My Fair Billionaire

Three


It wasn’t often that Ava heard a man’s voice in Talk of the Town. So when it became clear that the rich baritone coming from beyond her office door didn’t belong to anyone delivering mail or freight, her concentration was pulled from next month’s employee schedule to the sales floor instead. Particularly when she recognized the man’s voice as Peyton’s.

No sooner did recognition dawn, however, than Lucy, one of her full-time salesclerks, poked her dark head through the office door. “There’s a man out here looking for you, Ava,” she said, adjusting her little black glasses. “A Mr. Moss? He seemed surprised when I told him you were here.” She lowered her voice as she added, “He was kind of fishing for your phone number. Which of course I would never give out.” She smiled and lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “You might want to come out and talk to him. He’s pretty yummy.”

Ava sighed inwardly. Clearly, Peyton hadn’t lost his ability to go from zero to sixty on the charm scale in two seconds flat.

What was he doing here? Five days had passed since their exchange in her apartment, not one of which had ended without her thinking about all the things she wished she’d said to him. She’d always promised herself—and karma—that if she ever ran into any of her former classmates from Emerson whom she had mistreated as a teenager, she would apologize and do whatever it took to make amends. It figured that when fate finally threw one of her former victims into her path, it would start with the biggie.

So why hadn’t she tried to make amends on Saturday? Why hadn’t she apologized? Why had she instead let him think she was still the same vain, shallow, snotty girl she’d been in high school?

Okay, here was a second chance to put things to right, she told herself. Even if she wasn’t sure how to make up for her past behavior, the least she could do was apologize.

“Actually, Lucy, why don’t you show him into the office instead?”

Lucy’s surprise was obvious. Ava never let anyone but employees see the working parts of the boutique. The public areas of the store were plush and opulent, furnished with gilded Louis Quatorze tables and velvet upholstered chairs, baroque chandeliers and Aubusson carpets—reproductions, of course, but all designed to promote the same air of sumptuousness the designer clothes afforded her clients. The back rooms were functional and basic. Her office was small and cluttered, the computer and printer the only things that could be called state-of-the-art. The floor was concrete, the walls were cinder block, the ceiling was foam board and nothing was pretty.

Lucy’s head disappeared from the door, but her voice trailed behind her. “You can go back to the office. It’s right through there.”

Ava swiped a hand over the form-fitting jaguar-print dress she had donned that morning—something new from Yves Saint Laurent she’d wanted to test for comfort and wearability. She had just tucked a stray strand of auburn back into her French twist when Peyton appeared in the doorway, dwarfing the already tiny space.

He looked even better than he had the last time she saw him. His hair was deliciously wind tossed, and his whiskey-colored eyes were clearer. He’d substituted the rumpled suit of Saturday morning with faded jeans and a weathered leather jacket that hung open over a baggy chocolate-brown sweater. Battered hiking boots replaced the businesslike loafers.

He looked more like he had in high school. At least, the times in high school when she’d run into him outside of Emerson. Even in his school uniform, though, Peyton had managed to look different from the other boys. His shirttail had always hung out, his shoes had always been scuffed, his necktie had never been snug. Back then, she’d thought he was just a big slob. But now she suspected he’d deliberately cultivated his look to differentiate himself from the other kids at Emerson. Nowadays, she didn’t blame him.

He said nothing at first, only gazed at her the way he had on Saturday, as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real. Gradually he relaxed, and even went so far as to lean against the doorjamb and shove his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Somehow, though, Ava sensed he was striving for a nonchalance he didn’t really feel.

“Hi,” he finally said.

“Hi yourself.”

She tried to be as detached as he was, but she felt the same way she had Saturday—as if she were in high school again. As if she needed to shoulder the mantle of rich bitch ice princess to protect herself from the barbs she knew would be forthcoming. She was horrified by the thought—horrified that the girl she used to be might still be lurking somewhere inside her. She never wanted to be that person again. She never would be that person again. In spite of that, something about Peyton made the haughty teenager bubble up inside her.

Silence descended for an awkward moment. Then Peyton said, “You surprised me, being here. I came into the shop to see if anyone working knew where I could find you. I didn’t expect you to actually be here.”

Because he didn’t think she actually worked here, Ava recalled, battling the defensiveness again. She told herself not to let his comment get to her and reminded herself to make amends. The best way to do that was to be the person she was now, not the person she used to be.

“I’m here more often than you might think,” she said—sidestepping the truth again.

Then again, one couldn’t exactly hurry the appeasement of karma. It was one thing to make amends for past behaviors. It was another to spill her guts to Peyton about everything that happened to her family and admit how she’d ended up in the same position he’d been in in high school, and now she was really, really sorry for how she had behaved all those years. That wasn’t really necessary, was it? To go into all that detail? A woman was entitled to some secrets. And Ava wasn’t sure she could bear Peyton’s smug satisfaction after he learned about it. Or, worse, if he displayed the same kind of fake pity so many of her former so-called friends did.

Oh, Ava, they would say whenever she ran into them. Has your poor father gotten out of prison yet? No? Darling, how do you stand the humiliation? We must meet for lunch sometime, get you out of that dreary store where you have to work your fingers to the bone. I’ll call you.

No calls ever came, of course. Not that Ava wanted them to. And their comments didn’t bother her, because she didn’t care about those people anymore. But coming from Peyton... For some reason, she suspected such comments would bother her a lot.

So she stalled. “We’re supposed to be receiving a couple of evening gowns from Givenchy today, and I wanted to look them over before they went out on the floor.” All of which was true, she hastened to reassure herself. She just didn’t mention that she would have also been at the store if they were expecting a shipment of bubble wrap. She put in more hours at Talk of the Town than her two full-timers did combined.


“Then I guess I was lucky I came in today,” he said, looking a little anxious. Sounding a little anxious.

“What made you come in?” she asked. “I thought you were going to be all booked up with Henry Higginses and millionaire matchmakers while you were in town.”

He grinned halfheartedly and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Both actions were probably intended to make him look comfortable, but neither really did.

“Yeah... Well... Actually...” He took a breath, released it slowly and tried again. “Actually, that’s kind of why I’m here.”

He gestured toward the only other chair in the office and asked, “Mind if I sit down?”

“Of course not,” she replied. Even though she did kind of mind, because doing that would bring him closer, and then she would be the one trying to look comfortable when she felt anything but.

He folded himself into the other chair and continued to look uneasy. She waited for him to say something, but he only looked around the office, his gaze falling first on the Year in Fashion calendar on the wall—for April, it was Pierre Cardin—then on the fat issues of Vogue, Elle and Marie Claire that lined the top shelf of her desk, then lower, on the stack of catalogs sitting next to the employee schedule she’d been working on, and then—

Oh, dear. The employee schedule, which had her name and hours prominently at the top. Hastily, she scooped up the catalogs and laid them atop the schedule, tossing her pencil onto both.

He finally returned his gaze to her face. “The Henry Higgins didn’t work out.”

“What happened?”

His gaze skittered away again. “He told me I had to stop swearing and clean up my language.”

Ava bit her lip to keep from smiling, since, to Peyton, this was clearly an insurmountable problem. “Well, if you’re going to be dealing with two sweet little old ladies from Mississippi who are in their eighties and wear hats and white gloves, that’s probably good advice.”

“Yeah, but the Montgomery sisters are like five states away. They can’t hear me swearing in Chicago.”

“But if it’s a habit, now is a good time to start breaking it, since—”

“Dammit, Ava, I can stop swearing anytime I want to.”

“Oh, really?” she said mildly.

“Hell, yes.”

“I see.”

“And you should have seen the suits he tried to put me into,” Peyton added.

“Well, suits are part and parcel for businesspeople,” Ava pointed out, “especially those in your position. You were wearing a suit at Basilio’s the other night. What’s the sudden problem with suits?”

“The problem wasn’t suits. It was the suits this guy wanted to put me into.”

She waited for him to explain, and when he didn’t, asked, “Could you be a little more specific?”

He frowned. “One was purple. Oh, excuse me,” he quickly corrected himself. “I mean eggplant. The other was the same color green the guys on the team used to spew after getting bodychecked too hard.”

Ava thought for a minute, then said, “Loden, I think, is the color you’re looking for.”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“Those are both very fashionable colors,” she said. “Especially for younger guys like you. Sounds to me like Henry knew his stuff.”

Peyton shook his head. “Suits should never be anything except gray, brown or black. Not slate, not espresso, not ebony,” he added in a voice that indicated he’d already had this conversation with Henry Higgins. “Gray. Brown. Black. Maybe, in certain situations, navy blue. Not midnight,” he said when she opened her mouth to comment. “Navy blue. They sure as hell shouldn’t be purple or puke-green.”

Ava closed her mouth.

“And don’t get me started on the etiquette lessons the guy said I had to take,” Peyton continued. “Or all that crap about comportment. Whatever the hell that is. He even tried to tell me what I can and can’t eat in a restaurant.”

“Peyton, all of those things are important when it comes to dealing with people in professional situations. Especially when you’re conducting business with people who do it old school, the way it sounds like the Montgomery sisters do.”

He frowned. “Ava, I didn’t get where I am today by studying etiquette books or comporting myself—whatever the hell that is. I did it by knowing what I want and going after it.”

“And that’s obviously worked in the past,” she agreed. “But you admitted yourself that you’ll have to operate differently with the Montgomerys. That means using a new rule book.”

“I like my rule book just fine.”

“Then do your takeover your way.”

Why was he here? she asked herself again. This was an odd conversation to be having with him. Still, they were getting along. Kind of. Maybe she should just go with the flow.

He growled something unintelligible under his breath, but if she had to wager a guess, she’d bet it was more of that profanity he was supposed to be keeping under wraps.

His voice gentled some. “All I’m saying is that this guy doesn’t know me from Adam, and he has no idea what’s going to work for me and what isn’t. I need to work with someone who can, you know, smooth my rough edges without sawing them off.”

Okay, she was starting to understand. He wanted to see if she could recommend another stylist for him. Since she owned a shop like Talk of the Town, he figured she had connections in the business that might help him out.

“There are several stylists in Chicago who are very good,” she said. “Some of them bring their clients to me.” She reached for a binder filled with business cards she’d collected over the years. “Just give me a minute to find someone whose personality jibes with yours.”

Ha. As if. There wasn’t a human being alive whose personality jibed with Peyton’s. Peyton was too larger-than-life. The best she could hope for was to find someone who wasn’t easily intimidated. Hmm...maybe that guy who worked with the Bears before their last Super Bowl appearance. He’d had to have a couple of teeth replaced, but still...

Peyton placed his hand over hers before she had a chance to open the binder. She tried to ignore the ruffle of butterflies in her midsection. Ha. As if.

His voice seemed to come from a very great distance when he spoke again. “No, Ava, you don’t understand. Anyone you recommend is going to be in the same boat as Henry Higgins. They won’t know me. They won’t have any idea what to do with me.”

She said nothing for a moment, only gazed at his hand covering hers, noting how it was twice the size of her own, how much rougher and darker, how his nails were blunt and square alongside her smooth, taupe-lacquered ovals. Their hands were so different from each other. So why did they fit together so well? Why did his touch feel so...right?

Reluctantly, she pulled her hand from beneath his and moved it to her lap. “Then why are you...”

The moment her gaze connected with his again, she began to understand. Surely, he wasn’t suggesting... There was no way he... It was ludicrous to even think... He couldn’t want her to be his stylist.

Could he?

She was his lifelong nemesis. He’d said so himself. Not to her face, but to a friend of his. She’d overhead the two of them talking as they came out of the boys’ restroom near her locker at Emerson. The seniors had been studying Romeo and Juliet, and she’d heard him say that the Montagues and Capulets had nothing on the Mosses and Brenners. He’d told his friend that he and Ava would be enemies forever. Then he’d ordered a plague on her house.


Very carefully, she asked, “Peyton, why exactly are you here?”

He leaned forward in the chair, hooking his hands together between his legs. His gaze never leaving hers, he said, “Exactly? I’m here because I didn’t know where else to go. There aren’t many people left in this city who remember me—”

Oh, she sincerely doubted that.

“And there are even fewer I care about seeing.”

That she could definitely believe.

“And I’m not supposed to go back to San Francisco until I’m, um—” he made a restless gesture with his hand, as if he were literally groping for the right word “—until I’m fit for the right kind of society.”

When Ava said nothing in response—because she honestly had no idea what to say—he expelled a restless breath and leaned back in the chair again.

Finally, point-blank, he said, “Ava, I want you to be my Henrietta Higgins.”

* * *

Peyton told himself he shouldn’t be surprised by Ava’s deer-in-the-headlights reaction. He’d had a similar one when the idea popped into his head as he was escaping Henry Higgins’s office the previous afternoon. But there was no way he could have kept working with that guy, and something told him anyone else was going to be just as bad or worse.

How was someone going to turn him from a sow’s ear into a silk purse if they didn’t even know how he’d become a sow’s ear in the first place? He’d never be a silk purse anyway. He needed to work with someone who understood that the best they could hope for would be to turn him into something in between. Like a...hmm...like maybe a cotton pigskin. Yeah, that’s it. Like a denim football. He could do that. He could go from a sow’s ear to a denim football. But he was still going to need help getting there. And it was going to have to be from someone who not only knew how to look and act in society, but who knew him and his limitations.

And who knew his limitations better than Ava? Who understood society better than Ava? Maybe she didn’t like him. Maybe he didn’t like her. But he knew her. And she knew him. That was more than he could say for all the Henry Higginses in the world. He and Ava had worked together once, in spite of their differences—they’d actually pulled off an A-minus on that World Civ project in high school. So why couldn’t they work together as adults? Hell, adults should be even better at putting aside their differences, right? Peyton worked with people he didn’t like all the time.

The tension between him and Ava on Saturday morning had probably just been a result of their shock at seeing each other again. Probably. Hey, they were being civil to each other now, weren’t they? Or at least they had been. Before he dropped the Henrietta Higgins bombshell and Ava went all catatonic on him.

“So what do you say, Ava?” he asked in an effort to get the conversation rolling again. “Think you could help me out here?”

“I, ah...” she nonanswered.

“I mean, this sort of thing is right up your alley, right? Even if you didn’t own a store that deals with, you know, fashion and stuff.” Fashion and stuff? Could he sound more like an adolescent? “You know all about how people are supposed to dress and act in social situations.”

“Yes, but...”

“And you know me well enough to not to dress me in purple.”

“Well, that’s certainly true, but...”

“And you’d talk to me the right way. Like you wouldn’t say—” He adopted what he thought was a damned good impression of the man who had tried to dress him in purple. “‘Mr. Moss, would you be ever so kind as to cease usage of the vulgar sort of language we decided earlier might be a detriment to your reception by the ladies whom you are doing your best to impress.’ You’d just say, ‘Peyton, the Montgomerys are going to wash your mouth out with soap if you don’t stop dropping the F-bomb.’ And just like that, I’d know what the hell you were talking about, and I’d do it right away.”

This time, Ava only arched an eyebrow in what could have been amusement or censure...or something else he probably didn’t want to identify.

“Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t do it right away,” he qualified. “But at least I would know what you were talking about, and we could come to some sort of compromise.”

The eyebrow lowered, but the edge of her mouth twitched a little. Even though he wasn’t sure whether it was twitching up or down, Peyton decided to be optimistic. At least she hadn’t thrown anything at him.

“I just mean,” he said, “that you...that I...that we...” He blew out an irritated breath, sat up straighter, and looked her straight in the eye. “Look, Ava, I know we were never the best of friends...” Even if we were—for one night, anyway—lovers, he couldn’t help thinking. Hoping she wasn’t thinking that, too. Figuring she probably was. Not sure how he felt about any of it. “But I obviously need help with this new and improved me, and I’m not going to get it from some total stranger. I don’t know anyone here who could help me except you. Because you’re the only one here who knows me.”

“I did know you,” she corrected him. “When we were in high school. Neither of us is the person we were then.”

There was something in her voice that made Peyton hesitate. Although it was true that in a lot of ways he wasn’t the person he’d been in high school, Ava obviously still was. Maybe the adult wasn’t quite as snotty, vain or superficial as the girl had been, but she could still put a guy in his place. She was still classy. She was still beautiful. She was still out of his league. Hell, she hadn’t changed at all.

“So will you do it?” he asked, deliberately not giving her time to think it over.

She thought it over anyway. Dammit. Her gaze never left his, but he could almost hear the crackling of her brain synapses as she connected all the dots and came to her conclusions. He was relieved when she finally smiled.

Until she asked, “How much does the position pay?”

His mouth fell open. “Pay?”

She nodded. “Pay. Surely you were paying your previous stylist.”

“Well, yeah, but that was his job.”

She shrugged. “And your point would be?”

He didn’t know what his point was. He’d just figured Ava would help him out. He hadn’t planned on her being mercenary about it.

Wow. She really hadn’t changed since high school.

“Fine,” he said coolly. “I’ll pay you what I was paying him.” He named the figure, one that was way too high to pay anyone for telling people how to dress and talk and eat.

Ava shook her head. “No, you’ll have to do better than that.”

“What?”

“Peyton, if you want to make use of my expertise in this matter, then I expect to be compensated accordingly.”

Of course she did. Ava Brenner never did anything unless she was compensated.

“Fine,” he said again. “How much do you charge for your expertise?”

She thought for another minute, then quoted a figure fifty percent higher than what he had offered.

“You’re nuts,” he told her. “You could build the Taj Mahal for that.”

She said nothing.

He offered her 10 percent more.

She said nothing.

He offered her 25 percent more.

She tilted her head to one side.

He offered her 40 percent more.


“All right,” she said with a satisfied smile.

“Great,” he muttered.

“Well, I didn’t want to be unreasonable.”

This time Peyton was the one who said nothing. But he suddenly realized it wasn’t because he was irritated with their lopsided bargaining—as if Ava was any kind of bargain. It was because it felt kind of good to be sparring with her again. He remembered now how, despite the antagonism of their exchanges in high school, he’d always come away from them feeling weirdly energized and satisfied. Although he still sparred with plenty of people these days, none ever left him feeling the way he’d felt taking on Ava.

“But Peyton, you’ll have to do things my way,” she said, pulling him out of his musing.

Peyton hated it when people told him they had to do things any way other than his own. He waited for the resentment and hostility that normally came along with such demands to coil inside him. Instead, he felt strangely elated.

“All right,” he conceded. “We’ll do this your way.”

She grinned. He told himself it was smugly. But damned if she didn’t look kind of happy to have taken on the task, too.