The Proviso (99 page)

She harrumphed. “I think I’d have remembered
that.”

“
Why?
” he whispered as he caressed her cheek,
staring at her, making her blush with pleasure. “Why haven’t you
had a dozen lovers?”

Her brow wrinkled. “Do you want me to have had?”

“I don’t care one way or the other. What I don’t
understand is how you’ve gone all these years without some man
grabbing you and hauling you off to bed. You’re extremely sensual,
uninhibited. I just— I don’t get it.”

“I didn’t have time,” she said simply. “I was too
busy trying to survive and get ahead in the world.”

He sighed.

“So how many have you had before me?” she asked,
trying to remember that she was the one he wanted, so it shouldn’t
matter.

He tensed just a little, but then relaxed and said,
“Five. I was twenty-six the first time I got laid and my
relationships were serious and long term.”

She struggled to one elbow to stare down at him,
incredulous. “You’re kidding.”

“Before Parley, I was . . . a good Mormon kid.
Celibacy until marriage is part of the deal.”

She said nothing for a moment and then, “You miss
being able to say that about yourself, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” He paused. “I’ve left it up to the Lord to
decide if I made the right decision and . . . I have faith that he
might agree with my choice, even though the church didn’t. If he
doesn’t, I’ll take the consequences.”

“Oh, Knox,” she sighed. “There is no God.”

She could feel his chuckle against her body as she
cocooned herself in his arms and the warm covers and the
wonderfully perfect mattress. Her eyes began to close, too tired to
even relive the preceding hours when her beautiful lover had loosed
her Inner Pervert.

She started when the alarm buzzed and groaned. “My
boss is going to kill me today. You wore me out.”

Knox laughed then and caught her mouth in another
hot kiss that made her juices begin to flow yet again. “Once you
get up and around, that goes away,” he whispered.

He was right; once she got to work, she felt more
energetic and more able to do her work even though her mind was
back home, in bed, with Knox, and she couldn’t keep a smile off her
face.

Richard pulled up a chair at lunch.
“Congratulations,” he murmured.

“Congratulations what?” she asked, biting into one
of the absolutely divine cheeseburgers from the café across the
street.

“Now he’s looking at you the same way you look at
him.”

She choked and then swallowed her food. “So I’m not
the high school freshman with a crush on the captain of the
football team anymore?”

“I didn’t say that. Now the captain of the football
team has a crush on the little freshman.”

Justice laughed delightedly, warmed to the depths of
her soul.

“And—Justice?”

“What?”

“Thank you for the money.”

“I didn’t give it to you.”

“No, but I’m sure you put a bug in Knox’s ear.”

She smiled and patted his arm.

That night, Knox pounced on her as soon as she
walked in the door and she was more than ready to be pounced upon,
but she was tired and went to sleep as soon as she’d popped, Knox
still buried inside her.

The morning after that, she was late, and Knox
yelled at her in front of everybody. She was tempted to yell back
that
she
didn’t have a terminal case of insomnia and it was
his
fault for keeping her up all night, but she wasn’t quite
that bold.

“Time to get up, Iustitia,” Knox whispered in her
ear the third morning as she snuggled herself into the warmth of
his naked body.

“Grrr. Can we take a sick day?”

He laughed. “No. Especially not both of us at the
same time. But would you come away with me this weekend?”

She opened her eyes to see his face there in the
pillow, suddenly with fewer lines, and a serenity she had never
seen before. He gave her a crooked grin that made her belly flip
over. “Say yes, Iustitia. I haven’t asked a girl out on a date in a
long time.”

“Why do that when you can threaten?” she murmured
with a shy smile as she touched her palm lightly to his scruffy
face.

“I do everything the hard way, remember?”

“Yes, why
do
you do that?”

“Too early in the morning for psychoanalyzation,
love.”

Her shy smile widened a bit at the endearment and
she felt her face flush, so she buried her nose into the pillow. He
laughed as he bounded out of bed and went into the bathroom. “I’d
really rather not have to yell at you today. You know I hate
late.”

“Knox, it’s five-thirty in the morning. Couldn’t you
stand to actually get to work on time instead of an hour
early?”

“Old habits die hard,” he muttered around his
toothbrushing. “Couldn’t you stand to actually get to work on time
instead of thirty minutes late?”

She dragged herself out of bed, then nearly tripped
over the cat, who’d decided that since he’d already been dislodged
twice, he wasn’t budging again. “Dog,” she breathed, exasperated.
One loud meow let her know how irritated he was with her, and Knox
laughed.

“Guess he told you.”

Once in the bathroom, she nudged Knox over with her
hip and he protested with a grunt; then she began the task of
brushing her teeth. Knox moved around her to turn on the shower and
she bent to rinse her mouth.

She gasped when she felt Knox’s big hands around her
hips. One slid slowly from her hip over and around her thigh until
his fingers slid up inside her and his thumb massaged her clitoris.
She closed her eyes and sighed as she rose a bit so that her back
was against his chest. His other hand caressed her, hip to ribs to
breast until it was in his hand, his thumb manipulating her
nipple.

“Look in the mirror,” he whispered in her ear, deep
and gruff. “Watch me make love to you.”

Hesitantly, she opened her eyes and saw that girl
who surprised her every time, with copper-mahogany curls as messy
as they ever were in the morning; with freckles heavily layering
her face; with hazel eyes that had never been anything but dull to
her until right this moment.

She saw Knox’s sunny blond hair, his mouth in the
crook of her neck, nibbling, kissing, licking. She simultaneously
saw and felt what his hand did to her breast. She watched the
muscles in his other arm move in time with what she felt his
fingers doing to her.

Her breath came fast and hard even as she watched
Knox raise his head and meet her gaze in the mirror, that dark,
dark blue they turned when he was aroused, and oh! he
was
aroused.

“Look at your face and your breasts; they’re
flushing,” he murmured, and she looked. Indeed, they were flushing.
“Look at your eyes; they’re gold.” Indeed, they were gold. “Look at
your chest, how hard you’re breathing.” Indeed, she was panting as
if she’d run the two-minute mile. “I’ve waited three years to make
love to you, Iustitia, to watch you flush like that and your eyes
turn to gold.”

“
Why
did you wait?” she breathed, her eyes
closing in sheer sensation.

“It would’ve been longer if you hadn’t been in my
office when Jones came barging in.”

Then Knox slid his hands up and around her ribs,
drawing away from her. She opened her eyes again to see that he was
inspecting her back and buttocks, caressing her skin slowly all the
way down her body until they were again at her hips, then between
her legs, parting them gently until at last, his shaft was right
there
and she did so love that.

He pressed her forward a little and then slid up
into her, his hands flat on the counter, his big body surrounding
her and pressing against her as well as inside her. She released a
ragged sigh and closed her eyes.

“Put your hands on mine, love. Wrap your fingers in
mine. Brace yourself.”

She did, then he began to move and she sighed again,
deeper.

“Open your eyes, Iustitia. I want you to see
this.”

What she was looking at was two people making love,
their bodies moving, their breath coming shorterharderfaster, and
their skin flushing more.

What she saw was a man who loved her, had loved her
from the beginning, and who had finally felt ready to take what she
would have given him freely to begin with if he’d just asked.

She couldn’t watch herself come; she was too busy
feeling, her eyes closing yet again, her head back on Knox’s
shoulder, until she had come with soft gasps. Then she opened her
eyes to watch Knox.

His head back, his shoulders tense, he moved with
the grace of a lion and came with the roar of one, too.

He was
magnificent
.

He stilled for a moment, then slowly wrapped himself
around her, propping his chin on her shoulder and looking at her,
his eyes lightening as she watched.

“So how about it? Romantic weekend?”

“What about being seen together?”

“Not where I want to take you. Whittaker House in
Mansfield.”

Justice’s brow wrinkled. “What’s that and where’s
that?”

“Mansfield’s in the Ozarks. Whittaker House is an
inn that I half own.”

Justice, taken out of the moment, stared at him
agape. “You own an inn in the Ozarks?”

He chuckled and moved away from her, then directed
her into the shower. “Half.”

“That’s where you went those weekends?”

“Yes. My ward, Vanessa, is a chef. It’s her baby; I
just put up the cash. I go down there to unwind and help out. Do
the books and whatever legal work needs to be done.”

Justice was speechless. “You have a
ward
?”

“Two,” he said absently as he bent to lather soap up
Justice’s legs. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you on the way.”

She sighed in bemusement at how much she didn’t know
about Knox and watched him rise to his full height, then duck his
head under the spray. His body was strong, his shoulders and arms
heavily muscled, his chest covered in a dusting of hair lighter
than his skin. Justice didn’t know what other forty-year-old men
looked like naked, but she supposed she could be happy with what
she had.

“What are you smiling about?”

“You’re
gorgeous
.”

He stilled, stared at her for a moment, and then she
gasped, delighted, when he
blushed
. “No one’s ever said that
to me before,” he grumbled when she began to giggle, but he grabbed
her and kissed her to shut her up.

“I’m not going to be able to think about anything
but this all day today,” she whispered against his mouth as the
kiss softened.

He gave her a goofy grin she’d only begun seeing
after they’d really made love the first time, two nights before.
“I’ve been having a bit of that problem myself, Iustitia.”

“Knox? Were you waiting to make love to me until you
told me about Parley?”

He stilled “Yes,” he finally said. “I needed you to
hear it from me, all of it, how I did it—I’ve never told anyone
what I told you. I’m
not
sorry, but I didn’t want to feel
your disappointment or horror; didn’t want to see the same look on
your face you had when I shot Jones. And I certainly didn’t want
you to leave me again. Sleeping on the couch and having you in the
house somewhere was better than not having you at all.” He paused.
“Thank you, Iustitia.”

“For what?”

“Believing in me. Coming back to me.”

“You made me who I am. You gave me the strength and
courage to put my name to my opinions and then defend them.
Everything you’ve done to me, the threats, the intimidation—you
wanted, needed, me to stand up to you. Telling me you owned me was
the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

There was that grin again. “Well, I didn’t need you
to slap me that hard, but yes, I wanted to get you where you live
and see what you’d do. Iustitia, you already had it in you; you’ve
always had it in you. I just wanted to bring it to the surface and
test its strength.”

“Did I pass, Professor Hilliard?”

He laughed then. “Yes and I want to explore that
Professor Hilliard thing in more depth with you this weekend.”

“Oh?”

“Oh yes,” he purred. “That
older-professor-nubile-young-student thing is unexpectedly erotic.
I don’t know how the
hell
I missed that all these
years.”

* * * * *

92:
LITTLE RESORT IN THE OZARKS

Justice fell in love with Mansfield and Whittaker
House the minute they drove onto the pastoral property complete
with grazing sheep, though it did unnerve her that Knox’s ward,
Vanessa Whittaker, was almost exactly Justice’s age and, along with
being warm and gracious, she was very, very pretty.

With straight chocolate-colored hair streaked blonde
from the sun, vivid turquoise eyes, and perfect, faintly tanned
skin (without even one freckle), Vanessa was drop-dead gorgeous.
Justice had never thought of herself as a particularly jealous
person, but if it had to do with Knox . . .

She looked at Vanessa and those acid-green tendrils
curled through her until Knox wrapped his big hand gently around
the back of her neck and pulled her up against his broad, hard
body. He caressed her backside and his mouth brushed her ear.

Justice closed her eyes. Sighed.

“I told you on the way down here, Iustitia.
Vanessa’s my daughter. She was a twelve-year-old girl who did a
tremendously courageous thing in the name of truth and justice,
then needed someone to protect her from the fallout. I happened to
be the AP who caught that case.” He turned her and pointed to a
painting of Vanessa that hung in what was called the grand parlor.
“Tell me what you see in that work.”

Justice stared at the eight-by-five-foot semi-nude
portrait entitled
Wild, Wild West
; she could feel Knox
watching her, waiting . . . Justice gasped, all traces of jealousy
vanishing in a mist.