of course—in one hand. Without even greeting me, he would demand that I take off every stitch of clothing, which, of course, I would do. Then he would beckon me over and offer me the glass. I was to fill my mouth first with the Scotch, long enough to warm it, then drop to my knees and fill my mouth with him. As much of him as I could, anyway. I spent entire afternoons on my knees in that office by that chair, first giving him oral pleasure and then bent over the cushion so he could take me from behind, again and again and.” He halted and looked up at Violet once more, smiling even more broadly. “Well, I think I’ve made my point, haven’t I?”
Oh, yes! Yes! Yes! Yessss! Violet wanted to shout. “Um, I believe you’ve tried,” she said instead. She cleared her throat indelicately and avoided his gaze. “However, you failed.”
“Oh?”
She nodded. And avoided his gaze some more. “Your artwork is in no way decadent.”
Now Gavin raised both dark brows in surprise. “Ms., ah, Tandy, have you looked closely at those paintings?”
“Why do I need to look closely?” she replied. “They’re all abstracts. I don’t care much for abstract art. I mean, not that I’m much of an art connoisseur in the first place. But I really don’t like the kind of art where I can’t even tell what it’s supposed to be.”
“No, I’m sure you’re more inclined to view the images in the Kama Sutra, but indulge me. That one over there, for instance,” he said, pointing to one on the other side that was executed in bold lacerations of purple and brown. “What does that remind you of? “
She cocked her head to one side as she viewed it from this distance. “A peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” she finally said. Well, that was what it reminded her of. Hey, she’d told him she wasn’t an art 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.
“Move 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 parts and 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 …
“Oh. My. God,” she finally said. “That’s a man’s … a man’s, um …”
“A 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.”
“Yeah, 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.
“I 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 on her 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
Gavin 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 there who 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 the time or inclination to seduce someone with no experience? Who actually paid money for someone to pretend that? Gavin would rather get right to the action. Foreplay was way overrated. Hell, if he were going to pay a woman to have sex, it would be so she would skip over all that touching and fondling and stroking and licking and … and … and …
Where was he?
Oh, right. Marveling at Raven’s … he meant Violet’s. reaction to his decadent paintings. Which also made him wonder about her art commentary that had made her sound so pedestrian. Any high-priced call girl worth her salt would make it a point to school herself in whatever interests her elite clientele had, and art would definitely be an interest of an elite clientele.
Just who the hell was Violet Tandy? Who was Raven French? They were the same woman, but they seemed to have little in common.
She was playing a part, he told himself again. She’d slipped into the role she always plays with wealthy, powerful men to get what she wanted: Money. Maybe she wasn’t earning a paycheck from him at the moment—well, not the way she normally did—but she was definitely protecting her financial assets by ensuring he didn’t sue her. Of course she would deal with him the way she dealt with all her customers, by pretending to be something she wasn’t. In this case sweet, innocent and vulnerable.
Yeah, right. Gavin wasn’t one of her customers. He wasn’t paying her anything. On the contrary, he wanted a piece of her. Which maybe wasn’t the most tactful way to put it, but was appropriate in this case. He would have satisfaction. He would have a piece of Violet Tandy. And he would have it soon.
Violet didn’t stop fleeing until she was five blocks from the shiny metal building that held Gavin Mason’s decadent office and paintings. And she only stopped then because she’d reached the shop where she
