The Proviso (47 page)

“Usually,” she whispered shakily as she manipulated
her clitoris, “I don’t do this by hand. But you make me want
to.”

He quirked an eyebrow and smirked at that, but she
only acknowledged it with a slow blink and that not-smile-not-smirk
she had. Then she withdrew her hand and rose out of bed slowly. She
strutted toward him, then stopped and put her hands flat on his
chest, softly kissing his sternum. Butterfly kisses, tiny touches
of the tongue, sharp nibbles. He felt his cock rub against her
belly and he nudged his hips forward a bit to make his point.

“You are a god,” she whispered, awe tingeing her
voice. “Ares, the god of war.” He stopped smiling, his heart
pounding from the impact of her words, her regard. This was so much
more than he had ever hoped for and he gulped. Then she slid down
his body.

“And I’m on my knees. In front of you. Sucking your
cock. Isn’t that where you wanted me?”

He gasped when her tongue first twirled around the
head of his cock. He palmed the back of her head to pull her closer
to him, his head falling back once again. He couldn’t think,
couldn’t move. He had to trust her to know how to use those lips,
teeth, and tongue, bold and clever.

Bryce fisted his hand in her hair and swayed from
the feel of her mouth around him. She licked and sucked and
twirled, her hands clutching the back of his thighs to keep him
close to her. His hips began to move and he pressed her into him.
His head dropped back, his eyes closed in ecstasy, his back arched.
She opened her throat when he thrust harder, faster. He couldn’t
think. He pumped himself into her mouth and groaned when he
came.

When she’d sucked him dry and licked him clean, she
pulled away from him and looked up.

“Thank you,” he whispered, grateful and very, very
touched.

“It was the only wedding gift I could afford on
short notice,” she whispered back. “I have—well, I had—nothing
before it started raining money on me.”

“It was more than enough,” he said, pulling her up
off the floor and kissing her. “That first weekend, the blow job
you gave me then—that was the first time for me.”

She sucked in a breath. “You never—”

He shook his head slowly. “No. Never.”

“I— That’s— Oh, my.”

“I never dared ask and she wasn’t volunteering. You,
I didn’t even have to ask. I can’t tell you how much that meant to
me.”

He pulled her close and lifted her, wrapping her
legs around his waist then taking her to the bed. He lowered her
gently and pulled her knees apart, sliding backward down the bed
until his face was between her legs. He looked up at her. “Also
something I’d never done before you.”

She sucked in a quick breath and dug her fingers in
his hair to pull him into her. “Drink me, Bryce.”

And he did until she came, arching her back and
clutching his face into her. He rose then, slowly, and buried
himself inside her, having gotten hard again as his tongue played
with her clitoris.

Giselle sighed, and sighed again. She came again,
softly, and then he did, once more.

He stayed inside her as long as he could, her legs
wrapped around him, bearing his full weight. He didn’t know how she
could do that, but it filled him with joy.

“I lo—”

He clapped a hand to her mouth. “Don’t say it,” he
said softly. “Not in bed. It means nothing to me in bed, when we’re
coming down off that adrenaline rush. It needs to mean something
when things aren’t so rosy downstairs or outside or during any
number of things that need attention that don’t have anything to do
with sex. Giselle, I have never had an experience like this in my
entire life and I just want to enjoy it, to enjoy you.

“Please quit your job,” he continued, a pleading
note in his voice as he pulled his hand away her mouth. “I need you
here in the evenings with me. I can’t stand a quiet house and I
can’t stand being alone, especially after dark.”

She smiled. “I didn’t have to. This morning, Hale
told me not to come back until after I’d passed the bar. He put me
on leave of absence.”

Bryce rolled them over until she lay atop him. They
kissed for a long time, slowly, enjoying the moment, enjoying each
other, until they fell asleep.

* * * * *

44:
THE HOUSE AT POOH CORNER

OCTOBER 2006

Eilis didn’t know what she’d done that had made
Sebastian so angry with her that he was barely civil, but every
Friday at three, he came by, looked at her reports and spoke as
little as possible. Only on Fridays did she stand at the window and
look down upon Cubicleville, which thrummed with the excitement of
Sebastian’s three o’clock visit. Because he stopped to talk to
everyone who wanted to chat, it took him about thirty minutes to
walk the hundred feet from the door to the mezzanine steps.

How did no one in the cadre of CEOs she knew and
associated with see what he did? Why was he considered Satan
himself? No, he didn’t smile or laugh. Yes, he looked like the most
beautiful demon she could imagine. No, he didn’t take any bullshit.
Yes, he was ruthless.

But he understood people. He brought hope to them,
faith, optimism, and validation. He made impossible situations look
possible. He made work fun. He made the pain and the paranoia go
away. He taught and in the teaching, he left better people
behind.

Still he delayed the trip up the stairs to her
office. She wasn’t sure if he did this because he didn’t want to
speak to her or if this was just his way, but she felt bereft, as
if her lifeline, her support, her savior, had disowned her for an
offense she hadn’t known she’d committed.

The reports he wanted to see every week were on the
table between her office and the conference room, waiting for him.
She turned away from the window once he’d disappeared to climb the
stairs and then he was there.

“Good afternoon, Eilis,” he said, remotely cordial
as always. He immediately sat down and began inspecting the reports
she’d laid out for him. He’d come in looking as preoccupied as he
always did on these visits, but was now completely focused and
writing with his right hand. She thought both the preoccupation and
focus might be a dodge, but she couldn’t tell.

She’d learned a lot about people like Sebastian
since he’d come into her life and what she’d always seen as
deficiencies were not deficiencies at all. The employees who had
scored close to what Sebastian had done had been slotted according
to their interests and given more work than any human could
possibly handle. They had done exactly what Sebastian said they
would do. They chugged through their projects at a frightening pace
yet managed to spend a lot of time staring at nothing, playing with
executive toys, surfing the web, and shooting the breeze over their
cubicle walls.

It had taken her a great deal of control not to
crack down on that, but Sebastian had noticed and said, “Are they
getting the work done?”

“Yes.”

“Are they doing it well?”

“Yes.”

“Then leave them alone. All you should care about as
CEO is the result. The only thing about the process you need to
worry about is if they meet their deadlines with quality work.
Don’t micromanage.”

She didn’t understand it, but she couldn’t argue
with it because it worked. If Sebastian Taight couldn’t pass her
test, if he spent time gazing at nothing and working on his own
timetable, then she’d been doing something wrong all along, because
he was one of the most successful people she knew personally.

The one time she’d worked up the courage to try to
break through Sebastian’s shell, she’d asked, “You said most of
your family wouldn’t pass my test. Do they work like you do?”

Sebastian had stopped reading the reports, stopped
writing. He stared off into the distance a little while, then said,
“Everybody has their tricks, their coping mechanisms; just because
they wouldn’t pass the test doesn’t mean you would be able to tell
they’re like me.”

“And Knox and Fen?”

“They’re both schemers. They plot every scenario and
plan every detail out to the nth degree the same way you do and
they don’t leave anything to chance. The more elaborate the scheme,
the better; for them, it’s like working puzzles. Knox only
understands how I work because he’s watched me do it for years.
Fen’s never been able to figure out what I do, not that he hasn’t
tried, but he doesn’t have the temperament for it. Knox’s father
was a planner too, so I’m thinking it’s a Hilliard trait.”

Eilis’s stomach turned over.

“Problem was, Oliver didn’t have a managerial bone
in his body and OKH almost went under before Fen got complete
control of it. Fen’s a born manager.”

“So they don’t need the little tricks and toys.”

“Sure they do. Fen plays a lot of golf. Alone. I’m
sure he’s done deals that way, but he doesn’t like to. He uses
golfing to think. In fact, OKH has a nine-hole course on the
property. I don’t know what Oliver did.”

“And Knox?”

“Knox has a photographic memory. He remembers every
word he reads. If he’s paying attention—which he doesn’t do very
much because he’d go nuts—he’ll remember everything he sees and
every sound he hears. When he’s stuck or needs to work something
out, he starts reading. Anything. Everything. He doesn’t care. It
just has to be something he hasn’t read before because he needs a
bigger fund of knowledge to draw from than what he already has, and
he needs to lay new paths to make different associations.”

“What’s your trick?”

“If it’s business, I stare at walls. If it’s
personal, I paint.”

He would say no more after that, and Eilis felt both
enriched and bereft, especially when he went back to being barely
civil.

From the day Sebastian had left after making all the
changes he’d made in two weeks flat, her company’s growth had
boomed. She wasn’t out of the red yet, but they were making steady
progress on getting all the bills paid and paid on time.

Karen was a marketing genius.

Sheila was a rainmaker.

Conrad knew where to spend money and where not
to.

Michael delivered product.

Sebastian had known this about them, had exploited
them for it, and, also as he’d predicted, they thanked him for
exploiting their talents and rewarding them well for it.

She had exactly four executives, which was
twenty-one fewer than she’d had before Sebastian came. The salary
savings alone had allowed them to get out of the most pressing of
her debt.

Eilis cleared her throat, uneasy in the silence. “I
found a psychologist who’s developed a categorization method for
the tests. Michael’s coding the scoring software himself.”

“Good,” he said without looking up.

The speed at which Sebastian processed information
was astounding to her. She’d had to fight for every grade, every
inch of square feet in this building, every calculation, every data
analysis. Math, analyzation, data, statistics: Not her strong suit.
She’d chosen the hardest path possible in order to make something
of herself in spite of her past, to escape from the reality that
was her life.

“Are— Are you a genius? A real one?” she asked,
hesitant, and hating that she betrayed any emotion at all.

“Yes,” he said shortly.

Oh, she was tired of this. The silent treatment was
not fair. “Sebastian.”

He stopped what he was doing and was still. Then he
raised his head and his cold blue gaze bored into hers. “Yes,
Eilis?”

“Why are you angry with me?”

“I’m not.”

“I see.”

He sighed and put his elbow on the table, then put
his forehead in his hand. “It’s my problem, Eilis. I’m sorry.”

“What did I do?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry if I’ve been a little cool
toward you.”

“And I apologize for whatever I did.”

* * * * *

Sebastian didn’t know how he had let this get so
completely out of hand. He remembered the Eilis he’d met at the
Ford exhibit, and not only was she still wearing that hideous
costume, but she was determined to find Ford. There was only so
much a man could take. So he decided to go for broke and looked up
at her. “Would you have lunch with me tomorrow?”

As usual, Eilis betrayed no emotion, but he could
feel the sudden tension in her body. He felt just as tense; asking
her out on a date had been the furthest thing from his mind when
he’d walked into this building. “Lunch? Why?”

Sebastian’s mouth thinned. Why. “People have to eat,
Eilis,” he returned gruffly. “Maybe some people would like to not
do that alone.”

He watched her inscrutable face in case he could
tell anything of her thoughts, but she never once dropped her
façade.

“All right,” she finally agreed, “but I choose the
restaurant. You may pick me up at twelve-thirty.”

Sebastian felt both elated and dismayed. He wasn’t
sure why either, all things considered. “Uh—dress?”

“Very casual,” she murmured and turned away.

He had all the access in the world to her files, so
he didn’t bother asking her where she lived. It didn’t surprise him
that she lived in nearby Chouteau Woods, just ten minutes south of
the airport, only two miles away from Knox as the crow flies (and
of course Knox would have neglected to mention this to him). HR
Prerogatives stood in an office park halfway between her home and
the airport.

When he drove through the massive wooden gates of
her driveway the next day, flanked by two equally massive four-foot
square stone pillars and up the drive to her door, he wasn’t sure
what he’d expected, but he had to admit the place suited her.

A big brown-charcoal-tan brick boxy Tudor revival
with a multicolored blue-green slate roof and two chimneys, it
couldn’t be seen from the secluded and relatively dark side street
that itself didn’t invite traffic. An eight-foot-high iron fence
hidden by an immaculately trimmed hedgerow surrounded the entire
property, which was almost twice as big as Knox’s acre plot, the
difference being that this was rolling terrain. The lawn was a few
shades of the richest greens and nearly perfect. He wouldn’t have
been surprised to see a few head of sheep trimming it.