by Moriah Jovan
Knox had grumbled about Sebastian appropriating his barn and having his lawn wrecked by the workers who came to reinforce the building enough so that it wouldn’t fall down on Sebastian’s head. Once the structural work was done, the makeshift electricity and plumbing done, lights and space heaters installed for the coming winter, and an elaborate pulley system rigged to Sebastian’s specifications, the rest had to be done by Ford and his assistant—
—who had bitched and moaned the entire time he’d helped prep the space and the canvases: twelve feet high and twenty-four feet across total, in three sections clamped together. Sebastian and Knox had used gallons of gesso and painted it with rollers. They’d strung the cables through the pulley system to haul it off the floor and lean it back against the hayloft, then they’d assembled the scaffolding. After that, Knox had declared himself officially done as an artist’s assistant and told Sebastian if he wanted anything else, he’d have to recruit a different cousin, do it himself, or hire it done.
That night, after he’d parked, Sebastian plucked a very heavy five-gallon pail out of the pickup bed and took it into the barn. He flipped on the switch and half blinded himself, then turned on the music and looked up the canvas. Most of the top quarter was finished and he had to admit he hadn’t done badly. He had a hard time painting himself for several reasons, mostly because he didn’t like to. It necessitated professional photography and then painting from the photo, which he didn’t do so well.
He pulled out the paint he needed, a tray intended to hold drywall mud, and a putty knife, then opened his pail.
Clear diamond chips. He’d already gotten the little bit of ruby, emerald, and sapphire chips, not to mention the yellow diamond chips and gold filings that he needed for different parts of the painting. It was time to work on her body.
An entire tray full of titanium white, teensy bit of chrome yellow, teensy bit of cadmium yellow. Then a fairly generous scoop of diamond chips. He had no idea if this would work on a painting this large. It had sort of worked on a five-by-five, but he’d experimented until he had the paint so thick with diamonds, the paint barely held it all together.
That night as he worked, he grew more and more despondent as he remembered the sight of Eilis pulling away from him, leaving him, and began to understand a little bit of the pain Knox and Giselle wanted him to feel—what Eilis didn’t think he should have to feel.
A goddess. She was his Goddess and he was the artist who loved her and he was going to paint her in diamonds.
. . . don’t bother that man. You can see he’s talking to his wife.
Almost a year ago at Bryant’s, Eilis and “wife” in the same sentence had felt good. Right. Mrs. Van Horn occasionally asked about the pretty blonde he’d been with the day he’d met his little protégé Christopher. Just this past Sunday after dinner, after all the Van Horn children had been sent out to play, he’d sat at their table across from Christina and told her what he’d done to kill the fantasy Ford. He’d flinched at the disappointment in her chocolate eyes when he’d admitted that he hadn’t taken responsibility for it, that he hadn’t done what Giselle told him to. Christina’s husband had looked him in the eye and said, “You’re a durned fool.”
Tonight, the idea of Eilis being his wife didn’t seem just good and right. It seemed like an opportunity to bind her to him with paper and ring, which he had fucked up. He wanted to marry her, to be faithful to her, to give children to and take children from her if she was inclined toward that.
And now he wouldn’t have the chance.
He hadn’t told Knox about their argument, nor Giselle. He wanted to stay in their good graces as long as possible. Since Eilis was so enamored of the fact she had a brother who liked her and claimed her, and a cousin-plus-husband whom she thought of as her spiritual and financial bodyguards respectively, she’d probably end up telling them all herself.
Picking up his paint and four different sizes of drywall knives, he climbed up the scaffolding and began. An experienced muralist, he knew exactly what he wanted to do. He thwacked on the first plop of paint and realized that if he weren’t careful, the diamonds would slice the canvas.
More paint, just to soften the edges of the diamonds.
He painted for a long time. Tired. Sebastian couldn’t remember ever being this tired. He hadn’t slept since she left him; he’d sat in his living room drinking, which had given him a hangover, but hadn’t put him to sleep. He didn’t know it was actually possible to get a hangover without sleeping because he’d never, ever gotten drunk before. Getting drunk was so . . . gauche.
Maybe Knox would let him crash on his couch tonight, because he sure didn’t think he’d be able to make the thirty-minute drive home.
The tray was heavy. The spackling knife was heavy and he didn’t dare try to paint with his right hand to even out the load. No matter. This was a labor of love; the labor of an artist who loved his goddess—
—who could not have her.
* * * * *
76: ONE SOUL SHALL NOT BE LOST
Justice awoke not knowing where she was for a moment. Her eyes blinked in the all-encompassing blackness until she could make out silhouettes of furniture—not hers.
Not a dream.
She stiffened a bit, unwilling to turn over and see Knox in bed with her, but after a moment of utter silence and stillness, she realized she was alone. A thimbleful of disappointment suffused her; after all that and he hadn’t slept with her? Curious.
On sitting up, she winced at the soreness in her hips and legs, triggering the memory of the details of what had happened only hours ago. She gulped, unable to think about it right then.
She looked down to see that she wore an enormous pale blue Oxford shirt that smelled like Knox and a pair of soft gray boxers. Once she stood up, she realized that the boxers would have fallen off but for her hips. She took a step and winced.
A wide yellow rubber band of the type used in offices and around newspapers held her hair back. She reached down between her legs to rub her sore muscles and the scent of soap drifted up to her nostrils. Her brow wrinkled. He’d bathed her? Well, sponged her off, anyway. She was pretty sure she’d remember if she were given an actual bath. Curiouser.
She sat back down on the edge of the bed and closed her eyes, her body tense, her fingers curled into the edge of the mattress. She relived every second of what had happened out there in the yard, confused and . . . angry . . . for the wrong reason. Why had it hurt? For all her lack of opportunity to practice with another human being, she knew what sex was about, what she should expect and not. A woman wet, ready, wanting a man should not have pain. She didn’t expect to have had pleasure her first time, but never had she imagined having such pain.
And she had been wet, ready, wanting. She’d begged him, just as he’d told her she would.
Heat suffused her face at that, her embarrassment mitigated only by the fact that he hadn’t gloated, that he had been equally stunned. His voice hoarse with a touch of desperation, he’d apologized. Over and over again while he stroked her hair and held her close and kissed her ear and cheek and temple while she cried. Why had he done that? That wasn’t the ruthless and cruel and untouchable Knox Hilliard she’d come to know.
He’d given her a glimpse of the power he had over her when he’d slipped his fingers inside her and his thumb had manipulated her clitoris just so, and she’d come with a fire she’d never known by her own hand. He had great skill to make her want things from him that she should never want from a man who’d taken away her freedom, her choices.
She felt shame for that, for giving in to him up until the point he hurt her, to the point where even now, though her body felt empty and sore and ragged, she wanted to try again, to know what it was like to have him fully inside her, making her pain go away. If he hadn’t hurt her, she’d still be with him, in this bed, still feeling—acting—as if she were there of her own free will.
Justice stopped thinking and rose to waddle to the bathr
oom, hoping to walk it off.
Once there, she saw a dim glow coming from the backyard where they had—what? What had they done? He’d given her an orgasm, an entirely inadequate word for that, but it wasn’t sex. Wasn’t making love. Wasn’t rape. Wasn’t the F-word. She didn’t know how to label it and Justice was all about labels.
Something had happened, for sure, but—what?
Out the bathroom window, she could see an old barn back there lit up like a Christmas tree. It was some distance away, maybe half a football field; she vaguely remembered seeing it on her mad dash out the patio door. Her brow wrinkled. What was he doing out there?
She had to talk to him, to beg him to let her go—from this marriage, from this house, from that office, and she would go to Washington, which wasn’t far enough away from Knox Hilliard to suit her. She couldn’t live or work this way: Without her freedom, yet wanting to be with him.
What would she do if he wouldn’t let her go? Was she willing to take the chance he’d really kill her father if she left him anyway?
Once she’d made up her mind about seeking him out, Justice didn’t hesitate to walk outside in the nighttime barefoot, the grass wet and spongy under her feet.
Strange music—classical? opera?—with a thumping beat floated over the distance to her ears. There was something familiar about one phrase of it, but she was pretty sure she hadn’t heard any of the rest of it. She wasn’t even sure she liked it, and she liked pretty much everything, especially if it had a driving bass rhythm.
The barn itself looked like it was about to fall down. Light sprayed out from in between every vertical clapboard and every piece of wood on that barn was the odd gray-gold-green-silver color of disintegration. The roof wasn’t much better, and she could see that a blue tarp or six had been strapped down over it.
It took her a minute to find the barn door, thrown open wide to let the summer night breezes cross through to the other end, those doors also open. She flinched. The music nearly deafened her and the light nearly blinded her. She put one arm over her eyes and the other hand over one ear so they could adjust.
There, in the middle of the barn stood a canvas twelve feet high and at least twenty feet wide, leaning back on the edge of the hayloft. A man—not Knox—was on a high scaffold in front of it, painting. Odd. In his left hand was a large drywall knife, and in his right, a spackling tray full of paint.
Through the scaffold, she could see that not much of the painting was done, only the dullish gray torso of a man visible and complete. She got caught up in watching the artist work and in this music she didn’t know if she liked but attracted her anyway. The paint shimmered in the light and cast sparkles over the opposite wall. After a while, she decided to step into the barn and sit, with some pain, her knees drawn up to her chest and her ankles crossed, enthralled with this process.
Justice had no artistic talent; she wished she did. Her talents only lay toward scholarship and lately, she didn’t seem to do that very well, either. She’d never had the opportunity to observe someone creating something so lovely instead of always seeing or hearing or reading the end result.
After a while, the man—a huge man with black hair and pale skin who wore only an old pair of cutoff denim shorts—began to slow, then sag. He gripped his left shoulder with his right hand and rotated it, then rolled his head around on his neck. He stretched, yawned, then turned—and jumped back when he saw her.
He grabbed a remote and turned the music off. The sudden silence almost nauseated her and her ears rang most annoyingly.
“Who the hell are you?” he barked, nearly identically to Knox, but he didn’t scare her. How could he? Knox had scared every bit of fright out of her already.
She looked into his ice blue eyes and knew that he too was related to Knox, thus to Giselle. Probably not a brother; they were all too disparate, so she would assume he was another cousin.
“Justice,” she said. “Who are you?”
Staring at her for a long while, he finally said, “Ford. Or Sebastian, take your pick.”
Huh. She didn’t understand the Ford reference, but that was not what she’d expected Sebastian Taight to look like.
“What are you painting?”
He looked at her strangely before turning and wiping his face on a discarded tee shirt, then drew it over his head. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know. I woke up and saw the light, then came out to see.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Half an hour, maybe.”
“No, I mean, how long have you lived with Knox?”
“Oh. Just today.” Not even that, really.
He climbed down the scaffold and began to clean his knives and brushes in a makeshift sink connected to a garden hose. His back to her, he threw a question over his shoulder.
“When’d he marry you?”
She blinked. How did he know that? “Today,” she murmured. “Er, well, yesterday. I guess.”
“Not too happy about it, huh?”
“No,” she said flatly.
“I’m guessing that means the wedding night wasn’t terribly successful.”
Justice blushed and looked away.
“I see. Well, I’m sorry.”
She was silent for a moment and then said, “I didn’t know you could paint.”
He looked over his shoulder, his brow wrinkled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I’ve never read anywhere that Sebastian Taight painted anything ever.”
He dropped his knives in the sink and turned, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked at her for a long while, then, “That’s because Sebastian Taight doesn’t paint. Ford does. How much do you know about me?”
“I started hearing about your ‘Fix-or-Raid’ policy when Senator Oth got upset with you. I like it, even if it is rather . . . Randian.”
“You read Rand?”
“Everybody reads Rand at some point. It’s kind of a political rite of passage, like Marx, but most people grow out of it.”
“I take it you’re not a fan.”
“No, but it doesn’t take much to see you’re a devoted disciple.” Sebastian laughed. “I’m curious: What made you interested in raising up Kevin Oakley for Senate?”
“You are full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“I guess that depends on what you assume I know.”
“Oh, you’ve got a smart mouth. You’ll fit in with us just fine.” She smiled, comfort and warmth spreading through her inexplicably. “I’m going to go ahead and assume you know the answer to that question and you’re just fishing.”
She pursed her lips and realized she liked this man. He was warm and funny; she needed that right now—but more importantly, she had a lot to say to him. She picked up a random twig and played with it, studied it, while she spoke. “In Atlas Shrugged, when Hank Rearden was put on trial for being a ‘greedy enemy of the state,’” she began and, out of the corner of his eye, saw his body stiffen in shock, “he had already decided to destroy his company and his metal for the sake of Galt’s revolution. I didn’t like that. I think it was childish for all the producers to destroy their own work to prove a point, then ride off into the sunset.
“I know what Congress wants from you and why. They want to know why you make some companies better and why you take some companies completely out of the picture. They want to turn that on you and use it against you and people like you. Don’t give it to them. If they haven’t figured it out by now, they don’t deserve to know.
“On the other hand, don’t just take your ball and go home to Bora Bora, either, because people need to know people like you exist and they need your strength and example to become you. You need to teach those people for your own benefit, to better your bottom line and your strength as an entrepreneur—not theirs. Stay in the game. Keep doing what you do and thumb your nose at the looters. The moochers are unavoidable.”
Justice had the satisfaction of watching his incredu
lity grow as she spoke, though he did recover himself enough to say, “Well? How do I decide?”
She laughed. “Three of the five senators who were calling for your head are ones whose companies you took and destroyed or handed over to someone else to run after you took them and fixed them. They’re bad leaders. They’re stupid. They’re arrogant in their place in life and feel entitled to it.”
“Of course they do. They’re old-money back-room Republicans.”
She inclined her head. “Yes. So I’m going to assume that they were the same way as businessmen. Put that together with your very obvious worship at the altar of laissez-faire capitalism and any fool can see exactly what you do and why you do it.”
Sebastian threw back his head and laughed. After a moment of utter hilarity, he calmed and said, “Well, Justice, I have to tell you—you’re the first outsider who’s figured it out from scratch.”
“Kevin’s not going to be able to protect you from congressional hearings, you know. He’ll have no position of power when he gets there and it’ll take him years to build that kind of clout. So that’s what I’m asking. What do you think he can do for you the minute he gets into office?”
“It’s not what he can do for me once he gets there. It’s about what he can do for me just by running. I’m stalling for time.”
Justice pursed her lips and thought about this for a moment, looking at it from every angle she could think of, then laughed and gave him a small salute. “Very clever.”
He looked at the floor and fidgeted, then looked back up at her. “So since I’m not assuming what you know, what do you actually know about Fen Hilliard?”
“I know he’s Knox’s uncle and that you definitely don’t want him to win that Senate seat.”
Sebastian nodded absently, then said, “What do you think of OKH Enterprises?”
Justice’s brow wrinkled at the odd question. “Hilliard’s the CEO and I’m not impressed with his politics. Why?”
He glanced at her, then at the floor. “No reason, I guess.”