The Proviso

by Moriah Jovan

  His eyebrow rose at that. “Lilith, maybe?”

  With that, he continued on his way, leaving her dumbfounded, breathless, and thoroughly aroused.

  * * * * *

  What the hell had made him say that?

  Shock.

  Shock at seeing her, of actually meeting her. Here. In his own lawyer’s office. Working as a second-shift transcriptionist.

  It hadn’t occurred to him that Knox’s lover might work for a living. Knox always took care of his women well; he could afford to with all the untraceable money that ran through his office. Certainly, Leah had had the best of everything.

  He fought the urge to turn around and walk backward just so he could inspect her more closely: faded Levi’s, white tee shirt, and flamboyant vest that looked like a refugee from a Mardi Gras rag bag; rich golden-red hair—why had he thought it dull blonde?—in a ponytail, bound with a pert yellow ribbon and dripping those large, loose corkscrews down to her nape.

  If only he didn’t know that she wore a gun under cocktail dresses at funerals.

  If only he hadn’t heard her say I am not going to fuck you with the bored amusement of a woman who knew what to do with a man who couldn’t understand the word no.

  If only she hadn’t turned on the charm once Ralph had been disposed of and looked at Bryce like that.

  He sucked in a sharp breath and it caught.

  Women just didn’t look at him like that anymore and hadn’t since the fire. More than one who’d found his wallet intriguing had spoken to his necktie in an effort to avoid looking at his face. Most children scrambled to stay away from him, the combination of his big body and scarred features overwhelming.

  Monster.

  He almost laughed. He could afford to now that he knew that the woman who’d tormented him for the last six months, a woman he’d assumed would react the same way the rest of the female population did, had found him attractive enough to let him know exactly what she wanted from him and how she wanted it, Knox be damned.

  He must have imagined it.

  Deep breath. He held it, then puffed it out again in a whoosh. She’d completely blown his mind.

  Again.

  All the way through the meeting with his attorney he felt distracted, scattered.

  “Bryce? You with me?”

  He shook his head to clear it. “That typist you have out there—the redhead—”

  “Giselle? What about her?”

  “Your idiot attorney Ralph ‘Call Me Rafe’ hit on her as I was walking in. He’s a walking sexual harassment suit. He threatened to get her fired if she didn’t sleep with him.”

  Geoff Hale’s eyes narrowed. “I’m going to get rid of that son of a bitch.”

  “I suggested he have his office cleaned out by the time I left here tonight. I hope you don’t mind me stepping into your business like that, but he was a little too pushy for my comfort.”

  Hale’s eyebrows rose. “Oh. Well thank you, then. I’ll send a quick email to HR.” He turned to his computer for a moment and as he typed, he continued, “You know, he’s been nothing but trouble from day one. Giselle’s more valuable to me than three of him.”

  “Oh?” Bryce kept his voice casual to invite more comment, the perfect way to glean more information about her without arousing suspicion.

  “Brilliant woman. Going to law school on the five-year program and she’s interning for me this summer.” Bryce hid his surprise. “She’ll be a good trial attorney. Enough ego and charm to pull anything off and the brains and wit to back it up. I’m just hoping not to lose her to Hilliard’s office, since that’s where everyone wants to go. Not that I’ve asked her, come to think of it,” he added absently while finishing his email with a flourish.

  Bryce’s heart quickened, but he controlled his expression. “Ah. Does she, uh, have any connections to any local attorneys?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “Curious is all.”

  For some reason, Bryce kept what he knew to himself. Mentioning her intimate involvement with Knox Hilliard would definitely get her fired, but he didn’t know why he felt compelled to protect her.

  “Is she married?”

  Hale glanced at him then and his mouth twitched. “I forgot to mention that she’s pretty,” he said, “but I see you noticed that.”

  Bryce kept his expression carefully blank. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “I can, uh, put a bug in her ear as to your interest.”

  “I’m not,” Bryce murmured, his tone carefully masking his frustration with himself for going too far. Hale was no fool, but he said no more about Giselle Cox, and for that, Bryce was grateful.

  “Oh, by the way,” Hale said as he shook Bryce’s hand at the office door once their annual meeting had come to a close, “my condolences on your client. Leah Wincott, was it?”

  The mention of Leah’s name was enough to bring back some of the anger that had dissipated with the discussion of other matters. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Very nice lady.”

  “I wish I could believe Knox killed her,” Hale said, “but he’s got too much to lose.”

  “That’s kind of the way I figured it,” Bryce said, then continued, “I don’t know why Leah finally agreed to marry him, but she must have had her reasons. For what it’s worth, she was very happy; he treated her well.”

  Hale looked thoughtful. “Fen’s the most likely suspect, but nobody’d believe it.”

  “Agreed,” Bryce said, then started. “Hey, isn’t Fen your client?”

  “Oh, no,” Hale returned. “I haven’t met a Hilliard yet that I liked and that includes the old man. Fen and I had a couple of meetings before I decided I didn’t want to do business with him.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know. He’s honest. Smart. He’s good to the community, good to his employees. There’s just . . . something. I’d trust Knox before I’d trust Fen. At least with Knox, you know exactly what you’re getting. And that proviso? Taight? That whole situation’s a nasty tangle.”

  And your “valuable” typist is intimately mixed up in it.

  “I’m going home,” Hale said on a yawn. “What time is it anyway?”

  Bryce looked at his watch. “Twelve-thirty in the morning. Geez, Geoff, I’m sorry.”

  He waved a hand. “No need to apologize. It’ll be in your statement at the end of the month.”

  “I’m sure,” Bryce returned.

  As Bryce walked to the elevator, he couldn’t help but cast a look toward Giselle Cox’s desk. Her empty chair, blank computer, and tidy desktop all bespoke the end of her shift. He felt a great disappointment settle in the region of his solar plexus, but he only sighed and continued on his way.

  He stopped cold when he got to the parking garage and stared at the occupant of the only other car in the lot besides his.

  She couldn’t see him from the angle at which her car, an older model generic Chevy, sat. From what he could tell, she might be asleep or she might be hurt, for her head tilted back against the seat rest.

  Refusing to think about the consequences of his actions, he walked across the lot and noted her open car windows. The April breezes that wafted through stirred her ponytail and the ends of the ribbon just a bit.

  Once he got within speaking distance, he could see her dozing, a thick textbook open and lying face down on her chest. Even as he watched, her head lolled to the right so that he caught sight of the underside of her jaw and throat.

  He imagined all the things he wanted to do to that throat; remembered her as she had been that night six months ago with her skirt pulled up enough for him to see the top of her black stocking; needed to see the rest of her body stripped bare for his pleasure.

  Bryce squatted down beside the car and just watched her for a moment. “Miss Cox,” he murmured, then found himself nose to nose with a very lethal woman—and she had the barrel of that gun bored right in the middle of his forehead.

  She flipped it up and away from him once
recognition dawned, but her face still held that tense, wild look of someone startled out of her wits.

  “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, her voice husky with sleep. His cock strained at his fly and he gulped. She rubbed her eyes, shoved her gun in the waistband of her jeans, and put the textbook in the backpack next to her, then stretched as far as she could within the confines of her car.

  He said nothing as he watched her. She had taken off her vest and the thin white tee shirt did nothing to hide the lacy nearly-nothing bra she wore underneath it. Her nipples had hardened in the cool night air, begging for a nip, a lick, a tug.

  A bite. Bryce released a strangled breath.

  She came down from her stretch with a hard glint in her eyes, an ice blue that could probably sear a man in half. He had the oddest feeling that he had seen those eyes somewhere before.

  “What do you want.” Clipped, hostile. Not a question.

  “I wanted to tell you how foolish it is to sleep in an empty Plaza parking garage in the middle of the night with your windows rolled down, but I see it’s occurred to you.”

  “Indeed,” she said, tight-lipped. “Anything else?”

  Neither her expression nor her tone held any hint of desire or anything remotely complimentary—just anger with a great deal of contempt thrown in for good measure. He shouldn’t be surprised. He’d burned that particular bridge behind him.

  And rightly so! Another man’s lover, even. Although . . . from looking at the car, it didn’t seem as though Knox took care of her very well and certainly not as well as he’d taken care of Leah.

  “I wanted to know if you’d like a late dinner,” he said, shocking himself.

  She blinked. “’Scuse me?”

  He’d boxed himself in well. “Dinner. Or breakfast. Whatever.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” she sneered. She shoved her car key into the ignition and turned the engine over.

  “I saved your job.” Lame. True, but lame.

  “Lame,” she snapped. “Whatever you assumed about me? Dead wrong, so keep your derision to yourself. I don’t know who you are or who you think you are, but I assure you: You have never met a woman like me, and you never will again.”

  So saying, she reached over and grabbed the knot of his necktie to pull him to her. Surprised, he didn’t fight, but when her lips touched his and her tongue swept his mouth, he returned it with the same fire.

  Then he wrapped his hand around the back of her head, crushed her to him, and took the kiss away from her.

  Directed it.

  Deepened it.

  Lengthened it.

  He opened his eyes to watch her. Her face was a study in desire, her eyes closed, her breath ragged, her tongue matching his stroke for stroke, shift for shift. She sighed into his mouth and released his tie to caress his neck, the scars there, her thumb stroking his jaw line while their tongues mated.

  Suddenly she sucked in a deep breath and her eyes popped open, staring at him as if she’d lost herself somewhere inside him. She had. He’d surprised her, taken the power position away from her and she didn’t know how to take it back.

  He knew this as surely as he knew his own name.

  She jerked away from him, her breathing heavy and her eyes wide. “You—” She stopped. Swallowed. “I—” Bit her lip. Fumbled for the gear shift.

  Bryce stood, then wrapped his hand tightly around her chin. He tilted her head up until she looked up at him, an odd mixture of panic and passion in her expression.

  “Be careful what you wish for, Miss Cox,” he purred. “You might get it.” Then he turned and strode toward his own car without looking back, wondering what she’d make of that.

  * * * * *

  6: ENERGIZER RABBIT

  AUGUST 2005

  “Ah, Sunday again,” Sebastian intoned from the sofa where he watched a movie and drank a bottle of wine. “I don’t even know why you bother going to church. You’re not the most sterling example of Mormon womanhood ever.”

  Giselle went into the kitchen to mix up her sugar-free pink lemonade electrolyte booster, then cut ham and cheese into cubes to snack on before going to church. “Technically, I am.”

  “With your mouth? And your penchant for killing hitmen?”

  She went into the living room to eat and Sebastian put the movie on pause. So. He wanted to actually . . . talk? And he’d downed nearly a whole bottle of wine; he must have as much on his mind as she had on hers.

  “You know as well as I do that cursing and killing in self-defense wouldn’t keep me from being able to go to the temple if I wanted to.”

  “I’m pretty sure threatening to kill a man in cold blood would get you that excommunication you’ve been bucking for for the last couple of years.”

  “Threatening and doing—two different things.”

  “That’s rich, coming from a woman who’s never made a threat she hasn’t carried out.”

  “Okay, look. Say I go to the bishop and say, ‘Ready to go to the temple now’ and he whips out the list of questions. I can answer every single one honestly. I pay my tithing. I don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t do drugs. I’m honest, I believe in Christ, I don’t batter my spouse—”

  Sebastian laughed.

  “—I support the prophet. I’m still a virgin and I’m thirty-five. I’d say that’s a pretty decent track record and oh, guess what? Instant temple recommend. And there I go, off to St. Louis or Nauvoo or wherever and make my covenants with the Lord. My mom would be so proud.”

  “You forgot that general and all-encompassing unresolved issues question.”

  “I have no unresolved issues. Just because I’m not exactly, you know, leadership material doesn’t mean I don’t qualify as a Good Girl. And what do you mean, bucking for an excommunication?”

  “You know exactly what I mean. Your opinions’ll get you in trouble faster than murdering Fen will.”

  True. Giselle had always been different; she knew it, everybody at church knew it. She garnered respect and friendships across various social strata in the ward, but everyone knew she’d eventually say or do something scandalous because she managed to do it with amazing regularity—usually without meaning to.

  “I don’t spout false doctrine.”

  Sebastian grunted. “No, I know you don’t. Your problem is you’re as attracted to the profane as you are the sacred. You can’t bring yourself to pick one and stick with it, so you straddle the fence between them.” She fidgeted at his usual perception. “As far as I can see, there’s no reward in sticking with the sacred. So tell me something: Would you tell your bishop why all the double-A batteries in this house disappear so fast?”

  Heat rose in her cheeks. “Digital camera, asshole.”

  Sebastian smirked. “So technically, you aren’t. He’d laugh you out of his office with a ‘Stop doing that and come back to see me again in six months.’ Speaking of that, buy your own batteries or do it the old fashioned way ’cause I’m not supporting your habit anymore. And oh, let’s not forget your pièce de résistance. Would you tell him about that?”

  Something had changed inside Giselle once she’d turned that corner into territory that few people would understand. She had killed—and she felt absolutely no remorse.

  “No,” she admitted. “’Specially after what happened to Knox.”

  “Well. That’s apples and oranges, but I see your point. And do you actually plan on going to the temple?”

  “I would never go alone,” she murmured, looking down into her glass at the pink concoction she drank by the quart. “If I happened to find a dude I liked who could marry me in the temple, I’d go then.”

  Sebastian snorted. “You aren’t going to find Hank Rearden at church.” Hank Rearden, the fictional narrator of a political fable by a fringe political philosopher. Patheticpatheticpathetic.

  “I’m not holding out any hope, no. But I’m not cluttering up my life with a string of almosts and maybes and potentials, and I’m not interested in random fuck
ing. If I can’t have exactly what I want, I’ll go without.” She paused when she caught his upraised eyebrow and slid down into the upholstery. “Mostly,” she grumbled.

  “If your collection of erotica is anything to go by, you don’t know what the hell you want. Some of that shit’s not so fun when you try it and the rest of it’s just not worth the trouble. Ask me how I know.”

  She was too old and too honest with herself to say that she was still technically a virgin because it was what she’d been taught all her life: No sex before marriage. Don’t put oneself in temptation’s way. Avoid the appearance of evil. Marriage to a worthy member of the priesthood—

  —in the temple, where the words “’til death do you part” were not part of the ceremony; marriage was for eternity.

  Giselle had always wanted that, a good LDS man with a sexually adventurous streak.

  Yeah, but how would you know? People lie.

  She’d prepared, been obedient, but her childbearing years were fading fast, even as her libido ramped up on her way from thirty-five to forty, and all the while, the pool of desirable Mormon men dwindled to nothing. She personally knew ten other never-married women in the same boat and unless she ran into some smart, educated divorced man or widower (probably looking for a mother for his kids) who might not be thoroughly disgusted by what she’d ask for in bed, she was shit out of luck.

  “Quite frankly, Giz, you’re not going to find Rearden outside the church, either. Quit waiting for—” He waved a hand. “—fantasy man and let me fix you up with somebody. I know half a dozen CEOs who’d fall in love with you, respect you, treat you well. So they aren’t members of the church, but they’re good men. If you want to get married and have kids before your eggs dry up, you’re going to have to figure out what you’ll give up for it. Forget the temple marriage and settle for walking down the aisle like normal people.” He chuckled. “Or marry Knox. That’d solve his problem, my problem, and yours.”