The Proviso

by Moriah Jovan

  “Fen,” Sebastian said with careful civility, “I would’ve thought you’d learned your lesson about slapping women when Giselle broke your nose. Please try to remember that you’re only alive because Knox has politely requested she not kill you—and for no other reason. He does have a breaking point and then you’ll find out exactly how merciless she can be.”

  Fen swallowed.

  No matter that she had killed any hope of a future relationship with Sebastian, she knew she wouldn’t have to fight alone anymore. She had powerful allies now and because of that, she had nothing to lose.

  She could go home clean, start fresh. Done with David. Done with Sebastian. Done with Ford.

  Done with Fen.

  Her Bitch roared within her.

  “Fen,” Eilis said, hard, her life rolling up into a ball inside her and exploding in that rage that kept coming and coming and coming—a barrel of gasoline thrown into a bonfire, “since you’re so dead set to still not do what you should’ve done forty years ago, why don’t I go ahead and tell Sebastian what your interest in me is?”

  Fen gulped.

  No, he wouldn’t have anticipated this, wouldn’t have planned for it.

  She turned to face Sebastian, looked him straight in the eye. No more shame. No more deceit. Just rage.

  “Fen and Trudy Hilliard are my biological parents.”

  Eilis had no words to describe the look of shock that went across Sebastian’s face. She could only presume Jack and Melinda were equally shocked.

  She looked at Fen then, whose arm was still in Sebastian’s strong grip and he looked . . . frightened.

  “I’m sure,” she went on, “that you think you’re very clever, buying up a controlling interest of my company at its IPO. I expected that, but remember this: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed.

  “You go ahead and consider me part of whatever war Knox—my brother—and Sebastian have waged upon you. Jack,” she said, turning to her underwriter, “when the SEC refuses to allow Mr. Kenard to purchase any more OKH stock, which I expect will be any day now, please put it in my account. I’ll take over from there.”

  Then she turned back to Fen and slapped him across the face so hard it snapped his head a full quarter of a turn.

  With that, she turned on a heel and walked out of Blackwood Securities, down Wall Street, and hailed a cab to take her back to her hotel.

  * * * * *

  “Jack,” Sebastian said calmly, still holding Fen’s wrist in a grip that he tightened steadily until Fen winced, “call Kenard. Let him know what’s happened and see what he wants to do. And keep your fat mouth shut about this. I don’t want it all over Wall Street.” Jack and Melinda broke into a run toward the elevator banks.

  Fen couldn’t get any paler than he was. Sebastian dropped Fen’s wrist and his lip curled. “You’re pathetic.”

  Sebastian decided to walk back to TriBeCa. He needed the air. And time to talk. He flipped his phone open and punched two buttons.

  “You got a minute? You’re not going to believe this.”

  He went straight to his room once he got to the hotel and changed into his most comfortable clothes before knocking on Eilis’s door.

  She was in there, he knew, because he could hear her moving around, and then the sounds came closer. She didn’t ask who it was before opening the door wide and then turning to walk back into the depths of the suite. He didn’t feel like yelling at her for that and he came in and closed the door quietly behind him.

  Dressed in a fuzzy robe with a towel all wrapped up around her head, she sat at her table and calmly read the paper. Eggs Benedict, no bread, sat uneaten on the room service cart. Sebastian dropped into the opposite chair without a word and just looked at her. This was the woman he had shamed in order to destroy a man who didn’t exist. This was the woman about whose horrible life he’d read—a direct result of Fen and Trudy’s selfishness that they gave her up for adoption instead of at least asking one of Trudy’s sisters to take her in and keep their secret. Sebastian’s mother—any one of his other aunts—would have welcomed her with open arms and passed her off as her own, without ever telling a soul. This was the woman he’d brought here, to this day, to this hour to put a capstone on his work of fixing her company.

  This was the woman who’d taken his heart and his soul.

  He didn’t speak for a long time and just played with the utensils while she calmly read and ate, drank water and generally acted like the goddess that she was, not deigning to speak to the mortal who’d come to beg an audience.

  “Knox is thrilled,” he finally said. “Shocked as hell, but thrilled.”

  She said nothing, gave no sign that she’d even heard him. But then he saw a tear track down her scar, and he almost smiled.

  “I knew his reputation. I thought that if I told him, he would hate me, throw me to the wolves for being Fen’s daughter,” she said matter-of-factly. “I would like to think I know him well enough now to know he wouldn’t have done that. But,” she continued, “in spite of his reputation, in spite of what he could have done to me—what any other prosecutor in Kansas City would have done to me—he didn’t charge me and he gave me to you to fix me. Because he knew you could and he liked me enough to want to see me fixed.”

  “I guess kin knows its own.”

  “Are you going to yell at me now?”

  “No,” he said, knowing he couldn’t very well throw stones when he had his own deceptions that, in his mind, were much, much worse. “It might have been nice to know this, yes, but it wasn’t crucial to anything. I thought you handled him very well.”

  “The Bitch is back,” she said low in her throat.

  “And I like her.”

  She was silent for a long time and then put down her paper. She wouldn’t look at him. Almost three months after that night and she still couldn’t look at him.

  Ah, well, it was mutual. He could barely look at her.

  Today, on the podium at the New York Stock Exchange, was the first time Sebastian had seen Eilis since the night she’d come to Ford’s studio.

  Eilis swallowed. “I need to tell you something.”

  Sebastian remained silent.

  “I went to Ford. I—I wanted him to paint me and to make love to me and make me feel beautiful.” She turned her head, away from him. “I was naked and I let him touch me, and he was very gentle, but—I couldn’t do it. I didn’t— I left. I just couldn’t do it.”

  “Why?” Sebastian whispered, every word that fell from her tongue stinging his soul for making her do this because he was a coward.

  You’ve always been a coward, starting when you bailed on your mission because it was hard.

  She opened her mouth to say whatever it was she was going to say, but then Sebastian raised a hand and said, “You know what? Never mind. Don’t. Don’t say anything. It doesn’t matter why. Eilis, I have my own secret and I need to have you come back to Kansas City before I can tell you, show you. Whatever it is you think you’ve done doesn’t begin to compare with what I’ve done. Put it away for now, Eilis. I want to enjoy my time here in New York with you.”

  “But— How can you even stand to be near me?” she asked. “I’ve betrayed your trust.”

  “No. You didn’t. You couldn’t have because I never gave you enough of myself to betray. Please, Eilis. Let me show you New York. Get rid of the guilt and let me give you some memories before you get rid of me.”

  She looked at him then, fully, her expression hopeful, a spark of life, of her passion, coming back into her one green eye and one blue eye—but tinged with confused sadness. “Why do you think I would do that?” she whispered.

  “I won’t tell you now, but trust me when I tell you that you have good reason to.”

  * * * * *

  62: THE LOOK OF LOVE

  They strolled through the hotel lobby together holding hands, their fingers interlaced, both clad in denim shorts, tee shirts, and hiking
boots because they would walk wherever they went. It was June, sticky, and hot and Eilis had decided to wear her hair up in a ponytail. Though Eilis wasn’t sure where Sebastian intended to take her, he apparently had an itinerary in his head.

  She noticed stares of both genders aimed at them and grew uncomfortable. One man grew quite bold in his perusal of Sebastian, and Sebastian chuckled, vastly amused, and shook his head. “I never get used to that.”

  Eilis was acutely aware of the female stares of blatant lust Sebastian garnered and that those stares turned to surprise and disdain when they looked at her. They were beautiful women, to the last one, women Eilis wouldn’t be able to compete with—and she knew it.

  “They’re jealous,” he said in her ear. “Men who appreciate truly beautiful women wouldn’t give them the right time of day and they know that. Don’t pay any attention.”

  She automatically protested. “They think I’m too ugly to be with you—”

  “No, that’s not what they think, Eilis,” he said low. “They’re insecure because they can’t touch you for beauty. Be who you are; accept that you’re a bombshell, and revel in it.” They walked out into the bright June afternoon sunlight and Eilis felt a warmth suffuse the pit of her belly.

  “Sebastian,” she said on a whim as they turned right and walked—to where, she didn’t know, “don’t you think those women are beautiful? They’re thin, they’re elegant.”

  “I thought we addressed that thin thing at the grocery store,” he muttered.

  “Yes, but—”

  “No ‘yes buts.’ For one thing, I don’t like fake body parts. For another, they’re clothes hangers. Yeah, they can carry the fashions well, but you get ’em naked and you risk being impaled on one of their bones.”

  She laughed with Sebastian for the first time since that magical December weekend, oh so long ago, ever so aware that he hadn’t let go of her hand. He looked at her and smiled; she caught her breath. This was Sebastian Taight, the most feared and respected financier in the Midwest? He was coldly handsome when he didn’t smile, but when he did, he was warm and magical.

  “You?” He stopped and spread her hands wide as he looked her up and down. “You were made for love.”

  She blushed and looked away, and he laughed as he pulled her forward again.

  “Have you ever thought about modeling?” she asked.

  “It’s been suggested to me now and again,” he admitted.

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “I’d just as soon be behind the camera if I absolutely had to be in that industry. I’m not that vain. It takes a lot of time and effort to maintain that kind of vanity and—as you know, I live in my head.” Then he slid a look at her. “Have you ever thought about it?”

  “I’m not the type Madison Avenue wants to see.”

  “That’s probably true,” he mused, and her gut clenched in pain. “More’s the pity.” Then the pain went away and her gut unclenched as he continued to talk.

  “Men instinctively go for women like you. It’s an evolutionary response. That they don’t allow themselves to acknowledge or follow through with their desires is more a result of brainwashing by popular culture and porn than a true desire for the Barbie dolls. I’d be willing to bet that most younger men don’t know what they want because they’ve been fed a steady diet of video vixens who have identical faces and look like boys with fake tits. They’re all interchangeable. MTV didn’t even exist until I was seventeen and even then I was too busy making money to watch it. I got time and experience to figure out what I liked without being fed pablum from the time I was four.”

  “You don’t— Porn—?”

  He sneered. “I despise pornography. I like beautiful women. I like looking at beautiful women naked. I like making love to and having sex with and fucking beautiful women. Pornography is a perversion of both art and sex.”

  “I don’t— I’ve never met a man who didn’t . . . uh . . . ”

  Sebastian shook his head. “I’m related to a host of men who don’t. Knox. Bryce, Giselle’s husband. My uncles. My dad would’ve beat my ass with a belt if I’d brought anything like that into the house. The other fifteen of my male cousins. Can’t even imagine Fen wasting his time on it.”

  Eilis’s brow wrinkled in confusion; this completely upset her worldview of men and their appetites. “Why not?”

  Sebastian laughed. “Well, in Bryce’s and Fen’s case, too busy fucking the real women they’ve got and—” he continued huskily, “in Knox’s and my case, too busy thinking about the real women we’d like to be fucking.”

  Eilis blushed and looked away and he said, “Not to touch a sensitive topic for both of us—but do you think Ford objectifies women?”

  “No,” she said immediately. “He worships women.”

  “That’s right, and it’s very clear that he does. Pornography does the opposite and women buy into this artificial construct. Women have all the power. If they valued themselves the way they should, as who they are, then there would be much less porn and men wouldn’t stand for the crap they’re getting. They’d start to demand a better class of woman.”

  He stopped and turned to her. She watched him as his hand reached out to draw a line down her face from forehead to chin. “I like your nose, Eilis. I like the way it gives your face character and definition. I like your scar for the same reason. I’m sorry you came about them the way you did, but to me, they’re . . . part of the work of art that is your face. I love your eyes, one green, one blue. I’ve never seen anybody with two different colored eyes before. No, you don’t look like the women in that lobby; you stand head and shoulders above them. You should be proud of it and carry it like a badge of honor.”

  Eilis said nothing to that because it was so profound, so—validating. But then, that was what Sebastian did. That was his purpose in life, not just for her, but for Karen and everyone else he came in contact with.

  She realized that they had gone quite a way when she asked, “Where are we going?”

  “Mmmm, I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”

  Just then her stomach gurgled and she laughed. “I want to go get something to eat; I didn’t eat my lunch.”

  “Okay, and I know just the place to take you.”

  Sebastian and Eilis still ambled along, their fingers entwined, and he said, “Have you ever been to Central Park?”

  “No. I’ve never been here to see anything. It never occurred to me to look at things while I was here doing business.”

  “Every time I travel for business, I book at least a week on the back end for sightseeing. It’s kind of a drag by yourself, but I want to see and experience the world. And obviously,” he muttered wryly, “since I can’t show you anything new about Kansas City, I had to bring you to New York.”

  He stepped over and bumped into her so she stumbled, and then she laughed when she saw his wicked smile. She bumped him back and he grabbed her around the waist, picked her up, and spun her around until she was squealing with laughter. He stopped abruptly and her head spun, which made her laugh more.

  Eilis found herself sliding down Sebastian’s body slowly and she stared at him when they were eye level again. She thought he was going to kiss her and she bit her lip, but then he tickled her and she broke away from him, laughing. She ached from laughing.

  And desire.

  Sebastian took her hand and began walking again, a crooked smile on his face. They didn’t speak again until Sebastian stopped at a hot dog stand and got several. “Eilis, you’re gonna have to help me here.”

  So they ended up juggling hot dogs, topping them off with condiments, then they picked out pop and water, sticking the bottles into pockets and waistbands. And they picnicked in Central Park as the sun got lower in the sky.

  “Why did you come back to Kansas City?” she asked. “You could live anywhere in the world and do what you do.”

  He didn’t answer her for a long time, eating while he thought. “Kansas City’s in my heart.
I grew up there. I explored every single alley with my cousins. My comfort food is there. I learned about money and art there. My family is there. Nowhere in the world is going to have that place in my heart. So I stay to soak up the comforts of home and family. When I get tired of that, I leave for a while.”

  Eilis could understand that. “What neighborhood did you grow up in?”

  “I went to East High School. You?”

  She laughed. “Northeast.”

  “Ghetto kids. Why don’t you leave?”

  “I’m afraid,” she admitted with alacrity, somehow knowing that he wouldn’t make fun of her. “I feel safe and secure. I don’t want to go somewhere else to live by myself, no friends, not knowing the local spots, not knowing how to find the local spots, not knowing how business is done there, who to talk to, how to get things done.”

  “That’s why you hire an agent.”

  She shrugged.

  They ate for a while, not speaking, then Sebastian asked quietly, “Do you want to go to Ground Zero tomorrow?”

  “No,” Eilis whispered. “That was the beginning of the end for me. I— I was here that day. I saw the planes crash into the towers. I— Um, David and I— We— That’s why—”

  “Don’t,” he said sharply. “It’s gone, past. You’re done with what he did to you and he’s dead. Let that be enough.”

  She looked up at him and watched him look at her with an intensity that wasn’t passion, but something warm she didn’t understand. She nodded. “You’re right.”

  “Good. Do you have clothes for the opera and Broadway?”

  “Yes,” she said, delighted, her soul coming alive at the thought of seeing such things with a man, a man who did care for her.

  Sebastian laughed at her. “There’s a little girl inside there somewhere just dying to come out and play, isn’t there?”

  Eilis threw back her head and laughed a great rolling laugh that had been building inside of her all day long. It washed away the stain of Fen’s intrusion. It washed away her shame and guilt. It washed away all the bad things in her life because she was laughing with Sebastian, and to laugh with Sebastian was to experience life to its fullest, to have no pain, no failure.