fact, he thought as he homed in again on her ripe, red mouth, if it was Raven French doing it, it would be even more—

Annoying, he immediately, adamantly, interrupted his own wayward musing. Unfortunately, like all men, once a sexual thought began to unravel in his mind, there was absolutely no way to stop it, and the next thing he knew, he had an image imprinted at the forefront of his brain of Raven French lying stark naked in the middle of his bed, one hand covering her breast, the other between her legs, stroking herself with measured, leisurely caresses and looking as if she were about to come apart at the seams.

Damn. An image like that wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. And he had a busy afternoon ahead of him.

“That’s right,” she said.

For a single maddening moment, Gavin thought she was agreeing with his belief that women shouldn’t be satisfying themselves unless it was sexually. For another, even more maddening moment, he thought she was going to reach behind herself and lock the door, peel off every stitch of clothing, and gratify herself right there in his office in exactly the way he had imagined.

Then he remembered that she was the enemy, that she had defamed and libeled him and turned him into a laughingstock at both work and play, and he reminded himself that, even if she did do that whole erotic self-satisfying thing right there in his office, it would be really bad form for him to enjoy watching her.

Wait. What was the question?

Oh, yeah. She’d been admitting she had flagrantly lied about him, but that flagrantly lying hadn’t defamed him.

“Why plead guilty to the first, but not the second?” he asked.

“Because my book is a pack of lies, but it is in no way defamatory.” He opened his mouth to object, but she hurried on. “It’s fiction, Mr. Mason. Fiction is, by definition, untrue, and therefore lies. Likewise, by being untrue, it cannot be defamatory.”

He bit back a growl of irritation. “So we’re back to that again, are we? Your novel that everyone knows isn’t a novel at all, but a memoir about your sordid, tawdry life.”

“We’re back to that because that’s what’s true. Not the part about my life being sordid and tawdry,” she rushed to clarify. “Since it’s neither of those things and never has been. Well, not too sordid,” she clarified further after a telling second. “And only a little bit tawdry. And only in the past, not now. And only if you define tawdry in the sense of shoddy and unsophisticated, not crude and gaudy. And if you define the sordidness more as callousness and unpleasantness and not poverty and squalor. Okay, maybe poverty wouldn’t be so out of place, but I did not come from squalor. Nor do I live in squalor now.”

She spoke so rapid-fire and with such a roundabout delivery that Gavin’s brain was looped in knots by the time she finished—she was finished, wasn’t she?—with her. whatever it was she’d been talking about.

“The book is fiction,” she continued before he had a chance to think any more about what she’d said. Not that he wanted to think any more about it, since that would probably make his brain explode. “There’s no way you can prove otherwise.”

Due to the fog that had rolled in over his thinking, it took another moment for her statement to settle in. But when it did, just like that, the fogged cleared, and Gavin felt the upper hand slip back into his grasp. “I can’t, can I?”

Something in his tone must have notched a chink in her determination, because her expression, which had begun to grow smug, suddenly went a bit slack. “Um, no?” she replied—in the inquisitive tense, not the demonstrative, which heartened him even more. “No, you can’t?”

“Ms. French, I can not only argue that the book is nonfiction, I can prove it.”

“That’s impossible?” she said. Asked. Whatever. “Because there’s no way to prove it? Because it’s all a figment of my imagination?”

“Really?” Gavin said. Asked. Whatever. Dammit.

This time, Raven French only nodded her reply. Evidently she, too, had realized that she was beginning to sound like an uncertain second-grader.

He strode over to his desk and withdrew his copy of High Heels and Champagne and Sex, Oh, My! from the drawer into which he had crammed it over the weekend. As he thumbed through the pages, he made his way back to where Raven French was standing, this time stopping with even less space between them than before to make her even edgier. Immediately, she took a step in retreat. Without looking up, he completed another step forward. That elicited another one backward from Ms. So-called Raven French.

“Tell me,” he said as he continued to flip through the pages and took yet another step forward, knowing it would be impossible for her to retreat further, since the door was now at her back. “Is Raven French your real name?”

When she didn’t answer right away, Gavin glanced up from the book to see that she’d bowed her head and was fiddling with a button on the sleeve of her jacket. When he looked at her face, he was astonished to find that she was blushing. What kind of high-price call girl blushed?

Immediately, he answered himself, Those whose prices are so high because they’ve become such accomplished actresses.

Doubtless the blushing was a part of her professional persona. Or at least had been when she was making a living on her back—or her stomach or knees or whatever position commanded the most money—before she had begun to support herself with the more honorable profession of libel.

“Ms. French?” he prodded. “Raven? Is that your real name? “

“Um, no. It’s a pen name.”

Just as he’d suspected. “And why would you take a pen name, unless it was to protect yourself from all the men you’d be outing in your book and all the lawsuits that would result once it was published?”

Still not looking at him, but at least giving up on making the button do something it clearly did not want to do, she replied, “Actually, it was the publisher’s idea for me to take a pen name, not mine.”

He nodded, found the page he wanted, marked it with his finger, and studied not-Raven French again. “So they must have wanted to protect themselves from all the lawsuits that would result once your book was published.”

She did look up at that, but the moment her gaze connected with his, it skittered away again. And, once more, pink blossomed on both cheeks. Amazing, Gavin thought.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a conversation with a woman who blushed. Even by design.

“Actually,” she said again, “they didn’t think my name was, um, exciting enough. They thought the book would do better if the author’s name actually sounded like a call girl’s name.”

“In that case, you won’t mind telling me your real name.”

“I guess not….” But her voice trailed off without her doing it.

Gavin said nothing, only did his best to crowd her space some more in an effort to make her even more uncomfortable. And he told himself it was because he wanted to maintain the upper hand and not because he was hoping maybe she’d blush again….

Violet’s breath hitched tighter in her chest when Gavin Mason inched another millimeter toward her, an action she wouldn’t have thought possible since the guy had practically crawled inside her already. And dammit, she really wished her muddled brain had put that another way, because saying anything about him being inside her only made her thoughts even more muddled.

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?”

She searched the jacket again, this time looking for the smaller label on the inside seam that would offer the information. “Wool and cashmere,” she read. “But how do I know you didn’t buy that after reading the book, just to make your ridiculous charge seem real?”

“I bought this suit two years ago for a professional portrait I had made. Two years ago,” he added adamantly. “Check the shirt and tie, too,” he instructed.

She did. Ferragamo and Hermès, respectively.

He toed off a loafer and scooted it toward her with his foot. Santoni. Damn him.

He opened the book again as he slipped his shoe on, flipped a few more pages, then began to read. “Ethan’s work environment was a study in contradictions. The building that housed his office was a looming edifice of glass and metal, lacking in color or texture or character, as cold and stark and ruthless as the corporate world itself. But his office reflected the true magnificence, prosperity and hedonism of the man—rich colors, skillfully, beautifully wrought furnishings, decadent artwork.”

Gavin paused there, looking up to meet Violet’s gaze. Of course, she knew why. He wanted to gauge her reaction to what she knew came next. She had written the passage, after all. But she felt trapped somehow, pinned by his gaze, uncertain what she could say or do that would prevent him from reading the next paragraph. And when she said nothing to stop him, he seemed as if he were looking forward to reading the words that ensued.

“I have many, very special, memories of an oxblood leather chair tucked into one corner.”

At this, he glanced at something over her right shoulder. Sensing what she would see, she turned around anyway, only to find—ta da!—an oxblood leather chair tucked into that corner of the room. Damn. That didn’t look good. She turned back to Gavin, but he’d dropped his gaze to the book.

“So often,” he read, “when Ethan requested I come to his office for one of our sessions, he would be sitting in that chair upon my arrival, a cut crystal tumbler of fine, singlemalt Scotch—neat, of course—in one hand. Without even greeting me, he would demand that I take off every stitch of clothing, which, of course, I would do. Then he would beckon me over and offer me the glass. I was to fill my mouth first with the Scotch, long enough to warm it, then drop to my knees and fill my mouth with him. As much of him as I could, anyway. I spent entire afternoons on my knees in that office by that chair, first giving him oral pleasure and then bent over the cushion so he could take me from behind, again and again and.” He halted and looked up at Violet once more, smiling even more broadly. “Well, I think I’ve made my point, haven’t I?”

Oh, yes! Yes! Yes! Yessss! Violet wanted to shout. “Um, I believe you’ve tried,” she said instead. She cleared her throat indelicately and avoided his gaze. “However, you failed.”

“Oh?”

She nodded. And avoided his gaze some more. “Your artwork is in no way decadent.”

Now Gavin raised both dark brows in surprise. “Ms., ah, Tandy, have you looked closely at those paintings?”

“Why do I need to look closely?” she replied. “They’re all abstracts. I don’t care much for abstract art. I mean, not that I’m much of an art connoisseur in the first place. But I really don’t like the kind of art where I can’t even tell what it’s supposed to be.”

“No, I’m sure you’re more inclined to view the images in the Kama Sutra, but indulge me. That one over there, for instance,” he said, pointing to one on the other side that was executed in bold lacerations of purple and brown. “What does that remind you of? “

She cocked her head to one side as she viewed it from this distance. “A peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” she finally said. Well, that was what it reminded her of. Hey, she’d told him she wasn’t an art connoisseur. So sue her.

He laughed at that, a full, uninhibited laugh that rippled over her, making something in her belly tighten. Not in a bad way, but in a way that made her feel.

Um, never mind.

“Move closer,” he told her. “Tell me what you see.”

She sighed, growing tired of his efforts to find comparisons between himself and Ethan where there simply were none. But she did as he requested, completing the half-dozen steps necessary to put her within five feet of the painting. She looked at it, trying not to focus on the individual parts and instead considering the whole. She let her focus blur a little, and, sure enough, a figure began to emerge from the swirls of colors. Not a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but a … a … Hmm. It did look sort of familiar. In fact, it looked like a … like a …

“Oh. My. God,” she finally said. “That’s a man’s … a man’s, um …”

“A man’s um-physical attribute that makes him a man,” Gavin finished for her.

Violet spun around, gaping at him. “And you have it hanging in your office? That is so crass.”

He laughed again. “The artist is massively in demand in the art community,” he said. “Her greatest inspiration was Georgia O’Keeffe, but she’s taken that artist’s, ah, proclivities, one step further.”

“Yeah, I’ll say,” Violet agreed. Unable to help herself, she looked at the other paintings in the room. Sure enough, a theme began to develop. One picture depicted—quite graphically, once you got the gist of it—a woman’s, um. that part of a woman that made her a woman. Another picture was of a woman’s breasts. And a fourth painting was of all the subjects of the other pictures coming together in a way that, had they been a magazine cover, would have had them banned in every decent grocery store in the Midwest.

“I cannot believe you have pornography hanging on your office walls,” she said.

Gavin covered the distance between them until he stood beside Violet, towering over her as he had before. “Where does a woman who makes her living performing sex acts get off impugning a woman who paints them, or a man who collects those paintings?”

Enough. She’d had enough of Gavin Mason and his stupid ideas about her and her book. Settling her hands on her hips, she said, “The description of everything in that passage could be a description of a thousand buildings, offices and men in this country. I’m tired of arguing with you. You want to sue me, Mr. Mason, go ahead. You’ll be hearing from my attorneys this afternoon.”

With that, and without allowing him time to regroup and attack again, Violet turned on her heel and fled.

Four

Gavin watched Raven … Violet … whoever she was … flee—yes, that was definitely fleeing she was doing—until he heard the outer office door slam shut behind her, clueless what to say to stop her. What was odd was that he actually did want to stop her. What was even odder was his reason for wanting to stop her. Not so that he could threaten her again, but because after the conversation they’d had, he was more curious about her than ever.

How could a woman of her occupation not recognize the subject matter of the paintings hanging in his office? And then, once he pointed out to her what the subject matter was, how could a woman of her occupation be so shocked? To the point of being uncomfortable? Even offended?

He told himself it was another example of how she had been able to make so much money as a call girl, since it took a lot of talent for a seasoned prostitute to convincingly play naive. Doubtless there were a lot of men out there who found it arousing to bed an innocent who had to be schooled in the ways of sex. Frankly, Gavin didn’t see the attraction. He liked his women worldly and sophisticated and adventurous. Who had the time or inclination to seduce someone with no experience? Who actually paid money for someone to pretend that? Gavin would rather get right to the action. Foreplay was way overrated. Hell, if he were going to pay a woman to have sex, it would be so she would skip over all that touching and fondling and stroking and licking and … and … and …

Where was he?

Oh, right. Marveling at Raven’s … he meant Violet’s. reaction to his decadent paintings. Which also made him wonder about her art commentary that had made her sound so pedestrian. Any high-priced call girl worth her salt would make it a point to school herself in whatever interests her elite clientele had, and art would definitely be an interest of an elite clientele.

Just who the hell was Violet Tandy? Who was Raven French? They were the same woman, but they seemed to have little in common.

She was playing a part, he told himself again. She’d slipped into the role she always plays with wealthy, powerful men to get what she wanted: Money. Maybe she wasn’t earning a paycheck from him at the moment—well, not the way she normally did—but she was definitely protecting her financial assets by ensuring he didn’t sue her. Of course she would deal with him the way she dealt with all her customers, by pretending to be something she wasn’t. In this case sweet, innocent and vulnerable.

Yeah, right. Gavin wasn’t one of her customers. He wasn’t paying her anything. On the contrary, he wanted a piece of her. Which maybe wasn’t the most tactful way to put it, but was appropriate in this case. He would have satisfaction. He would have a piece of Violet Tandy. And he would have it soon.

Violet didn’t stop fleeing until she was five blocks from the shiny metal building that held Gavin Mason’s decadent office and paintings. And she only stopped then because she’d reached the shop where she had to return her outfit. Talk of the Town was a cozy boutique off Michigan Avenue that rented haute couture fashion and accessories to women who needed to rent high society. It was owned by a woman named Ava Brenner, who had been incredibly helpful to Violet every time she’d come by the shop.

Ava was helping another woman when Violet entered, and her assistant was ringing up a transaction for another customer, so Violet stole a few moments to catch her breath and gather her thoughts. Inescapably, her thoughts turned to Gavin Mason, something that did nothing to quell her ragged breathing.

What had happened in his office? One minute, she’d felt so in control of the situation, and the next, he’d snatched it right out of her hands. She’d felt like a small, helpless creature running for its life with the big, bad wolf right on her tail, his rabid, hot breath dampening the back of her neck, his big, hot paws stroking the length of her spine, his slick, hot tongue tasting her nape, and—

And goodness, it was hot in here. What did Ava keep the thermostat on, anyway?

Violet inhaled a slow, deep breath and closed her eyes, willing her thoughts to clear and her heart rate to slow. Think beautiful thoughts, she told herself. That was how she had always reacted to stressful situations when she was a child. Whenever she found herself in a new foster home, or when the other kids were mean to her, or when friends were moved to a new home where she would never see them again. Beautiful thoughts. The ocean had been a favorite, even though she’d never seen the ocean in person. She’d seen it on TV often enough. And she had a very vivid imagination.

In her mind’s eye, the ocean appeared, blue, blue water lapping at a sparkling white beach. The crisp azure sky was cloudless above it, the white-hot sun tossing diamonds onto the water’s surface. Oh, yes. Violet was feeling calmer already. Now she placed herself in the scene, sitting at the water’s edge, the foamy surf licking her toes, making her smile. A gentle breeze drifted over her shoulders, lifting a few errant strands of hair from her forehead. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t the breeze nudging aside her hair—it was a man’s fingertips. Violet turned her head into his touch, then looked into his face, and saw the strongest, most handsome, most delicious, most—

She snapped her eyes open again, her pulse rate rocketing, her breathing shallow. Dammit, now Gavin Mason was even invading her beautiful thoughts. How dare he?

“Miss Tandy, back so soon?”

Ava’s question returned Violet well and truly to the present, reminding her of the matter at hand. Ava really was a lovely woman, even if she did nothing to play up her attributes. Her dark blond hair was swept up in a French twist, and if she was wearing any makeup, Violet sure couldn’t tell. Her wide smoky eyes were thickly lashed, but not from mascara, and her mouth bore only a trace of gloss. She was dressed in a dove-gray suit that was doubtless as high fashion as her wares, a simple pearl necklace and studs her only accessories.

“I hope there wasn’t a problem with the suit,” she added. Her voice was completely at odds with her outward elegance, sounding of dark nights in smoky lounges and whiskey on the rocks. “If so, it will be the work of but a moment to find something more appropriate.”

Violet smiled back. She’d never heard anyone talk the way Ava talked. She wondered what the woman’s story was, why she was renting out fine clothing to women who couldn’t afford to buy it when she was obviously a product of high society herself. Normally, people like that didn’t want people like Violet anywhere near them. They wanted to forget people like Violet even existed. Oh, they didn’t mind writing checks to organizations or attending fancy fundraisers that helped people who couldn’t help themselves—giving back to the community, they called it, as if they’d ever come out of that community to begin with—but they didn’t want to soil their white gloves by actually coming into contact with anyone who needed help. Yet here was Ava, offering a means for such people to infiltrate society. Violet bet, if she asked, Ava would even be able to supply the white gloves.

“No, the suit was perfect,” she assured her. “My, ah, meeting didn’t last as long as I thought it would, that’s all.”

Ava clasped her hands together in front of herself in a way that reminded Violet of a school librarian. “I hope it went well.”

“Um, yeah,” Violet lied. “Yeah, it went really, really well.”

“Excellent.”

“I’ll, uh, go change if that’s okay.”

“Of course,” Ava told her. “If you’d like to step into changing room B, I’ll have Lucy bring you your things.”

That was another thing Violet liked about Talk of the Town. If your rental wasn’t overnight, you could check your street clothes for the day, thereby saving yourself a trip home and back. That plus the posh atmosphere and the fact that Ava had a way of making you feel like a million bucks, even when you were wearing your grubby blue jeans and hoodie and hiking boots, made Violet wish she could move into Talk of the Town and live here forever.

Unfortunately, since Ava would probably frown on that, she didn’t even ask. She simply changed into her grubby blue jeans and hoodie and hiking boots when Lucy brought them in to her, retrieved her damage deposit from same, and made her way out. The minute she hit the street, she was back in her real life. Her real life that wasn’t anywhere near as glamorous and refined as one small boutique off Michigan Avenue could make it feel.

Still, Violet’s real life wasn’t all that bad, and was certainly an improvement over the one she’d had as a child and young woman. Her Wicker Park apartment was in a recently reclaimed and renovated brownstone in a row of other reclaimed and renovated brownstones, and had tons of character. Like creaky floors and a noisy radiator and windows that stuck when the summer became too humid. And maybe there was no elevator, but, hey, climbing five flights of stairs every day was a lot cheaper than joining a gym. And so what if it only had one bedroom and teeny living area and a kitchen that was the size of an electron? She had a view of the city that was pretty breathtaking, and being on the top floor gave her roof access that had allowed her to make a patio of sorts up there with potted plants and everything.

Okay, okay, it wasn’t the Ritz. It was still a million miles away from the cramped apartments she’d called home growing up—such as they were, since “home” had always been a fluid concept. Even more fluid than the concept of “family,” which had never been cemented in the first place. If one of her foster parents got sick, or if the building where they were living was condemned, or if some court order said so, then, hey, so sorry, you have to move somewhere else. And you won’t know anyone there. And once you do get to know them, they’ll be taken away from you anyway, so don’t start caring about them unless you want to get hurt.

After Violet turned eighteen and was no longer a ward of the state, her living arrangements had really deteriorated, because she’d been working low-paying jobs and trying to save money for that house in the ‘burbs that she was this close to making a reality … provided Gavin Mason didn’t swoop down and ruin everything.

And dammit, there he was in her thoughts again. Would the man never leave her alone? She wasn’t even safe in her own home!

The days that followed Violet’s ill-fated trip to Gavin’s office only hammered home how unsafe she was from him, but for entirely different reasons. Thanks to the success of her Saturday book signing, Marie was able to land Violet a meeting with a features writer for the Sun-Times, along with a couple of appearances on local news shows the following week. It should have been a writer’s dream come true, all that publicity for her novel, but every time Violet spoke with an interviewer, it became clear that the person assumed the novel she’d created out of her imagination was actually a not-so-fictionalized account of her own experiences working as a high-priced, high-society call girl. Question after question addressed not Violet’s protagonist, but Violet herself. At best, there was a wink, wink, nudge, nudge banter involved. More often, though, there was less-than-subtle innuendo.

Like she even knew what position fourteen of the Kama Sutra was. And she’d never even met Hugh Hefner, let alone had his love child. And French tickler? Wasn’t that a city in Indiana? Worst of all, however, were the questions about her character of Ethan, and whether or not it was true he was modeled after a certain Chicago business magnate who shall remain nameless, but who everyone seemed to know the identity of anyway. No matter how many times Violet denied any knowledge of anything nonfictional in the week that followed her confrontation with Gavin, she grew more and more worried that no one believed a word.

The whole thing was nuts. The whole world was nuts. And casting a pall over all of it had been the specter of Gavin Mason, and whether or not he planned to go forth with his lawsuit. If the questions her interviewers were asking were any indication, however. Well, suffice it to say that Violet had a bad feeling about, oh … everything.

Although he had been surprisingly quiet after she left his office Monday, she didn’t kid herself that meant he was backing off. A man like him probably needed a little extra time to hone his weaponry and get all his peons in a row. There was no room for error with a guy like that. He was probably just ordering his minions to line up every legal precedent they could find.

By Friday night, all Violet wanted to do was hole up in her apartment with a bunch of old movies. As she always did when she locked the door behind herself, she found herself wishing she had a pet of some kind. A dog who would meet her at the door with happy yipping and dancing, or a cat who would wind around her legs and then hop into her lap. Something—someone—who made her feel important and necessary and who kept the loneliness at bay. But the building didn’t allow animals of any kind—not even fish—so, like always, Violet had to be her own best friend.

She made her way to her tiny bedroom, furnished in fin de siècle Paris, right down to the white wrought-iron bed, cabbage rose bedspread and fringed lamp shade. Even though it wasn’t quite dark, she changed into a pair of flannel pajamas spattered with cartoon sushi and pinned her hair loosely atop her head. Hey, she didn’t have plans for the evening, other than to watch a William Powell double feature and eat lots of ice cream. Having the specter of Gavin Mason hovering over one all week did have that I-need-ice-cream-and-I-need-it-now effect on a girl.

Dammit, there he was again. When she should be thinking about what flavor ice cream to have for dinner and whether she should watch The Thin Man or My Man Godfrey first.

As she entered her kitchen, she shoved all thoughts of Gavin Mason out of her brain and focused on more important matters. Cherry Garcia or Chunky Monkey—there was a dilemma. But it was easily settled by plunking a scoop of each into a big bowl. Now that’s what Violet called living the high life. Who needed Dolce & Gabbana when you had Ben & Jerry?

The opening credits for My Man Godfrey had just finished when there was a knock at Violet’s front door. Which did more than startle her, since not only was she not expecting anyone, but only the most dedicated serial killer would brave five flights of stairs, indicating the one at the door must be truly intent on wreaking mayhem.

Oh, stop it, she told herself. It was probably a delivery for her downstairs neighbor.

A quick peek through the peephole, however, and Violet knew it wasn’t a delivery. She also knew it wasn’t a serial killer. More was the pity. Because she would have been infinitely more grateful for one of those instead of Gavin Mason, who was, in fact, standing on the other side of the door. What on earth was he doing here?

“Who is it?” she called through the door.

“You know exactly who it is,” he replied. “You have a peephole.”

“Through a peephole, everyone looks like a giant fish,” she stalled. “So unless you’re a giant fish, then I don’t know who you are. And even if you are a giant fish, I still don’t know you, because I don’t know any giant fish.”

She heard an exasperated sound from the other side followed by “Open the damned door.”

Violet hooked the chain in its groove, then opened the door the four inches that would allow. “Why, Mr. Mason,” she said when she saw him. “To what do I owe this honor? “

She was proud of herself for not sounding anywhere near as uneasy as she felt. Really, what was he doing here? In a tuxedo? Looking freshly showered and shaved, and smelling even better than he had the last time she saw him?

He studied her intently for a moment. “Actually, it’s you who owes me,” he said. “And I’m here to give you a chance to make good on the debt.”

Oh, she didn’t like the sound of that at all. “I beg your pardon?” she said. Mostly because she had no idea what else to say.

“I had a date for a fundraiser tonight,” he said. “A woman named Marta who read your book, recognized me in Ethan, and who now refuses to speak to me.”

“Gee, that’s a shame,” Violet said. “Not that you don’t have a date for the evening,” she hastened to clarify, “but that you date women who don’t have enough brains to recognize the difference between fact and fiction.”

He frowned at that, obviously wondering if that was a dig at him, too. Which, of course, it was. But he said nothing, evidently thinking that best. Good man.

“Sorry I can’t help you out,” she told him. “But I’m not a dating service.”

He smiled at that. Well, okay, it was actually more like gritting his teeth. But she was going to give him the benefit of the doubt—unlike some Chicago business magnates she knew—and go for smile. “No, you’re certainly not a dating service,” he agreed. “But I’m not here because I want you to fix me up with someone. I’m here because you owe me.”

It took a moment for his meaning to gel in Violet’s muddy brain. “You want me to go to this thing with you?” she asked incredulously.

“No, I don’t want that. But I don’t have much choice. No other woman in town will be seen with me, thanks to you. And going to this thing alone would only illustrate that fact to everyone there.”

“Well, sorry, but I already have plans for the evening,” she said. “Maybe next time you could call first. Surely if you can figure out where I live, you can locate my phone number. Both are unlisted, after all.”

She started to push the door closed, but his hand shot out, his palm flattening against it, and he pushed it effortlessly to its limit again. “I don’t think you understand, Ms. Tandy,” he said. “You seem to think you have a choice in the matter. Like me, you don’t.”

She turned her shoulder to the door and pushed as hard as she could. It didn’t budge. She told herself it was because she couldn’t get any traction on the hardwood floor wearing socks. But she didn’t really believe herself. With a fretful sigh, she gave up and looked through the gap in the door again.

“You owe me,” he said again. “And I’m not leaving until you pay up.”

Oh, she really didn’t like the sound of that. “Do you honestly think I’d open my door to you after you say something like that? Not every woman is as dumb as Marta, you know.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I need an escort to the fundraiser tonight. I figure since it was your damned book that put me in this situation, and since that’s how you used to make your living, you can help me out by going in Marta’s place. It’s the least you can do.”

Actually, the least she could do was slam the door in his face, but she’d already tried that and failed. It wasn’t her fault Marta had bailed on him. The woman obviously wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Gavin should be grateful she had bailed on him. He’d made clear his disdain for Violet, so why would he even want her to fill in for the woman who’d dumped him? That made no sense.

As if he’d read her mind, he said, “I’ve called every woman I know. None of them will even take my calls. The ones who haven’t read your damned book have heard enough gossip to know I’m in it, and none of them wants anything to do with me anymore. The only reason no one rescinded my invitation to the fundraiser tonight is because I’m one of their biggest donors. Money talks, even louder than gossip. Except among women who are easily slighted.”

Something in his voice almost—almost—made Violet feel bad for him. Until she remembered he was threatening her with a lawsuit that could upend her entire life and destroy a dream future she was that close to turning into a reality.

“Can I come in?” he asked, sounding almost—almost—solicitous. “I have a proposition for you.”

Oh, she bet he did. So much for solicitous. Soliciting was more like it. “Thanks, but no thanks. As I’ve said a billion times, I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a call girl. Or an escort, either. I’m not interested in your … proposition.”

He had the decency to wince at that. “Maybe that was a bad word choice. It’s not that kind of proposition. Look, let me come in for a few minutes to talk, all right? I think we can help each other out.”

“Oh, I don’t think—”

“Let me in, Violet. Now.”

Five

Something in his voice when he uttered his demand made all Violet’s reserve puddle around her ankles like something she’d rather not think about puddling around her ankles. After only a small hesitation, she closed the door, released the chain then opened it again. Gavin pushed past her into her apartment, and it was he, not she, who closed the door. Then, for good measure, he placed himself between it and Violet, making it truly impossible to escape from him.

Not that she wanted to escape. Escape was such a desperate word, after all. And she wasn’t desperate. She was merely a little concerned. Okay, a lot concerned. For some reason, though, her fear wasn’t for her physical safety. It was for something else she didn’t think it would be a good idea to consider too closely.

“Here’s the situation,” he said. “The event tonight is a very big deal, not just because—” He halted abruptly, looking Violet up and down, from her head to her toes. “What the hell are you wearing? Is that sushi?”

For the first time, it occurred to her how underdressed she was. Then she reminded herself that she was relaxing at home, making her attire perfectly acceptable. Gavin was the one whose outfit was out of place—he was grossly overdressed. Yeah. Put the burden on him, where it belonged.

“Well, it’s not like I’m wearing real sushi,” she replied indignantly. “And pajamas are perfectly in keeping with my plans for the evening. Which is to do nothing.”

She hoped she punctuated that announcement adamantly enough that he would realize he was wasting his time with whatever his proposition was.

“Well, you’re going to have to change. You can’t wear that to the Steepletons’ party.”

She crossed her arms over her midsection, realizing for the first time that her pajamas were so big, the sleeves nearly covered her hands. “Problem solved then. I’m not going to the Steepletons’ party. Thanks so much for stopping by.”

She started to reach past him for the doorknob, but as he had done at his office that day, he snaked out a hand, circling his fingers firmly around her wrist. Deftly, before she even realized his intent, he switched their positions so that she was between him and the door. Only where she had kept her distance from him, he crowded into her space again, anchoring one big hand on the door by her forehead and arcing the other arm on the door above her head. She tried to shrink away but found herself effectively pinned to the spot without him even touching her. In spite of that, her breath caught in her chest, heat pooled in her belly, and something snaked down her spine that left a trail of heat in its wake.

“Like I said, this event tonight is a very big deal for me, not only because it raises money for a cause I respect, and not only because I’m one of the biggest, if not the biggest, donors.” He dipped his head lower to hers, his voice going steely and cool. “But even more important than that right now, if I don’t show up or, worse, if I show up without a date, it’s going to look like I’m not there because I’m hiding out. Or, worse, that I can’t get a date.”

She swallowed with some difficulty, then pointed out, “But you can’t get a date.” Quickly, she added, “Not that that’s my fault, since my book is a work of complete fic—”

“So I need to be there with a date. Because showing up with a beautiful woman on my arm will prove there are still some people who don’t believe a word of your damned book, and there are still beautiful women who are willing to be seen with me.”

Color her shallow, but it took a moment for Violet to move past the word beautiful. He thought she was beautiful? In her sushi pajamas? Then she remembered that both times he’d seen her before this evening, she’d been arrayed in thousands of dollars’ worth of gorgeous rented clothing and accessories and artfully applied cosmetics. All modesty aside, she supposed she did clean up rather well. Still, it was obvious that his beautiful—both times—had been for Raven French, not Violet Tandy.

Then she moved on to the rest of his statement and realized a number of problems with it. “Okay, first,” she said, “you showing up with the author of the book isn’t going to do anything to dispel the so-called rumors that people think you’re a character in the book.”

“I won’t be showing up with Raven French,” he said. “I’ll be showing up with Violet Tandy.”

Oh. So did that mean those beautifuls had been for her, after all? And why did that make something inside her go all warm and fizzy? Who cared what Gavin Mason thought of her? The guy was a Neanderthal when it came to women.

“You can’t show up with Violet,” she said. “Violet doesn’t have anything to wear to a high society party.”

“Why not?”

“Because Violet doesn’t go to high society parties.”

He nodded at that. “Right. Violet only attends private parties, doesn’t she? I guess the attire for that would be a bit limited. In more ways than one.”

Okay, that did it. No more Ms. Nice Guy. Splaying both hands open on his chest, Violet pushed Gavin with all her might. The action must have caught him by surprise, because he actually stumbled backward a step or two, looking at her in disbelief when he finally came to a halt.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. Before he had a chance to trap her again, she strode defiantly into the middle of her living room to put more distance between them, then spun around to face him. “You are not going to stand here, in my home, and impugn my reputation.”

He laughed at that. A deep, full-throated laugh that came from somewhere deep inside him, sounding rich and dark and, well, kind of sexy, truth be told. Violet had always loved hearing men laugh, because they so seldom did, most of them. And Gavin’s laughter was in keeping with the man—confident, powerful and larger-than-life.

“I impugn your reputation?” he managed to say through his laughter. “Sweetheart, you’ve done a fine job of that all by yourself. This may come as a shock to you, considering the world you live and work in, but even in today’s decadent society, women who take money in exchange for sex don’t have a reputation to impugn. It doesn’t matter if you are making money now with … a different body part. Once a prostitute, always a pros—”

“I am not a prostitute!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, hoping, in hindsight, that her downstairs neighbor wasn’t home. “You know, you’re not helping your own cause here if you expect me to do you a favor.”

“It isn’t a favor,” he said, completely unfazed by her outburst. “It’s your chance to pay up on a debt you owe me.”

“But—”

“Think of it this way,” he interrupted her. Again. “If you go to this fundraiser with me tonight, being no more than Violet Tandy, writer—not that you need to tell anyone what you wrote—I might be inclined to reconsider my lawsuit.”

Now Violet was the one to narrow her eyes. “You’re saying if I go to this party with you tonight you’ll forget about suing me? “

“I said I’d reconsider it.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning maybe I’ll change my mind about pursuing it.”

Violet dropped her hands to her hips, a deliberate attempt to look less as if she were on the defense and more as if she were on the offense. Even if she still felt plenty defensive and in no way offensive. “Maybe isn’t good enough,” she told him.

“All right then. Probably. I’ll probably change my mind about pursuing it.”

“That’s no better than maybe.”

“Of course it’s better,” he told her. “Probably means much more likely than maybe.”

“But it’s still not definitely.”

“It’s still better than maybe. And it’s the best offer you’re going to get. And, it’s only good for—” he lifted an arm and pulled back the jacket and shirt sleeve to reveal an elegant gold watch beneath “—another sixty seconds.” He dropped his hand to his side. “One minute, Violet. Make a decision. Either go with me tonight and instill a feeling of gratitude in me that might make me rethink prosecuting you for libel, slander and defamation of character, or turn me down and know I’ll go after you with both guns drawn.”

Oh, like that was any kind of choice. Heads he won, tails he also won. There was no guarantee of anything in it for Violet.

Except for the opportunity to attend a swanky Gold Coast party, she thought, which she’d never done before and doubtless never would again. Except for the chance to rub shoulders with the cream of Chicago society. And maybe, you know, get some material for her new novel, which so happened to be about the cream of Chicago society—fictional society, natch, lest there be some confusion about that at some point—and which was barely half finished. And which her publisher was breathing down her neck to turn in so they could capitalize on the success of High Heels and Champagne and Sex! Oh, My!, striking while the iron was hot and all that. So maybe there was a little something in it to benefit Violet. Other than spending an evening with Gavin Mason.

No! Spending an evening with Gavin Mason wasn’t a benefit. That would be a punishment. The burden she had to bear in order to get the good stuff. Which was not Gavin, lest there be some confusion about that, too. Which maybe there was, since Violet was getting more confused by the moment, but—

“Thirty seconds, Violet.”

She mentally ransacked her wardrobe, coming up empty until she remembered a black dress she’d purchased secondhand for a graduation from high school party. That had been ten years—and okay, okay, ten pounds—ago. But it was a forgiving jersey knit with a simple cut that would stay in style forever.

“Fifteen seconds.”

Coupled with a rhinestone bracelet and earrings that could pass for cubic zirconium, provided the lighting wasn’t great, and a pair of slender heels she’d worn to the same graduation party, and maybe, just maybe—

“Five seconds, Violet. Four, three, two—”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll go to the party with you. And you, in turn, are promising you’ll probably change your mind about the lawsuit.”

He said nothing for a moment, then smiled. But instead of saying he promised to do anything, he only echoed one word. “Probably.”

It was the best she was going to get, she told herself. And it was at least a little bit better than what she’d had before. Because there was a chance now, however small, that Gavin would leave her alone after tonight, and she’d never have to see him again.

So why didn’t that make her feel at least a little bit better? In fact, why did she kind of feel worse?

Sugar rush, she finally concluded. All that ice cream was creating one of those carb crashes. Yeah. That had to be it. No other explanation made any sense.

“When can you be ready?” Gavin asked.

Violet looked down at her sushi pajamas, then at Gavin’s flawless tuxedo. Then she drove her gaze higher, to his face, marveling again at how exquisitely his features were arranged. Never, she thought. She could never be ready for a man like him.

“Fifteen minutes,” she told him. “Give me fifteen minutes, and I’m good.”

Fifteen minutes, Gavin echoed to himself as he watched Violet hesitate at the entry to the Steepletons’ ballroom. Fifteen minutes, she’d said, and she was good. Good. Unbelievable. Not only did she look way better than good—words like radiant, luminous and stunning came most readily to mind—but any other woman would have needed hours to put herself together so well.

The black dress was styled simply, even modestly, with a straight neckline that went from collarbone to collarbone in front and had a slight dip in back that revealed just enough skin to make a man want to see more. But it hugged her curves like a lover’s caress, making it not very modest at all. She’d even managed to twist her hair up into something sleek and elegant that revealed the slender column of her nape, a creamy span of flesh that beckoned to a man’s fingertips … and mouth.

Her jewelry was a puzzle, however. Gavin had bought enough diamonds for his companions over the years—though not, God forbid, a ring of any kind—to know whether a woman’s gems were real or not. Violet’s were not. He would have thought that among her clientele over the years, there would have been at least a few generous types who gave her a trinket or two for services rendered, even if they were paying good money for those services. In Gavin’s experience, men who bought women liked to decorate them from time to time, if for no other reason than to remind them who was really in charge of the arrangement. Evidently, Violet’s customers had never given her anything but her required fee, otherwise she would have been wearing the real thing. Maybe he should get her a little something for—

For what? he immediately asked himself. For helping him out tonight? Why should he feel grateful because she’d done an amazing job of looking incredibly beautiful in a matter of minutes? Hell, she was used to putting herself together quickly. A woman in her profession would naturally need to wind things up with a client quickly and make an elegant exit to ensure being hired for another night, even if the jerk didn’t buy her something nice now and then. Violet had had a lot of practice looking this good in fifteen minutes.

She turned around to look at him, smiling a soft smile. And just like that, Gavin felt like someone had punched him in the gut. Because when she smiled that way, without artifice or inhibition, she went beyond beautiful. That naiveté was back, but with it was an innocence and purity that he would have thought impossible to fake. For the first time, he could see why men would pay money, and lots of it, to bed her. Because bedding Violet would make a man feel like he was her very first, that no man had come before him, that he would leave an indelible impression on her that would outstay any man who came after him.

Maybe that wasn’t exactly a PC way of thinking these days, but there it was just the same. A lot of men were still attracted to the notion of virginity. And if that virgin happened to know a lot about sex and was an eager partner, all the better. No wonder Violet’s memoir had so many chapters in it. God knew how many men had come before Gavin.

His thinking halted him in his tracks—literally, since he had been about to step forward to escort Violet into the room. How could he be thinking about how many men had come before him, unless he was thinking about becoming one of Violet’s men?

He didn’t have time to ponder that further, because her smile increased, revealing a small dimple on one cheek that was. Damn. The only word he could think to describe it was enchanting, even though that was a word he normally, manfully, avoided.

“After blackmailing me to come to this thing,” she said, “are you going to stand in the hallway all night?”

Well, no. Not when there were other rooms he’d much rather make use of. He’d been to the Steepletons’ house many times since meeting Richard a decade ago, and he knew for a fact that they had eight bedrooms in their Lakeshore Drive mansion. Gavin even had intimate knowledge of two of them, since he’d made use of them with his date during every party he’d attended here. He had intimate knowledge of the Steepletons’ master bathroom, too. And one of the coat closets. And their gazebo. And a window seat in the dining room behind a pair of heavy drapes.

Good times. Good times.

“After you,” he said to Violet now.

He splayed his hand at the small of her back, the warmth of her skin seeping through the soft fabric and into his fingers. The dress was so clingy, it was almost as if he were touching bare skin, which naturally made him wonder if Violet was as silky and creamy under her dress as the rest of her seemed to be.

The moment he touched her, however, she surged forward and away from him, almost as if he’d been holding a hot poker. So Gavin stepped forward, too, this time barely stroking her back with the tips of his fingers. Even that scant brush of contact made her twitch, but she didn’t pull away from him this time. He gave her a moment to get used to the connection, then he moved forward once more, until scarcely a breath of air was between them.

Lowering his head to her ear, he said, very softly, “Don’t flinch when I touch you, Violet. And don’t pull away. You’re my date, which means we are intimately involved. Don’t do anything that will make others doubt that, or I’ll have to reconsider my offer.”

“Your offer was only to reconsider in the first place,” she replied without turning around, her voice as quiet as his. But she sounded a little breathless, which, for some reason, made Gavin feel a little breathless, too. “How can you reconsider a reconsideration?”

“You’ll find out if you do a bad job convincing everyone here that you’re crazy about me and that we’re only here long enough to make an appearance, after which we’ll be escaping to have sex for the rest of the night because you can’t keep your hands off me.”

Now she turned around to face him fully, splashes of pink blossoming on each cheek. The blush was back. The surprising, alluring, strangely erotic blush. Gavin managed to keep his breathing in check, but wasn’t quite as successful controlling another part of himself—a part he’d as soon not be losing control of at the moment, since the cut of his jacket was such that it wouldn’t hide his condition.

“Now wait just one minute,” she whispered. “There was nothing in this deal that said I had to pretend we’re sexually involved. I’m supposed to be your date.”

Gavin smiled at that. “Sweetheart, it’s a given that any woman who’s dating me is also sleeping with me. I assumed you knew that, since it’s the same thing you wrote about Ethan.”

She opened her mouth to respond to that, evidently thought better of what she had intended to say, and snapped her lips shut. Pity. He’d started to have all kinds of good ideas for that open mouth. Of course, none of them had involved talking.

He urged her forward, this time wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her close. Screw the courtesies. It wasn’t like he’d ever been big on courtesies with other women. Why should Violet be any different? Especially since she wasn’t the sort of woman who commanded courtesy to begin with.

Ah, dammit, where was the bar?

He found it immediately, tucked into the same corner of the ballroom where the Steepletons always put it, and he steered Violet in that direction. Before he could even ask her what she wanted, she requested a glass of champagne from the bartender, who poured it with great flourish before handing it to her with a smile. She smiled and thanked him warmly, then lifted the glass to her lips for a sip before declaring it delicious and thanking the bartender again. When the man turned to Gavin, Gavin barked out an order for his favorite Scotch, taking it from the man’s extended hand without acknowledgment and guiding Violet toward a small pocket of people on the other side of the room.

“You know, you were very rude back there,” she said as they threaded their way through the crowd.

Gavin had no idea what she was talking about. “What? When?”

“The bartender,” she said. “You didn’t even thank him for your drink.”

“Why would I thank a bartender for doing his job?”

“Because it’s a nice gesture,” she said. “Because it makes someone in that position feel appreciated.”

“Who cares if he feels appreciated? He’s a bartender. It’s not like he’s trying to cure cancer or bring peace to a war-torn country.”

“No, but he made this party more enjoyable for you by fixing you a nice drink. Therefore, you should thank him.”

How could she possibly care about the hired help? Gavin wondered. Who even noticed the hired help? They were invisible. Or would be, if she would stop carping on them.

“Come on,” he said, striving to make the bartender invisible again. “There are some people over here who need to see you with me.”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought she growled under her breath at that. Which, truth be told, he found kind of erotic. But then, there was little about Violet tonight that he didn’t find erotic, so maybe that wasn’t surprising.

“This won’t take long,” he told her. “Nod and look sexy for a few minutes, and then we can move on to another group. If everything goes smoothly, and you play your part well, then I can have you out of here and home before midnight. Just like Cinderella.”

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