by Moriah Jovan
And he was gone.
Without kissing her.
* * * * *
She was waiting in the courtyard once she had opened the gate for Sebastian’s old pickup, then closed it after he was through. As he drove closer, she gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth, then began to laugh.
“You brought me horse manure!” she squealed and knew she should be embarrassed about being delighted about feces, but she wasn’t. The entire bed was full and piled high with horse manure, a blue tarp over the whole thing.
“I did,” he said as he leaned over the seat to open the passenger door for her. “Let’s go get it unloaded.”
There was a box of wines, juices, and spices on the floor of the passenger side and she said, “Hold on. I’ll take this in.”
Quickly enough, she was back and had hopped in. He drove down the path to the compost, then over the stone bridge. She told him where to park so they could unload it where she needed it to go.
“Shovels?”
“Oh, no. Bobcat.”
Sebastian grinned as she went to the backhoe, climbed in, started it up, and drove it the very short distance to the bed of the pickup. He leaned against the truck to watch her and she felt rather nervous all of a sudden. He had never seen this side of her and she was a little embarrassed. She set the levelers, then lowered the bucket carefully so that she didn’t damage the truck—not that anybody’d notice—and scooped up a good portion of the pile. The cab swung around and she dumped it.
It took ten scoops to get all she could, then she lifted the levelers and drove it around to a different spot and parked.
“Eilis,” he said, a corner of his mouth turned up, “I never would’ve thought I’d get turned on by the sight of a beautiful woman shoveling shit with a backhoe.”
She blushed and ducked her head, then he laughed. “Shovels and brooms now.” When she came back from gathering those, he was thumbing through a CD sleeve. “I don’t work without music,” he muttered, “but I can’t decide what’s good for such an auspicious occasion. Here.” He gave her the sleeve and took a shovel.
“This is all classical,” she said.
“I very rarely listen to anything not classified that way, except for zydeco. Carmina Burana’s my favorite.”
“Well—”
“Not that,” he said shortly. “That’s for another time. When you hear it, you’ll understand.”
“Okay, then. Old Christmas chestnuts. Messiah or Nutcracker?”
Sebastian pursed his lips. “Messiah.”
She blinked. “For a pagan?”
“Good music’s good music and spirituality is spirituality. I have no problem with Jesus of Nazareth. It’s religion I don’t like. It’s said that Messiah is the most perfect score ever composed. Not sure I agree because there’s just way too much perfect music out there, but it is divine.” He paused. “No pun intended.”
Eilis laughed and she marveled at how easy it was to laugh with Sebastian, a man reputed never to laugh at all. It was her own delicious little secret, to know Sebastian Taight laughed and that he laughed with her.
The music began to pour out of the truck’s speakers and they began to finish unloading the manure. There was much left that the backhoe couldn’t get, but that was better than having to do it all by hand.
“So you won’t get your air conditioner fixed, but you have a state-of-the-art sound system.”
“Of course,” he grunted and heaved. “I have my priorities straight.”
“And the zydeco?”
He slid her a glance and his gaze flickered over her hair. “Jole blon,” he said, then began to speak in what seemed to her very lazy French.
“What is that?” she asked, interrupting him.
“Cajun French. Fascinating patois and culture. I love it.”
“What did you say?”
He smirked. “It doesn’t translate, but trust me, it was vulgar.”
She blushed and turned away from him when he laughed.
It didn’t take nearly as long as Sebastian had predicted and it would’ve taken even less time had they not gotten into a manure flinging contest. Sebastian actually played to win, but Eilis bided her time and finally smacked him square in the face with an entire shovel full. “Okay, okay, uncle,” Sebastian groaned, trying to pick pieces of hay from his tongue. “You don’t play fair.”
“Of course it was fair. You should’ve known better than to take me on on my own turf.”
The last of it was swept out of the bed and they climbed back into the cab to go up to the house.
“Come in this way,” Eilis said, leading him across the back patio and around the house where there was a large atrium with an outside door. It was a bathroom.
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Floor to ceiling, wall to wall glass in a bathroom?”
“Who’s going to see? Besides, the hot water makes it steam up fast. Go ahead. I’ll wait since,” she smirked, “I didn’t get a face full.”
Sebastian curled his lip at her and she laughed as she went back to the truck to get the change of clothes he’d brought and had asked her to retrieve.
While she was in his truck, she snooped. Shamelessly. On his key chain was a Ferrari key, which wouldn’t have surprised her before she saw him driving his ancient pickup. Nothing in the ashtray. Nothing under the seats. It was probably the cleanest rattletrap truck she’d ever seen, in fact. It was in the glove compartment she hit pay dirt. There was a hardback sketchbook and a case with pencils in it. It seemed there were very few blank pages left. She opened it and her soul filled with wonder.
Page after page of his visual impressions of people, places, and things. There were many pages dedicated to Paris: women in various stages of undress, the Moulin Rouge, the Seine, Notre Dame, a small café with a very old man and a concerned child.
A bedsit with a full-size bed, a small table with a paper-wrapped loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, a small wheel of cheese on a board with a small knife. Apples, lemons, pears, grapes. A stack of clothes folded neatly on a chair pushed up against a wall. Canvases scattered around, an easel.
It was a travelogue of Europe and she knew these drawings were twenty years old, done through the eyes of a twenty-year-old boy with an extraordinary talent. If he had been that good then, she wondered what he’d have turned into if he’d pursued it professionally.
She flipped through the book and saw sketches of Kansas City: Bryant’s, May’s Grocery, a ghetto neighborhood honestly but lovingly drawn. There was a portrait of an older woman she assumed to be his mother, and a portrait of a devilishly handsome man with a peaceful aura and a blinding smile, yet he was haggard and worn, old before his time. His father.
There was a candid drawing of a young Knox Hilliard passionately kissing an even younger girl. Eilis’s breath caught in her throat and she thought she’d cry, so she turned the page quickly.
There was another picture of a twenty-ish Knox Hilliard in a courtroom giving a speech to the jury. This, too, was a study of a face: young, confident, and beguiling. Directly across from that page was the same picture, only the face was different: hard, cynical, and cold. Eilis felt tears well in her eyes again at the difference in the two men.
Still only halfway through the thick book, she kept going, seeing the world through Sebastian Taight’s eyes. More random people in random circumstances, some funny, some touching, some heartbreaking. She skipped over the pages of that terrifying September day in 2001.
There was another drawing of the girl Knox Hilliard had been kissing, only now, an adult and much more serious. Her hair was in a ponytail tied with a ribbon in a bow. She stood holding a gun in each hand on two faceless men. That drawing was a study of her face—ferocious, lethal, the face of a warrior. Giselle, the cousin who had threatened Fen with his life. Eilis shuddered and turned another page.
There were only a few pages left and she turned one only to gasp. It was her, Eilis, the way Sebastian saw her. And the way Sebastian saw
her was . . . beautiful. It was her as she had been the day they’d gone to Bryant’s and he’d stood in line entertaining not only her but the entire line of people. He’d caught her in a laugh, the early afternoon sun bright, white, her hair swirling around her face on a breeze.
Somehow, he’d captured a sparkle in her eyes and he’d managed to make her scar and her nose look attractive. He’d made her eyes actually look two different colors—in pencil.
The next page was her again, as she looked in costume at work, which was definitely not lovingly drawn. He must despise the way she dressed for work. She almost let a tear loose then, but she turned the page quickly—but then she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. She felt desire well up within her.
This was what he imagined Eilis must look like naked, which, she had to admit, was dead on. He’d drawn her nude, lying on her side in one of her flower beds, asleep. If she hadn’t known it was her, she’d have thought he’d drawn a fertility goddess. But she knew that though the proportions were right, right down to the pooch in her belly, that wasn’t her.
That woman had—something—that Eilis didn’t see in her reflection. She didn’t know what bothered her more, that he’d never seen her nude but had been able to draw her accurately or that he’d bestowed upon her a mysterious something that made this woman beautiful, but that she didn’t have.
“Eilis! Where the hell did you go?” The bellow startled her and she put the book back in the glove compartment. She picked up his backpack full of clothes, then scurried toward the house.
* * * * *
Sebastian smiled to himself when she came around the house in a huff. He figured he’d given her enough time to thumb through his sketchbook pretty thoroughly. He wanted her to know how he saw her. Not that she’d believe him, he thought wryly.
“Geez, Eilis,” he groused as he took the backpack and she led the way into the breezeway where it was warm, “took you long enough. Standing there freezing my ass off, yelling at you.” She wouldn’t look at him. He didn’t know if that was because he only had a towel on or because now she knew how he saw her.
“My turn,” she murmured and brushed by him through the inside doorway to the bathroom, slamming and locking it behind her.
He dressed as quickly as he could. The last thing in the world he needed right now was for her to see his nude backside.
* * * * *
47: GRIS GRIS
Eilis kneaded sweet bread dough while directing Sebastian as to which paintings he should take downstairs to her vault to make room for decorations. As he’d suspected, she had not one, but two Georgia O’Keeffes and he didn’t care what Georgia said, those weren’t just irises.
Once down in her basement, he saw that she had a pretty thorough understanding of how much money hung on her walls. The vault was an actual bank vault that held millions of dollars in art. He wasn’t sure why she just hadn’t sold a few of these to get her company out of hot water, but then he was startled to see what it was she had. He understood.
Valuable, yes, but probably not what she’d paid for them and certainly not enough to make much difference in HRP’s situation. She was waiting for a market upturn on specific artists before she sold them so she would at least not lose money. Some of these would never regain value.
“Eilis!” he called and it was a minute before she came to the top of the stairs. “Can you stop and come down here a minute?”
“Hold on. I have to set the bread to rise.” It wasn’t too long before she entered the vault. “What?”
“I know you didn’t ask for my advice,” he began, “and I’m probably going to offend you, so fair warning, but—” He flipped through the canvases, culling as he went. “These are worth as much as they’re ever going to be worth. I suggest you sell them as soon as possible. We could slide these in the lot going to Christie’s in February.”
He glanced up at her and her mouth was tight, her eyes hard.
“Uh oh. I’m in trouble.”
“No,” she murmured. “Those were David’s picks. I don’t like them and I didn’t think they’d appreciate at all, but he was insistent.”
“All right,” Sebastian said, releasing his breath in a whoosh. It helped to know she hadn’t been the one who’d selected those. He continued to pull out canvases and put them in a separate stack. “These are questionable. I wouldn’t buy them, but you could get your money back if you wanted to. I doubt they’ll go up in value.”
“I agree.”
He looked at her again. “Why haven’t you done this yourself?”
She swallowed and looked away. “I haven’t been down here since David lived here.”
“Why?”
A slight hesitation, then, softly, “He raped me here.”
Sebastian’s breath caught. “Oh. I— I’m sorry. I won’t keep you.”
“No, it’s okay if you’re here. That’s why I asked you to help me. I couldn’t come down here myself. I suspected you might start sorting through things, but I didn’t expect it of you. I only needed you to bring the Christmas decorations up the stairs.”
“Do you want to stay?” he asked gently, not daring to touch her.
Eilis looked around then and didn’t answer. She stepped outside the vault and looked at the rest of this part of the basement that was used for storage of things that weren’t valuable. She motioned him to join her outside the vault and took his hand to lead him across the room to an outside corner. She put her finger on a dark spot that was about six inches in diameter and wrapped around the bead of concrete that was the corner, covering both walls. Sebastian knew that was blood before she spoke.
“That’s where he broke my nose and gave me this scar,” she said tonelessly. Sebastian could feel horror rise up in him at what she’d suffered personally.
No wonder she’d not been able to salvage her company or take the time to get to know her employees. She’d been too busy trying to survive, trying to save their pensions, trying Webster. Trying to salvage her own soul.
Suddenly, he realized that he hadn’t taken the time to get to know her the way he’d gotten to know her employees. If he’d known any of this, he’d not have reprimanded her so sharply and he felt sick to his stomach about that fact.
“Eilis, you don’t have to tell me this,” Sebastian murmured.
“No, it’s okay,” she insisted. “You know every detail of my company, what he did to it. And you fixed it.”
Maybe you can fix me, too. The unspoken wish hung heavy in the air, and he was only too glad to see what he could do about that.
He laid his hand on her cheek and drew her face around so she was looking at him. Then he laid his other hand along her other cheek.
“Eilis,” he whispered, intent on her scar and her nose, both of which he thought were lovely and made her even more beautiful than she would have been without them. “David. Is. Dead.”
Her eyes popped open. “What? When? How do you know? I wasn’t notified.”
“Monday. Knox must not have gotten around to telling you yet. Did you know David had a heart condition?”
“Yes. He took a lot of medication for it.”
“Apparently, he just keeled over at mess. Heart attack. Knox thinks it’s very . . . possible . . . that the infirmary screwed up his meds, but they won’t admit it.”
She looked at him for a long time, and he waited for whatever she was going to say. She took a long breath. “Thank you,” she whispered, “for . . . telling . . . me.”
“You’re welcome,” he said with a warm smile and gathered her into his body when she began to cry. He let her continue until she hiccuped, then finally, he pulled her down to the floor and leaned back against the wall. He sat her in his lap and let her cry some more until nothing was left and she simply sat between his legs and pressed her cheek to his chest.
It was a while. Sebastian ran his fingers through her pretty pale butter-blonde hair and caressed the nape of her neck. He rubbed her back and arm.
�
�Oh, shit!” she said and popped out of his lap to sprint upstairs.
Sebastian sat confused until he heard the slap of bread dough on the counter, and then he chuckled. He spent the next hour sorting her vaulted art and assumed that he’d be the one to broker these for her if she wanted. He found paper and pen, then began to catalog them according to his breakdowns and what he thought they might fetch at auction.
“Eilis, are you done up there?”
“Just a minute.”
When she came back downstairs, she had two more canvases. She showed them to him and without a word, he pointed to which piles they should go and marked them on his scratch paper.
“Any more?”
“No. That’s it.”
“Okay.” He went back into the cleaned-out vault and said, “Come look.”
The minute she entered the vault, he again framed her face with his hands, but this time, he kissed her. He would kiss her until she forgot what had happened here, what David had done to her.
“Mmmm,” she hummed into his mouth, her eyes closed. He watched her face as he kissed her, unable to not watch her flush with desire.
Then the kiss slowly ended and her eyes fluttered open.
“Look around you, Eilis,” he murmured and let go her face. She looked. “Remember this. It’s clean. Your good art is coming back in. Your bad art is out there and going to auction with your Fords. And remember, your Fords are only going because the corporation owns them. When Christmas is over, I’ll help you undecorate and you’ll have all your good art to put back. Bonus! You have been well kissed.”
Her gaze went everywhere, touched every crevice. Then she looked at him and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You fix everything for me.”
“It’s all part of the Fix-or-Raid plan,” he said dryly and she laughed. Together they put the good art back, then stacked the bad art toward the front of the vault for safekeeping until auction. He’d see about getting them crated up as soon as possible and stored with the Fords so as to get them out of her house.
“Okay,” Sebastian said. “Point me to the Christmas decorations and a ladder, and go finish that povitica you promised me.” She bounded up the stairs with a laugh and he watched that beautiful ass all the way. “I’d rather have raided,” he muttered to himself with a sigh. He picked up the first two of a dozen or more tubs and headed up the stairs after her.