The Proviso (19 page)

He stood beside her and looked down at the patchwork
of cubicles without speaking. She was very aware of his presence,
his fragrance, his height.

This would be so much easier if she weren’t so
unexpectedly attracted to him.

“You’re not a good gambler,” he said finally. Eilis
hid her reaction. Whatever she’d expected, his mild manner was not
it.

“I built this company. How do you think I did that?”
she asked, her voice, as always, perfectly modulated.

“And you lost it. How do you think you did
that
? It’s not the making of a company, Mrs. Webster. It’s
the keeping of it and the growing of it that counts.”

She did not flinch, though she wanted to.
Becoming Mrs. Webster
, that which had been her
biggest—gamble? Was that what he thought it was?—and one she would
pay for for the rest of her life.

No, Eilis was an
excellent
gambler.

When backed into an emotional corner, however, she
invariably zigged when she should have zagged. Not that she would
tell
him
that.

“Believe it or not, Knox did you a favor,” he added,
as if for good measure.

She resisted the urge to snort, instead calling up
her persona from years of practice. She said calmly, “I’m quite
sure you both think you’ve counted quite a coup.”

He slid a glance at her and she was unaccountably
pleased that she didn’t have to look down at him. “I don’t have to
do this, Mrs. Webster. I can find someone else to do it if you’d
like.”

“Would it make any difference?” she asked, still
calm.

That was the way she always was. Calm, quiet,
unassuming. She’d begun her career hard, ruthless, but as her
reputation for such grew, her enemies used it to sabotage her
business deals. Forced to abandon that approach, she had concocted
Miss Logan, splendidly, flawlessly ladylike.

She hated it, but it worked exponentially better
than she could have ever dreamed. The intimidation and discomfort
men felt when she forced them to pay her homage as a lady never
went away and its element of surprise was ever present.

Oh, yes, it was a power play of immense proportions,
but it had taken a heavy toll on her over the years.

He turned back to the window and said, “You know
better than that.”

As raiders went, he was better than most. She
couldn’t lie to herself—if he had no ulterior motive, he would do a
good job with fairness and honesty. If his track record held, she
would have her company back in less than the three years the
receivership was slated to run, unless he chose to buy her out. He
could do anything he wanted with her as long as the bills got
paid.

She resented him just for being called in to do what
she could have done herself had she had time and briefly resented
the prosecutor for not asking her her opinion.

“Mrs. Webster—”

“I no longer use that name,” she murmured,
struggling to keep her composure, to keep her tears at bay at the
tone of sympathy she had heard in his voice. “Miss Logan, if you
please.”

“Miss Logan.” He complied so easily. Why did that
irritate her? “Shall we get started?”

* * * * *

Miss Logan’s obvious distrust of him annoyed the
hell out of him, but he couldn’t say why because this was the way
it
always
was.

Sebastian was sympathetic to her situation; he was
sympathetic to all situations. He too would be resentful if he were
the one staring a court-ordered receivership in the face.

The barely veiled venom of the beginning of his
relationship with this woman was mild compared to most, and she had
more reason than anyone else in the world to hate him. It wasn’t as
if
she
had called him to come rescue her, and anyone
could’ve made the mistake of hiring a thief as one’s CFO. Senator
Oth’s entire executive staff had been a den of thieves.

Of course, Oth hadn’t married his CFO, either.

Damn
Knox for badgering him into being this
woman’s trustee, and damn that judge for being such a good friend
to Knox that he’d ordered it. In Sebastian’s opinion, his
relationship to Knox made this whole thing one big fat conflict of
interest.

“If it makes you feel any better,” he heard himself
saying as, together, they moved away from the glass toward her
private office, her inner sanctum, windowless and clad in maple, “I
don’t want to do this any more than you want it done. I do have
better things to do with my time than rescue a company that doesn’t
interest me.”

He felt her surprise and relief, but she only said,
“I see,” without emotion.

Stifling a sigh, he went through her office to
her
desk, sat in
her
chair, in front of
her
computer, to gain access to
her
company’s records. Being
considered a villain on first sight was so common in his life as to
be a cliché.

He was surprised when she spoke again, her voice
still measured and perfect. “I’m curious, Mr. Taight. If this is
such a burden to you, why did you accept?”

He grunted. “Family. Loyalty. Trust.”

She showed no emotion at that and, unsatisfied that
she hadn’t cracked, he turned back to the computer.

He clicked through her computer files. He made note
of spreadsheets and databases, mentally mapping out matrices and
indices to begin his work, all too aware she stood only a few feet
from him, watching. Silent, impassive. He’d never before been a
trustee for a company in receivership, but he had hauled enough
companies out of bankruptcy by a breath to know what he needed to
do and what to look for without preparation.

That could be the only reason why Knox had asked him
to do this. Of course, Knox probably had other, more sinister
ulterior motives, but he didn’t know what they were and he didn’t
care. He’d find out eventually because Knox
never
did things
the easy way.

Eilis Logan’s company was very well positioned for
salvation and Sebastian was curious as to why she hadn’t taken the
obvious steps to do so herself. She was certainly capable of
it.

He happened across a file of digitized documents
that hadn’t been in the paperwork he’d been given and saw why Knox
had asked him to do this. He sent an email:
FOUND THE FORDS.
THX
.

“Mr. Taight—”

“Sebastian, please.”

“Mr. Taight,” she went on in that same ladylike
moderation, not a shred of passion in it. “Are you going to need me
for anything here? If not, I would like to take a vacation.”

Sebastian stilled and looked up at her and allowed
himself to see her as a man saw a woman. It wasn’t that he didn’t
notice beautiful women, because he did. On a detailed, aesthetic
level, he very much noticed and appreciated every woman’s beauty,
but he had learned through the years that he couldn’t seduce any
woman when he was thinking very left-brain things. Unless a woman
was thoroughly entranced by a discussion of the inflation-proof
bond, nothing would happen while he was in a suit.

He’d tried that. It had gone very badly—several
times.

It wasn’t even as if he hadn’t already carefully
cataloged this woman in his mind, head to toe and she was
beautiful—but she hid it very well and very deliberately.

No matter what she did, she wouldn’t have been able
to hide her very aristocratically sculpted face, with the exception
of the nose that had obviously been badly broken and never set
straight. She had high cheekbones, a fine forehead, and
strong-but-not-masculine jaw. Her mouth was full, though she wore a
color of lipstick designed to hide that fact. She wore brown
contact lenses—why?—and there was something under all that
foundation that looked like a thin scar running from eyebrow to
jaw.

And her body—Sebastian shocked himself with his very
right-brained thinking about the perfection that was Miss Eilis
Logan. Tall and lush, she was a Viking queen. The Chanel made it
perfectly clear that this woman was built like a fertility goddess.
In Sebastian’s estimation, she was flawless, and Sebastian knew he
had good taste in women.

“I would prefer you stay involved in the process,
Miss Logan,” he said slowly, not really sure how to deal with her
request, because no one he’d worked with had ever made such an
outrageous one before. “Your employees will need you here to give
them confidence and you might learn something you could use in the
future. I’ll also need your input and assistance with things I
can’t know, such as employee issues.”

“I have a cell phone,” she said levelly.

That was a bluff. He knew he’d won the battle with
his deliberate mention of her employees. If for nothing else, she
had a reputation for how much she cared about the people who worked
for her.

“Okay, if that’s how you want to play it,” he said
flatly, unaccountably angry with her now. “The answer’s no. I’m not
going to let you walk off the field just because I’m the one
quarterbacking now. If this is going to be a problem for you, you
can take it up with Knox.”

That got a reaction. Her nostrils flared a tad and
her jaw clenched only the slightest bit. Well, in for a penny, in
for a pound. If that got a reaction from her, he’d go for
broke.

“One of the things I’m going to do,” he continued,
with that same flat, heartless tone that should tell her his
patience had run out, “is sell off every Ford painting this
corporation owns. I’m requesting, nicely, that you hand them over
so that I can start building your cash reserves. Together, they’re
worth tens of millions of dollars, which will be a good head
start.”

Her silent stoicism told him everything he needed to
know. She had expected this; she had probably even thought of doing
that herself and hadn’t been able to bring herself to.

“If you had done that six months ago, I wouldn’t be
here,” he said, now thoroughly pissed off that she hadn’t blinked
an eye. Taunting a client was uncharacteristic for him and he
didn’t like the fact that he wanted to get a reaction from her so
badly that he was willing to grind it in.

He stopped and took a deep breath before he really
let loose and mentioned the second, third, and fourth things she
should’ve done. That would be downright mean.

Sebastian had a speech he had perfected over the
years that he used without fail. He didn’t want to break people’s
spirits; he didn’t ridicule their choices and he was always careful
to maintain respect for them and sympathy with their situations.
Once these people in distress got to know him it seemed, oddly,
that his presence was of comfort to them in their time of greatest
stress and grief.

Not that anyone ever actually noticed that. They
never saw what
he
had done to salvage their companies the
minute he left for good, check in hand, and only knew what
they
had done. He always pulled his punches, handled
everyone with kid gloves, hoping they would learn from their
mistakes and from changing their business strategies. Today,
though, he hadn’t used his normal speech on her, and he didn’t know
why other than that she was so damned uncrackable.

“I love those paintings,” she finally admitted with
great dignity.

“Sentiment has no place here, although I will admit
that if you had sold them off one at a time for a quick fix, you’d
be worse off now than you are.”

He saw a split-second flash of heartbreak in her
face that must have been extreme to be seen through her mask of
makeup. She turned away. Finally, she said, “May I keep one? It’s
not on the books.”

“Does the corporation own it?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice tinged with a nearly
imperceptible despair.

For reasons he didn’t understand, instead of the
same flat “no” he would’ve normally given anyone in her position,
the same one he’d given her about a vacation, he asked, “Which one
is it?”

“
Morning in Bed
.”

He sucked in a breath and his eyes widened. “You own
Morning in Bed
?”

“Yes.”

That painting was worth tens of millions by itself.
If she sold that along with the rest of them, she’d be more than
half salvaged. Still, he hesitated. “Let me think about it. In the
meantime,” he continued briskly, “I would like you to go to the
Ford exhibit with me Saturday evening so that you can see for
yourself the value of letting them all go.”

“I can’t,” she said smoothly. “I have other
plans.”

Sebastian was immediately suspicious. A woman who
owned nine Fords, including the most notorious one, hadn’t planned
to attend the Ford exhibit where a new painting would be unveiled?
Did she hate his presence so much that she would give that up
rather than go with him? It wouldn’t be the first time that had
happened, though, so it was entirely possible. He figured if he
couldn’t get a date with her under cover of business, he may not be
able to get a date with her at all.

He inclined his head. “As you wish, Miss Logan.”

Then he walked out of her office and out of her
building, now even more pissed off that Knox had badgered him to do
this for one entirely different reason. He wanted Eilis Logan in
his bed. Badly—

—but he didn’t know how the hell he was going to get
her there.

* * * * *

19:
CLINICAL, INTELLECTUAL, CYNICAL

Giselle sat on a picnic table by Brush Creek just
off campus, feeding bread to the ducks and geese. She couldn’t take
this much longer. Sebastian, irritated, had accused her of “moping
around the house like a love-struck sixteen-year-old girl for the
last seven months.” Knox was angry because she had assiduously
avoided him. She hadn’t returned her mother’s phone calls or emails
in two weeks and Lilly had resorted to hounding both Sebastian and
Knox as to Giselle’s state of mind. She hadn’t shown up at any of
her extended family’s frequent functions because she just couldn’t
take Fen on any level after he’d called her in the middle of class
to yell at her for going to his party armed.