“I think we’ve both had enough for today,” she said decisively.
“We finally get to escape the museum?” he asked with feigned hopefulness, still looking plenty irritated by her last remark.
“Yes, we’ve had enough of that, too. Since it looks like you have the literary angle covered, tomorrow we can tackle music.”
He looked as if he were going to protest, then the fight seemed to go out of him. “Okay. Fine. Whatever. What time should I pick you up?”
She shook her head, as she did every time he asked that question—and he’d asked it every day. She said the same thing she always said in response. “I’ll meet you.”
Before he could object—something else he did every day—she gave him the address of a jazz record store on East Illinois and told him to be there when they opened.
“And then I bet we get to have lunch at another pretentious restaurant,” he said, sounding as weary as she felt. “Hey, I know. I’ll even wear one of my new suits this time.”
She knew he meant for the comment to be sarcastic. So she only echoed his ennui back. “Okay. Fine. Whatever.”
Ennui.
Right. As if the tension and fatigue they were feeling could be ascribed to a lack of interest. Then again, maybe for Peyton, it was. He’d made no secret about his reluctance to be My Fair Gentlemanned to within an inch of his life. He really didn’t give a damn about any of this and was only doing it to further his business. Ava wished she could share his disinterest. The reason for her impatience and irritation this week had nothing to do with not caring.
And it had everything to do with caring too much.
Seven
P
eyton gazed at Ava from across the smallest table he’d ever been forced to sit at and did his best to ignore the ruffled lavender tablecloth and flowered china tea set atop it. He tried even harder to ignore the cascade of lace curtains to his right and the elaborately scrolled ironwork tea caddy to his left. And it would be best not to get him started on the little triangular sandwiches with the crusts cut off or the mountain of frothy pastries.
Tea.
She was actually making him
take tea
with her. In a tea shop. Full of women in hats and gloves. Hell, even Ava was wearing a hat and gloves. A little white hat with one of those netted veil things that fell over her eyes, and white gloves that went halfway up her arm with a bazillion buttons. Her white dress had even more buttons than her gloves did.
She hadn’t been wearing the hat or gloves when she’d walked into the record store earlier, so he hadn’t realized what was in store for him. She’d pulled them out of her oversize purse as the two of them rode to the damned
tea
shop—except she hadn’t said they were going to a
tea
shop. She’d said they were going to a late lunch.
Still, the appearance of a hat and gloves should have been his first clue that “lunch” was going to be even worse than something he’d put on a damned suit for. Something that would, in Ava’s words, aid in his edification. He just wished he could believe this was for his edification instead of being some kind of punishment for his behavior at the museum yesterday.
He also wished he could think Ava looked ridiculous in her dainty alabaster frock and habiliments. Which was the kind of language to use for a getup like that, even if those were words he had always—before this week, anyway—manfully avoided. Hell, she looked as if she was an escapee from an overbudgeted period film set during the First World War. Unfortunately, there was something about the getup that was also... Well... Dammit. Unbelievably hot.
Which was just what he needed. To be turned on by Ava, the last woman on the planet who should be turning him on. He’d been so sure he could remain unaffected by her while they were undertaking this self-improvement thing. After all, they hadn’t gotten along at all that first morning at her apartment. Instead, with every passing day, he’d just become more bewitched by her.
Just as he had in high school.
It was only physical, he told himself. The same way it had only been physical in high school. There was just some kind of weird chemistry between them. Her pheromones talking to his pheromones or something. Talking, hell. More like screaming at the top of their lungs. People didn’t have to like each other to be sexually attracted to each other. They just had to have loud, obnoxious pheromones.
Tea,
he reminded himself distastefully.
Focus on the fact that she’s making you sit in a tearoom drinking—gak—
tea
and eating the kind of stuff that no self-respecting possessor of a Y chromosome should ingest.
God knew what this was going to do to his testosterone levels.
“Now then,” she said in a voice that was every bit as prissy as her outfit. “Taking tea. This will probably be your biggest challenge yet.”
Oh, Peyton didn’t doubt that for a minute. What he did doubt was that many people actually
took tea
—he just couldn’t think that phrase in anything but a snotty tone of voice...tone of mind...whatever—in this country. Not any people with a Y chromosome, anyway.
“A lot of people think the art of tea has fallen by the wayside over the years,” she continued, obviously reading his mind. Or maybe his distasteful expression. “But it’s actually been rising in popularity. Hence your need to be familiar with it.”
“Ava,” he said, mustering as much patience as he could, “I think I can safely say that no matter how high in society I go, I will never, ever, ask anyone to—” he could barely get the words out of his mouth “—
take tea
with me.”
She smiled a benign smile. “I bet the sisters Montgomery would be charmed by a man who asked them to tea. And I bet not one of your competitors would think to do it.”
She was right. Dammit. Two sweet old Southern ladies would find this place enchanting. Crap.
Enchanting.
There was another word he normally avoided manfully. Where the hell had his testosterone gotten off to?
He blew out an exasperated breath. “Fine. Just don’t expect me to wear white gloves.”
“I suppose we could allow that small concession,” she agreed. “Now then. As Henry James wrote in
The Portrait of a Lady,
‘There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.’”
Oh, good. At least this wouldn’t last more than an hour.
“And I, for one,” she continued, “couldn’t agree more.”
Peyton did his best to look as if he gave a crap. “Yeah, well, ol’ Henry obviously never spent an afternoon sharing a case of Anchor Steam with his friends while the Blackhawks trounced the Canucks.”
Ava smiled thinly. “No doubt.”
She launched into a monologue about the history of afternoon tea—all three centuries of it—then moved on to the etiquette of afternoon tea, then on to the menu selection of afternoon tea. She talked about the differences between cream tea, light tea and full tea—thankfully, they were having full tea, since Peyton was getting hungrier with every word she spoke—then she pointed to the selections on the caddy beside them, categorizing them as savories, scones and pastries, even though they looked to him like sandwiches, biscuits and dessert. By the time she wrapped up her dissertation, his stomach was grumbling so forcefully even his Y chromosome was thinking the little flowery cakes looked good.
Unfortunately, as he reached for one, Ava smacked his hand as if he were a toddler.
“Don’t reach,” she said. “Ask for them to be passed.”
“But they’re sitting right there.”
“They’re closer to me than they are to you.”
“Oh, sure, by an inch and a half.”
“Nonetheless, whoever is closer should pass to the person who is farther away.”
Okay, she was definitely going out of her way to be ornery, deliberately to get a rise out of him. Well, he’d show her. He’d kill her with kindness. He’d be as courteous as he knew how to be. And thanks to her lessons, he’d learned how to be pretty damned courteous.
Sitting up straighter in his tiny chair, he channeled the inner Victorian he didn’t even know he possessed and said, “If you please, Miss Brenner, and if it wouldn’t trouble you overly, would you pass the...” What had she called them? “The savories?”
She eyed him suspiciously, clearly doubting his sincerity. But what was she going to do? He’d been a perfect effing gentleman. He’d even thought the word
effing,
instead of what he really wanted to think, which was...uh, never mind.
Still looking at him as if she expected him to start a food fight, she asked, “May I suggest the cucumber sandwiches or the crab puffs?”
He unclenched his jaw long enough to reply, “You may.”
“Which would you prefer?”
“The cucumber sandwiches,” he said. Mostly because he didn’t think he could say
crab puffs
with a straight face. Not that
cucumber sandwiches
was exactly easy. “If you please.”
Before retrieving the plate, she began to unbutton her gloves. Evidently good manners precluded wearing such garments whilst one was taking tea.
Dammit, he thought when he played that back in his head. There was no way he was going to last an hour in this place.
When she finally had her gloves off—a good fortnight after initiating their unbuttoning—she reached for the plate of sandwiches and passed it the three inches necessary to place it on the table between them. Then she poured them each a cup of tea from the pot, adding three sugar cubes—jeez, they had flowers on them, too—to her own. Peyton eschewed them—since no one taking tea would ever
blow off
something; they would always
eschew
it—and lifted the cup to his mouth. At Ava’s discreetly cleared throat, he looked up, and she tilted her head toward the cup he was holding. Holding by its bowl having grabbed the entire thing in his big paw, because he’d been afraid he’d break off the handle if he tried to pick it up that way. Gah. After a moment of juggling, he managed the proper manipulation of the cup, holding it by its handle, if just barely. Only then did Ava nod her head to let him know he was allowed to continue.
Man, had she actually had to grow up this way? Had her mother sat her down, day after day, and made her memorize all the stuff she was making him memorize? Had she been forced to dress a certain way and unfold her napkin just so, and talk about only approved subjects with other people, the way she was teaching him to do? Or did that just come naturally to people who were born with the bluest blood in the highest income bracket? Was good taste and polite behavior encoded on her DNA the way green eyes and red hair were? Did refinement run in her veins? And if so, did that mean Peyton’s DNA was encoded with garbage-strewn streets and fighting dirty and that transmission fluid flowed through his veins?
It hit him again, even harder, how far apart the two of them were. How far apart they’d been since birth. How far apart they’d be until they died. Even with his income rivaling hers now, even mastering all these lessons that would grant him access to her world, he’d never, ever be her social equal. Because he’d never, ever be as comfortable with this stuff as she was. It would never be second nature to him the way it was to her. He would hate it in her world. All the rules and customs would suffocate him. It would kill everything that made him who he was, the same way taking Ava
out
of her world would doubtless suffocate her and kill everything that made her her.
And why did it bug him so much to realize that? He wasn’t a kid anymore. He didn’t care what world she lived in or that he’d never be granted citizenship there. Truth be told, now that he was a monster success, he kind of reveled in his mean-streets background. Even as a teenager, he’d taken a perverse sort of pride in where he came from, because where he came from hadn’t destroyed his spirit the way it had so many others in the neighborhood. So why had it been such a sticking point with him in high school, the vast socioeconomic chasm between him and Ava? Why was it still a sticking point now, when that chasm had shrunk to a crack? Why did it bother him so much that his and Ava’s worlds would never meet? What difference did her presence in the scheme of things—or lack thereof—make anyway?
His cup was nearly to his mouth when an answer to that question exploded in his head. It bothered him, he suddenly knew, because the thing that had sparked his success, the thing that had made him escape his neighborhood and muscle his way into a top-tier college, the thing that had kept him from giving up the hundreds of times he wanted to give up, the thing that had made him seize the business world with both fists and driven him to make money, and then more money, and then more money still...the thing that had done all that was...
Hell. It wasn’t a thing at all. It was a person. It was Ava.
Down went the teacup, landing on the table with a thump that sent some of its contents spilling onto his hand. Peyton scarcely felt the burn. He looked at Ava, who was studying a plate of cakes and cookies, trying to decide which one she wanted. She was oblivious to both his spilled tea and tumultuous thoughts, but she had flipped back the veil from her face, leaving her features in clear profile.
She really hadn’t changed since high school. Not just her looks, but the rest of her, too. She was as beautiful now as she’d been then, as elegant, as refined. And, he couldn’t help thinking further, as off-limits. When all was said and done, the Ava of adulthood was no different from the Ava of adolescence. And neither was he. He was still—and would always be—the basest kind of interloper in her world.
As if to hammer home their differences, she finally decided on a frilly little pastry cup filled with berries and whipped cream and transferred it to her plate with a pair of dainty little silver tongs. Then she went for one of the prissy little flowered cakes. Then a couple of the lacy little cookies. All the fragile little things Peyton would have been afraid of touching because he would probably crush them. He was way better suited to a big, bloody hunk of beef beside a mountain of stiff mashed potatoes, with a sweaty longneck bottle of beer to wash it all down. The nectar of the working-class male.
When Ava finally looked up to see how he was faring, her brows knitted downward in confusion. He glanced at the plate of sandwiches sitting between them. Although they were heartier than the pastries, those, too, looked just as off-limits as everything else, so small and delicate and pretty were they. He tried to focus on them anyway, pretending to be indecisive about which one he wanted. But his thoughts were still wrapped up in his epiphany.
God. Ava.
It had been Ava all along.
He wasn’t trying to master the art of fine living because he wanted to take over another company and add another zero to his bottom line. Not really. Sure, taking over Montgomery and Sons was the impetus, but he wouldn’t be trying to do that if it weren’t for Ava. He wouldn’t have done anything over the past sixteen years if it weren’t for Ava. He’d still be in the old neighborhood, working in the garage with his old man. He’d be spending his days under the chassis of a car, then going home at night to an apartment a few blocks away to watch the Hawks, Bulls or Cubs while consuming a carryout value meal and popping open a cold one.
And, hell, he might have even been happy doing that. Provided he’d never met Ava.
But from the moment he’d laid eyes on her in high school, something had pushed him to rise above his lot in life. Not even pushed him.
Driven
him. Yeah, that was a better word. Because after Ava had walked into his life, nothing else had mattered. Nothing except bringing himself up to standards she might approve of. So that maybe, someday, she
would
approve of him. And so that maybe, someday, the two of them...