My Fair Billionaire

Yesterday, looking out that window, he had been brutally reminded of how his teenage life in this part of town had been juxtaposed to the life—if he could even call it that—that he’d led in his not-even-marginal neighborhood. As much as he’d hated Emerson, it had always felt good to escape his home life for eight hours a day. Yesterday, looking out at the conspicuous consumption of Michigan Avenue, Peyton had, ironically, been transported back to his old neighborhood instead. He’d been able to smell the grease and gasoline of the garage he and his old man had lived above—and where he’d worked to save money for college when he wasn’t at school. He’d heard the police sirens that pelted the crumbling urban landscape, had seen the roving packs of gangs that considered his block fair game. He’d felt the grime on his skin and tasted the soot that belched from the factory smokestacks. And then...

Then had come memories of Emerson, where he’d won a spot on the school hockey team—along with a full scholarship—thanks to his above-average grades and his ruthlessness on the rink. God, he’d hated that school, teeming as it had been with blue-blooded trust-fund babies who were way too rich for his system. But he’d loved how clean and bright the place was, and how it smelled like floor wax and Calvin Klein perfume. He’d liked the quiet during classes and how orderly everything ran. He’d liked being able to eat one decent meal a day. He’d liked feeling safe, if only for a little while.

Not that he would have admitted any of that back then. Not that he would admit it to anyone now. But he’d been smart enough to know that an education from a place like Emerson would look a hell of a lot better on a college application than the decaying public school he would have attended otherwise. He’d stomached the rich kids—barely—by finding the handful of other students like himself. The wretched refuse. The other scholarship kids who were smart but poor and determined to end up in a better place than their parents. There had been maybe ten of them in a school where they were outnumbered a hundred to one. Peyton hadn’t given a damn about those hundreds. Except for one, who had gotten under his skin and stayed there.

Ava Brenner. The Golden Girl of the Gold Coast. Her daddy was so rich and so powerful, and she was so snotty and so beautiful, she’d ruled that school. Not a day had passed at Emerson that didn’t revolve around Ava and her circle of friends—all handpicked by the princess herself, and all on eggshells knowing they could be exiled at her slightest whim. Not a day had passed that Peyton hadn’t had to watch her strolling down the hall, flipping that sweep of red-gold hair around as if it was spun copper...and looking at him as if he were something disgusting stuck to the bottom of her shoe. And not a day had passed when he hadn’t wanted her. Badly. Even knowing she was spoiled and shallow and vain.

He opened his eyes. Yeah, he remembered now that he had been thinking about Ava yesterday. In fact, that was what had made him beat a hasty retreat to the hotel bar. He remembered that, too. And he remembered tossing back three single malts on an empty stomach in rapid succession. He remembered being politely asked to leave the hotel bar and, surprisingly, complying. He remembered lurching out onto Michigan Avenue and looking for the first place he could find to get another drink, then being steady enough on his feet to convince the bartender to fix him a couple more. Then...

He tried harder to remember what had happened after that. But all he could recall was a husky—sexy—voice, and the soft scent of gardenias, and a pair of beautiful sea-green eyes, all of which had seemed oddly familiar somehow.

That brought his gaze back to the woman sleeping on the couch. In the semidarkness, he could see that she lay on her side, facing the room, one hand curled in front of her face. The blanket with which she had covered herself was drooping, part of it pooled on the floor. For some reason, he was compelled to move to the couch and pick it up, to drape it across her sleeping form. As he bent over her, he inhaled the faint scent of gardenias again, as if it had followed him out of his memories.

And just like that, he was pummeled by another one.

Ava Brenner. Again. She was the one who had smelled of gardenias. Peyton remembered the night the two of them had— Well, the night they’d had to finish a school project together at her house. In her room. When her parents were out of town. At one point, she’d gone downstairs to fix them something to eat, and he’d taken advantage of her absence to shamelessly prowl around her room, opening her closet and dresser drawers, snooping for anything he could discover about her. When he came across her underwear drawer, he actually stole a pair of her panties. Pale yellow silk. God help him, he still had them. As he’d stuffed them into his back pocket that night, his gaze lit on a bottle of perfume on her dresser. Night Gardenia, it was called. That was the only way he knew that what she smelled like was gardenias. He’d never smelled—or even seen—one before that night.

As he draped the cover over the sleeping woman, his gaze fell to her face, and his gut clenched tight. He told himself he was imagining things. He was just so overcome with memories of Ava that he was imprinting her face onto that of a stranger. The odds of him running into the last person he wanted to see in Chicago—within hours of his arrival—were too ridiculous to compute. There were two and a half million people in this city. No way could fate be that cruel. No way would he be thrown back into the path of—

Before the thought even formed in his head, though, Peyton knew. It was her. Ava Brenner. Golden Girl of the Gold Coast. Absolute ruler of the Emerson Academy for College Preparatory Learning. A recurring character in the most feverish dreams he’d ever had as a teenage boy.

And someone he’d hoped he would never, ever see again.

Two

“Ava?”

As if he’d uttered an incantation to free a fairy-tale princess from an evil spell, her eyes fluttered open. He tried one last time to convince himself he was only imagining her. But even in the semidarkness, he could see that it was Ava. And that she was more beautiful than he remembered.

“Peyton?” she said as she pushed herself up from the sofa.

He stumbled backward and into a chair on the other side of the room. Oh, God. Her voice. The way she said his name. It was the same way she’d said it that morning in her bedroom, when he’d opened his eyes to realize the frenetic dream he’d had about the two of them having sex hadn’t been a dream at all. The panic that welled up in him now was identical to the feeling he had then, an explosion of fear and uncertainty and insecurity. He hated that feeling. He hadn’t felt it since...

Ah, hell. He hadn’t felt it since that morning in Ava’s bedroom.

Don’t panic, he told himself. He wasn’t an eighteen-year-old kid whose only value lay in his ruthlessness on the rink. He wasn’t living in poverty with a drunk for a father after his mother had deserted them both. He sure as hell wasn’t the refuse of the Emerson Academy who wasn’t worthy of Ava Brenner.

“Um, hi? I guess?” she said as she sat up, pulling up her covers as if she were cloaking herself in some kind of protective device. She was obviously just as anxious about seeing him as he was about seeing her.

As much as Peyton told himself to reply with a breezy, unconcerned greeting, all he could manage was another quiet “Ava.”

She pulled one hand out of her cocoon to switch on a lamp by the sofa. He squinted at the sudden brightness but didn’t glance away. Her eyes seemed larger than he remembered, and the hard angles of her cheekbones had mellowed to slender curves. Her hair was shorter, darker than in high school, but still danced around her shoulders unfettered. And her mouth—that mouth that had inspired teenage boys to commit mayhem—was... Hell. It still inspired mayhem. Only now that Peyton was a man, mayhem took on a whole new meaning.

“You want coffee?” she asked. “It should be ready. I set the coffeemaker for the usual time, thinking I would wake up when I normally do, but I don’t think it’s been sitting too long. If memory serves, you like it strong, anyway.”

If memory serves, he echoed to himself. She had brewed a pot of coffee for them at her house that night, in preparation for the all-nighter they knew lay ahead. He had told her he liked it strong. She remembered. Even though the two of them had barely spoken to each other after that night. Did that mean something? Did he want it to?

“Coffee sounds good,” he said. “But I can get it. You take yours with cream and sugar, if I recall correctly.”

Okay, okay. So Ava wasn’t the only one who could remember that night in detail. That didn’t mean anything.

She pulled the covers more snugly around herself. “Thanks.”

Peyton hurried to the kitchen, grateful for the opportunity to collect himself. Ava Brenner. Damn. It was as if he’d turned on some kind of homing device the minute he got into town in order to locate her. Or maybe she had turned on one to locate him. Nah. No way would she be looking for him after all this time. She’d made her feelings for him crystal clear back at Emerson. They’d only shone with an even starker clarity after that night at her parents’ house. And no way would he be looking for her, either. It was nothing but a vicious twist of fate or a vengeful God or bad karma that had brought them together again.

By the time he carried their coffee back to the living room, she had swept her hair atop her head into a lopsided knot that, amazingly, made her look even more beautiful. The covers had fallen enough to reveal a pair of flannel pajamas, decorated with multicolored polka dots. Never in a million years would he have envisioned Ava Brenner in flannel polka dots. Weirdly, though, they suited her.

She mumbled her thanks as he handed her her coffee—and he told himself he did not linger long enough to skim his fingers over hers to see if she felt as soft as he remembered, even if he did notice she felt softer than he remembered. He briefly entertained the idea of sitting down beside her on the couch but thankfully came to his senses and returned to the chair.

When he trusted himself not to screw up the question, he asked, “Wanna tell me how I ended up spending the night with you again?”

He winced inwardly. He really hadn’t wanted to make any reference to that night in high school. But her head snapped up at the question. Obviously, she’d picked up on the allusion, too.

“You don’t remember?” she asked.

There was an interesting ambiguity to the question. She could have been asking about last night or that night sixteen years ago. Of course she must have meant last night. Still, there was an interesting ambiguity.

He shook his head. As much as it embarrassed him to admit it, he told her, “No. I don’t remember much of anything after arriving at some restaurant on Michigan Avenue.”

Except, of course, for fleeting recollections of green eyes, soft touches and the faint aroma of gardenias. But she didn’t have to know that.

“So you do remember what happened before that?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Not that he was going to tell her any of that, either.

She waited for him to elaborate. He elaborated by lifting one eyebrow and saying nothing.

She sighed and tried again. “When did you get back in town?”

“Yesterday.”

“You came in from San Francisco?”

The question surprised him. “How did you know?”

“When I offered to take you home last night, you told me I was going to have a long drive. Then you told me you live in an area called Sea Cliff in San Francisco. Sounds like a nice neighborhood.”

That was an understatement. Sea Cliff was one of San Francisco’s most expensive and exclusive communities, filled with lush properties and massive estates. His two closest neighbors were a globally known publishing magnate and a retired ’60s rock and roll icon.

“It’s not bad,” he said evasively.

“So what took you to the West Coast?”

“Work.” Before she could ask more, he turned the tables. “Still living in the Gold Coast?”

For some reason, she stiffened at the question. “No. My folks sold that house around the time I graduated from high school.”

“Guess they figured those seven thousand square feet would be too much for two people instead of three. Not including the servants, of course.”

She dropped her gaze to her coffee. “Only two of our staff lived on site.”

“Well, then. I stand corrected.” He looked around the tiny living room, recalled the tiny kitchen and tiny bedroom. “So what’s this place?”

“It’s...” She glanced up, hesitated, then looked down into her coffee again. “I own the shop downstairs. A boutique. Women’s designer fashions.”

He nodded. “Ah. So this apartment came with the place, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Easier to bring me here than to someplace where you might have to explain my presence, huh?”

For the first time, it occurred to him that Ava might be married. Hell, why wouldn’t she be? She’d had every guy at Emerson panting after her. His gaze fell to the hands wrapped around her coffee mug. No rings. Anywhere. Another interesting tidbit. She’d always worn jewelry in high school. Diamond earrings, ruby and sapphire rings—they were her parents’ birthstones, he’d once heard her tell a friend—and an emerald necklace that set off her eyes beautifully.

Before he had a chance to decide whether her ringless state meant she wasn’t married or she just removed her jewelry at night, she said, “Well, you’re not exactly an easy person to explain, are you, Peyton?”

He decided not to speculate on the remark and instead asked about her status point-blank. “Husband wouldn’t approve?”

Down went her gaze again. “I’m not married.”

“But you still have someone waiting for you at home that you’d have to explain me to, is that it?”

The fact that she didn’t respond bothered Peyton a lot more than it should have. He told himself to move along, to just get the condensed version of last night’s events and call a cab. He told himself there was nothing about Ava he wanted to know, nothing she could say that would affect his life now. He told himself to remember how bad things were between them in high school for years, not how good things were that one night.

He told himself all those things. But, as was so often the case, he didn’t listen to a single word he said.

* * *

Ava did her best to reassure herself that she wasn’t lying to Peyton. Lies of omission weren’t really lies, were they? And what was she supposed to do? No way had she wanted him to see the postage stamp-size apartment she called home. She was supposed to be a massive success by now. She was supposed to have a posh address in the Gold Coast, a closet full of designer clothes and drawers full of designer jewelry. Well, okay, she did have those last two. But they belonged to the shop, not her. She could barely afford to rent them herself.

People believed what they wanted to believe, anyway. Even sitting in her crappy apartment, Peyton assumed she was the same dazzling—if vain, shallow and snotty—Gold Coast heiress who’d had everyone wrapped around her finger in high school. He thought she still lived in a place like the massive Georgian townhouse on Division Street where she grew up, and she still drove a car like the cream-colored Mercedes convertible she’d received for her sixteenth birthday.

He obviously hadn’t heard how the Brenners of the Gold Coast had been reduced to a state of poverty and hardship that rivaled the one he’d escaped on the South Side. He didn’t know her father was still doing time in a federal prison for tax evasion, embezzlement and a string of other charges, because he’d had to support a drug-and-call-girl habit. He didn’t know her mother had passed away in a mental hospital after too many years of trying to cope with the anguish and ostracism brought on by her husband’s betrayal. He didn’t know how, before that, Colette Brenner had left Ava’s father and taken her to Milwaukee to finish high school, or that Ava had done so in a school much like Emerson—except that she had been the poor scholarship student looked down on by the ruling class of rich kids, the same way she had looked down on Peyton and his crowd at Emerson.

Sometimes karma was a really mean schoolgirl.

But that was all the more reason she didn’t want Peyton to know the truth now. She’d barely made a dent in her karmic debt. Spending her senior year of high school walking in the shoes of the students she’d treated so shabbily for years—being treated so shabbily herself—she had learned a major life lesson. It was only one reason she’d opened Talk of the Town: so that women who hadn’t had the same advantages in life that she’d taken for granted could have the chance to walk in the designer shoes of high society, if only for a little while.

It was something she was sure Peyton would understand—if it came from anyone but Ava. If he found out what she’d gone through her senior year of high school, he’d mock her mercilessly. Not that she didn’t deserve it. But a person liked to have a little warning before she found herself in a situation like that. A person needed a little time to put on her protective armor. Especially a person who knew what a formidable force Peyton Moss could be.

“There’s no one waiting for me at home,” she said softly in response to his question.

Or anywhere else, for that matter. No one in her former circle of friends had wanted anything to do with her once she started living below the poverty line, and she’d stepped on too many toes outside that circle for anyone there to ever want to speak to her. Peyton would be no exception.

When she looked up again, he was studying her with a scrutiny that made her uncomfortable. But all he said was, “So what did happen last night?”

“You were in Basilio’s when I got there. I heard shouting in the bar and saw Dennis—he’s the bartender,” she added parenthetically, “talking to you. He suggested, um, that you might want a cup of coffee instead of another drink.”

Instead of asking about the conversation, Peyton asked, “You know the bartender by name?”

“Sure. And Basilio, the owner, and Marcus, the waiter who helped me get you to the car. I eat at that restaurant a lot.” It was the only one in the neighborhood she could afford when it came to entertaining potential clients and vendors. Not that she would admit that to Peyton.

He nodded. “Of course you eat there a lot. Why cook for yourself when you can pay someone else do it?”

Ava ignored the comment. Peyton really was going to believe whatever he wanted about her. It didn’t occur to him that sixteen years could mature a person and make her less shallow and more compassionate. Sixteen years evidently hadn’t matured him, if he was still so ready to think the worst of her.

“Anyway,” she continued, “you took exception to Dennis’s suggestion that you’d had too much to drink—and you had had too much to drink, Peyton—and you got a little...belligerent.”

“Belligerent?” he snapped. “I never get belligerent.”

Somehow Ava refrained from comment.

He seemed to realize what she was thinking, because he amended, “Anymore. It’s been a long time since I was belligerent with anyone.”

Yeah, probably about sixteen years. Once he graduated from Emerson, all the targets of his belligerence—especially Ava Brenner—would have been out of his life.

“Basilio was going to throw you out, but I...I mean, when I realized you were someone I knew...I...” She expelled a restless sound. “I told him you and I are... That we were—” Somehow, she managed not to choke on the words. “Old friends. And I offered to drive you home.”

“And he let you?” Peyton asked. “He let you leave with some belligerent guy he didn’t know from Adam? Wow. I guess he really didn’t want to offend the regular cash cow.”

Bristling, Ava told him, “He let me because you calmed down a lot after you recognized me. By the time Marcus and I got you into the car, you were actually being kind of nice. I know—hard to believe.”

There. Take that, Mr. Belligerent Cow-Caller.

“But once you were in the car,” she hurried on before he could comment, “you passed out. I didn’t have any choice but to bring you here. I roused you enough to get you into the apartment, but while I was setting up the coffee, you found your way to the bedroom and went out like a light again. I thought maybe you’d sleep it off in a few hours, but... Well. That didn’t happen.”

“I’ve been working a lot the last few weeks,” he said shortly, “on a demanding project. I haven’t gotten much sleep.”

“You were also blotto,” she reminded him. Mostly because the cow comment still stung.

In spite of that, she wondered what kind of work he did and how he’d spent his life since they graduated. How long had he been in San Francisco? Was he married? Did he have children? Even as Ava told herself it didn’t matter, she was helpless not to glance at his left hand. No ring. No indentation or tan line to suggest one had ever been there. Not that that was any definer of status. Even if he wasn’t married, that didn’t mean there wasn’t a woman who was important in his life.

Not that Ava cared about any of that. She didn’t. Really. All she cared about was getting him out of her hair. Getting him out of her apartment. Getting him out of her life.

In spite of that, she heard herself ask, “So why are you back in Chicago?”

He hesitated, as if he were trying to figure out how to reply. Finally, he said, “I’m here because my board of directors made me come.”

Board of directors? she thought incredulously. He had a board of directors? “Board of directors?” she asked. “You have a board of directors?”

The question sounded even worse coming out of her mouth than it had sitting in her head, where it had sounded pretty bad.

Before she had a chance to apologize, Peyton told her—with a glare that could have boiled an ice cube, “Yeah, Ava. I have a board of directors. They’re part of the multimillion-dollar corporation of which I am chief shareholder, not to mention CEO. A company that’s named after me. On account of, in case I didn’t mention it, I own it.”

Ava grew more astonished with every word he spoke. But her surprise wasn’t from the discovery that he was an enormous success—she’d always known Peyton could do or be whatever he wanted. She just hadn’t pegged him for becoming the corporate type. On the contrary, he’d always scorned the corporate world. He’d scorned anyone who strove to make lots of money. He’d despised people like the ones in Ava’s social circle. And now he was one of them?

This time, however, she kept her astonishment to herself.

At least, she thought she did, until he added, “You don’t have to look so shocked. I did have one or two redeeming qualities back in high school, not the least of which was a work ethic.”

“Peyton, I didn’t mean—”

“The hell you didn’t.” Before she could continue, he added, “In fact, Moss Holdings Incorporated is close to becoming a billion-dollar corporation. The only thing standing between me and those extra zeroes after my net worth is a little company in Mississippi called Montgomery and Sons. Except that it’s not owned by Montgomery or his sons anymore. They all died more than a century ago. It’s now owned by the Montgomery sons’ granddaughters. Who are both in their eighties.”

Ava had no idea what to say. Not that he seemed to expect a response from her, because he suddenly became agitated and rose from the chair to pace the room.

He sounded agitated, too, when he continued, “Helen and Dorothy Montgomery. They’re sweet little old Southern ladies who wear hats and white gloves to corporate meetings and send holiday baskets to everyone every year filled with preserves and socks they make themselves. They’re kind of legendary in the business and financial communities.”

He stopped pacing, looking at something near the front door that Ava couldn’t see. At something he probably couldn’t see, either, since whatever it was must have existed far away from the apartment.