The Proviso (70 page)

Before she could move or say anything more,
Sebastian had Fen’s wrist clasped in his big hand, caught as he’d
been about to slap Eilis. Jack and Melinda stepped back,
horrified.

“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
bomb
shell, 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.”