The Proviso (33 page)

“Not right now,” she whispered.

“Anyway, it took me a year to lay the groundwork,
then another year for everything else to come together. The divorce
was about to be finalized when the fire happened. I was relieved
she was dead, but I’d rather have had the divorce if I could’ve
kept my kids. I got a life insurance payout, so that made me
suspect number one for murder and I didn’t care. I was too
heartbroken over my kids.” He stared up at the sky. “Emme was ten.
Luke was eight. Andrea was six and Randy was three.”

Giselle put her hand to the burn scars on his face
and caressed them. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But you know your
children are just fine now, don’t you?”

“Intellectually, yes, but . . . ” He took a deep
breath. “Giselle, I
really
don’t want to talk about this
anymore.”

She supposed she could understand that and though
she wanted him to trust her enough to tell her about his fire, she
wouldn’t push. “Okay.” They fell silent to listen to the familiar
goings-on around them. Children squealed, cars whizzed past. Sirens
blared somewhere, fountains gurgled, and horns honked. Birds sang
and a small bee buzzed around Giselle’s hair because it smelled
like watermelon. She cleared her throat.

“Bryce,” she murmured, “about this alpha thing.”

“Yes?”

“I won’t play those games outside the context of
sex. And sometimes not even then.”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“Telling you,” she said sharply, looking him
straight in the eye. “I won’t obey. I won’t ask permission to live
my life the way I want to and I won’t be controlled.”

He nodded. “Agreed. I want it in bed. I don’t want
to live it.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Um, Giselle, I—” he
began, stopped, looked away. She watched him and her spine tingled
as if she were in trouble. He finally looked back at her and after
another long moment, he said, “I can’t have any more children.”

Her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes widened
and she swallowed. Hard.

“
Oh.”
It was a whisper, a breath.

“I should have told you that sooner, I know, but the
conversation never came around to it and it never occurred to me.
You’re thirty-six. I guess I just assumed you wouldn’t be
interested. Then, when I saw that painting last night— It hit me in
the gut. I didn’t want to tell you after that; I wanted to enjoy
what was left of the weekend. I figured it might be a deal breaker.
I— I’m sorry I didn’t say anything at dinner.”

“
I
didn’t do anything that
I
wouldn’t
have done anyway,” she murmured, though without humor. It was her
turn to be silent, her mind in complete turmoil. She cleared her
throat. “That would be a new concept for me,” she finally said. “I
mean, you know. You grow up in the church, children are by default
part of your future. Being with a man and deliberately
not
having any isn’t part of the plan.”

“I do
not
want any more,” he said
emphatically. “If I hadn’t had a vasectomy after Randy was born,
I’d do it now and I will
not
get it reversed.” He said that
with such finality she didn’t dare argue. “Children are the most
precious, noisy, wonderful, obnoxious little creatures on the
planet, especially if you made them. But when they die before you
do, even one of them—” His mouth tightened. “I don’t want to have
more with you and go through my life wondering when and how the
Lord’s going to take them away from me because I broke my
covenants.”

She stared at him, shocked to her core. “Do you
really believe he would do that?” she whispered.

“He’s already done it and for a helluva lot less
than fornication.”

“The Lord doesn’t work that way!”

“Oh, really? When was the last time you read your
scriptures? He’s all about punishment.”

Her nostrils flared. “
Bryce—
”

“No, Giselle,” he snapped. “No—
Hell
no.
Don’t ask me for children, don’t ask me to go back to church, don’t
spend any time fantasizing about me repenting so we can get married
in the temple. I’m telling you right now, it won’t happen. If you
want to be with me, those are the terms and I
never
gave you
any reason to think otherwise.”

Her nose stung and her eyes watered. She
disentangled her body from his and stood, took a deep breath and
released it, hoping she wouldn’t break down right there. “Um, I—
I’m going to have to percolate on that a while.”

He said nothing for a long moment as he studied the
ground. Then he nodded. “That’s fair.”

“It’s three-thirty,” she said, her throat tight. “I
have to be at work at four.”

* * * * *

31:
CRAZY FAITH

“Miss Logan,” Sebastian said briskly as he strode
into her office early Monday morning. Eilis turned from the window
where she’d watched him come into the building. She figured if she
could think of him as a piece of art, then it would be okay to
admire his beauty.

“Mr. Taight,” she said calmly, levelly, as he
plopped a backpack on the table that sat in the middle of the
massive office, then pulled out a pad of green engineer’s paper and
a mechanical pencil. She watched as he sat in one of the armless
designer chairs that surrounded the conference table and began to
write on his tablet. Curious, she wandered over to him and saw that
he was creating mathematical formulas and plugging in values,
working them all without benefit of a calculator.

“Do you always do that by hand?” she asked
softly.

“Yes,” he grunted. “Helps me think.” He continued to
scratch out numbers in a bold hand and Eilis saw that his
handwriting was very . . . him. He spoke again as he whipped over
his formulas with lightning speed. No wonder he didn’t use a
calculator. It would slow him down.

“I need you to bring me your employee list sorted as
to pay scale and management level. Please.”

“Why?”

She almost gulped when Sebastian stopped writing
immediately, his body still, then he looked up at her slowly.
“Why?” Tension radiated from his body and Eilis wanted to look away
from him. She didn’t dare.

“Miss Logan,” he said as he threw his pencil down
and leaned back in his chair, one arm on the table, the other along
the back of the chair, his fingers steepled at his temple. He put
his leg up on the chair next to him. “Do you understand that what
I’m going to do is what you should’ve done long ago? Tell me
something: You’re a brilliant woman, I’m assuming well educated,
and very, very savvy. You have a good reputation for making all the
right moves, David Webster aside. In fact, I hear that early in
your career, you were quite the ruthless
bitch
. How in the
hell
did you miss doing the most obvious things you needed
to do to save this company? It’s not like you were without
resources.”

Eilis wasn’t going to answer that. She had her
reasons and they weren’t any of his business. And as for “ruthless
bitch” . . . well, that was true, and Eilis had traded on it as
long as she could before being forced to become Miss Manners. Her
Inner Bitch had abandoned her, betrayed by Chanel.

He went on. “You know exactly what I’m going to do
with that list. I’ll give you the option of presenting the other
three points of my reorganization plan and letting your employees
think that the good stuff is all your idea and I’m just your
court-appointed supervisor who was the big bad meanie who cleaned
your house for you. You’ve thought about doing everything I’m going
to do to this company. You just haven’t had the balls to do
it.”

“You have no way of knowing that,” she murmured,
stung, and aching to correct his assumption. Not daring to.

“Sure I do. I never miss details, Miss Logan. I
should think you’d have figured that out.”

Eilis fought the urge to suck in a sharp breath at
his reference to how easily and how fast he’d picked her out at the
Ford exhibit.

“I usually never let a CEO know what I’m going to do
before I do it. It hurts too much and they wouldn’t have thought of
it themselves anyway. But you already knew what I was going to do
and you got your back up. Well, Miss Logan, if it’s a fight you
want, I’ll give it to you and without question— You. Will. Lose. Do
I make myself clear?”

Heaven help her, she liked King Midas much better
than Sebastian Taight, who’d been so solicitous of her Saturday
night, who tried too hard, was too nice, because he didn’t want to
scare women any more than he already did.

She spoke again, evenly, holding her hand up in a
fist. She counted off three points of his four-point plan on her
fingers as if she’d actually read it. She hadn’t; it was in his
head.

And hers.

“One: Clean house.

“Two: Sell the art.

“Three: Mass market the personality screening tests
instead of keeping it a proprietary tool for our clients. Create a
small business version of the HRP Full Management System software
and distribute it widely.”

She watched him as his eyes widened just a little
bit and she thought she saw approval there. Then he slowly began to
clap as he stood, unfolding his lithe body to his full height. She
had to look up at him a little bit; she liked that.

Eilis was barely able to stand still, not jump, when
he slammed his hands on the table and got in her face.

“So why the
hell
didn’t you do that before
you got this far in the hole?” he barked.

She would not flinch, would not look away, would not
step back. Would not would not wouldnot wouldnot
wouldnot
.
But
why
was he so angry with her? No one had
ever
told her anything about Sebastian Taight ever getting angry about
anything. Ruthless, cold, heartless, yes. Passionately angry,
no.

“I have my reasons,” she said evenly.

“I guarantee you could have no reason that would be
good enough to excuse this mess.”

She hated to let him continue to think that, but she
had no choice.

“Why don’t you tell me which ones give you the worst
taste in your mouth? No, wait. Let me guess. It’s the one you
deliberately
left off the list, which is to take your
company public.”

His mouth compressed in a thin line when she didn’t
answer that charge.

“You have two choices,” he said low, with none of
the patience he’d displayed last week. “You can do this and I’ll
stand in the background and hold your hand or I’ll rip this company
right out from under you because you don’t seem to be fit to run it
at this point.”

That was when she knew he’d gone beyond his breaking
point, but she had no idea why or how. She’d left him amicably at
the Ford exhibit very soon after he’d requested a kiss and he’d
walked into her office not ten minutes ago.

She gathered herself up, dignified, calm, gracious.
“What have I done or said to deserve this?”

He blinked. It was a half a minute before his mouth
tightened and he withdrew and sat in his chair. He wiped his mouth
and he looked away. “Nothing,” he said, low. “I apologize.”

It was Eilis’s turn to be surprised.

Sebastian took a deep breath and sat up to stare at
his pad, his right hand clenching around his pencil. “Tell me which
one of those bothers you most. Please.”

She didn’t want to trust him. He was the enemy.

“Taking the company public,” she said, never
wavering or trembling.

He put his hands over his face. “Why?”

“I have a reason and you’ll have to trust me that
it’s a very good one.”

He sighed and sat back in his chair again. “All
right, Eilis,” he muttered and she liked her name on his tongue, so
she didn’t protest his familiarity. He must not have realized he’d
called her by her first name. “I’m not going to argue with you
about it right now. If you could get me that list, please?”

* * * * *

What the hell was wrong with him? He’d never treated
a client like this before and he didn’t consider her any less of a
client just because she was under court order.

He knew why.

He kept remembering how she’d looked at the Ford
exhibit, all that gorgeous blonde hair, that perfect fertility
goddess body, the luscious skin, the divine perfume, the broken
nose, the scar, and those eyes! Two different colors. He caught his
breath yet again at the memory.

And he’d come in here this morning to find . . .
that. That woman who hid from something he didn’t understand. That
getup killed his hard-on now that he knew what she really looked
like. Coco Chanel should rot in hell for that monstrosity she had
on.

Eilis had made him mad the minute he’d walked into
this office and looked at her, because she
knew
how to dress
and this was purposely disgusting. She was not a woman who needed a
makeover.

Then she’d stood up to him, calm, ladylike, and
asked what she’d done. He had no defense for that. What was he
supposed to say?
I hate that rag you’re wearing
would
probably not win him any brownie points. Nor would
Go home and
get something decent on
or, his personal favorite,
Take that
off and go lie on the couch. Wait for me while I lock the
door.

“Eilis,” he said when she brought him the list he’d
asked for. He noticed she hadn’t taken exception to his calling her
by her first name. He loved her name; it melted on his tongue like
mint chocolate chip ice cream. “I apologize again. I’m just
impatient this morning. I really need to get you through this
receivership as fast as possible.”

So I can take you home to the bed that I haven’t
used in years.

“Do you have a timetable?” she asked quietly and sat
down beside him.

Interesting. She didn’t wear perfume to work; all he
could smell was a cheap generic soap.
Dammit.