He didn’t allow himself to finish the thought. He was afraid of what else he might discover about himself. Bad enough he understood what had brought him this far. But he did understand now. Too well. What he didn’t understand was why. Why had Ava had that effect on him when nothing else had? Why would he have been satisfied with the blue-collar life for which he had always assumed he was destined until he met her? What was it about her that had taken up residence deep inside him? Why had she been the catalyst for him to escape the mean streets when the mean streets themselves hadn’t been enough to do that?
“Is something wrong?” she asked, pulling him out of his musings.
“No,” he answered quickly. “Just trying to decide what I want.”
Which was true, he realized. He just didn’t want anything that was on the plate of sandwiches.
“The petit fours here are delicious,” she told him.
He’d just bet they were. If he knew what the hell a petit four was.
“Though you’d probably prefer something a little more substantial.”
Oh, no doubt.
“Maybe one of the curried-egg sandwiches? They’re not the kind of thing you get every day.”
And naturally Peyton didn’t want the kind of thing he could get every day. Hell, that was the whole problem.
“Or if you want something sweeter...”
He definitely wanted something sweeter.
“...you might try one of the ginger cakes.”
Except not that.
Oh, man, this thing with Ava wasn’t turning out the way he’d planned
at all.
She was supposed to be schooling him in the basics of social climbing, not advanced soul-searching. And what man wanted to discover the workings of his inner psyche for the first time in a frickin’ tearoom?
“Aaahhh...” he began, stringing the word over several time zones in an effort to stall. Finally, he finished, “Yeah. Gimme one of those curried-egg sandwiches. They sound absolutely...” The word was out of his mouth before he could stop it, so overcome by his surroundings, and so weakened by his musings, had he become. “Scrumptious.”
Okay, that did it. With that terrible word, he could feel what little was left of his testosterone oozing out of every pore. A man could only take so much tea and remain, well, manly. And a man could only take so much self-discovery and remain sane. If Peyton didn’t get out of this place soon...if he didn’t get away from Ava soon...if he didn’t get someplace, anyplace, far away from here—far away from
her
—ASAP, someplace where he could look inside himself and figure out what the hell was going on in his brain...
Bottom line, he just had to get outta here. Now.
“Look, Ava, do you mind if we cut this short?” he asked. “I just remembered a conference call I’m supposed to be in on in—” He looked at his watch and pretended to be shocked at the time. “Wow. Thirty minutes. I really need to get back to my hotel.”
She looked genuinely crushed. “But the tea...”
“Can we get a doggie bag?”
Judging by the way her expression changed, he might as well have just asked her if he could jump up onto the table, whip off his pants and introduce everyone to Mr. Happy.
“No,” she said through gritted teeth. “One does not ask for a doggie bag for one’s afternoon tea. Especially not in a place like this.”
“Well, I don’t know why the hell not,” he snapped.
Oh, yeah. There it was. With even that mild profanity, he sucked some of his retreating testosterone back in. Now if he could just figure out how to reclaim the rest of it...
He glanced around until he saw a waiter—or whatever passed for a waiter in this place, since they were all dressed like maître d’s—and waved the guy down in the most obnoxious way he knew how.
“Hey, you! Garson!” he shouted, deliberately mispronouncing the French word for
waiter.
“Could we get a doggie bag over here?”
Everyone in the room turned to stare at him—and Ava—in frank horror. That, Peyton had to admit, helped a lot with his masculine recovery. Okay, so he was acting like a jerk, and doing it at Ava’s expense. Sometimes, in case of emergency, a man had to break the glass on his incivility. No, on his crudeness, he corrected himself. His grossness. His bad effin’ manners. Those were way better words for what he was tapping into. And wow, did it feel good.
He braved a glance at Ava and saw that she had propped her elbows on the table and dropped her head into her hands.
“Yo, Ava,” he said. “Take your elbows off the table. That is so impolite. Everyone is staring at us. Jeez, I can’t take you anywhere.” He looked back at the waiter, who hadn’t budged from the spot where he had been about to serve a couple of elderly matrons from a pile of flowered cakes. “What, am I not speakin’ English here?” he yelled. Funny, but he seemed to have suddenly developed a Bronx accent. “Yeah, you in the penguin suit. Could we get a doggie bag for our—” he gestured toward the tea caddy and the plates on the table “—for all this stuff? I mean, at these prices, I don’t want it to go to waste. Know what I’m sayin’?”
“Peyton, what are you doing?” Ava asked from behind her hands. “Are you trying to get us thrown out of here?”
Wasn’t that obvious? Was he really not speakin’ English here?
“Garson!” he shouted again. “Hey, we don’t got all day.”
Ava groaned softly from behind her hands, then said something about how she would never be able to take tea here again. It was all Peyton could do not to reply,
You’re welcome.
Instead, he continued to channel his inner bad-mannered adolescent—who he wasn’t all that surprised to discover lurked just beneath his surface. “The service in this place sucks, Ava. Next time, we should hit Five Guys instead. At least they give you your food in a bag. I don’t think this guy’s going to bring us one.”
He figured he’d said enough now to make her snap up her head and blast him for being such a jerk—as politely as she could, naturally, since they were in a public place. Instead, when she dropped her hands, she just looked tired. Really, really tired. And she didn’t say a word. She only stood, gathered her purse and gloves, turned her back, and walked away with all the elegance of a czarina.
Peyton was stunned. She wasn’t going to say something combative in response? She wasn’t going to call him uncouth? She wasn’t going to tell him how it was men like him who gave his entire gender a bad name? She wasn’t going to glare daggers or spit fire? She was just going to walk away without even trying?
When he realized that yep, that was exactly what she was going to do, he bolted after her. He was nearly to the exit when he realized they hadn’t paid their bill, so ran back to the table long enough to drop a handful of twenties on top of it. He didn’t wait for change. Hell, their server deserved a 100-percent tip for the way he had just behaved.
When he vaulted out of the tearoom onto the street, he found himself drowning in a river of people making the Friday-afternoon jump start from work to weekend. He looked left, then right, but had no idea which way Ava had gone. Remembering her outfit, he searched for a splash of white amid the sullen colors of business suits, driving his gaze in every direction. Finally, he spotted her, in the middle of a crosswalk at the end of the block, buttoning up those damned white gloves, as if she were Queen Elizabeth on her way to address the royal guard.
He hurtled after her, but by the time he made it to the curb, she was on the other side of the street and the light was changing. Not that that deterred him. As he sprinted into the crosswalk against the light, half a dozen drivers honked their displeasure, and he was nearly clipped by more than one bumper. Even when he made it safely to the other side of the street, he kept running, trying to catch up to the wisp of white that was Ava.
Every time he thought he was within arm’s reach, someone or something blocked him from touching her, and for every step he took forward, she seemed to take two. Panic welled in him that he would never reach her, until she turned a corner onto a side street that was much less crowded. Still, he had to lengthen his stride to catch up with her, and still, for a moment, it seemed he never would. Finally, he drew near enough to grasp her upper arm and spin her around to face him. She immediately jerked out of his hold, swinging her handbag as she came. Peyton let her go, dodging her bag easily, then lifted both hands in surrender.
“Ava, I’m sorry,” he said breathlessly. “But... Stop. Just stop a minute. Please.”
For a moment, they stood there on the sidewalk looking at each other, each out of breath, each poised for...something. Peyton had no idea what. Ava should have looked ridiculous in her turn-of-the-century garb, brandishing her handbag in her little white gloves, her netted hat dipping to one side. Instead, she seemed ferocious enough to snap him in two. A passerby jostled him from behind, sending him forward a step, until he was nearly toe to toe with her. She took a step in retreat, never altering her pose.
“Leave me alone,” she said without preamble.
“No,” he replied just as succinctly.
“Leave me alone, Peyton,” she repeated adamantly. “I’m going home.”
“No.”
He wasn’t sure whether he uttered the word in response to her first sentence or the second, but really, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to leave her alone, and he didn’t want her to go home. Despite his conviction only moments ago that he needed to be by himself to sort out his thoughts, isolation was suddenly the last thing he wanted. Not that he was sure what the
first
thing was that he wanted, but... Well, okay, maybe he did kind of know what the first thing was that he wanted. He just wasn’t sure he knew what to do with it if he got it. Well, okay, maybe he did kind of know that, too, but...
“You said we still have a lot of work to do before I can go out with Francesca,” he reminded her, shoving his thoughts to the back of his brain and hoping they stayed there. “That’s only a week away.”
She relaxed her stance, dropping her purse to her side. It struck him again that she looked tired. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her looking like that before. Not since reacquainting himself with her in Chicago. Not when they were kids. It was...unsettling.
Then he remembered that yes, he had seen her that tired once. That night at her parents’ house when they’d been up so late studying. It had unsettled him then, too. Enough that he’d wanted to do something to make her less weary. Enough that he’d placed his hands on her shoulders to rub away the knots in her tense muscles. But the moment he’d touched her—
He pushed that thought to the back of his brain, too. He
really
didn’t need to be thinking about that right now.
“You should have thought about your date with Francesca before you humiliated us the tearoom,” she said.
“Yeah, about that,” he began. Not that he had any idea what to say about that, but
about that
seemed like a good start.
Ava spared him, however. “Peyton, we could work for a year, and it wouldn’t make any difference. You’ll just keep sabotaging us.”
He couldn’t help noting her use of the word
us.
She hadn’t said he was sabotaging himself. She hadn’t said he was sabotaging her efforts. She’d said he was sabotaging the two of them. He wondered if she noticed, too, how she’d lumped the two of them together, or if she even realized she’d said it. Even if she did, what did it mean, if anything?
“I only sabotaged us today,” he told her. “And only because you were going out of your way to make things harder than they had to be.”
Even though that was true, it wasn’t why he’d behaved the way he had. He’d done that because he’d needed to get out of that place as fast as he could. The problem now was convincing Ava that he still wanted to move forward after deliberately taking so many giant steps backward.
And the problem was that, suddenly, his wanting to continue with this ridiculous makeover had less to do with winning over the Montgomery sisters in Mississippi...and more to do with winning over Ava right here in Chicago.
Eight
A
va trudged up the stairs to her apartment with Peyton two steps behind, silently willing him to twist his ankle. Not enough to do any permanent damage. Just enough to make him have to sit down and rub it for a few minutes so she could escape him.
In spite of her demands to leave her alone, he had followed her for three blocks, neither of them saying a word. She’d thought he would give up when they reached the door behind the shop that opened onto the stairwell leading up to her apartment. But he’d stuck his foot in it before she had a chance to slam it in his face. At this point, she was too tired to argue with him. If he wanted to follow her all the way up so she could slam her apartment door in his face, then that was his prerogative.
But he was too fast for her there, as well, shoving the toe of his new Gucci loafer between door and jamb before she had a chance to make the two connect. She leaned harder on the door, trying to put enough force into it that he would have to remove his foot or risk having his toes crushed. But his shoe held firm. Damn the excellence of Italian design anyway.
“Ava, let me in,” he said, curling his fingers around the door and pushing back.
“Go. Away,” she told him. Again.
“Just talk to me for a few minutes. Please?”
She sighed wearily and eased up on the door. Peyton shouldered it harder, gaining enough ground to win access to the apartment. But he halted halfway in, clearly surprised by his success. His face was scant inches from Ava’s, and his fingertips on the door skimmed hers. Even though she was still wearing her white gloves, she could feel the warmth of his hand against hers. He was close enough for her to see how the amber of his irises was circled by a thin line of gold. Close enough for her to see a small scar on his chin that hadn’t been there in high school. Close enough for her to smell the faint scent of something cool and spicy that clung to him. Close enough for her to feel his heat mingling with her own.
Close enough for her to wish he would move closer still.
Which was why she sprang away from the door and hurried toward the kitchen. Tea, she told herself. That was what she needed. A nice, calming cup of tea. She’d hardly had a chance to taste hers in the shop. She had a particularly soothing chamomile that would be perfect. Anything to take her thoughts off wanting to be close to Peyton.
No!
she quickly corrected herself. Anything to take her thoughts off her lousy afternoon.
Without wasting a moment to remove her gloves or hat—barely even taking the time to shove the netting of the latter back from her face—she snatched the kettle from the stove, filled it with water and returned it to the burner as she spun the knob to turn it on. Then she busied herself with retrieving the tea canister from the cupboard and searching a drawer for the strainer. She felt Peyton’s gaze on her the entire time, so knew he had followed as far as the kitchen, but she pretended not to notice. Instead, after readying the tea and cup, she began sorting through other utensils in the drawer, trying to look as if she were searching for something else that was very important—like her peace of mind, since that had completely fled.
“Ava,” he finally said when it became clear she wouldn’t continue the conversation.
“What?” she asked, still focused on the contents of the drawer.
“Will you please talk to me?”
“Are we not talking?” she asked, not looking up. “It sounds to me as if we’re talking. If we’re not talking, then what are we doing?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m trying to get you to look at me so I can explain why I did what I did earlier.”
He wasn’t going to leave until they’d hashed this out. So she halted her phony search and slammed the drawer shut, turning to face him fully. “You were trying to get us thrown out of there on purpose,” she said.
“You’re right. I was,” he admitted, surprising her.
He stood in the entry to the kitchen, filling it, making the tiny space feel microscopic. During their walk, he had wrestled his necktie free of his collar and unbuttoned his jacket and the top buttons of his shirt, but he still looked uncomfortable in the garments. Truth be told, he hadn’t looked comfortable this week in any of his new clothes. He’d always looked as if he wanted to shed the skin of the animal she was trying to change him into. He looked that way now, too.
But he’d asked her to change him, she reminded herself. There was no reason for her to feel this sneaking guilt. She was trying to help him. She
was.
He was the one who had wrecked their afternoon today with his boorish behavior. He even admitted it.
“Why did you do it?” she asked. “We were having such a nice time.”
“No,
you
were having a nice time, Ava.
I
was turning into Mary fu—uh... Mary friggin’ Poppins.”
“But Peyton, if you want to get along in—” somehow, she managed to get the words out “—my world, then you need to know how to—”
“I don’t need to know how to
take tea,
” he interrupted her, fairly spitting the last two words. “Admit it, Ava. The only reason you took me to that place was to get even with me for something. For being less than a gentleman—what you consider a gentleman, anyway—at the Art Institute yesterday. Or maybe for something else this week. God knows you’re as hard to read now as you were in high school.”
Ignoring his suggestion that she’d made him go to the tearoom as a punishment—since, okay, maybe possibly perhaps there was an element of truth in that—and ignoring, too, his charge that she was hard to read since he’d never bothered to see past the superficial—she latched on to his other comment instead. “What
I
consider a gentleman?” she said indignantly. “News flash, Peyton—what I’m teaching you to be is what any woman in her right mind would want a man to be.”
He grinned at that. An arrogant grin very like the ones to which he’d treated her in high school. “Oh, yeah? Funny, but a lot of women who knew me before this week liked me just fine the way I was.
A lot
of women, Ava,” he reiterated with much emphasis. “Just
fine.
”
She smiled back with what she hoped was the same sort of arrogance. “Note that I said, ‘any woman in her
right
mind.’ I doubt you’ve known too many of those, considering the social circle—or whatever it was—you grew up in.”
She wanted to slap herself for the comment. Not just because it was so snotty, but because it wasn’t true. Right-minded people weren’t defined by their social circles. There were plenty of people in Chicago’s upper crust who were crass and insufferable, and there were plenty of people living in poverty who were the picture of dignity and decency. But that was the effect Peyton had on her—he made her want to make him feel as small as he made her feel. The same way he had in high school.
He continued to smile, but his eyes went flinty. “Yeah, but these days, I move in the same kind of circle you grew up in. And hell, Ava, at least I
earned
my money. That’s more than you can say for yourself. Your daddy gave you everything you ever had. And even Daddy didn’t work for what he had. He got it from his old man. Who got it from his old man. Who got it from his old man. Hell, Ava, how long has it been since anyone in your family actually
worked
for all the nice things they own?”
Something in her chest pinched tight at that. Not just because what he said about her father was true—although Jennings Brenner III earned pennies these days working in the prison kitchen, he’d inherited his wealth the same way countless Brenners before him had. But also because Ava still hated the reminder of the way her family used to be, and the way they’d treated people like Peyton. She hated the reminder of the way
she
used to be, and the way
she’d
treated people like Peyton. He was right about her money, too—about the money she’d had back in high school, anyway. It hadn’t been hers. She hadn’t earned any of it. At least Peyton had had a job after school and paid his own way in the world. In that regard, he’d been richer back then than she. She’d
really
had no right to treat him the way she had when they were kids.
The kettle began to boil, and, grateful for the distraction, she spun around to pour the hot water carefully into her cup. For long moments, she said nothing, just focused on brewing her tea. Peyton’s agitation at her silence was almost palpable. He took a few steps into the kitchen, pausing right beside her. Close enough that she could again feel his heat and inhale the savory scent of him. Close enough that she again wanted him to move closer still.
“So that’s it?” he asked.
Still fixing her attention on her cup, she replied, “So what’s it?”
“You’re not going to say anything else?”
“What else am I supposed to say?”
“I don’t know. Something about how my money is new money, so it’s not worthy of comparison to yours, being as old and moldy as it is, or something like that.”
The teenage Ava would have said exactly that. Only she would have delivered the comment in a way that made it sound even worse than Peyton did. Today’s Ava wanted no part of it. What today’s Ava did want, however...
Well. That was probably best not thought about. Not while Peyton was standing so close, looking and smelling as good as he did.
She sidestepped his question by replying, “Why would I say something like that when you’ve already said it?”
“Because I didn’t mean it.”
“Fine. You didn’t mean it.”
Instead of placating him, her agreement only seemed to irritate him more. “Why aren’t you arguing with me?”
“Why do you want me to argue?”
“Stop answering my questions with a question.”
“Am I doing that?”
“Dammit, Ava, I—”
She spoke automatically, as she had all week, when she said, “Watch your language.”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “No.”
That, finally, made her look up. “What?”
He smiled again, but this time it was less arrogant than it was challenging. “I said, ‘No,’” he repeated. “I’m not going to watch my language. I’m sick of watching my language.”
To prove his point, he followed that announcement with a string of profanity that made Ava wince. Then he fairly rocked back on his heels, as if waiting for her to retaliate. No, as if he was looking forward to her retaliation. As if he would relish it.
So, in retaliation, Ava went back to her tea. She dunked the strainer a few more times, removed it from the brew and set it aside. Then she lifted the cup to her lips and blew softly to cool it. When she braved a glimpse at Peyton, she could see that his annoyance had steeped into anger. She replaced her tea on the counter without tasting it. But she continued to gaze into its pale yellow depths when she spoke.
“No more arguing, Peyton. I’m tired of it, and it gets us nowhere.”
He said nothing in response, only stood with his body rigid, glaring at her. Then, gradually, he relented. She could almost feel the fight go out of him, too, as if he were just as tired of the antagonism as she was.
“If I apologize for my behavior this afternoon,” he asked, “will you come back to work for me?”
She told herself to say no and assure him that he’d learned enough to manage the rest of the way by himself. But for some reason, she said nothing.
“You said we still have a lot of work to do,” he reminded her.
She told herself to admit she’d only said that because she hadn’t wanted to end their time together. But for some reason, she said nothing.
“I mean, what if Caroline sets up a date for me and Francesca that involves seafood? I don’t know how to eat a lobster that doesn’t include slamming it on a picnic table a half dozen times.”
She told herself to tell him he should just ask the matchmaker not to send them to Catch Thirty-Five.
“Or what if she makes us go to a wine bar? You and I have barely covered wine, and that’s something you rich people always end up talking about at some point.”
She told herself to tell him he should just ask the matchmaker not to send them to Avec.
“Or, my God, dancing. I don’t know how to do any of that Arthur Murray stuff. I can’t even do that ‘Gangnam Style’ horse thing.”
Although that made her smile, Ava told herself to tell him he should just ask the matchmaker not to send them to Neo.
She told herself to tell him all those things. Then she heard herself say, “All right. I’ll teach you about seafood, wine and dancing between now and the end of next week.”
“And some other stuff, too,” he interjected.
She looked up at that and immediately wished she hadn’t. Within the passage of a few moments, he’d somehow become even more attractive than he was before. He looked...gentler. More personable. More approachable. Like the sort of man any woman in her right mind would want...
“What other stuff?” she asked, quelling the thought before it fully formed.
He seemed at a loss for a minute, then said, “I’ll make a list.”
“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly. It was only for another week. Surely she could be around him for one more week without losing her heart.
Mind,
she quickly corrected herself. Without losing her mind.
“Do you promise?” he asked, sounding uncertain.
It was an odd request. Why did he want her to promise? It was as if they were back to being adolescents. Why didn’t he trust her to follow through? She’d done her part this week to teach him all the things he’d asked her to help him with. It was only when he’d thrown those lessons out the window and turned into a boor that she’d walked away.
“Yes, I promise.”
“You promise to help me with everything I need help with?”
“Yes. I promise. But in return, you have to promise you’ll stop challenging me every step of the way.”
He grinned at that, but there was nothing arrogant or challenging in the gesture this time. In fact, this time, when Peyton smiled, he looked quite charming. “Oh, come on. You love it when I challenge you.”
Oh, sure. About as much as she had loved it in high school.