The Proviso

by Moriah Jovan

  She pursed her lips and remained silent for a few beats and then, “Glass bottle. Sebastian and I were out collecting one night and the debtor had arranged an ambush.”

  He smirked. “What happened?”

  She hesitated again. “Let’s just say he paid us what he owed us. Eventually. We didn’t know where he got the money and we didn’t care.”

  With a finger, he made a sweeping motion around it, then around again. Visions of his own all-American boyhood flashed through his mind: football, surfing, church, Boy Scouts, suburban school. He compared it to the vision of her girlhood of guns, ghettos, and back alley collections and—

  “That’s fuckable,” he finally breathed and she laughed.

  “I wouldn’t be with a man who didn’t find a few war wounds attractive.”

  No, nothing fragile or breakable about this woman.

  “You’re perfect.”

  “Mmmm, so are you.”

  “No. We’re Beauty and the Beast, is what we are.”

  She scowled. “I don’t see you that way. Whatever you think about the way you look? Ditch it. Only my opinion counts and I think you’re perfect.”

  “You didn’t see me before the fire and I have no pictures.”

  “Before the fire, you were married.”

  “And about a week away from being divorced.”

  “Because you were miserable.”

  “And because she wasn’t you.”

  “You didn’t know me then.”

  “I feel like I’ve known you forever,” he murmured, dipping his head to nibble and taste the crook of her neck, licking the mark he had given her. “You are so familiar to me, it’s like we met long ago. Giselle, I’ve spent two years thinking of you, what it would be like to be in bed with you, what you must have in that warrior’s soul of yours.”

  “You had a six-month head start on me, then.”

  They watched each other carefully for a long moment, then Bryce kissed and nibbled at her ear. “I don’t know when I fell in love with you, Giselle, but I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t.”

  She turned her head then and caught his mouth in a kiss he didn’t care about taking away from her.

  “You bit me,” she breathed into his mouth.

  “I did,” he whispered back. “You’re mine. I want every male in the world to know that.”

  “Mmmm, I like that. But don’t think I won’t give back as good as I get.”

  “Counting on it.”

  * * * * *

  26: O FORTUNA

  Sebastian had gone home after spending the day with the delectable Miss Logan and painted like a man possessed, following the heavy percussion and extravagant voices of Carmina Burana that resounded throughout his massive studio.

  He scowled in irritation when Giselle came clattering in the door overhead until he realized by the sound of the footsteps that she had someone with her—a man. There was only one man she’d bring into this house and for only one reason, so his irritation died as fast as it had flared.

  Sebastian continued to paint, the erotic music loud and heightening what was happening above his head, thereby informing what happened on his canvas. It wasn’t long until her cries could be heard over the pounding music every time she came. Snapped out his funk by his thorough delight at her sudden and unexpected debauchery, Sebastian laughed out loud.

  It did occur to him he should probably have the place soundproofed, especially if Kenard became a regular overnight guest. Yeah, it was funny tonight, but by tomorrow, Sebastian would be seriously annoyed. On the other hand, it would shock him speechless if she didn’t move out of Sebastian’s house and into Kenard’s soon. Within the week.

  That might suck a bit. He liked having her around, kinda like a cat without the litter box.

  He continued to paint long into the night and after all the noises above him had ceased, until he was distracted by the sound of Knox letting himself into the house and then coming down the stairs to his studio.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Sebastian barked, angry at the interruption.

  “It’s eight o’clock in the morning and you look like shit,” Knox shot back. “I came to talk to you about Eilis Logan. And where’s Giselle? Her car’s not out there.”

  Sebastian grinned. “Giselle is just fine, I do believe. What do you want to know about Logan?”

  “Can she be rescued?”

  He pursed his lips while he cleaned his brushes and knives. He’d had no idea he’d painted the night away, although he did admit that what he’d painted was particularly exquisite, once he stepped back and looked.

  He didn’t answer, but led the way upstairs to the kitchen to fix himself some breakfast. Knox rooted around in the refrigerator, then sat down at the conference room table and ate part of a leftover steak to temper the orange juice.

  “You’re a shithead, you know that?” Sebastian said. “You could’ve just told me she had all that art to begin with, and I would’ve taken the receivership without you having to hammer away at me. Why do you have to do everything the hard way?”

  “You don’t seem to mind that when you dig yourself into a hole and you need me to pull you back out.”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll be sure to tell Congress you’re the biggest weapon in my Fix-or-Raid arsenal. Happy now?”

  “Ah, recognition for my genius at last.”

  “Madness, not genius.”

  “And always with a method. Eccentric hermit money brokers have no room to talk. Are you going to sell her art?”

  “Absolutely. With the sale of the eight Fords alone, she’ll be almost halfway out of the red. I’m still in shock that she’d keep them while her company went deeper and deeper—and who knows what other treasures she’s got stored away somewhere. I’m shocked she didn’t clean house. She’s so top-heavy that building should be leaning like Pisa. And why hasn’t she taken her company public? She’s got two great products that she hasn’t put on the general market . . . why? Her marketing sucks. Nothing makes sense.”

  “I wondered about that, especially the part about clearing out her executive ranks,” Knox muttered absently, “but that’s not my area of expertise so I wanted you to figure it out.” He stopped for a minute to think. “I like her. I don’t know why. I just wanted to give her someone who could make her do what she needed to do. Did you read Webster’s trial transcripts?”

  Sebastian shook his head.

  “When I was trying to decide whether I wanted to prosecute her or not,” Knox said, “I started looking at the dates of the thefts. It looked to me like if she hadn’t married Webster, he’d have been able to take everything: pensions, art, other assets. So I asked her how she found out and blammo. Stray piece of paper on the bedroom floor about a week after he moved into her house. She was only able to catch him before he got everything because she married him and she stayed married to him to rescue her company. He hid it so well it took her six months to figure out where it was all going and prove it.”

  Sebastian stared at him for a long moment and then said, “Maybe she’s a better gambler than I thought.” He hoisted himself up on the kitchen counter and brooded. He did that a lot and his family had long ago accepted that they just had to wait until he was finished and then said whatever it was he needed to say. Knox continued to eat.

  “She also owns Morning in Bed,” he finally said.

  Knox choked.

  “It’s not on the books. She ’fessed up—why, I don’t know because I would’ve never found out. I can only conclude she really does value her company more than she values her standing in the art community.”

  “Nobody knows who owns that painting, so she has no standing.”

  Sebastian grunted. “True. I’m thinking about letting her keep it with no one the wiser.”

  Knox got up and cleaned up his breakfast mess. “That’s very out of character for you.”

  “She didn’t have to tell me at all.”

  Knox started laughing at once.
“Oh, I see. You want to fuck her.”

  “Shut up,” Sebastian snarled.

  He held up his hands, still grinning. “Hey, I make no judgments. I told you I like her and I do respect her. She’s one of the most unique women I’ve ever met, certainly, and she’s got brains. But the Jackie O. schtick leaves me cold.”

  Sebastian waved a hand. “Camouflage.”

  “Say, where’d King Midas go while you were trying to figure out how to run your freight train over her track?”

  “No idea. I was too surprised it was happening at all.”

  Knox continued to chuckle as they left the conference room and went down the four stairs to the corridor, shaking him down about Giselle’s whereabouts, which made Sebastian pissy. It made him so pissy, in fact, that he suggested Knox open her bedroom door and see if she was there.

  He did.

  “Gi— Holy shit.”

  Sebastian did smile then. The bed was trashed, the room reeked of sex, and the guilty parties were naked. Giselle slept curled up against Kenard, her back against his ribs, his arm her pillow. Knox nearly swallowed his tongue.

  “Get out.” That nasty snarl came from the man in the bed, who had propped himself up on one elbow. With the burn scars that matted half his face and apparently, the entire left side of his body, he looked as deadly as he sounded. Sebastian curled his hand around Knox’s collar and dragged him of the doorway, then closed the door.

  “Well, that was refreshing and unexpected!” Sebastian crowed, poking at Knox, wanting to see him lather up.

  Knox punched him in the sternum—hard—and stalked off to the living room, where he flopped on the couch and turned on the TV. “If you’re hooking for any more reaction from me, you’re wasting your time. I’ve got my own problems and nowhere on that very long list is a notation to be jealous of Bryce when—Remember!—I went out of my way to make sure he knew she was ripe for his picking. And then I had to go kick Giselle’s ass into gear. You’d’a thought they were a couple of damned eighth graders.”

  That was true and Sebastian growled, unsatisfied with the reaction he’d gotten. That was two people in two days Sebastian had been unable to bait successfully. No matter. He knew he could get Giselle and how. He scrounged around for the envelopes he knew he had somewhere.

  “Knox,” he said blithely, “you wanna go to the Ford exhibit tonight?”

  “And be treated like a leper? You know I’m persona non grata all over town.”

  “Oh, good, because I only have two invitations and I wanted to make sure you didn’t want one before I gave them to Giselle and Kenard.”

  Knox turned around and stared at him, then started laughing. “Oh, you’re a bastard.”

  Sebastian chuckled. “Yes, I am. Couldn’t crack that damn façade Eilis has and your reaction to our newly deflowered Giselle in there was highly unsatisfactory. I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for cheap entertainment this morning.”

  “Cheap entertainment? Open her damn door and watch. Any woman who’d bring a man home and not lock her door wants to be watched.” And so saying, Knox turned up the volume on the TV. “I’d love to be at that exhibit just to see his face. You should’ve seen him when I told him she’d threatened Fen at gunpoint.”

  “I’m guessing, since he’s in there with her, that he finds her fuckable because of her proclivities, not in spite of. I mean, any man who can bed Giselle is not a man to be fucked with. He’s so beyond bitter and angry, he could chew concrete.” Knox made no reply. “Oh, here they are. Hey, are you still serious about not wanting OKH?”

  “Dead serious.”

  Sebastian went into the living room and as he passed Knox, he walloped him in the back of the head. He dropped into the club chair across from him and put his feet up on the coffee table. “Out with it. What does Giselle know that I don’t?”

  Sebastian watched as Knox flipped through the channels until he settled on Animaniacs. Naturally. “There’s a woman I want. That’s what Giselle knows. All I need is to get through my birthday alive and go get her.”

  Sebastian couldn’t fault that logic. “But does she want you?”

  “Yes. And I have no interest in running a company.”

  “You have a degree in accounting.”

  “And so I’m a prosecutor who understands white-collar crimes better than most and I’m a whiz with paper trails. I can’t imagine being chained to a desk poring over the tax code.” Knox shuddered. “I should’ve stayed in California.”

  Sebastian made no reply to that. It would be futile to point out that Knox wouldn’t give up his job for anything, even to be a professional surfer.

  “I might have a solution for your issues with being a CEO,” Sebastian said slowly, staring at the coffee table, thinking out loud. “I’d make Eilis Logan CEO.”

  Knox grunted. “Good luck with that. She can’t even manage what she built herself.” With that, he hauled himself out of the couch and started toward the front door. “I’m out of here. I can’t take any more of the second-hand fuckfest.”

  “You should’ve heard her last night.”

  “Make her go downstairs.”

  Sebastian’s mouth thinned. “I think not. That’s my bedroom.”

  “When was the last time you used it?”

  That hit its mark and Sebastian’s teeth ground. Knox laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. You better figure out a way to get Logan in bed and quick. Now that you’ve got a woman in your cross hairs that you’ll actually have to spend time to seduce, you’ll be insufferable. Oh wait,” Knox said blithely as he opened the front door, “you can’t. You’re her trustee. That would be . . . immoral. And I think it’d be funnier’n’hell to figure out how it might be illegal and throw your ass in jail for it. Check and mate.” He smiled benignly at Sebastian, then slammed the door behind him.

  Sebastian shook his head and went back to work. He knew how he was going to haul Eilis out of bankruptcy; it was a matter of how fast he could make it happen and how hard she’d fight him. He wanted her and he’d made up his mind he would have her. Somehow.

  What Sebastian wanted, Sebastian got.

  Always.

  * * * * *

  27: STANDING ON HIGHER GROUND

  A soft knock sounded on Giselle’s bedroom door. “Hey, Giz,” Sebastian called politely, “when you come up for air, I want to talk to you. Bring Kenard.”

  Giselle sighed and looked over at her clock. “It’s three o’clock and I’m hungry.”

  “You always do what he says?” Bryce muttered from beside her, his face buried in the pillow and his arm in the curve of her waist.

  “Absolutely not. Sebastian’s all about wine, women, and song and thinks everybody else should be, too. He wouldn’t interrupt if it weren’t important to him. Plus, it’s Saturday. He’ll have Bryant’s.”

  “Oh, that’s all you really needed to say.”

  An hour later, wrapped up in terry cloth from head to toe, she waddled, still groaning, out to the conference room holding hands with Bryce, who wore only a low-slung towel around his hips. A solid twelve, thirteen hours of fucking, and she could feel every minute of it in her muscles that hurt oh, so badly she could barely walk.

  She liked it. She didn’t know if any other event in her life could ever compete.

  “I know you’ve met already. Sorta. Bryce, Sebastian. Sebastian, Bryce.”

  “Sorry about punching you at Fen’s party.”

  “Eh, don’t worry about it. It was worth it.” Sebastian shot a glance at Giselle. “Having a little trouble walking this afternoon, Giz?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Who hasn’t gotten laid in the last four years?”

  Sebastian curled his lip at her and she chuckled.

  As soon as they’d settled themselves in with the barbecue, Sebastian’s irritation with her gave way to a calculating smirk and she caught her breath, wondering how he would retaliate. First Knox, then her. Sebastian was on a roll today.

  He slid two white en
velopes across the table at her and said, “Giz, I would like you and Kenard here to come to the Ford opening tonight.”

  She sucked in a deep breath. No. Not that. Anything but that. Sebastian grinned when she slouched down in her chair and glared at him, folding her arms over her chest.

  “Something wrong, Giz? Is there some reason you don’t want to go to an exclusive Ford showing tonight?”

  “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

  She could sense Bryce’s confusion, but she didn’t care to explain and finally Sebastian got down to business.

  “I’m actually glad—” He shook his head and let loose a chuckle, his eyebrows raised. “—although extremely surprised—that you’re here. I was going to contact you next week.”

  That startled Bryce, distracted him. Yay.

  “I need a secret trust,” Sebastian explained. “I had heard you were especially good at those. And I’m curious. Why are you so good at this? You’re a trial attorney.”

  Bryce shrugged. “I was getting divorced and wrapping up my assets so she couldn’t get to them.”

  “Ah. That’s a bitch.”

  “Yes, she was,” Bryce muttered emphatically, and Giselle hurt for him all of a sudden, without knowing why.

  Sebastian cleared his throat to dislodge his foot. He pulled out a thick file and slid it across the table. He began to eat while Bryce looked them over. “Knox asked me to be the trustee for this receivership and I’m starting to lay some groundwork.”

  Giselle leaned over Bryce’s arm to read and her eyes widened at the very high eight-figure numbers—all in red. Giselle’s bankruptcy didn’t even begin to approach that. HR Prerogatives. Eilis Logan.

  “That’s a beautiful name,” Giselle whispered reverently.

  “It’s Gaelic,” Bryce murmured and Giselle smiled. “Irish for Elizabeth.” While Bryce and Sebastian discussed this woman’s situation, she relived the most magical hours of her life. She could afford to be a little cavalier about it because she had a man who’d be in a lot more trouble with the church than she would be when they chose to repent later—and he knew it.