My Fair Billionaire. Elizabeth Bevarly

do with love. But it hadn’t been sex, either. There had been more to it than the mingling of two bodies. It had just fallen short of the mingling of two souls.

      The morning after, Peyton had jumped out of bed on one side, and Ava had leaped out on the other. They had hurled both accusations and excuses, neither listening to the other. The only thing they’d agreed on was that they’d made a colossal mistake that was never to be mentioned again. Peyton had dressed and fled through her bedroom window, not wanting to be discovered, and Ava had locked it tight behind him. Monday morning, they turned in their assignment and went back to being enemies, and Ava had held her breath for the remainder of the year. Only after Peyton graduated and took off for college had she been able to breathe again.

      For all of three weeks. Until her entire life came crashing down around her, pitching her to the bottom rung of the social ladder among the very people she had treated so callously before. People whom she quickly learned had deserved none of the treatment she had spent years dishing out.

      She turned to Basilio. “I need a favor. Could I ask one of your waiters to run back to my shop for my car so I can drive Mr. Moss home? I’ll stay here and have coffee with him until then.”

      Basilio looked at her as if she’d lost every marble she possessed.

      “It’s only a fifteen-minute walk,” she told him. “Ten if whoever you send hurries.”

      “But, Ms. Brenner, he’s not—”

      “—himself,” Ava quickly interjected. “Yes, I know, which is why he deserves a pass tonight.”

      “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

      No, she wasn’t. This Peyton was a stranger to her in so many ways. Not that the Peyton she used to know had exactly been an open book. He might not have thought much of her kind when they were in high school, and maybe he hadn’t been much of a gentleman, but he hadn’t been dangerous, either. Well, not in the usual sense of the word. Whatever had made him behave badly tonight, he’d calmed down once he recognized a familiar face.

      Besides, she owed him. She owed him more than she could ever make up for. But at least, by doing this, she might make some small start.

      “My keys are in my purse at my table,” she told Basilio, “and my car is parked behind the shop. Just send someone down there to get it, and I’ll take him home. Please,” she added.

      Basilio looked as if he wanted to object again, but instead said, “Fine. I’ll send Marcus. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

      Yes, well, that, Ava thought, made two of them.

      * * *

      Peyton Moss awoke the way he hadn’t awoken in a very long time—hungover. Really hungover. When he opened his eyes, he had no idea where he was or what time it was or what he’d been doing in the hours before wherever and whatever time he was in.

      He lay still in bed for a minute—he was at least in a bed, wasn’t he?—and tried to figure out how he’d arrived in his current position. Hmm. Evidently, his current position was on his stomach atop a crush of sheets, his face shoved into a pillow. So that would be a big yep on the bed thing. The question now was, whose bed? Especially since, whoever the owner was, she wasn’t currently in it with him.

      But he concluded the owner of the bed must be a she. Not only did the sheets smell way too good to belong to a man, but the wallpaper, he discovered when he rolled over, was covered with roses, and a chandelier above him dripped ropes of crystal beads. He drove his gaze around the room and saw more evidence of gender bias in an ultrafeminine dresser and armoire, shoved into a corner by the room’s only window, which was covered by billows of lace.

      So he’d gone home with a strange woman last night. Nothing new about that, except that going home with strangers was something he’d been more likely to do in his youth. Not that thirty-four was old, dammit, but it was an age when a man was expected to start settling down and figuring out what he wanted. Not that Peyton hadn’t done that, too, but... Okay, so maybe he hadn’t settled down that much. And maybe he hadn’t quite figured out everything he wanted. He’d settled some and figured out the bulk of it. Hell, that was why he’d come back to a city he’d sworn he would never set foot in again.

      Chicago. God. The last time he was here, he’d been eighteen years old and wild as a rabid badger. He’d left his graduation ceremony and gone straight to the bus station, stopping only long enough to cram his cap and gown into the first garbage can he could find. He hadn’t even gone home to say goodbye. Hell, no one at home had given a damn what he did. No one in Chicago had.

      He draped an arm over his eyes and expelled a weary sigh. Yeah, nothing like a little adolescent melodrama to start the day off right.

      He jackknifed to a sitting position and slung his legs over the bed. His jacket and tie were hanging over the back of a chair and his shoes were on the floor near his feet. His rumpled shirt and trousers were all fastened, as was his belt. Obviously, nothing untoward had happened the night before, so, with any luck, there wouldn’t be any awkward moments once he found out who his hostess was.

      Carefully, he made his way to the door and headed into a bathroom on his right, turning on the water to fill the sink. After splashing a few handfuls onto his face, he felt a little better. He still looked like hell, he noted when he caught his reflection in the mirror. But he felt a little better.

      The mirror opened to reveal a slim cabinet behind it, and he was grateful to see a bottle of mouthwash. At least that took care of the dead-animal taste in his mouth. He found a comb, too, and dragged that through his hair, then did his best to smooth the wrinkles from his shirt.

      Leaving the bathroom, he detected the aroma of coffee and followed it to a kitchen that was roughly the size of an electron. The light above the stove was on, allowing him to find his way around. The only wall decoration was a calendar with scenes of Italy, but the fridge door was crowded with stuff—a notice about an upcoming Italian film festival at the Patio Theater, some pictures of women’s clothing cut out of a magazine and a postcard reminding whoever lived here of an appointment with her gynecologist.

      The coffeemaker must have been on a timer, because there was no evidence of anyone stirring but him. Glancing down at his watch, he saw that it was just after five, which helped explain why no one was stirring. Except that the coffeemaker timer must have been set for now, so whoever lived here was normally up at this ungodly hour.

      He crossed the kitchen in a single stride and exited on the other side, finding himself in a living room that was barely as big as the bedroom. Enough light from the street filtered through the closed curtains for him to make out a lamp on the other side of the room, and he was about to move toward it when a sound to his right stopped him. It was the sound a woman made upon stirring when she was not ready to stir, a soft sough of breath tempered by a fretful whimper. Through the semidarkness, he could just make out the figure of a woman lying on the couch.

      Peyton had found himself in a lot of untenable positions over the years—many of which had included women—but he had no idea what to do in a situation like this. He didn’t know where he was, had no idea how he’d gotten here and was clueless about the identity of the woman under whose roof he had passed the night. For all he knew, she could be married. Hell, for all he knew, she could be a knife-wielding maniac. Then his hostess made that quiet sound of semiconsciousness again, and he decided she couldn’t be the last. Knife-wielding maniacs couldn’t sound that delectable. Still, if she was sleeping out here and he’d spent the night in her bedroom, he had nothing to feel guilty about, right? Except for tossing her out of her bed when he should have been the one sleeping on the couch. And except for passing out on her in the first place.

      What the hell had happened last night? He mentally retraced his steps from the moment he set foot back on his native soil. Although he’d left Chicago via Greyhound bus more than fifteen years ago, his return had been aboard a private jet. His private jet. He might have been a street dog in his youth, but in adulthood... Ah, who was he kidding? In adulthood, he was still a street dog. That was the reason he was back here.

      Anyway,