The Billionaire Gets His Way / The Sarantos Secret Baby: The Billionaire Gets His Way / The Sarantos Secret Baby

“Pooh,” she said softly under her breath, forcing her feet to move her in the direction of the crosswalk. Gavin Mason wasn’t trouble. Not with any kind of case on the T. She’d faced worse problems than him in her life. No way would she let a man like that deter her from achieving her dreams. Let him try to charge the unchargeable and prove the unproveable. Hell, the publicity would only boost sales of her book even more.

Ka-ching.

Unless, you know, he did manage to tie her up in legalities indefinitely. Which, she supposed, was why she was currently crossing the street toward his office.

Okay, okay, she relented. So maybe Gavin Mason really was Trouble with a capital T, but it rhymed with C, and that stood for—

“Crap,” she muttered under her breath as she reached his side of the street and her feet began to slow. “Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.”

She wadded up the business card and tossed it into a nearby trash can. Take that, trouble/Trouble. Hmpf. And she tried not to think about how, by hedging on the capitalization thing, she had just assigned Gavin Mason the distinction of double-trouble.

She took a deep, fortifying breath and exhaled it slowly. She could do this. She could go to Gavin Mason’s office and speak civilly to him about this matter. He’d had two days to cool off, as had she, and now they could both be reasonable. She could explain to him how she’d come to write her novel, and make him understand that it was a work of fiction. By the end of their meeting, they’d doubtless both be laughing about it.

Okay, maybe not laughing, she amended as she entered the skyscraper that housed GMT, Inc. Because the building didn’t lend itself to levity, and it reeked of serious big business. The steel and glass of the outside was replicated inside, then made even colder and more solemn by the addition of a black granite floor and fixtures. The elevators were stainless steel outside and more black inside, and Violet rode shoulder to shoulder with people dressed in more black and gray.

It dawned on her then, the appropriateness of Gavin Mason’s name. Seriousness and stone. Like everything else here. The utter opposite of someone named Candy Tandy and then further nicknamed Violet. She suddenly felt even more out of place in her rented duds. Not because of the suit’s chicness and expense this time, but because of its hue. She usually liked bright colors and wore them well. But in this environment, wearing red made her feel as if she were standing in the middle of the bullfighting ring, waving the cape to taunt the biggest, baddest of them all.

The offices of GMT, Inc. were in keeping with the rest of the building, but somehow seemed even more severe. A lone receptionist—another study in gray from her clothing to her hair—sat behind a big black desk, with big black letters identifying the company looming on the white wall behind her. The other walls were bare, Violet noted, and the waiting area held only a quartet of empty and uncomfortable-looking chairs. There was no reading material to peruse for anyone who might be waiting. No music to listen to. Not so much as a charcoal print to ponder. Clearly, Gavin Mason didn’t concern himself with creature comforts.

Then she remembered his paisley silk boxers. Well, not for other people, anyway.

She’d been worried that showing up without an appointment might cause a problem, but seeing the place so empty reassured her. After speaking with her editor this morning, Violet had deliberately decided to come just after lunchtime, hoping to catch the man sated and slowed with a full belly and before he got too tied up for the rest of his day. She hadn’t worried that he wouldn’t be here. He was obviously the kind of man who took his work seriously enough to never leave it. Hell, Violet wouldn’t have been surprised if he lived in the building, too. It suited him, all cold and impersonal as it was.

Now, now,she admonished herself.Don’t go in with that attitude. You’re here to make things better, not worse.

As if cued by the thought, the receptionist glanced up from her computer screen. She apologized for not seeing Violet right away in a voice that sounded in no way apologetic, then asked what she could do for her.

“Hello,” Violet said in as chipper a voice as she could manage. “I was wondering if it might be possible to steal a few moments with Mr. Mason. Gavin Mason,” she quickly clarified. As if that needed clarification.

Obviously, it didn’t, since the moment she’d uttered the first Mason, the receptionist had started shaking her head. “I’m afraid Mr. Mason has a very full schedule today. I’m sorry.”

“I realize he’s a busy man,” Violet said, “and I promise not to take any more of his time than necessary. Truly, just a few minutes would be all I’d need.”

The receptionist smiled mechanically, then dropped her gaze to the computer screen and pushed a few buttons on her keyboard. “Perhaps if you can tell me what this is about, I can make an appointment for you later in the week.”

Which would mean Violet had spent money on her rental clothing for nothing and would have to spend more later in the week. Not to mention stew over Gavin Mason’s threats for another few days.

“Today would be much better,” she said firmly. “I mean, I’m here now, and—” she threw a meaningful look over her shoulder at the waiting area “—and no one else is, and, as I said, it won’t take long.”

“Mr. Mason has a very full schedule today,” the receptionist repeated crisply. “Perhaps if you can tell me what this is about, I can fit you in—”

“Later in the week,” Violet chorused with her, then added politely, “doesn’t work for me, I’m afraid.”

“Well, perhaps if you’d made an appointment …”

Violet tried again. “Maybe if you told Mr. Mason I’m here, he would—”

“Mr. Mason has a very full schedule today.”

“He might—”

“Perhaps if you can tell me what this is about, I can fit you in later in the week.”

There was no way Violet was going to tell this woman she was here because Gavin Mason suspected her of being a call girl who’d written about him in a memoir that was really a novel. But if the only way she was going to see the man was later in the week, then she’d have to settle for that.

“Fine,” she said. “I’d like to make an appointment with Gavin Mason later in the week.”

The receptionist smiled, this time with great satisfaction, lifting her perfectly manicured hands to the keyboard before her. “And your meeting is in regard to …?”

“Public relations,” Violet said off the top of her head.

The receptionist narrowed her eyes. “Can you be more specific?”

“No.”

She narrowed her eyes some more but didn’t push the issue. Instead, she studied her computer screen for a moment and said, “Come back at four-fifty-five on Friday. He can see you for five minutes.”

Violet gaped at that, but didn’t object. How could she? She was the one who had said it would only take a few minutes. A foot in the door, she reminded herself. That was all she needed.

“Fine,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Your name?”

She started to reply with her real name, then realized Gavin Mason wouldn’t recognize it. “Raven French.”

She might as well have yelled that the receptionist’s hair was on fire, so massive was the woman’s reaction. Her hands faltered on the keyboard, she bolted backward in her chair, and when she jerked up her head to look at Violet again, her eyes were wide with horror.

“Raven French,” she echoed. With no small amount of melodrama, too, Violet couldn’t help thinking. Honestly, the woman might as well have been summoning some kind of B-movie hell spawn.

“Ye-es,” Violet said cautiously.

Now it was the receptionist who gaped. But she didn’t say anything, either. Her gaze never leaving Violet’s, she rose unsteadily from her chair and began to back away, bumping into the wall behind herself before flattening her palms against it and sidling to the right.

“Stay right there,” she finally said, her voice going even more Norma Desmond than before. “I think maybe Mr. Mason has a moment right now.”

And with that, the woman disappeared behind the wall. Violet heard the clatter of something tumbling over, followed by a thump and the crash of breaking glass, and a not-so-quietly muttered—nor in any way professional—oath. Then there was the quick rapping of knuckles on a door and an even less-quiet—and even less professional—screech of “Oh my God, Mr. Mason, that horrible woman is here to see you. Here. In your office. Can you imagine the nerve?”

The screeching was then replaced by another clatter and thump, only this time it sounded more like something being thrown than being dropped, and the oaths that followed were the likes of which Violet hadn’t heard since accidentally downloading Scarface from Netflix one night instead of Sense and Sensibility, which she had been so certain was next in her queue.

Then, suddenly, there was silence. And somehow, that was even scarier than Say hello to my little friend!

The receptionist suddenly reappeared from behind the wall. After a few delicate ahems, she said, “Mr. Mason will see you now.”

“Um, thank you,” Violet said.

But she didn’t feel particularly grateful. In fact, by the time she moved around the wall and saw the door to Gavin Mason’s office, her insides were taut with anxiety. As demanding as she’d been to see him, she halted at the threshold, now reluctant to enter. Bending at the waist, she peeked inside, looking left, then right, then left again.

But the room was empty. It was also nowhere near as sterile as the rest of the building, filled with massive, dark wood furnishings scattered atop an immense Persian rug that was woven in rich, jewel-tone colors. The paintings on the walls, too, were colossal, brutally executed abstracts in colors that were even denser than the rug. Clearly whoever inhabited the office was as bold and dynamic and larger-than-life as his possessions, but he hadn’t come to work yet. Thinking she must have approached the wrong door, Violet straightened and began to take a step in retreat.