The Proviso (15 page)

“Nocek made his money fixing cases, which I didn’t
know for a couple of months. Then he informed me he expected me to
contribute to the widow’n’orphan fund like the rest of the crew.
There were three attorneys in that office who didn’t, but they were
so subtle, Nocek didn’t know they weren’t on the take. I latched on
to them, but I wasn’t very successful at hiding my winning streak.
Nocek rode my ass constantly because I wasn’t bringing any money
into the office. Then after I ki—”

Knox stopped abruptly. Took a deep breath. Gulped
down his water.

Bryce began to laugh and Knox glared at him. “Shut
up. Anyway, after—well, after
that
was all over with, he
left me alone for another couple of months, but it was too late.
I’d had enough of his bullshit, so I forced him to resign and name
me as his successor.”

“And the untouchable Knox Hilliard was born, all
with the tacit approval of the federal prosecutor.”

“Well, you know. You turn vigilante—”

“Twice.”

“—and you get the undying loyalty of every cop in
the state. So now I’m happy with what I do. I know as well as I
know the penal code that I’m not cut out to be a CEO of anything.
I’m not a manager. I don’t even manage my own staff; my executive
AP does that and I don’t know how I got anything accomplished
before he came to work for me. I’m just a redneck lawyer in a
backwater of a county that’s
still
a cesspool. And I like it
that way.”

“Doesn’t hurt that you have your pick of the
brightest legal minds coming out of every law school in the
Midwest, either, corruption be damned. How’d that happen?”

Knox grunted. “Lucked into it. About five years ago,
a friend called me, said she needed a sub for her class for a week
and then my name got passed around when somebody needed a fill-in.
One semester, one of the emeritus professors died the day before
class started and I got called. I guess a few of the students were
impressed enough to drop their CVs at my office after they
graduated. Kinda bloomed from there.”

“You’re faculty now, though?”

“Part time. One class a semester is the most I can
squeeze in, if that. I don’t even bother to keep office hours.
Obviously the county takes precedence and if someone needs a
face-to-face conference, they have to come up to Chouteau City to
do it.”

“So you and Taight are working together to take
OKH?”

“I wouldn’t call it working together so much as
trying to get the other one to do all the heavy lifting. The irony
is neither one of us wants it. We just want Fen not to get it
because he killed one person to have it and one person to keep it.
And it all started when he tried to kill Giselle to keep her from
marrying me.”

Bryce’s gut clenched. “He what?”

“Mmmm, that’s right,” Knox said around his bite.
“The first time, he burned her bookstore. She lived in the
apartment above it and she would’ve died in it except she couldn’t
sleep that night and just
knew
something was wrong. Girl has
the instincts of a she-wolf. The alarms had been disabled and she
barely got out with her purse and her laptop and that was it.
Fortunately, she was the only one who actually lived in the
building.”

Bryce thought his heart had stopped at the word
“burned.” Knox looked up then and breathed, “Oh, dude, I’m sorry. I
didn’t think.”

He shook his head to clear it. “I—” He gulped. “It’s
an excruciating way to die,” he whispered, hoarse.

Knox sighed, but didn’t speak again until Bryce had
recovered himself, cleared his throat again, and said, “Go on.”

“Well, anyway, when that didn’t work, Fen sent a
couple of hit men after her.” He stopped and ate some more.

“That explains the bullet holes,” Bryce
muttered.

Knox speared him with a glance. “Holes? Plural?”

“The ones in her shoulder?”

He snickered. “Hole. That was a through-and-through.
They had to dig the other one out of her hip.”

It was just so . . .
wrong
. . . that Bryce
found that arousing.

“So they’re still out looking for her?”

“Naw. She killed ’em, one gun in each hand. No
hesitation. No remorse. It was a regular little shoot-out, but it
put her in the hospital for a few days. Then he went after Leah
instead. Giselle put a gun to his head, told him that if he did it
again, she’d take him out. Of course, Giselle can get a little out
of control now and again, and she never makes threats she won’t
carry out. Fen knows she was serious and he won’t play chicken with
her, but if he pushes her to it, I hope she has the good sense to
do it in my county.”

Bryce’s eyes widened and he didn’t know what to do,
what to think. What he did know was that he was very, very
hard.

“Obviously, Fen doesn’t want me to fulfill the
proviso. He hasn’t decided yet if he wants to test the limits of
Giselle’s patience, but I wouldn’t put it past him to try if he
manages to cozy up to her again.”

Bryce’s brow wrinkled.

“Fen and Giselle have a very strange
relationship.”

“Strange how?”

“They amuse the hell out of each other. Always have.
If it weren’t for the whole killing thing, they’d be best buds.
Every so often, Fen gets comfortable with her again and forgets
that she doesn’t play games. He’ll drop his guard, do something
that pisses her off, and then he’ll spend the next little while
kissing her ass until she cools down. She hasn’t cooled off since
he had her shot and that’s the longest she’s ever been mad at him.
I think she hurt his feelings.”

Bryce stopped chewing and stared at Knox. “Hurt
his
feelings?”

“Because she doesn’t find him amusing at the moment.
Don’t feel bad; Sebastian and I don’t understand it, either.
Anyway, after Leah was killed, I finally decided that I don’t need
OKH so badly I’m willing to put another woman in front of him,
especially the woman I want.”

Bryce looked at him carefully. “The woman you want,”
he said slowly, “which is
not
Giselle?”

“Hell no.”

That tore it. “Oh, so she’s just a booty call for
you.”

Knox’s jaw and fork dropped at the same time. “What
the
fuck
?”

“I overheard you at Leah’s visitation. You took her
home.”

Knox stared at him, the tic in his cheek working.
“You know,” he said, “you’ve always been stupid about women. First
of all, if you were eavesdropping, you deserve what you hear.
Second of all, if you’re going to eavesdrop, you could have the
courtesy to stick around for the whole conversation. Third, didn’t
you learn your lesson about assuming the worst about my sexual
habits the
first
time I was accused of banging a woman you
thought belonged to you?”

Uh oh.

He threw his napkin on the table and started to
rise. “You know what, Bryce? Fuck you. I’m tired of being the one
getting the shaft when a woman’s got you in knots.”

“Siddown,” Bryce growled and wasn’t surprised when
Knox looked at him expectantly, waiting. It was a familiar
exchange. “I’m sorry,” he muttered when he looked down at his
plate, thoroughly abashed. “Again.”

It took a moment before he heard Knox settle back
into his seat. “Yeah, I asked her to go home with me,” Knox said
low, his voice unusually raspy. “Don’t tell me you’ve never needed
to hold on to somebody when your life’s been ripped out from under
your feet.”

Oh.
Bryce swallowed.

“But wait. I forgot.
You
don’t have anybody
you can beg comfort sex from who’ll still love you the day after
whether she gives it to you or not.”

He flinched.

“She said no. Happy now? Again?”

Yes, but . . .
He decided to keep his
curiosity in check for the moment.

Knox drew in a deep breath before continuing a
moment later. “So here I am, four serious girlfriends and a dead
fiancée later, barely thirty-seven, still not married and with no
child on the way, the clock ticking—and it’s because of all this
that Leah’s dead. And make no mistake. Whatever you think about me
or my relationship with Leah—oh, look, more assumptions—I loved
her.”

Bryce’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t assume anything
about Leah. She told me what you did to her.”

Knox rolled his eyes.

“You blackmailed her and manipulated everything
around her so she’d have no choice. I can think of at least three
felonies you committed to get her into bed.”

He speared Bryce with a glance. “Did she
tell
you she had no choice? In those words?”

Bryce pursed his lips.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. She had a choice. She was
just more willing to bail her daughter out of a homicide charge
than she was to keep her virtue intact. Not my problem. The deal
was she had to sleep with me a week and—Surprise!—she
loved
it. Rachel found out, threw it back in her face, and disappeared.
After that, Leah figured she had no reason to go back to Houston at
all except to pack up her shit and put her house on the market. She
was back in bed with me in two weeks flat and she was there for
five years, saying no every time I broached the subject of
marriage.”

“Well,” Bryce conceded, “she
did
tell me she
didn’t want Rachel to have squatter’s rights to OKH.”

“I didn’t either, so I didn’t push very hard.”

“So that was why Leah wasn’t as threatening to Fen
as Giselle.”

“Exactly. He saw Giselle as a way-too-convenient
solution to the problem that I could leverage at any moment, Leah
or no Leah. Giselle’s loyal to me and she’s low profile, so no one
would connect her death to me or OKH if he hid it well enough. Leah
finally decided that she’d best marry me to keep Fen off Giselle’s
back, so fuck you very much.
Again
.”

Well, he did have a point.

“Giselle was so nervous before the wedding she was
radioactive, so Leah told me to make Giselle stay away from her.
Stupid shit that I am, I decided that Leah should have her way on
her wedding day.”

“Is that why she was so mad at Leah’s funeral?”

“That and a shit load of guilt for not following her
gut regardless of what Leah wanted. I should have trusted her
instincts, but I didn’t want to upset Leah. If Giselle had been
with her . . . ” His voice, heavy with regret, trailed off and
Bryce said nothing. Another moment of silence passed before Knox
collected himself enough to continue. “So now here I am, a year and
a half later wanting to be free to pursue this other woman without
having to fulfill anything, without putting her in Fen’s line of
fire. She’s too young to have to deal with that and I’m not that
selfish.”

That jolted Bryce. “Young? Except for Giselle,
you’ve never liked young. You were dating post grads when you were
a freshman.”

Knox didn’t say anything for a while. Then, low,
“She’s twenty-three.”

Bryce pulled back a bit. “Whoa,” he breathed.
“That’s a serious change for you. Don’t tell me she’s blonde,
too.”

“Oh, no. She’s a redhead. I haven’t gone completely
nuts.”

“What’s so special about her that you’d go from Mrs.
Robinson to Lolita?”

“You ever heard the name Justice McKinley?”

Bryce choked on his water. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.”

“Does she even know you exist?”

“She has a crush on me.”

“Oh, shit. You were her professor.”

“Substitute professor. For one week. And don’t think
that doesn’t give me the willies.”

“You haven’t had her in any of your classes
since?”

“Once this semester ends, I won’t teach any more
classes until she graduates. After I turn forty, I’ll go find her
and hope like hell she’s not attached by then.”

“She’s an atheist, isn’t she?”

“Why would that make a difference to me? I’m not
allowed to step foot in the only church I have any interest
in.”

A companionable silence descended as they ate. After
a bit of the edge had been knocked off Bryce’s appetite, he
said,

“So . . . the takeover.”

Knox pursed his lips and thought for a long moment.
“Sebastian hates Fen,” he said finally, “always has, and the
feeling’s mutual. But he kept his mitts off OKH in deference to me
until Fen went after Giselle.”

“Really. Why?”

“Sebastian thinks his sole purpose in life is to be
Giselle’s mother. A few days after her fire, he told Fen if I
didn’t have OKH on my fortieth birthday for any reason, he’d take
it. If I were dead, he’d take it. If he did anything more at all to
Giselle, he wouldn’t wait until I was forty to take it. Fen loses
the company to Sebastian, no question. If I fulfilled the terms of
the proviso, he’d lose it to me, no question. Giselle was fine with
that.”

“Fen thought he was bluffing.”

“Well, you know. Sebastian does bluff a lot, so it
wasn’t unreasonable of Fen to assume that. So after Giselle got
shot, Jack Blackwood summoned Fen to New York—”

“Jack
Blackwood
? Jack the Ripper?”

“Yeah, him. Blackwood Securities. He and Sebastian
go way back.”

“Shit. Even I would think twice about crossing that
bastard.”

“Exactly. Fen wasn’t sufficiently cowed by
Sebastian’s threat, but he wasn’t going to ignore an invitation
from one of the biggest power brokers in the country. When he got
there, Jack plunked down solid numbers for him. He told him
Sebastian was not only prepared to take it, but he was prepared to
burn it down to the ground, to boot. Every last employee, every
last nut, bolt, and washer. Sebastian had OKH’s parted-out resale
value calculated to within ten bucks.”

Bryce’s eyes widened. “He wouldn’t,” he breathed.
“Thousands of people?”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Knox drawled. “Another bluff, but
enough of one that Fen wasn’t going to chance it. Having everything
you’ve built and love taken away from you by someone who would take
care of it is one thing; seeing it completely destroyed for no
reason other than revenge is another. And having Blackwood as your
enemy just isn’t good business. It didn’t occur to Sebastian—nor
would it have occurred to me—to threaten him if he touched any
other woman I wanted to marry.”