The Proviso (22 page)

Giselle blinked. “Why?”

“You— You’re powerful and—” She looked at the floor
and whispered, “I want to learn that.”

Let Knox teach you; he’ll show you the power you
don’t know you have yet.

Giselle watched her for several long seconds before
Justice raised her eyes to find out why Giselle hadn’t
answered.

“I can’t teach you how to be that,” she said once
Justice had fully concentrated on her face. “You have to come to it
on your own, through hardship and fear. You have to know who you
are and what you believe and you have to take stock of that every
day. You have to walk barefoot through fire on broken glass. You
have to stand up to people who frighten you under conditions that
terrify you. You have to be honest with yourself about what you
really want. You have to be willing to fail.

“Power is acquired, earned. You’ll have many
opportunities in your life to earn bits and pieces of it. You’ll
make bad choices; learn from them and do the best you can with
them. Do not, under any circumstances, dither over what the right
choice might be every single time you’re presented with one. It
won’t teach you anything and you’ll be a bore at cocktail
parties.”

Justice’s hazel eyes had widened and Giselle smiled,
reaching out to rub her shoulder, surprising both of them. Giselle
almost
never
touched people she didn’t know, or allowed them
to touch her. On the other hand, she’d touched this girl once and
at that moment had become vested in keeping her safe, in smoothing
her road for her, in helping her travel the path that led to
Knox.

“You’ll do fine. Now,” she said briskly, turning
away from Justice and back to the mirror to do some last-minute
primping, “I need to go take some of my own advice.” She caught
Justice’s look of confusion when she turned to walk toward the
door. She opened it a crack and then looked back over her shoulder.
“Acquiring power is a never-ending process, Justice. Every day you
have to wake up and prove to the world all over again that you
deserve it. There should never come a day when you wake up and say,
‘Okay, I’m powerful now; I’m done.’
Never
.”

With that, she left the restroom and found the
correct set of courtroom doors. She opened one quietly, tiptoed in
and stood silently against the back wall to watch Bryce Kenard do
what he did that made him the god of the UMKC School of Law.

* * * * *

Bryce had used the architecture of this closing
argument so often he could recite it in his sleep. It wasn’t that
he didn’t believe it—no, he believed every word of what he said and
because of that, he could sell it to the jury. Every time. Sadly,
he had too many cases that required this closing argument; thus, he
had to deliver his closing by rote. Otherwise, he could make
himself insane with the grief of his own loss.

“This trial is not and never was an issue of suing a
poor, hapless doctor who tried his best yet lost the struggle
between life and death. It’s about a little girl who had a bad
doctor and
died
as a direct result of his incompetence.” His
client had bowed her head and her tears fell slowly and silently.
That wasn’t an act on her part, and he felt her pain acutely for a
moment before forcing himself to shake it off.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said as he placed his
hands on the jury box and leaned into them, making sure they could
all see his scars up close and personal. “The medical community
saved my life; I’m grateful every day that I have my life because
of a team of brilliant surgeons, specialists, nurses, and
therapists. I’m immensely grateful that my caretakers are so
competent and dedicated to their art and their patients.

“I’m not here to ask you for money for my client.
I’m not asking you to pass judgment on the medical community. I’m
not even asking you to send a message to it that it should police
its own so that people like us, you and me, don’t have to. I’m just
asking you to help me clean it up one bad doctor at a time, and
maybe, just maybe, let Melissa Hawthorne’s mother sleep a little
better at night.”

He nodded his thanks to the jury and walked to his
chair. There weren’t that many people in the gallery, so the woman
who stood against the back wall was hard to miss. His eyes widened
as he stared at her for the split-second before he turned to sit.
Soon, the jury left to begin deliberations and he rose, clutching
his sobbing client to his chest.

He knew only too well how it felt to be suddenly
childless.

Bryce released her after a while so she could leave
and turned back to the table to gather his papers and laptop and
Blackberry, to put his briefcase back together before he confronted
Giselle. He talked to his interns, piled his things into the box
one of them carried, and gave them instructions.

He took his time, sorting through the remnants of
his closing argument, feeling his client’s grief and his own
wrapped up in it, but now . . .

She
was at the back of the room and he didn’t
seem to hurt quite as much. “Stalker,” he muttered, still feeling
the sting of her parting shot at the library. He’d be damned if he
appeared too eager to talk to her after that.

She awaited him patiently as he dawdled, then
strolled up the aisle toward her, the very last person out of the
courtroom. He never imagined she could look like that in a million
years and the thought crossed his mind that he could certainly
stand to look at her for the rest of his life.

Tight oxblood leather pants clung to her legs like a
second skin. She had heavy Doc Martens on her feet. Though a
voluminous white cotton blouse floated around her torso, he could
see the curve of her breasts through the laces that held the front
together. Her honey corkscrews fell to her shoulders, a wide
fringed-and-beaded black scarf from her forehead to her crown
holding her hair away from her face. A small dog could’ve jumped
through the golden hoops that hung from her ears. Her face was
slightly flushed and whatever way she’d made up her eyes—he didn’t
remember the name of that stuff—only enhanced her exotic look.

She might intimidate him a little if he didn’t know
how she responded to him.

He stopped in front of her, glaring at her. He
smelled her perfume and felt the amusement that rippled his way.
“Stalking me?” he snapped

She pursed her lips and thought about that for a few
seconds. “You tell me. Your secretary all but drew me a map once I
told her my name.”

His jaw clenched. Of course she’d have noticed
that.

“I want to talk to you,” she continued, somewhat
breathily. “I’ve needed to say something to you since December and
I— I just haven’t been able to.”

“So say it.”

“Mmmm, that’s going to take a while. Tell you what,”
she said, pushing herself off the wall. “How about you meet me at
Kauffman Garden at six?”

He considered. Finally, he figured that if this was
all he would ever get from her, he’d take it and tuck it away in
his memory.

“Fine.” Unwilling to leave her, her scent, her
humor, but needing to make his point, he walked away and didn’t
look back.

* * * * *

22: NO
ONE BRIGHTER THAN YOU

Giselle stood in the V between her open car door and
her car, facing west and watching the sun on its course toward the
horizon. Waiting.

She had dressed carefully in a sundress of navy
linen with white polka dots. The modest bustline fit closely and
didn’t show a hint of cleavage between the triple spaghetti straps.
Over that, she wore a light white short-sleeved shrug. The full
bias-cut skirt fell from the empire waistline to her knees. Navy
sandals gave her another four inches of advantage.

She’d replaced her black hair scarf with a white
one. She’d removed the kohl and kept the makeup to a minimum. She’d
changed out her gold hoops for pearl studs.

This was her Sunday best.

Though she had invited Bryce to wring her out and
hang her up to dry on her own sins, she refused to look and feel
like a ragamuffin during the ordeal or give him any more reasons to
think she would use her body to get something from him.

Six o’clock came and went. Her pinging nerves
settled into acute disappointment. So, he had decided to show his
contempt for her by standing her up. Well, she supposed she
deserved it. Twenty minutes later, she still waited because she
didn’t know what else to do. Her nose stung. She blinked back
tears. She chewed on the inside of her bottom lip. Several cars
turned in the lot, but she couldn’t see them, wouldn’t look, and
didn’t know when he drove in and parked, or if he drove in at
all.

She only knew when he appeared next to her and
settled himself back against her car. She couldn’t see his face
because she didn’t turn toward him, embarrassed and deeply
regretful that she had ruined her chance to be with this man. He
would not look kindly on her deceit, but at this moment, she only
cared that he’d shown up after all.

“You rang?” he said after a moment. Ooh, still
angry.

She pursed her lips, screwing up her courage to say
what she had to say.

“I lied to you.”

She felt his body shift against the car as if she
had startled him. He said nothing for a long time. “Is that why
you’ve been brushing me off?” he asked, his voice grainy and
hoarse.

“Mostly, yes.”

Another few seconds ticked by in silence. Silence
was good, she guessed. At least he hadn’t raged at her, run her
character into the ground. Yet. And he hadn’t asked her what she’d
lied about. Interesting.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. He wore the
same clothes he’d had on in court today, with the exception of his
suit coat. The sleeves of his white dress shirt were folded and
bunched at his elbows, he had no tie, and the two top buttons at
his neck were undone.

“Has anybody ever told you that you’re too hard on
yourself?”

Where did that come from?
“No.”

“They should’ve.”

She didn’t know what to say. He seemed to want to
talk about something completely different from what she had meant
for them to talk about.

“I’m not as honorable as I should be. Why should
anyone cut me any slack for that?”

“Is that what you want to be?”

“Honorable? Of course.”

“Define it.”

She turned then and looked up at him sharply.
“Define it?”

“Define honor. What it means to you.”

Huh. “What do you want me to say? It’s whatever
that’s noble and virtuous that I’m not.”

“Surely you have your own definition.”

She barked a humorless laugh. “There are no words to
describe what true honor is. I only know I don’t see it in my
mirror.”

He fell silent. A good span of time passed before he
spoke again. “What happened between June and today that made you
finally willing to talk to me?”

Though determined not to lie to him again, she still
needed to keep some things to herself for now. “I had to tie up
some loose ends before I sought you out.”

“I see,” he said, though clearly he didn’t. “I don’t
really recall that we’ve had enough conversation for you to have
had the opportunity to lie to me.”

“It wasn’t what I said. It’s what I did.”

“Okay. So—talk.”

And there it was. Her gut clenched and she felt as
if she had jumped out of a plane without a parachute. “I went to
the Nelson that night specifically to keep you engaged and
distracted, away from Fen Hilliard and the party. The goal was to
occupy you so Fen wouldn’t be able to find you. I—” She stopped and
took a deep breath. “I didn’t know who you were when I went there.
Bryce Kenard was just a name to me—a favor for people who respect
you enough to want to protect you.”

“But then you knew.”

“Yes. And I did it anyway.”

“What actually happened, on the bench—was that part
of your master plan with this Bryce Kenard whom you didn’t
know?”

“Ah, no. Most definitely not. I’d been told you
enjoy good conversation.”

“Would you have done that if you hadn’t been on
orders to distract me?”

She pondered that, because it hadn’t occurred to her
to ask herself that. Finally, she shrugged. “I’m sure something
would’ve happened between us somehow.”

“Okay. So what’s the problem?”

She turned her head and looked at him carefully,
cautiously. His tone was too casual, but he still didn’t look at
her. “What do you mean, ‘what’s the problem?’”

“I mean, a year and a half ago, you and I met at
Hale’s, I insulted you, you put a gun to my head and told me I was
six kinds of a bastard, then
I
kissed
you
. And you
ran away.”

She sucked in a long breath.

“Eight months after that,” he continued blithely,
“not only were you not mad at me, you lured me to a dark and quiet
place where I had my way with you. And you ran away. I’ve tried to
talk to you several times since March. And you’ve run away. Was
there more that happened any of those times that I didn’t notice or
don’t remember?”

He knew. He knew what he did to her, taking her
power away from her, overwhelming her, keeping the upper hand with
her. Taking her on and making her back down. He wanted her to
acknowledge it, give it words, make it real.

She declined to answer since she would let him take
only so much.

“I just wanted to talk to you, Giselle,” he said
after a moment, weary now. “I thought I made that perfectly
clear.”

“I was ashamed because I’d deceived you,” she said,
low.

He looked at her sharply. “You should’ve just told
me that up front. Then I would’ve told you that
I
didn’t do
anything to you that
I
wouldn’t have done anyway.” Her eyes
widened a bit and she swallowed; she could feel the heat rising in
her as he held her stare, one eyebrow cocked at her as if to dare
her to comment. Then, casually, “Does your boss know you’re Knox’s
cousin?”