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

connoisseur. So sue her.
    He laughed at that, a full, uninhibited laugh that rippled over her, making something in her belly tighten. Not in a bad way, but in a way that made her feel…
    Um, never mind.
    â€œMove closer,” he told her. “Tell me what you see.”
    She sighed, growing tired of his efforts to find comparisons between himself and Ethan where there simply were none. But she did as he requested, completing the half-dozen steps necessary to put her within five feet of the painting. She looked at it, trying not to focus on the individual partsand instead considering the whole. She let her focus blur a little, and, sure enough, a figure began to emerge from the swirls of colors. Not a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but a…a… Hmm. It did look sort of familiar. In fact, it looked like a…like a…
    â€œOh. My. God,” she finally said. “That’s a man’s…a man’s, um…”
    â€œA man’s um-physical attribute that makes him a man,” Gavin finished for her.
    Violet spun around, gaping at him. “And you have it hanging in your office? That is so crass.”
    He laughed again. “The artist is massively in demand in the art community,” he said. “Her greatest inspiration was Georgia O’Keeffe, but she’s taken that artist’s, ah, proclivities, one step further.”
    â€œYeah, I’ll say,” Violet agreed. Unable to help herself, she looked at the other paintings in the room. Sure enough, a theme began to develop. One picture depicted—quite graphically, once you got the gist of it—a woman’s, um…that part of a woman that made her a woman. Another picture was of a woman’s breasts. And a fourth painting was of all the subjects of the other pictures coming together in a way that, had they been a magazine cover, would have had them banned in every decent grocery store in the Midwest.
    â€œI cannot believe you have pornography hanging on your office walls,” she said.
    Gavin covered the distance between them until he stood beside Violet, towering over her as he had before. “Where does a woman who makes her living performing sex acts get off impugning a woman who paints them, or a man who collects those paintings?”
    Enough. She’d had enough of Gavin Mason and his stupid ideas about her and her book. Settling her hands onher hips, she said, “The description of everything in that passage could be a description of a thousand buildings, offices and men in this country. I’m tired of arguing with you. You want to sue me, Mr. Mason, go ahead. You’ll be hearing from my attorneys this afternoon.”
    With that, and without allowing him time to regroup and attack again, Violet turned on her heel and fled.

Four
    G avin watched Raven…Violet…whoever she was…flee—yes, that was definitely fleeing she was doing—until he heard the outer office door slam shut behind her, clueless what to say to stop her. What was odd was that he actually did want to stop her. What was even odder was his reason for wanting to stop her. Not so that he could threaten her again, but because after the conversation they’d had, he was more curious about her than ever.
    How could a woman of her occupation not recognize the subject matter of the paintings hanging in his office? And then, once he pointed out to her what the subject matter was, how could a woman of her occupation be so shocked? To the point of being uncomfortable? Even offended?
    He told himself it was another example of how she had been able to make so much money as a call girl, since it took a lot of talent for a seasoned prostitute to convincingly play naive. Doubtless there were a lot of men out therewho found it arousing to bed an innocent who had to be schooled in the ways of sex. Frankly, Gavin didn’t see the attraction. He liked his women worldly and sophisticated and adventurous. Who had