The Proviso (38 page)

Six-four. Two hundred-plus pounds of solid muscle
poured into tight worn jeans, a black tee shirt, brown leather
bomber jacket and black cowboy boots. Black hair cut excruciatingly
short. Angular face, olive-tinged skin almost as fair as
Sebastian’s. Small black-rimmed eyeglasses.

Remington Steele.

She continued to talk to Andrew, to explain the
finer points, had him recreate the technique on her so she could
demonstrate where he needed to change his execution. He did well
enough to put her on her knees, but, afraid of hurting her, not
well enough to keep her there. Still talking, still teaching . .
.

The man had stopped short in the doorway and stared
at her with an expression she recognized immediately, for all she’d
never seen a man look at her that way before: Lust.

Blatant, unadulterated, hot.

She determined to cut Andrew’s lesson short to make
certain she had an opportunity to let that man know she
reciprocated that lust fully, but out of habit, she checked his
left hand.

Sixty seconds. It’d taken her sixty seconds, a
glance, to fall head over for a married man.

Turning her attention back to Andrew fully then, she
tried to breathe normally, to put aside that stabbing pain behind
her sternum, to ignore the sick feeling in her belly. She smoothly
maneuvered Andrew so that her back was to the door and she could no
longer see him.

How could it be—and at BYU yet? Married men didn’t
look at women other than their wives that way, or at least, if they
did, they successfully kept it to themselves.

More to the point, men didn’t look at
Giselle
that way at all. Not even Knox did that.

She left as soon as the time came for Andrew to join
the study group. Refusing Knox’s offer of a ride home with a wave,
she ran the mile from his house on Tenth East to her apartment on
First East, hoping to kill some of the pain.

She curled up on her bed, still in her gi, still
sweaty. She shoved her fingers through her coarse, frizzy curls
with a vicious yank as if the pain would distract her, and let the
tears drip silently into her pillow as she confronted the truth of
the matter.

Her hand drifted to her pudgy belly, then over her
wide hips to explore—not for the first time—the broad expanse of
butt that her gi couldn’t hide. Strong, athletic, graceful. And
fat. She couldn’t diet it away; she was already starving. She’d
even tried making herself throw up, but that was nasty and worked
even less effectively than starving. Sebastian would have a fit if
he knew and it didn’t matter he lived half a world away. She didn’t
dare let Knox find out because he’d feed her himself. She couldn’t
exercise it away; she got stronger, but no leaner.

It didn’t matter with Knox; Knox needed her constant
presence to mitigate his growing frustration and insecurity because
no LDS girl would go out with him once she found out he hadn’t gone
on a mission—and he didn’t want to taint any possible relationships
with the details of his inheritance. Giselle needed his constant
presence to make her feel as if she weren’t, as Aunt Trudy had told
her more than once, “the most hideous girl I’ve ever seen.”

Without Knox, she would have no boyfriends at
all; with Knox, she had an excuse. It had been enough until that
man looked at her like
that
.

It was more than she could bear, that wedding band
on his finger. The only man, a gorgeous one to boot, to look at her
as if she had some sexual worth—and he was married.

“
How could you?” she whispered, her faith shaken.
“I’ve done everything you asked me to do. How could you do that to
me?”

Heartbroken, she touched herself . . .
there
. . . and, for the first time, did what she knew she should
never
do.

Nobody else would.

*

Once three o’clock came, Giselle’s head had cleared
enough that by the time she got to work, she could do her job
accurately and well. Mercifully, after about an hour, she lost
herself in it.

But then it was 12:15. She had finished and stopped
thinking about her relationship with Bryce. She let her instincts
take over and, her heart in her throat, she drove directly to his
house.

He lived in Brookside, just off Loose Park, in a
three-story pale yellow Italian renaissance revival all renovated
and dressed up as a showcase home. The stoop light was on, as well
as a small lamp in a great paned window to the right of the front
door. She hesitated; after all, most people didn’t go visiting
unexpectedly after midnight.

Gathering her courage, she walked up to the door and
rang the bell. It took a while and another ring of the bell before
she heard, “Hold on!” shouted from the depths of the house.
Suddenly, the door was yanked open and he barked, “It’s
twelve-thirty in the morning. What the hell—” And he stopped cold
as soon as he realized who she was. “Giselle,” he breathed, and
opened the door to let her in.

She stepped in gingerly and looked everywhere but at
him, hoping once again she hadn’t ruined her chance by not keeping
hold of him when she had him in her hand. “I— I’ve thought about
it, and— I’m sorry. I—”

“Don’t talk,” he muttered and kissed her again like
he had that first night when he set about teaching her how to fuck,
and she lost herself in him for good. She knew she couldn’t live
without this—this heat, this deep, dark level of carnal
experience.

This man.

He gathered her up in his arms as if she weighed
next to nothing rather than forty pounds more than what the charts
said she should weigh, and carried her up the stairs, to his
bedroom, and laid her gently in the massive mahogany bed, into
sheets that smelled just like him. He covered her with his body and
rolled her over until she lay on top of him. He only kissed her,
drinking her in in silence.

How could she have ever doubted that she could live
without him, no matter what the future brought? She would ride the
ride and see where it went.

She was fully clothed. He wore nothing, having
answered the door with a short towel hastily slung around his hips.
They lay there together in the dark, not even the nearby
streetlight able to pierce the heavy drapes, silent, kissing until
they drifted off to sleep.

* * * * *

36:
ARBITRAGE

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Giselle studied Bryce’s face in the morning sunlight
that streamed through the bedroom window. He studied her in return.
She shifted away from him a bit so she could look at his
beautifully scarred body, touch it, caress it.

Kiss it.

“I missed you,” he whispered and gently furrowed his
fingers through her tangled curls as she pressed her lips against
the skin overlying his collarbone. Tasted him.

“I missed you, too,” she breathed, her hand splayed
out over his heart, her thumb stroking his nipple. “I’m sorry I
left you in the park Sunday. I—”

He pressed his finger to her lips, silencing her.
“No. I’m sorry. I knew what you’d want and I didn’t want to think
about it. I deserved to be left.” He lifted the locks of her hair
only to let them slither away through his fingers, then again. And
again. “So, kids? Church?”

She shrugged. “I’m here. On your terms.”

“Is that going to be difficult for you?”

“Um,
yeah
. It is.”

He sucked in a breath, held it, then released it in
a whoosh. He looked up at the ceiling and ran his hand down his
face. “We need to talk.”

“Mmmm, true. But first—”

“Pee and brush teeth.”

“Precisely.” She rolled out of bed to accomplish
those tasks, then stripped. Bryce joined her in the shower as she’d
hoped he would. “Don’t you have to go to work today?”

“The nice thing about owning your own practice,” he
murmured in her ear, “is that you can pretty much do what you
want.”

“What about meetings? Clients?”

“Nothing’s ever scheduled before eleven. My
assistant rearranges my appointments if I don’t show up by nine and
my attorneys can step in at a second’s notice.”

She closed her eyes and sighed, then leaned back
into him. His arms around her, they stood quiet in the spray to
commune silent, still, through the warmth of their bodies until the
water ran tepid.

They bathed, dried, and tumbled back into bed, again
skin-to-skin, and cocooned themselves in the fine linens.

“Are you hungry?”

Giselle’s ear to his chest, she could feel the
vibrations of his hoarse baritone and at that moment, she found
that the sexiest thing imaginable.

“No,” she murmured. “I don’t usually eat this early
in the morning. Are you?”

“No.” Another moment of silence, though still not
awkward. “Giselle,” he murmured, “I know we got off to a rough
start and we haven’t spent any real time together doing things,
talking, laying down expectations. You know, doing things by the
church’s playbook. I told you not to expect a temple marriage, but
no matter what, I’m never going to be comfortable having a
girlfriend, lover, mistress, significant other, whatever you want
to call it.”

Giselle’s gut began to clench at the possibility
he’d had second thoughts after all, that he’d tell her they’d made
a mistake and she should go home. “Oh,” she breathed. “Okay.”

“I
do
want to marry you, just not . . . by
the playbook.”

Her breath caught.

“Yeah, I know it’s weird,” he said in a rush when he
misunderstood her silence. “Love at first sight and all that—I
never believed in that and I still don’t. I can’t say I love you
because I don’t know you well enough. I know I’m
in
love
with you and in
lust
with you and I’m pretty sure I don’t
want to live without you. But for right now, that’s all I have to
offer you. If we don’t make it, okay, but I
need
that sense
of permanence for as long as we’re together.”

The pleading in his voice had returned. Still
shocked, it dawned on her that he must fear she would say no, that
he thought she wouldn’t want to commit to him.

“I— Um—”

“I mean, if you want to hold off for a while until
we see how this relationship shakes out, I’ll respect that.”

“No, I—” She cupped her hand over his mouth when he
would’ve continued to defend his position. “Stop. Let me talk.” She
took a deep breath. “I’m not interested in being a perpetual
fiancée, no. But I’m also not interested in going into marriage
thinking things like ‘if we don’t make it.’ If I say yes, which I
want to, I don’t want to always have it in the back of my mind that
you’ve left yourself an out. I’m willing to work at a relationship,
at a marriage, with you. I need to know you’ll work at it with
me.”

He caressed the skin of her back with his calloused
hands and she waited for him to process what she’d said. His body
relaxed, the tension draining from his muscles. “I understand. I
can promise that.”

“The other thing,” she continued, clearing her
throat, “is I’m afraid you might one day come to resent me for
breaking your covenants with me.”

“I didn’t get caught up in the heat of the moment,
Giselle.”

Her eyes widened. Her body tingled. “Oh,” she
breathed. “So dinner . . . ”

“Wasn’t part of the seduction. I told you I’d have
taken you home that night at the Nelson and I would have. But after
Knox summoned me, I took some time to think about it. I decided to
talk to you first, to confirm that I wanted to try, to see if we
were compatible enough to build something on. If that hadn’t gone
well, then nothing else would’ve happened. The reason I wanted to
have
lunch
with you was so neither of us could ditch our
afternoon commitments in case I hadn’t made up my mind, but still
wanted to take you to bed. I needed to know where you were coming
from, to let you know where I was coming from without the pressure
of impending sex.”

“I was coming from Rearden. You were coming from
Galt.”

He laughed and she smiled. “You’re not going to let
me forget that, are you?”

“Nope.”

She took a deep breath and his body tensed again.
“Next topic,” she said finally, sober again because no matter how
ugly, it had to be discussed. “Money.”

He started. “What about it?”

“I don’t have any. I’m still in debt from my fire,
my bankruptcy hasn’t been discharged, and I have a ton of student
loans. Sebastian says you’re as rich as he is and I’m
very
uncomfortable with that. I would feel better if we had a prenuptial
agreement.”

“I won’t agree to that,” he said, relaxing again.
“You said you weren’t interested in going into marriage thinking
things like ‘if we don’t make it.’ A prenuptial agreement
presupposes that we won’t, so no. No prenup. Giselle,” he continued
when she opened her mouth to protest, “the reality is that even if
you tried to take everything away from me, you wouldn’t get it. I’d
send it offshore and wrap it up so tight it’d take an act of God to
break it open. I’ve already been down that road and I can make it
disappear like it never existed. I’m not shy about doing whatever I
have to do to keep what’s mine. As for how the money would work
once we got married, well, everything I have would be yours.”

She swallowed in mixed relief, guilt, and dread. “I
don’t like feeling rescued,” she murmured.

“You didn’t go under because of anything you did
wrong. You went under because Fen’s evil and you’re lucky that all
you lost was your business. That’s a completely different
proposition from someone bailing you out of your own stupidity. And
even if that had been the case— Giselle, you’re one of the few
women I’ve ever met who hasn’t expected something from me. Before
my fire, it was sex and money. After, it was just the money.”