Free MY FAIR BILLIONAIRE by Elizabeth Bevarly

in particular that he maybe, possibly, perhaps should apologize for...
    “It’s not that your other clothes are bad,” she added, evidently mistaking his silence as irritation. “Like I said, they just need a little, um, updating.”
    She was trying hard not to say anything that might create tension between them. And the two of them had gotten along surprisingly well all morning. They’d been stilted and formal and in no way comfortable with each other, but they’d gotten along.
    “Look, Ava, I’m not going to jump down your throat for telling me I’m not fashionable,” he said. “I know I’m not. I’m doing this because I’m about to enter a sphere of the business world I’ve never moved in before, one that has expectations I’ll have to abide by.” He shrugged. “But I have to learn what they are. That’s why you’re here. I won’t bite your head off if you tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
    She arched that eyebrow at him again, the way she had the day before at the restaurant, when he’d bitten her head off for telling him what he was doing wrong.
    “Anymore,” he amended. “I won’t bite your head off anymore.”
    The eyebrow went back down, and she smiled. It wasn’t a big smile, but it was a start. If nothing else, it told him she was willing to keep reminding him, as long as he was willing to remember he’d reminded her to do it.
    The tailor returned with a trio of suits and a single tuxedo, and Peyton blew out a silent breath of relief that none of them could be called anything but dark. The man then helped Peyton out of his leather jacket and gestured for him to shed the dark blue sweater beneath it. When he stood in his white V-neck T-shirt and jeans, the tailor helped him on with the first suit jacket, made some murmuring sounds, whipped the tape measure from around his neck, and began to measure Peyton’s arms, shoulders and back.
    “Now the trousers,” the man said.
    Peyton looked at Ava in the mirror.
    “I think it’s okay if you go in the fitting room for that,” she said diplomatically.
    Right. Fitting room. He knew that. At least, he knew that now.
    When he returned some minutes later wearing what he had to admit was a faultless charcoal pinstripe over a crisp white dress shirt the tailor had also found for him, Ava had her back to him, inspecting two neckties she had picked up in his absence.
    “So...what do you think?” he asked.
    As he approached her, he tried to look more comfortable than he felt. Though his discomfort wasn’t due to the fact that he was wearing a garment with a price tag higher than that of any of the cars he’d owned in his youth. It was because he was worried Ava still wouldn’t approve of him, even dressed in the exorbitant plumage of her tribe.
    His fear was compounded when she spun around smiling, only to have her smile immediately fall. Dammit. She still didn’t like him. No, he corrected himself—she didn’t like what he was wearing. Big difference. He didn’t care if she didn’t like him. He didn’t. He only needed for her to approve of his appearance. Which she obviously didn’t.
    “Wow,” she said.
    Oh. Okay. So maybe she did approve.
    “You look...” She drew in a soft breath and expelled it. “Wow.”
    Something hot and fizzy zipped through his midsection at her reaction. It was a familiar sensation, but one he hadn’t felt for a long time. More than fifteen years, in fact. It was the same sensation he’d felt one time when Ava looked at him from across their shared classroom at Emerson. For a split second, she hadn’t registered that it was Peyton she was looking at, and her smile had been dreamy and wistful. In that minuscule stretch of time, she had looked at him as if he were something worth looking at, and it had made him feel as if nothing in his life would ever go wrong again.
    Somehow, right now, he had that feeling again.
    “So you like it?” he asked.
    “Very much,” she said. Dreamily. Wistfully. And heat