The Proviso (11 page)

At least now he knew Fen intended to carry his
personal philosophy of philanthropy right on into Congress with him
and Bryce had no intention of backing that with either his
checkbook or his influence. Giving away money as a private citizen
or a corporation was Bryce’s idea of generosity of spirit and
community service. Using taxpayer money to do it was bullshit.

In addition, though Bryce didn’t know Sebastian
Taight personally, he definitely didn’t like the witch hunt Fen’s
announcement had triggered. It would’ve happened eventually, but if
Taight went down, half the extraordinarily successful entrepreneurs
in the country would go down with him. That didn’t bode well for
anyone, not to mention what it would do to the economy.

Fen’s campaign had less to do with political
ambition and a need to protect the public from rampaging capitalist
pigs, but more to do with Taight’s takeover of OKH. Bryce wouldn’t
trust Fen Hilliard to hold his nine-iron for him.

Bryce sighed as he returned to nursing his Perrier,
disengaged from the people who had clumped around him. The company
he kept at these inane functions was the most amusing he could
find, but some evenings, like tonight, that didn’t say much. Bored
out of his mind, he wondered if this was preferable to knocking
around a dark, silent, empty house at Christmas time.

Absorbed in watching the play of light on the
surface of his sparkling water, Bryce thought he saw a head of
honey-colored hair in his periphery and his gut clenched.

Only one person he had ever met had hair that color,
subtle in its blondeness and its redness at the same time.
No hairdresser, no matter how talented or
expensive, could duplicate the complicated highlights of
commingling blonde and red strands.

He turned and looked for her, unable to credit that
she
might be here. His breath caught in his throat when he
saw her. When she turned a bit, he realized that she went about on
Sebastian Taight’s arm and a pain struck him behind his sternum as
she chatted amiably—almost familiarly—with Fen and Trudy
Hilliard.

First Knox, then Taight and the rest of the
Hilliards. It stood to reason that if she was fucking Knox, she
would know Taight and definitely Knox’s mother—but what kind of
typist and law student had these kinds of connections? He knew no
one in society by the name of Cox or who had ties to a Cox
family.

Bryce drank in her appearance more fully, able to
take his time and notice small details that pleased but did not
surprise him. She had such an air of understated elegance, he had
to wonder if she had a gun strapped to her thigh.

Her black and white dress showed off her pale
shoulders to exquisite advantage and gave her hair a subtle
brilliance. He liked the red earrings.

The slight plump of her breasts above the black
corset caught his attention. His mind filled with images of them
bare, flushed with passion, her nipples begging him to lick and
suck them. He drew in a sharp breath and his erection strained
against his fly. She turned away from him then and he studied the
delineation of well-developed muscles in her arms and upper back.
He remembered her legs the night of Leah’s visitation.

Collier’s
Lilith
was soft, round, lush.

Giselle Cox was most definitely not.

I notice the type of women who catch your eye:
Muscular. Solid. A woman you can throw at a bed and fuck. Hard.

Brilliant woman . . . She’ll be a good trial
attorney. Enough ego and charm to pull anything off and the brains
and wit to back it up.

I notice the women you like to talk to: Smart.
Edgy.

I assure you: You have never met a woman like me,
and you never will again.

Taight led Miss Cox away from the Hilliards and she
strolled about on his arm for a moment before they came to an
abrupt halt. She began to talk and gesture, a highball glass of
something clear over ice in one hand, while Taight listened
intently. He sipped at his champagne, never taking his eyes off
her, then he grinned at her. She returned it, but began to speak
again and did so at some length. Taight’s expression gradually
transformed from amusement to— Respect?

He wondered what Giselle Cox could possibly have to
say that would have a notorious and semi-reclusive billionaire’s
rapt attention. Taight very rarely attended society events and if
he did deign to grace an affair with his presence, he mingled very
little. He rarely spoke and he never showed any emotion.

Taight’s presence at a party for a man he had
declared war upon, a woman on his arm, and his uncharacteristic
public display of humor—incredible. Quite a few of the gathered
shot intermittent glances at the pair, no less intrigued than
Bryce.

And her!
No anger tonight, no rage. Just
amusement. He remembered her clumsy attempt at flirting, her
straightforward charm, her obvious hope for him to ask her
out—possibly more. He’d insulted her and her anger had resurfaced.
He’d kissed her and she’d sunk into desire. He’d called her out and
flustered her. Her moods swung wildly and she made no effort to
hide them.

He could only see Miss Cox in profile, but he could
read her amazingly expressive face from where he stood. She smirked
once at something Taight muttered, and though she didn’t show any
other overt signs of humor, Bryce could feel her amusement in
palpable waves across the distance between them and pulse through
his body. Whatever she said had been funny enough to make Taight
nearly laugh and Bryce heard one woman actually gasp.

Jealousy, hot and vicious, seized his gut and his
lip curled. Knox Hilliard knew her intimately. Sebastian Taight
treated her as an equal, though not as a lover—at least, not as
Bryce would have treated a lover—or would have treated
her
if she were
his
lover.

What did a second-shift transcriptionist and
over-age student have to offer that she could capture two brilliant
men’s attention? All his adult life, he’d known women who craved
attention and did anything they could to get it. He knew when a
woman faked obliviousness to attract more attention. Giselle Cox,
absorbed in her conversation with Taight, either hadn’t noticed the
attention they garnered or didn’t care.

She had Bryce tied in knots, a room full of men
watching her with speculation, and a room full of women studying
her as if to learn something.

A lovely peal of laughter rang out from her vicinity
and Bryce looked up from her breasts to find himself staring into
those ice blue eyes that seemed so familiar as to be eerie.

She blinked, and held his gaze. She blinked again,
but had turned her attention back to Taight with a smile of genuine
warmth. As if she hadn’t recognized Bryce. No, more than that—as if
he didn’t exist.

Regret, deep and sharp, joined his jealousy and rode
him hard. His jaw ground and he looked back down into his glass. He
had blown any chance he might have had with her and he flinched at
the way he had dismissed her with such finality. All he’d had to do
was ask her out for dinner when she’d begged him to—
before
he’d pissed her off.

One hand stuffed in his pocket, he looked down at
the floor and tried for all the world not to let her get to him the
way she did.

That kiss. It tormented him, now months after it had
happened, but she must have forgotten it. Such a fool. Between
Hilliard and Taight, why would she remember Bryce at all?

Bryce looked up again just as Taight bent to murmur
something in her ear, then left her standing there, striding away
from her and toward the owner of a foundering company. Once alone,
her palpable humor vanished. The people who observed this grew
puzzled, Bryce no less so.

After a couple of seconds of looking down into her
glass, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, slowly in her nose,
then out through the O of her lips. She did that several times, her
breasts swelling with each inhalation. His own breath caught in
response.

Suddenly he found her looking straight at him again.
Deliberately, this time, and she held his gaze. Her mouth—that
cherry-kissed mouth with full lips that could probably work
miracles on a man’s anatomy—twitched. A corner of it turned up; not
quite a smile, not quite a smirk.

Oh, no. She hadn’t forgotten at all.

Adrenaline surged through him as he returned her
stare. The fantasies of his youth, the ones that had tortured him
with their wickedness, the ones he’d tried so hard to quell at such
great cost, curled around him. The predator in him surged and
howled, all traces of regret and jealousy gone. Bryce cocked an
eyebrow at her and she acknowledged him with a miniscule shift of
her shoulders and lowered eyelids.

Miss Giselle Cox, whoever she was, promised the
fulfillment of every one of his long-denied yearnings. She was
dangerous—and he knew he’d give up everything he had to have
her:

His pride.

His net worth.

His salvation.

She put her glass on a passing waiter’s tray, then
turned without warning and sashayed, not toward him, but across
Kirkwood Hall to Sculpture Hall. She disappeared behind the
Christmas tree, then reappeared, her steps slow and studied, her
back straight and head high, as if she had all the time in the
world and nowhere in particular to go. He watched her progress
across the marble floor, deftly and graciously weaving through
clumps of chatters without fanfare.

He followed her at some distance through the grand
hall, then through the sculpture room that was littered with
clusters of chatting people who stilled slightly as she glided by.
A couple of men started to follow her but happened to glance up at
Bryce; he merely had to raise an eyebrow at their impudence to send
them scurrying back to their cliques.

A corner of his mouth turned up, grateful for his
scarred face for the first time ever.

Then his eyes narrowed as he tracked her with a
hunter’s skill. Sebastian Taight had just become mistressless. He’d
deal with Knox Hilliard later—and Knox would lose.

Finally she reached the staircase that led down to
the Bloch building, the hideous modern addition that marred the
landscape and lines of the original gallery. She smoothly descended
to the wide landing, but instead of going down the next set of
stairs to the new building, she turned right to go up the dimly lit
stairs to the European exhibits. Those collections were not on
display at this time of day and technically, people were not
allowed to go wandering the gallery at will, although they often
did.

She unhooked the velvet rope that blocked off that
section of the museum, which didn’t surprise him. A woman who was
so sure of herself that she’d kiss a man she didn’t know and then
be surprised when it got turned back on her would do exactly what
she pleased, regardless of the obstacles.

She stopped then and looked over her shoulder at
him, that same not-smile-not-smirk on her face. She raised one
eyebrow and deliberately dropped the rope on the floor. He ached in
ways he hadn’t since before the fire and his breath caught.

Bryce stood transfixed as she ascended the staircase
step by deliberate step, her white skirt held in her right hand.
Her hips swayed. The short train of her black skirt slithered
behind her. Her delicate hand slid up the copper banister and
though half the room watched, as riveted as he, no one tried to
stop her.

His feet moved of their own accord. He absently
excused himself through the crowd, irresistibly drawn after her as
if she were Calypso, ensnaring him with his own lust—

—then found himself detained by some policy wonk who
not only didn’t notice that Bryce had other plans, but felt
entitled to the contents of his brain.

Left or right? A few more of the terminally clueless
gathered around him. Which way would she go and would he see her
with all the people suddenly demanding his attention? How would he
find her? His jaw ground at the thought of losing her to the
labyrinthine hallways and myriad exhibits because people he didn’t
know wanted a piece of him.

“Excuse me,” he barked, interrupting someone who
purposely stood in his way to spout drivel, then plowed his way out
of the committee of vultures around him to find her and catch
her.

She had turned left.

* * * * *

11:
CHECK

Over a fifth glass of champagne, Sebastian watched
Giselle walk across the room. Kenard had a hunger, a raw lust, in
his face that was unexpected, given what little he knew. Sebastian
studied the room’s male occupants as a full half of them turned to
watch her cross the floor.

Perhaps he’d underestimated Giselle’s appeal. On any
day Sebastian thought about it and felt generous, he would classify
Giselle as passably cute.

He saw two men start out after her, tongues dragging
the floor. Kenard’s snarl quelled them instantly and it hadn’t gone
unnoticed by the milling partygoers. Sebastian pursed his lips. The
man had marked Giselle as his territory like the alpha wolf he was
reputed to be, though his reputation with women could most kindly
be described as . . . nonexistent.

Better than Sebastian’s, anyway.

He followed the two of them into Sculpture Hall to
see what would transpire next and he leaned against a wall somewhat
out of the way, his arms crossed over his chest.

Kenard got caught in a web of moochers who gathered
around him, clamoring at him for his time, his attention, his
money. It took a great deal of rudeness and strength for the man to
break through that to follow her. He clipped down the first
staircase, bounded up the next one three steps at a time, then
disappeared in a flash around a corner, his tux coat flaring out
after him.