The Proviso (20 page)

She just wanted to be alone for a while with no one
jabbering in her ears, making demands, lecturing her on propriety,
threatening her life and livelihood and grades, or shaming her for
a heinous breach of trust.

She knew Bryce’s office address: downtown, in a
prestigious skyscraper convenient to the Jackson County Courthouse.
She still had no idea what to do with that information or if she’d
do anything at all.

“Boy, you just don’t know a good thing when it steps
right in front of you, do you?”

“Go away,” she muttered. “Don’t you have fathers and
fiancées to avenge, women to marry, and children to sire?”

“You’re a hot mess. Move over.”

She did and he climbed up onto the table beside
her.

He leaned in to kiss her and she leaned away from
him. “No more. I’m done with this.”

“Done with what?”

“Done with you.”

Knox said nothing and she dared not look at him. He
could tease her out of her funk now, but it would come back the
next day anyway. She was worn out and overwhelmed and very
unhappy.

“I’m done with this semi-incestuous relationship.
Done with the Shakespearean tragedy that is your life. Knox, I have
no stake in OKH, but because of it, everything I had has been taken
away from me except my life and that’s only because I got lucky.
Twice. I’m tired. I want— No, I
need
a resolution.”

He handed her a bottle of cold water, which she
took. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know,” she replied with a sigh. “Me too.”

He caught her mouth then and coaxed her tongue to
play, twenty-five years of familiar, so very comfortable. She
sighed into his mouth, fell into the kiss, closed her eyes—

—and found herself comparing him unfavorably to
Bryce Kenard. She opened her eyes then and pulled away from him.
“That wasn’t fair. What if somebody saw us?”

“Oh, it’d just give your reputation another layer of
mystique.”

“Pffftt.
Professor Hilliard
is pissing me
off.”

“
Miss Cox
yanks my chain plenty, too, so
don’t act like you’re all lily white.”

She sighed. “I’m guessing you’re here because
Sebastian bitched at you to bitch at me?”

“Yeah. You’re not home enough for him to kick your
ass and when you are, you’re sleeping. He thinks I know all your
little hiding places.”

“Well, you don’t.”

“You’re right about that. I’ve been to every shoe
store in town.”

She cracked a reluctant smile.

“Lemme guess. Bryce Kenard.”

She swallowed.

“Talk to me, Giselle.”

“He, um— At the gallery, he—” She stopped. Took a
deep breath. “He wanted— He asked me to go home with him and— Um,
and I wanted to, but I was there to trick him. I mean, I couldn’t—
Not on a lie.”

“Oh, is
that
what this is about?”

“That and the fact that he thinks I’m a slut,” she
said in a rush. “I’m
mortified
.”

He said nothing for a moment. Then, “So tell him the
truth. Throw yourself on his mercy. You’ve got nothing to
lose.”

“Like I want to invite someone else to read back my
pedigree for me? I think not. Sebastian takes care of that quite
nicely, thank you.”

“That’s a dodge. He intimidates you and you don’t
like it.”

“Fuck you.”

Knox took some of her bread to throw to the ducks.
Neither of them spoke for a long time, then he said, “I’ve been
wanting to ask you something. Was I that obvious?”

“When?”

“That day in class last year, that week I subbed for
Grady.”

Giselle had to cast back in her memory a bit before
she remembered. “I thought you didn’t want to discuss it?”

“I do now. Talk.”

“Hmm. Well. It was obvious to me. I think the rest
of the class was just too shellshocked to notice.”

“Shellshocked?”

“Knox, you were . . . enraged. I haven’t seen you
that angry since you tried Tom Parley and you’ve never shown that
side of you in class. You turned from hottie heartthrob law
professor into badass Chouteau County prosecutor. And how you
looked at her— I have never seen you look at any woman that way,
not Leah, not me, not any other woman you’ve ever loved.” She
paused. “By the way, did you get in trouble for that?”

His eyebrow rose. “Giselle,” he drawled.

“Of course not! Untouchable Knox Hilliard strikes
again.” Giselle huffed. “So if Leah hadn’t been in the picture,
would you have nabbed her after class and taken her to the Den of
Iniquity? ’Cause that’s what it looked like you wanted to do.”

His silence told her everything she needed to
know.

“Oh, Knox,” she sighed. “More guilt?”

“I went home that day feeling like the worst bastard
who ever lived. I could barely look at Leah. Then she died—” His
mouth tightened. “I know you haven’t told Sebastian any of this
because he hasn’t cracked my head open.”

She waved a hand. “I’m torn. I see your point and I
agree with it, but this really is your fight and Sebastian has a
right to resent that you want to abandon ship now that he’s
steering it. Why don’t you seek her out and tell her how you feel,
lay it all out for her, and let her decide whether she wants to be
with you or not? She’s in love with you.”

“She wouldn’t understand it even if I recited it
line and verse. And even if she did, no woman in her right mind
would step into my mess voluntarily. You know I don’t like women
not in their right minds and, aside from her crush on me, Justice
McKinley
is
in her right mind.”

“I don’t think that’s fair. I mean, if I were her,
I’d want to know that the man I wanted actually wanted me, too. I
wouldn’t want to live my life wondering and dreaming and
wishing.”

“Giselle, she’s
fourteen years
younger than
me. She’s not old enough to know what she wants. I’ve never been
one of
those
professors and I don’t like younger women.
Forty-year-old women are hot to trot. You have no idea.”

Giselle’s mouth dropped open.

He caught her look. “Oh. Right. I guess you do know.
The point is, this is killing me. She’s young enough to be my
daughter; hell, I’ve raised a girl her age. What am I supposed to
do with her? By the time she turns forty, I’d have to pop Viagra
like they’re aspirin just to barely keep up. And then there’s the
perv factor. As in, ‘Oh, gee, I was fourteen when she was
born.’”

“And Leah was fifteen when you were born.” She
paused. “All you’d have to do is have your executive give her a
little ringy-ding, ask her to come in for an interview. Everybody
would assume that you’re courting her name just as much as every
other office and every other think tank in the country. Her name
would skyrocket if Knox Hilliard, Trainer of Baby Litigators,
sought her out and nobody would ever have to know that all you want
is a little redheaded teddy bear. Keep her as an AP, train her,
wait until after your birthday and then explain it.

“Or, in the alternative, hire her, train her, and
let her go none the wiser. She needs a backbone and it would take
her six years to get where you could get her in six weeks.”

“My world would crush her,” he murmured so low she
could barely hear him. “
I
would crush her.”

“Knox, you gave her name to her. Do you not get
that? She’s well respected across the country and powerful people
have begun to court her opinions. Every time you hear her quoted on
talk radio, every time you read her blog posts, every time you open
a magazine or a newspaper and see her byline—you did that. You
validated her, gave her some confidence.” Giselle paused. “Online
and in print, anyway.

“She hides behind her computer. She still walks
around school like she deserves nothing, like she’s only there by
the grace of God and Knox Hilliard—and that might get taken away
any day. She should be walking around like the genius that she is,
but— In two, three years, you could turn her into a real power
player in politics or law or both. At the very least, finish the
job you started.”

Knox said nothing for a long while, then, “Her CV is
on my desk. I was going to have Eric interview her and then send
her on her way.”

Giselle gasped and her eyes widened. “She came to
you?” He nodded morosely. It took her a bit of thought and silence
to work that through; she had never expected that the girl would
have the guts to seek Knox out herself.

“Oh, I get it. You think that once she sees you in
your world—not as knight-in-shining-armor Professor Hilliard—she
won’t look at you the same way she did that day and you don’t want
to watch her get disillusioned with you.”

“I find it inconvenient that you can read my
mind.”

That made Giselle laugh. “Master of the overstated
understatement.”

He flashed her a grin. “Did you like that?”

“You dumbshit,” she said and pushed him off the
table.

That made him laugh in turn and he hopped back up on
the table. He sobered then. “Me, my name, my office—it would taint
her, not make her. Her career would be over before it really began
and could kill Oakley’s chances, to boot.”

Giselle couldn’t deny that. Kevin Oakley would have
enough to answer for if his long friendship with Knox came to
light. Now that Justice had agreed to endorse Kevin as a senatorial
candidate, her employment in a corrupt prosecutor’s office would
cast doubt on her character and, by extension, diminish Kevin’s
credibility.

“I just want to see her again, let her go, and then
find her when this is all over with. Maybe she needs the world to
knock her around a little bit—and I refuse to put her where Fen’ll
feel obliged to kill her. If it weren’t for his unpredictability,
I’d do it, but I can’t take that chance.”

Giselle sat and thought about that for a while. “You
do have a point,” she said slowly, looking off into the distance.
“Well,” she finally said, “I can appreciate that you want to take
the high ground, so I’ll not argue with you about it.”

“Giselle, do you know why I’m so good at what I
do?”

“Not really, no. I don’t think of you that way.”

“Huh. Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s my memory. So
this is what I have to say to you: ‘If it were me, I’d want to know
that the man I wanted actually wanted me, too. I wouldn’t want to
live my life wondering and dreaming and wishing.’”

Her breath caught in her throat. “Bastard,” she
grumbled.

“Coward.”

* * * * *

20:
FENEMIES

Giselle lay awake all night with Knox’s parting shot
ringing in her ears.

Coward.

Her situation and his weren’t perfectly analogous,
but he’d used her own words against her. Did they apply any less to
her and this man, this Bryce Kenard (whose very name screamed
testosterone) with whom she’d spent so little time, and every
second of it in intensely erotic foreplay?

That’s a dodge. He intimidates you and you don’t
like it.

Knox was right and she hated when that happened,
especially when Sebastian agreed, since they so very rarely did.
Knox had wasted no time in tattling on her to Sebastian, who said,
“So? It’s not like you pulled off some elaborate scam and made a
fool of him. But,” he added, “you need to get the monkey off your
back first so you can have a fresh start. Kenard doesn’t need to be
mixed up in this. He’s done nothing to deserve it.”

Knox agreed with that assessment, too. She had no
chance when both of them ganged up on her.

She made up her mind and she wouldn’t wait until the
family’s Labor Day barbecue to have her say, so she went to Fen
immediately. Once having made the decision to seek Bryce Kenard
out, she wouldn’t let it lie one more second.

Giselle didn’t dare go unarmed. She also didn’t
bother to stop at the guard’s desk or pause when the metal detector
shrieked at her, or in any way acknowledge the men who hollered
behind her and scrambled to keep her from going any farther into
the building.

“Stand down, gentlemen,” boomed a deep voice from
the mezzanine above the massively expansive terrazzo-and-marble
front lobby of OKH Enterprises. “Everything’s fine. My wayward
niece just wants to throw a little tantrum at me.”

Protests followed her as she took the stairs of the
grand staircase two at a time, her strong legs eating up the
distance between him and her. She ignored everyone but the man she
had come to see.

She had a strange balance of power with him that
she’d had since she was a child. She didn’t always understand it,
but occasionally it proved useful.

Yes, he’d tried to kill her twice, which had
bankrupted her and obliged her to undergo emergency surgery,
respectively.

Yes, she’d calmly and deliberately threatened to
kill him, a hand on his throat and a gun to his head.

Yes, he felt as free to dress her down as any of her
other aunts and uncles.

Yes, they usually had a good time together once he
made her laugh again.

“Come in, Giselle, come in,” Fen Hilliard said
graciously. He held the door to his office suite open and guided
her through the floor of assistants’ desks arranged as if it were a
bank lobby. They all looked at her warily, this sacrilegious woman
appearing at the CEO’s office wearing tight leathers and boots,
with a Glock stuck in the back of her waistband. She smiled
slightly at one young male assistant who couldn’t take his eyes off
of her. She winked at him and he blushed.

“Stop flirting with my people,” Fen hissed once he
had ushered her into his private office and closed the doors behind
them. “You dare come to me armed?”

“Pffftt. I’d be a fool not to.”

“I wouldn’t be stupid enough to kill you here,
Giselle.”

“There is that. You don’t have the stomach to do it
yourself.”