My Fair Billionaire

Four


Scarcely an hour after Ava agreed to be Peyton’s makeover artist, she sat across from him at a table in a State Street restaurant. He’d asked her if they could get started right away, since he was eager to get on with his corporate takeover and had already lost a week to his previous stylist. And since—Hey, Ava, would ya look at that?—it was coming up on noon anyway, lunch sounded like a really good idea. After ensuring that one of her morning clerks would be able to pull an afternoon shift, too, Ava had agreed.

As surprised as she’d been by his request to help him out, she was even more surprised to realize she was happy to be doing it. Though not because he was paying her, since the figure she’d quoted him would barely cover the cost of the two additional salesclerks she’d need at Talk of the Town to cover for her. The strange happiness, she was certain, stemmed from the fact that she would finally be able to make amends for the way she had treated him in high school. It was that, and nothing more, that caused the funny buzz of delight that hummed inside her.

Anyway, what difference did it make? The point was that she would be helping Peyton become a gentleman, thereby ensuring he added to his already enormous financial empire. The point was that she would be performing enough good deeds over the next week or so to counter a lot of the mean things she’d said and done to him in high school. And the point was that, by helping him this way, she wouldn’t have to bare her soul about the specifics of her current lifestyle. Specifically, she wouldn’t have to tell him how she didn’t have any style in her life, save what she was surrounded by at work every day.

What would telling Peyton about what happened to her family sixteen years ago accomplish? It wouldn’t change anything. Why shouldn’t she just do this nice thing for him and make some small amends for her past? No harm, no foul. They could complete the mission, job well done, then he could be on his way back to the West Coast none the wiser.

Yeah. That’s the ticket.

She sighed inwardly as she looked at Peyton. Not because of how handsome he was sitting there looking at the menu—though he was certainly handsome sitting there looking at the menu—but because he was slumped forward with one elbow on the table, his chin settled in his hand. He had also preceded her to the table and seated himself without a second thought for her, then snatched up the menu as if it he hadn’t eaten in a week. Combined, the actions gave her some small inkling of what his previous Henry Higgins had been up against.

“Peyton,” she said quietly.

His gaze never left the menu. “Yeah?”

She said nothing until he looked up at her. She hoped he would realize she was setting an example for him to follow when she straightened in her chair and plucked the menu delicately from the table, laying her other hand in her lap.

He changed his posture not at all. “What is it?”

She threw her shoulders back and sat up even straighter.

“What?” he repeated, more irritably this time.

Fine. If he was going to behave like a child, she’d treat him like a child. “Sit up straight.”

He looked confused. “Say what?”

“Sit up straight.”

He narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth as if he were going to object, but she arched one eyebrow meaningfully and he closed his mouth again. To his credit, he also straightened in his chair and leaned against its back. She could tell he wasn’t happy about completing the action. But he did complete it.

“Take your elbow off the table,” she further instructed.

He frowned at her, but did as she said.

Satisfied she had his attention—maybe a little more than she wanted—she continued with her lesson. “Also, when you’re in a restaurant with a woman and the host is taking you to your table, you should always invite her to walk ahead of you and follow her so that—”

“But how will she know where she’s going if she’s walking ahead of me?” he interrupted.

Ava maintained her calm, teacherly persona. “This may come as a surprise to you, Peyton, but women can generally follow a restaurant host to a table every bit as well as a man can. Furthermore,” she hurried on when he opened his mouth to object again, “when the two of you arrive at the table, if the host doesn’t direct her to a chair and pull it out for her, then you need to do that.”

“But I thought you women hated it when men pull out a chair for you, or open the door for you, or do anything else for you.”

“Some women would prefer to do those things themselves, true, but not all women. Society has moved past a time when that kind of thing was viewed as sexist, and now it’s simply a matter of common—”

“Since when?” he barked. Interrupting her. Again. “The last time I opened a door for a woman, she about cleaned my clock for it.”

Ava managed to maintain her composure. “And when was that?”

He thought for a minute. “Actually, I think it was you who did that. I was on my way out of chemistry and you were on your way in.”

Ava remembered the episode well. “The reason I wanted to clean your clock wasn’t because you held the door open for me. It was because you and Tom Sellinger made woofing sounds as I walked through it.”

Instead of looking chagrined, Peyton grinned. “Oh, yeah. I forgot that part.”

“Anyway,” she continued, “these days it’s a matter of common courtesy to open a door for someone—male or female—and to pull out a woman’s chair for her. But you’re right that some women prefer to do that themselves. You’ll know a woman who does by the way she chooses a chair when she arrives at the table and immediately pulls it out for herself. That’s a good indication that you don’t have to do it for her.”

“Gotcha,” he said. Still grinning. Damn him.

“But from what you’ve told me about the Misses Montgomery,” Ava said, “they’ll expect you to extend the courtesy to them.”

“Yeah, okay,” he muttered. “I guess you have a point.”

“Don’t mutter,” she said.

He narrowed his eyes at her again. But his voice was much clearer when he said, “Fine. The next time I’m in a restaurant with a woman, I’ll let her go first and watch for clues. Anything else?”


“Oh, yes,” Ava assured him enthusiastically. “We’ve only just begun. Once you sit down, let her open her menu first.” When he started to ask another question that would doubtless be more about when women had changed their minds about this sort of thing—as if women had ever stopped having the prerogative to change their minds about whatever they damned well pleased—she continued, “And when you’re looking at your menu, it’s nice to make conversation over the choices. Don’t just sit there staring at it until you make a decision. Ask your companion what she thinks looks good, too. If you’re in a restaurant where you’ve eaten before, you might even make suggestions about dishes you like.”

He considered her for another moment, then asked, “You’re not going to make me order for you, are you? I hate that.”

“I won’t make you order for me,” she said. “But some women like for men to do that.”

“Well, how the hell will I know if they want me to or not?”

Ava cleared her throat discreetly. He looked at her as if he had no idea why. She stood her silent ground. He replayed what he had just said, then rolled his eyes.

“Fine. How...will I know?” he enunciated clearly, pausing over the spot where the profanity had been.

“You’ll know because she’ll tell you what she’s planning to have, and when your waiter approaches, you’ll look at her, and she’ll look back at you and not say anything. If she looks at the waiter and says she’ll start with the crab bisque and then moves on to the salad course, you’ll know she’s going to order for herself.”

“So what do you think the Montgomerys will do?”

“I have no idea.”

“Dammit, Ava, I—”

She arched her eyebrow again. He growled his discontent.

“I hate this,” he finally hissed. “I hate having to act like someone I’m not.”

Ava disagreed that he was being forced to act like someone he wasn’t, since she was confident that somewhere deep inside he did have the potential to be a gentleman. In spite of that, she told him, “I know you do. And after your takeover of the Montgomerys’ company is finished, if you want to go back to your reprobate ways, no one will stop you. Until then, if you want your takeover to be successful, you’re going to have to do what I tell you.”

He blew out an exasperated sound and grumbled another ripe obscenity. So Ava snapped her menu shut and stood, collecting her purse from the back of her chair as she went.

“Hey!” he said as he rose, too, following her. “Where the hell do you think you’re going? You said you would help me out.”

She never broke stride. “Not if you won’t even try. I have better things to do with my afternoon than sit here watching you sulk and listening to you swear.”

“Yeah, I guess you could get a crapload of shopping done this afternoon, couldn’t you?” he replied. “Then you could hit that restaurant where you know everyone’s name. Some guy there will pull out your chair for you and do all the ordering. And I bet he never swears.”

She halted and spun around to face him. “You know, Peyton, I’m not sure you are fit for polite society. Go ahead and bulldoze your way over two nice old ladies. You were always much better at that than you were asking for something politely.”

Why had she thought this could work? Just because the two of them had managed to be civil to each other for ten minutes in her office? Yeah, right. Ten minutes was about the longest the two of them had ever been able to be in each other’s presence before the bombs began to drop.

Well, except for that night at her parents’ house, she remembered. Then again, that had been pretty explosive, too...

“Excuse me,” she said as civilly as she could before turning her back on him again and making her way toward the exit.

She took two steps before he caught her by the arm and spun her around. She was tempted to take advantage of the momentum to slam her purse into his shoulder, but one of them had to be a grown-up. And she was barely managing to do that herself.

She steeled herself for another round of combat, but he only said softly, sincerely, “I’m sorry.”

She relaxed. Some. “I forgive you.”

“Will you come back to the table? Please?”

She knew the apology hadn’t come easily for him. His use of the word please had probably been even harder. He was trying. Maybe the two of them would always be like fire and ice, but he was making an effort. It would be small of her not to give it—not to give him—another chance.

“Okay,” she said. “But, Peyton...” She deliberately left the statement unfinished. She’d made clear her terms already.

“I know,” he said. “I understand. And I promise I’ll do what you tell me to do. I promise to be what you want me to be.”

Well, Ava doubted that. Certainly Peyton would be able to do and say the things she told him to do and say. But be what she wanted him to be? That was never going to happen. He would never be forgiving of the way she had treated him in high school. He would never be able to see her as anything other than the queen bee she’d been then. He would never be her friend. Not that she blamed him for any of those things. The best she could hope for was that he would, after this, have better memories of her to replace the ugly ones. If nothing else, maybe, in the future, when—if—he thought of her, it would be with a little less acrimony.

And, hey, that wasn’t terrible, right?

“Let’s start over,” she said.

He nodded. “Okay.”

She was talking about the afternoon, of course. But she couldn’t help thinking how nice it would be if they could turn back the clock a couple of decades and start over there, too.

* * *

The last time Peyton was in a tailor’s shop—in fact, the only time Peyton was in a tailor’s shop—it had been a cut-rate establishment in his old neighborhood that had catered to low-budget weddings and proms. Which was why he’d been there in the first place, to rent a tux for Emerson’s prom. The place had been nothing like the mahogany-paneled, Persian-carpeted wonder in which he now stood. He always bought his clothes off the rack and wore whatever he yanked out of the closet. If the occasion was formal, there was the tux he’d bought at a warehouse sale not long after he graduated from college. His girlfriend at the time had dragged him there, and she’d deemed it a vintage De la Renta—whatever the hell that was—that would remain timeless forever. It had cost him forty bucks, which he’d figured was a pretty good deal for timelessness.

Ava, evidently, had other ideas. All it had taken was one look at the dozen articles of clothing he’d brought with him, and she’d concluded his entire wardrobe needed revamping. Sure, she’d been tactful enough to use phrases like a little out-of-date and not the best fitting and lower tier. The end result was the same. She’d hated everything he brought with him. And when he’d told her about the vintage De la Renta back in San Francisco and how he’d worn it as recently as a month ago, she’d looked as though she wanted to lose her breakfast.

Now she stood beside him in front of the tailor’s mirror, and Peyton studied her reflection instead of his own—all three panels of it. He still couldn’t get over how beautiful she was. The clingy leopard-print dress she’d worn the day before had been replaced by more casual attire today, a pair of baggy tan trousers and a creamy sweater made of some soft fuzzy stuff that didn’t cling at all. She’d left her hair down but still had it pulled back in a clip at her nape. He wondered what it took—besides going to bed—to make her wear it loose, the way it had been Saturday morning. Then again, as reasons went for a woman wearing her hair loose, going to bed was a pretty good one.


“Show him something formal in Givenchy,” she said, speaking to the tailor. “And bring him some suits from Hugo Boss. Darks. Maybe something with a small pinstripe. Nothing too reckless.”

The tailor was old enough to be Peyton’s grandfather, but at least his suit wasn’t purple. On the contrary, it was a sedate dark gray that was, even to Peyton’s untrained eye, impeccably cut. He had a tape measure around his neck, little black glasses perched on his nose and a tuft of white hair encircling his head from one ear to the other. His name was the very no-nonsense Mr. Endicott.

“Excellent choices, Miss Brenner,” Mr. Endicott said before scurrying off to find whatever it was she had asked him to bring.

Ava turned her attention to Peyton, studying his reflection as he was hers. She smiled reassuringly. “Hugo Boss is a favorite of men in your position,” she said. “He’s like the perfect designer for high-powered executives. At least, the ones who don’t want to wear eggplant, loden or espresso.”

Peyton started to correct her about the high-powered-executive thing, then remembered that he was, in fact, a high-powered executive. Funny, but he hadn’t felt like one since coming back to Chicago.

“I promise he won’t bring you anything in purple or puke-green,” she clarified when he didn’t reply. “He’s one of the most conservative tailors in Chicago.”

Peyton nodded, but still said nothing. A weird development, since he’d never been at a loss for words around Ava before. He’d said a lot of things to her when they were in high school that he shouldn’t have. Even if she’d been vain, snotty and shallow, she hadn’t deserved some of the treatment she’d received from him. There were a couple of times in particular that he maybe, possibly, perhaps should apologize for...

“It’s not that your other clothes are bad,” she added, evidently mistaking his silence as irritation. “Like I said, they just need a little, um, updating.”

She was trying hard not to say anything that might create tension between them. And the two of them had gotten along surprisingly well all morning. They’d been stilted and formal and in no way comfortable with each other, but they’d gotten along.

“Look, Ava, I’m not going to jump down your throat for telling me I’m not fashionable,” he said. “I know I’m not. I’m doing this because I’m about to enter a sphere of the business world I’ve never moved in before, one that has expectations I’ll have to abide by.” He shrugged. “But I have to learn what they are. That’s why you’re here. I won’t bite your head off if you tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

She arched that eyebrow at him again, the way she had the day before at the restaurant, when he’d bitten her head off for telling him what he was doing wrong.

“Anymore,” he amended. “I won’t bite your head off anymore.”

The eyebrow went back down, and she smiled. It wasn’t a big smile, but it was a start. If nothing else, it told him she was willing to keep reminding him, as long as he was willing to remember he’d reminded her to do it.

The tailor returned with a trio of suits and a single tuxedo, and Peyton blew out a silent breath of relief that none of them could be called anything but dark. The man then helped Peyton out of his leather jacket and gestured for him to shed the dark blue sweater beneath it. When he stood in his white V-neck T-shirt and jeans, the tailor helped him on with the first suit jacket, made some murmuring sounds, whipped the tape measure from around his neck, and began to measure Peyton’s arms, shoulders and back.

“Now the trousers,” the man said.

Peyton looked at Ava in the mirror.

“I think it’s okay if you go in the fitting room for that,” she said diplomatically.

Right. Fitting room. He knew that. At least, he knew that now.

When he returned some minutes later wearing what he had to admit was a faultless charcoal pinstripe over a crisp white dress shirt the tailor had also found for him, Ava had her back to him, inspecting two neckties she had picked up in his absence.

“So...what do you think?” he asked.

As he approached her, he tried to look more comfortable than he felt. Though his discomfort wasn’t due to the fact that he was wearing a garment with a price tag higher than that of any of the cars he’d owned in his youth. It was because he was worried Ava still wouldn’t approve of him, even dressed in the exorbitant plumage of her tribe.

His fear was compounded when she spun around smiling, only to have her smile immediately fall. Dammit. She still didn’t like him. No, he corrected himself—she didn’t like what he was wearing. Big difference. He didn’t care if she didn’t like him. He didn’t. He only needed for her to approve of his appearance. Which she obviously didn’t.

“Wow,” she said.

Oh. Okay. So maybe she did approve.

“You look...” She drew in a soft breath and expelled it. “Wow.”

Something hot and fizzy zipped through his midsection at her reaction. It was a familiar sensation, but one he hadn’t felt for a long time. More than fifteen years, in fact. It was the same sensation he’d felt one time when Ava looked at him from across their shared classroom at Emerson. For a split second, she hadn’t registered that it was Peyton she was looking at, and her smile had been dreamy and wistful. In that minuscule stretch of time, she had looked at him as if he were something worth looking at, and it had made him feel as if nothing in his life would ever go wrong again.

Somehow, right now, he had that feeling again.

“So you like it?” he asked.

“Very much,” she said. Dreamily. Wistfully. And heat whipped through his belly again. She finally seemed to remember where she was and what she was supposed to be doing, because she looked down at the lengths of silk in her hand. He couldn’t help thinking she sounded a little flustered when she said, “But you, ah, you need a tie.”

She took a few steps toward him, stopped for some reason, then completed a few more that brought her within touching distance. Instead of closing the gap, though, she held up the two neckties, one in each hand.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, “but I’m of the opinion that the necktie is where a man truly shows his personality. The suit can be as conservative as they come, but the tie can be a little more playful and interesting.” She hesitated. “Provided that fits the character of the man.”

He wanted to ask if she actually thought he was playful, never mind interesting, but said nothing. Mostly because he had noted two spots of pink coloring her cheeks and had become fascinated by them. Was she blushing, or was the heat in the store just set too high? Then he realized it was actually kind of cool in there. Which meant she must be—

“If you don’t like these, I can look for something different,” she told him, taking another step that still didn’t bring her as close as he would have liked. “But these two made me think of you.”

Peyton forced himself to look at the ties. One was splashed with amorphous shapes in a half dozen colors, and the other looked like a watercolor rendition of a tropical rain forest. He was surprised to discover he liked them. The colors were bold without being obnoxious, and the patterns were masculine without being aggressive. The fact that Ava said they reminded her of him made him feel strangely flattered.


“I’ll just look for something different then,” she said when he didn’t reply, once again misinterpreting his silence as disapproval. “There were some nice striped ones you might like better.” She started to turn away.

“No, Ava, wait.”

In one stride, he covered the distance between them and curled his fingers around her arm, spinning her gently around to face him. Her eyes were wide with surprise, her mouth slightly open. And God help him, all he wanted was to keep tugging her forward until he could cover her mouth with his and wreak havoc on them both.

“I, uh, I like them,” he said, shoving aside his errant thoughts.

Once again, he forced himself to look at the ties. But all he saw was the elegant fingers holding them, her nails perfect ovals of red. That night at her parents’ house, her nails had been perfect ovals of pink. He’d thought the color then was so much more innocent-looking than Ava was. Until the two of them finally came together, and he realized she wasn’t as experienced as he thought, that he was the first guy to—

“Let’s try that one,” he said, not sure which tie he was talking about.

“Which one?”

“The one on the right,” he managed.

“My right or your right?”

He stifled the frustrated obscenity hovering at the back of his throat. “Yours.”

She held up the tie with the unstructured forms and smiled. “That was my favorite, too.”

Great.

Before he realized what she was planning, she stepped forward and looped the tie around his neck, turning up the collar of his shirt to thread it underneath. He was assailed by a soft, floral scent that did nothing to dispel the sixteen-year-old memories still dancing in his head, and the flutter of her fingers as she wrapped the length of silk around itself jacked his pulse rate higher. In an effort to keep his sanity, he closed his eyes and began to list in alphabetical order all the microbreweries he had visited on his travels. Thankfully, by the time he came to Zywiec in Poland, she was pulling the knot snug at his throat.

“There,” she said, sounding a little breathless herself. “That should, ah, do it.”

He did his best to ignore the last two words and the fact that she had stumbled over them. She couldn’t be thinking about the same thing he was.

“Thanks,” he muttered, the word sounding in no way grateful.

“You’re welcome,” she muttered back, the sentiment sounding in no way generous.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Ava glaring at him. Worse, he knew he was glaring at her, too. Before either of them could say anything that might make the situation worse, he went back to the mirror. Mr. Endicott took that as his cue to start with the measuring and adjusting again. He made a few notations on a pad of paper, struck a few marks on the garment with a piece of chalk, stuck a few pins into other places and told Peyton to go try on the next suit.

When he returned in that one, Ava was near the mirror draping a few more neckties onto a wooden valet. Upon his approach, she hurriedly finished, then strode to nearly the other side of the room. Jeez, it was as though anytime the two of them spent more than an hour in each other’s presence, a switch flipped somewhere that sent a disharmony ray shooting over them. What the hell was up with that?

This time Peyton tied his own damned tie—though not with the expertise Ava had—then turned for her approval. Only to see her still riffling through some neckties on a table that she’d probably already riffled through.

He cleared his throat to get her attention.

She continued her necktie hunt.

He turned back to the tailor. “This one is fine, too.”

Out came the tape measure and chalk again. The ritual was performed twice more—including Peyton’s futile efforts to win Ava’s attention—until even the tuxedo was fitted. Only when he was stepping down from the platform in that extraformal monkey suit did Ava look up at him again. Only this time, she didn’t look away. This time, her gaze swept him from the top of his head to the tips of his shoes and back.

He held his breath, waiting to see if she would smile.

She didn’t. Instead she said, “I, um, I think that will do nicely.” Before Peyton had a chance to say thanks, she added, “But you need a haircut.”

All Peyton could think was, Two steps forward, one step back. What the hell. He’d take it.

“I’m guessing that’s somewhere on our to-do list?” he asked.

She nodded. “This afternoon. I made an appointment for you at my salon. They’re fabulous.”

“Your salon?” he echoed distastefully. “What’s wrong with a barbershop?”

“Nothing. If you’re a dockworker.”

“Ava, I’ve never set foot in a salon. A record I plan to keep.”

“But it’s unisex,” she said, as if that made everything okay.

“I don’t care if it’s forbidden sex. Find me a good barber.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but his unwillingness to bend on the matter must have shown in his expression. So she closed her mouth and said nothing. Not that that meant she would find him a barber. But at least they could bicker about it after they left the tailor’s.

And why was he kind of looking forward to that?

When it became obvious that neither of them was going to say more, Peyton made his way back to Endicott, who led him back to the fitting room.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Moss,” the tailor said. “You’re doing fine.”

Peyton looked up at that. “What?”

“Miss Brenner,” Endicott said as he continued to walk, speaking over his shoulder. “She likes the suits. She likes the tuxedo even more.”

“How can you tell?”

The tailor simply grinned. “Don’t worry,” he repeated. “She likes you, too.”

Peyton opened his mouth to reply, but no words emerged. Which was just as well, because Mr. Endicott continued walking, throwing up a hand to gesture him forward.

“Come along, Mr. Moss. I still need to pin those trousers.”

Sure thing, Peyton thought. Just as soon as he pinned some thoughts back into his brain.