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“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.
