Stay: Vignettes & Outtakes (4 page)

Vanessa had never been so shocked in her life.

A great many people looked askance at her once they had entered the gallery, and she hesitated, wanting to flee from this man she didn’t know, to take shelter in Ford’s arms and bed.

“
If
I go out, I never have a woman on my arm,” he murmured to her in between introductions he made somewhat awkwardly. She had never seen this side of him, and it shocked her, how insecure he was, camouflaged as an aloof contempt for the whole affair.

“Why not?”

“Women are scared of me. I don’t know why.”

Vanessa would be afraid of him, too, if she hadn’t spent so much time with him alone. Naked. Making love.

He didn’t relax as the evening wore on, though she did, emboldened by the alcohol though wise enough to stop when she had lost just enough of her inhibitions to allow her to be comfortably chatty and gracious.

She met the owner of Chez Fricassee, and though it bothered her a little that she had this step up on her classmates because of her sexual relationship with a powerful man, she and Sebastian both knew it was more than that.

Sebastian took her back to his suite and undressed her slowly, did what he had done so many times with the same magic. She knew it would take an extraordinary man to take his place in her bed, much less her heart.

He surprised her the next morning over breakfast in the sitting room. “Knox tells me you’ve got some pretty grand plans once you get some time in a New York kitchen.”

His casual tone didn’t fool her. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to presume,” she murmured, looking down at her plate, thinking about all the arguments she’d had with herself about approaching him as a venture capitalist supplicant like so many others. “Did he show you?”

“Yes,” he said shortly. He was not happy. “What you don’t realize is that if you’d come to me as an unknown, I’d have offered to invest. It’s good. I like it. I’m not certain about the location, but with the right ad campaign, it’ll work.”

She shrugged defensively, conditioned by the fact that she’d been forced to take a full grade lower on her senior presentation because she wouldn’t budge on that point. “That’s nonnegotiable,” she muttered.

He grunted. “You’ll have to make it part of your marketing.”

“I know that,” she replied testily. She’d pointed that out to her advisors to no avail, and Knox wasn’t any more impressed than they had been.

“Vanessa.” She lifted her head to look at him, his expression soft and calm. “I’d like to help you. If you’ll let me. I know—” He waved a hand and looked out the window. “I know this bugs you, but... I don’t know how else to express how much you mean to me.”

“Oh,” she breathed.

“The building— What you want. It can be done, but it won’t be cheap and it won’t be easy. Knox took the liberty of talking to our cousin, Étienne. He’s an engineer, an inventor. He says he can do most of what you’ll need, but it’ll take an architect who can work with him. Problem is, Étienne’s impossible to work with.”

“So...”

“I have someone in mind. She’s young, like you. Just starting out. She’s talented, but more importantly, she’s got the balls to take Étienne’s bullshit and hit him over the head with it. But,” he said brusquely, wiping his mouth as if he were troubled. “I need to know that you aren’t going to have issues with me being your lover and your financier.”

Vanessa took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about it,” she murmured. “That’s not it. I can separate the money and the sex. It’s just that...”

“You’re not obliged to sleep with me to get this done. I hope you know that. So if that’s your problem—”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t sleep with you if I didn’t want to. I— It’s—”

“What other people think.”

She nodded.

“Vanessa, what you want to do— Building it is the easy part. After the money’s spent and the building’s up, it’ll be up to you to keep it and grow it, because I won’t throw good money after bad. Not even for you.”

She gulped. It wasn’t as if that reality hadn’t run that through her head a million times already. Failure was not an option once that building got built.

“So what I would suggest you do,” he continued, “is flaunt our affair. You’re a beautiful woman. Use it. Turn it to your advantage. Do some photo shoots. Nobody who matters will think it’s about our affair once they see you work. What you do is exploit people’s fascination with you, with our relationship, the ones who have the money to indulge their curiosity.”

He waited silently for her to think, but she’d already calculated the costs and the risks and though she had dithered about asking Sebastian to finance her, she wasn’t stupid enough to refuse when he offered out of the blue.

She nodded. “All right.”

“Good,” he said briskly, throwing down his napkin. “Knox can draft the contracts, since he has an interest in protecting both of us.”

“He said he wanted to invest. It’s just the location’s a problem for him.”

“He’ll get over it. Let’s go back to bed.”

March 2007

Vanessa knocked lightly on the heavy walnut door.

“Mr. Thompson?”

Mr. Thompson
, her ass. Nash Piper, or Vanessa didn’t know her country music—and he was a lot hotter up close and personal than in pictures, brand new Jesus hippie look notwithstanding. She wasn’t sure if it was his dark good looks or the pinging of all that caged energy in a big body still too small to hold his personality in.

The door opened and she saw him stride back into the suite. She followed, rolling in the service trolley.

“Close the door, doll.”

Vanessa, her hands on the trolley, simply bumped it closed with her hip and continued on into the room to serve her latest guest.

It wasn’t even as if she hadn’t considered flirting with him just enough to get the message that she might be up for a little fun, but the jumble of items on her to-do list coupled with his arrogant demand for food pushed the idea out of her mind.

Now, she was here in his suite, serving him food the way she did the rest of her guests when they requested it, and didn’t give much thought to the fact that he wandered about in one of Whittaker House’s complimentary bathrobes.

“I like your paintin’,” he muttered, touching a skunk pelt blanket.

Vanessa made her usual sound of acknowledgment, her mind on the food and its presentation. Her painting was another of her gimmicks, which was why she’d hung it where she had.

“What would it take to let me have a gander at that body without all those clothes?”

She chuckled. That was a once-a-week proposition, but since she’d already thought about it, it took on a different meaning for her.

“I’m a
food
whore, Mr.
Piper
.”

He barked a laugh. “I saw how you looked at me, doll, so don’t think I don’t know it crossed your mind.”

“Guilty as charged,” Vanessa said as she finished laying out the food.

She straightened, turned, and looked square at him. He returned her look second for second. She glanced pointedly at his midsection, but couldn’t tell if he had a hard-on or not through the robe.

He smirked at her.

“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make sure the world thinks you’re dead, letting people make shrines and hold candlelight vigils. Why?”

“That ain’ none o’ your business, Ms. Whittaker.”

“It is if you expect me to hide you.” He blinked, and she chuckled. “I see. I can do that better with a little more information.”

He said nothing for a moment, then said, low, “I got some things I gotta take care of an’ I gotta do it alone. Can’t, with people yellin’ in my ear an’ holdin’ their hand out.”

“How long are you staying?”

He shrugged. “One, two years, tops. Be mighty nice if I had a little comfort food to help me pass the time.”

“You didn’t come here for my food.”

“Well, yeah, I
did
,” he said. “That’s just not all I was fixin’ to eat while I was here.”

“And you think being a guest here gets you the chief executive chef on a platter?”

He folded his arms over his chest and rocked back on a bare heel to study her, inspecting her slowly up and down, back up again. Vanessa’s body responded. “If I didn’t think I’d get the chief executive chef on a platter, I’d’a gone somewhere else,” he murmured, his tone dangerous.

Vanessa remained poised in spite of her arousal. “A lot of powerful and famous people come here thinking that, Mr. Piper. What makes you think you’re special?”

He inclined his head. “I was willin’ to be wrong, but turns out I wasn’t wrong. Was I?” He jerked his chin at her. “Get nekkid.”

Vanessa almost laughed. What did it say about her that she found such imperious men arousing? Screw pleasantries and skillful seduction. Nash approached her the way she liked, and it hadn’t occurred to her until now that she had any preference. But she
did
have one inviolable rule—

“Are you married?”

“Ain’t been for a while now.”

“Then let’s get something straight right up front,” Vanessa said, as she began to unbutton her blouse. Nash’s smirk turned into a predatory smile. “
Nobody
finds out about this. Ever. I have a lot of credibility here as a professional. No nonsense.”

“Oh, like you ain’t splashed your affair with Ford all over creation.”

“Do you believe all of the rumors you hear?”

“Who do you want me to believe? You or my lyin’ eyes?”

“Take it or leave it.”

“You think you’d lose somethin’ if people thought you and I were lovers?”

“They’d question my judgment, possibly my sanity. If any one of my staff—or the co-owner—figures this out,” she said, dropping her blouse and kicking off her shoes, “I’ll have the paparazzi down here so fast you won’t have time to pack up and leave.”

“Deal.” He dropped his robe and her breath caught.

“Condoms?”

“I never go bareback.”

She tilted her head as he fell on the bed and locked his fingers behind his head to watch her. Then she laughed and dropped her skirt. Shimmied out of her expensive panties, locked the door and dimmed the lights.

“I want you to know,” she murmured as she put one knee on the bed and then crawled toward his bare, muscular body, “that I don’t do this for just anyone.”

“I wouldn’t’a thought different,” he murmured once she pulled even with him, running his hand through her hair and drawing him to her. “I hear Ford’s no slouch in bed, an’ that paintin’s a few years old, so I expect he trained you and you got spoilt.”

“He did and I did,” she whispered, kissing him. Long, slow. “And you’re right. He was my first. You’re my second. You’re welcome.”

“Mmmm, yeah, doll. Where’s my manners? I’ll send Taight a thank-you note tomorrow.” She stilled and he began to chuckle. “No secrets amongst celebrities, doll. He’s my money man an’ he knows where I am.”

“That’s disturbing,” she whispered right before she deepened the kiss. “And oh, that paparazzi thing? Sebastian doesn’t find out, either. Got it?”

“Wouldn’t think of it.” He handed her a condom and said, “Why’n’t you do the honors, doll?”

“Glad to. Your food’s going to get cold.”

He slipped a hand between her legs and she whimpered. “Don’t think so.
That’s
plenty hot.”

Knox Hilliard’s uncle murdered his father to marry his mother and take control of the family company. Now, he and his cousins Sebastian and Giselle are on a quest for justice and to restore Knox’s inheritance to him. None of them expect to find love along the way. Read more at
theproviso.com
.

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So you read
The Proviso
and you’re slightly curious as to what might have happened off page?

Sebastian and Eilis’s wedding?
The murder of Tom Parley?
The reading of Fen’s will?
The Jep Industries takeover?

You got it.

•

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At 12, Vanessa defied her family to save 17-year-old bad boy Eric from wrongful imprisonment and, possibly, death. She’d hoped for a “thank you” from him, a kiss on the cheek, but before she could grow up and grow curves, he left town. Fourteen years later, Vanessa is a celebrity chef at the 5-star Ozarks resort she built. Eric is the new Chouteau County prosecutor on his way to the White House. Four hours apart and each tied to their own careers, their worlds have no reason to intersect until a funeral brings Vanessa back to Chouteau County, back to face the man for whom she’d risked so much, the only man she ever wanted--the only man she can’t have.

•

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Visit
theproviso.com/stay
for tons of extras.

COMING APRIL 24, 2011

Book 3
MAGDALENE

A Mormon bishop
An ex-prostitute
A man with a vendetta

Let the games begin.

•

MAY 2007

I didn’t go into prostitution because I was desperate; I did it because I was bored: Bored of my hausfrau existence, bored of my husband both in bed and out, bored of my ingrate daughters who don’t (yet) understand what it means to be the sacrificial lamb in the nuclear family setup and that being a wife and mother can be its own category of prostitution. They will. And I’ll laugh.

I was never the stereotypical whore with a heart of gold, which seems to be used as point and counterpoint: If you’re pure in heart, being a whore is tolerable, forgivable even; if you’re just a mercenary bitch who likes sex and, moreover, getting paid for it, it’s the unforgivable sin. Ultimately, however, I had to choose my customers on their ability to pay my exorbitant prices and leave the good sex to my carefully selected lovers.