MY FAIR BILLIONAIRE (6 page)

“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.

Five

A
fter addressing Peyton’s wardrobe and hair, ah, challenges, Ava turned his attention to the appreciation of life’s finer things—art, music, theater. At least, that was where she was planning to turn his attention the morning after their sartorial adventures. No sooner did she rap lightly on the door of his hotel suite, however, than did she discover her plans were about to go awry.

“Sorry,” he said by way of a greeting. “But we have to cancel this morning. I’m supposed to meet with the matchmaker. I forgot all about it yesterday when you and I made plans for this morning.”

Ava told herself the reason for the sudden knot her stomach was because she was peeved at his last-minute canceling of their date. Ah, she meant
plans.
And she was peeved because they were
plans
she’d given herself the day off from work for when she might have saved herself some money instead of paying Lucy overtime. It had nothing to do with the fact that Peyton would be spending the morning with another woman.

Not that the other woman was, you know,
another
woman,
since for her to be that, Ava would have to be the primary woman in his life, and of course that wasn’t the case. Besides, the other woman he was seeing today was only a matchmaker. A matchmaker who would be setting him up with, well,
other women.
Women he would be seeing socially. Confidentially. Romantically.

The knot squeezed tighter. Because she was peeved, Ava reminded herself. Peeved that he was messing up their
plans.

“Oh. Okay,” she said, sounding troubled and unhappy, and in no way peeved.

“I’m really sorry,” he apologized again. “When I checked my voice mail last night, there was a message from Caroline—she’s the matchmaker—reminding me. By then it was too late to call you, and you didn’t answer your phone this morning.”

He must have called while she was in the shower. “Well, you don’t want to miss a meeting with her. I’m sure you and she have a lot to go over before you can launch your quest for Ms. Right.”

“Actually, I’ve already met with her once. We’re meeting today because she’s rounded up some possible matches, and she wants me to look at their photos and go over their stats before she makes the actual introductions. Maybe we could just push things back to this afternoon?”

“Sure. No problem.”

So what if Peyton was meeting with his matchmaker? Ava asked herself. He was supposed to be doing that. Finding an appropriate woman was half the reason he was back in Chicago, and Ava didn’t even have to work with him on that part. She only had to make sure he was presentable to any woman he did meet.

She leaped on that realization. “But you know, Peyton, I’m not sure you’re ready to meet any prospective dates just yet. We still have a lot of work to do to get you ready for that.”

“How much more do we have to do?”

He’d actually come a long way in four days, Ava had to admit. And not just because of his stylish new wardrobe and excellent new haircut—which he had finally agreed to get at her salon, but not after much haggling. Haggling that, in hindsight, hadn’t been all that unpleasant, especially when he seemed to be enjoying it as much as she did.

At any rate, his faded jeans and bulky sweater of the day before had made way for expensive dark-wash denim and a more fitted sweater in what she knew was espresso, but which she’d conceded to Peyton—after more surprisingly enjoyable haggling—was actually brown. His shorter hair had showcased the few threads of silver amid the black, something that gave him a definite executive aura—not to mention an added bit of sexiness. Ava’s charcoal skirt and claret cashmere sweater set—both by Chanel—should have seemed dressy, but he made denim and cotton aristocratic to the point where she felt like the palace gardener. He was the kind of client that would make a matchmaker drool—never mind the effect he would have on his prospective matches. It was amazing what a little polish would do for a guy.

Then again, it wasn’t always the clothes that made the man. What made Peyton Peyton was what was beneath the clothes. And that was something even teaching him about the finer things in life wouldn’t change. Yes, he needed to learn to become a gentleman if he wanted to impress the sisters Montgomery and acquire their company. But there was too much roughneck in him to ever let the gentleman take over for very long.

It was a realization that should have made Ava even more peeved, since it suggested that everything she was doing to help him was pointless. Instead, it comforted her.

Remembering he’d asked her a question that needed a response, she said, “Well, I was kind of hoping to cover the arts this week. And we still need to fine-tune your restaurant etiquette. And we should—” She halted. There was no reason to make him think there was still tons more to do, since there really wasn’t. For some reason, though, she found herself wishing there was still tons more to do. “Not a lot,” she said. “There’s not a lot.”

Instead of looking pleased about that, he looked kind of, well, peeved.

“I should go,” she told him. “What time do you think you’ll be finished?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I could call you when we’re done?”

She nodded and started to turn away.

“Unless...”

She turned to face him. “Unless what?”

He looked a little uncomfortable. “Unless maybe...” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, a restless gesture. “Unless maybe you want to come with me?”

It was an odd request. For one thing, Caroline the matchmaker would be curious—not to mention possibly peeved—if Peyton showed up with a woman. A woman who, by the way, Caroline had had no part in setting him up with, so she wouldn’t be collecting a finder’s fee. For another thing, why would Peyton want Ava with him when he considered a potentially life-changing decision?

As if he’d heard her unspoken question, he hurried on, “I mean, you might be able to give me some advice or something. I’ve never worked with a matchmaker before.”

Oh, and she had? Jeez, she hadn’t even had a date in more than a year. She was the last person who should be giving advice about matters of the heart. Not that Peyton needed to know any of that, but still.

“Please, Ava?” he asked, sounding as if he genuinely wanted her to come along. “You know what kind of woman I need to find. One who’s just like—”

You.
That was what he had been about to say. That was the word his lips had been about to form, the one hanging in the air between them, the one exiting his head and entering her own. Ava knew it as surely as she knew her own name.

After an almost imperceptible pause, he finished, “—Jackie Kennedy. I need to find a woman like Jackie Kennedy.”

Oh, sure. As if there were
any
women in the world like Jackie Kennedy. How Peyton could have jumped from thinking about Ava to thinking about her was a mystery.

“Okay, I’ll come with you,” she said. She had no idea when she had made the decision to do so. And she was even more uncertain about why. What was really odd, though, was how, suddenly, somehow, she didn’t feel quite as peeved as she had before.

* * *

The office of Attachments, Inc. had surprised Peyton on his first visit. He’d thought a matchmaker’s office would be full of hearts and flowers, furnished with overblown Victorian furniture in a million different colors, with sappy chamber music playing over it all. Instead, the place was much like his own office in San Francisco, twenty stories above the city, with wide windows that offered panoramic views of Lake Michigan and Navy Pier, furnished in contemporary sleekness and soothing earth tones. The music was jazz, and the only plants were potted bamboo.

Caroline, too, had come as a surprise that first time. He’d expected a gingham-clad grandmother with a graying bun and glasses perched on her nose, but the woman who greeted him and Ava was a far cry from that. Yes, her hair was silver, but it hung loose and was stylishly cut, and her glasses were shoved atop her head. In place of gingham, she was wrapped in a snug, sapphire-colored dress and wearing mile-high heels that click-click-clicked on the tile floor as she approached them.

“Mr. Moss,” she gushed when she came to a stop in front of him and extended her hand the way any high-powered business CEO would. “It is so nice to see you again.” Her gushing ebbed considerably, however—in fact, the temperature seemed to drop fifty degrees—when she turned to Ava and said, “Now who are you?”

Before Ava had a chance to answer, Peyton replied, “She’s my, ah, my assistant. Ava Brenner.”

Caroline gave Ava a quick once-over and, evidently satisfied with his answer, immediately dismissed her. She turned to Peyton again. “Well, then. If you’d like to come back to my office, we can get down to business.”

Confident the two of them would follow, she spun on her mile-high heels and click-click-clicked in the direction from which she’d come. Peyton turned to Ava and started to shrug, but stopped when he saw her expression. She looked kind of...peeved. Although that wasn’t a word in his normal vocabulary, he couldn’t think of any other adjective to describe her. She was looking at him as if he’d just insulted her. He backtracked the last few seconds in his brain, then remembered he’d introduced her as his assistant. Okay, so maybe that suggested she was his subordinate, but he was paying her to help him out, so that sort of made her an employee, and that kind of made her a subordinate. And what was the big deal anyway? Some of his best friends were subordinates.

Anyway, they didn’t have time for another argument. So he only gestured after the hastily departing Caroline and asked, “Are you coming?”

“Do I have a choice?” she replied crisply.

He did shrug this time, hoping the gesture looked more sincere than it felt. “You could wait out here if you want.”

For a moment, he thought she would take him up on that, and a weird panic rose in his belly. She wouldn’t. He needed her to help him with this. He had no idea what kind of woman would be acceptable to his board of directors. Other than that she had to have all the qualities Ava had.

Caroline called back to them, and although Ava tensed even more, she turned in the direction of the matchmaker and began to march forward. Relief—and a strange kind of happiness—washed over Peyton as he followed. Because he needed her, he told himself. Or rather, he needed her
help.
That was why he was glad she hadn’t stayed in the waiting room. It had nothing to do with how he just felt better having her at his side. The reason he felt better having her at his side was because, you know, she was helping him. Which he needed. Her help, he meant. Not her at his side.

Ah, hell. He was just happy—he meant
relieved
—that she was with him.

Caroline’s office was a better reflection of her trade. The walls were painted the color of good red wine, and a wide Persian rug spanned a floor that had magically become hardwood. Her desk was actually kind of Victorian-looking, but it was tempered by the sleek city skyline in the windows behind her. On one wall hung certificates for various accomplishments, along with two degrees in psychology from Northwestern. Her bookshelf was populated less by books than by artifacts from world travels, but the books present were all about relationships and sexuality.

Instead of deploying her strategy from behind her desk, Caroline scooped up a small stack of manila folders atop it, invited Peyton and Ava to seat themselves on an overstuffed sofa on the opposite wall, then sat down in a matching chair beside it.

“May I call you Peyton?” she asked with a warm smile.

“Sure,” he told her.

He waited for her to smile warmly at Ava and ask if she could call her by her first name, too, but Caroline instead began to sift through the folders until she homed in on one in particular.

Still smiling her warm smile—which Peyton would have sworn was genuine until she dismissed Ava so readily—she said, “I inputted your vital statistics, your likes and dislikes, and what you’re looking for in a match into the computer, and I found four women I think you’ll like very much. This one in particular,” she added as she opened the top folder, “is quite a catch. Very old-money Chicago, born and raised here, Art Institute graduate, active volunteer in the local arts community, a curator for a small gallery on State Street, contributing reviewer for the
Tribune,
member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.... Oh, the list just goes on and on. She has every quality you’re looking for.”

Caroline handed the open folder to Peyton, who took it automatically. It contained a few sheets of printed information with a four-by-six head shot attached. It was to the latter that his gaze was naturally drawn. The woman was—well, there was no other word for it—breathtakingly beautiful. Okay, okay, that was two words, but that just went to show how amazingly gorgeous and incredibly dazzling she was. Women who looked like her just demanded adverbs to go along with the adjectives. Her hair was dark auburn and pooled around her bare shoulders; her eyes were huge, green and thickly lashed. He didn’t kid himself that the photo wasn’t retouched or that she would look the same had she not been so artfully made up with the kind of cosmetic wizardry that made a woman look as though she wasn’t wearing makeup at all. She was still... Wow. Breathtakingly beautiful, amazingly gorgeous and incredibly dazzling.

“Wow,” he said, speaking his thoughts aloud. Well, part of them, anyway. There were some that were best left in his head.

“Indeed,” said Caroline with a satisfied smile. “Her name is—”

“Vicki,” Ava finished, at the same time Caroline was saying, “Victoria.”

The women exchanged looks, then spoke as one again. But, again, they each said something different.

“Victoria Haverty,” said the matchmaker.

“Vicki Nielsson,” said Ava.

The two women continued to stare at each other, but it was Caroline alone who spoke this time. “Do you know Ms. Haverty?”

Ava nodded. “Oh, yes. We debuted together. But Haverty is her maiden name. She’s Vicki Nielsson now.”