The Billionaire Gets His Way by Elizabeth Bevarly Read Free Book Online Page B

business from the ground up. He’d begun with dirty fingernails and secondhand clothes, performing backbreaking labor from sunup ’til sundown to collect a paycheck that barely sustained him. He schooled himself at night, both in the ways of business and the streets, still managing to earn his degrees—yes, he had three of them—”
    At this, he took a break from the reading to glance to the left. Violet followed his gaze and found herself looking at three framed degrees hanging on the wall.
    â€œâ€”three of them,” Gavin continued, returning his attention to the book, “earning them in less time than his infinitely more privileged classmates took to earn one. And don’t think the realization of that had humbled him in any way. On the contrary. Ethan’s feelings of entitlement, authority and superiority were all rooted in those early days and had only flourished since.
    â€œThose days were well in his past, however. When I met Ethan, he was wearing a twenty-five-hundred-dollar Canali suit—wool and cashmere, of course—and Santoni loafers that must have set him back at least another fifteen hundred. His tie, I knew, was a silk Hermès—I’d soon learn that all of his ties were silk, which made those evenings whenhe wanted to tie me to the bed with them that much more enjoyable—and his shirt was a fine cotton Ferragamo. I know my men’s fashion, dear reader, and trust me. Ethan, more than any of the hundreds of men I’ve bedded, knew men’s fashion, too.”
    He looked up from the page, closed the book, and stared straight at Violet. “I’m sorry I don’t read out loud with the breathlessness and pretentiousness a passage like this demands, but—”
    â€œBreathlessness?” Violet interrupted indignantly. “Pretentiousness?” she echoed even more angrily. “Roxanne isn’t pretentious. Today’s readers love all that name-dropping product placement. Didn’t you ever watch Sex and the City? Jeez. And she’s only breathless because her clients pay good money for that kind of thing. They want her to sound like Marilyn Monroe.”
    Gavin eyed her steadily, a faint smile dancing about his lips. “I thought you said this was fiction.”
    Violet felt her defensiveness rising to the fore again, and she straightened, squaring her shoulders once more. “It is fiction.”
    â€œThe way you talk about Roxanne, she sounds like she’s real.”
    Now Violet lifted her chin an indignant inch, too. “Well, she’s real to me. All my characters feel real when I’m writing about them.”
    â€œMaybe because they are real? Real people you haven’t even tried to disguise except for lamely changing their names?”
    â€œNo way,” she stated adamantly. “You ask any novelist worth her salt, and she’ll say she feels like her characters are real, even if she knows they aren’t.”
    â€œEverything you wrote about Ethan in that passage could be said of me.” He smiled in full now, but there wasn’tanything happy in the gesture. “But then, you already know that. How you know it, I’m not sure, because much of it isn’t common knowledge. You must have found someone who knew me twenty years ago in New York and paid them a bundle to reveal the information. Even more than I paid them to keep it quiet.”
    â€œI have no idea what you’re talking about,” Violet assured him. “I’d never heard of you before you forced your business card on me.”
    Now his smile turned indulgent. Which still wasn’t happy. “Okay. Let’s pretend you’re as ignorant as you say. Let’s act as if you really don’t know anything about me.”
    â€œI don’t know anything about—”
    â€œYou saw the letters on my card,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “GMT stands for Gavin Mason