The Proviso (35 page)

Eilis stared at him, not really understanding what
he was telling her. She had built an outsourcing human resources
company. Did he think he knew more than she?

“Let me put it another way,” Sebastian continued
when she didn’t speak. “I’ll bet a good half of your employees have
some sort of personality or mood disorder, and they’re either on
medication for it or they’ve developed a bunch of coping mechanisms
to deal with it.”

Horrified, she said, “
What?
”

“Attention-deficit disorder. You could throw
hyperactive, hypomanic, and possibly mildly bipolar somewhere in
there and call it good.”

“Oh, no, you would
not
find those kinds of
people here,” she declared. “My screening test filters them
out.”

His eyebrow rose. “Really.”

“Yes.”

“I want to take one of those tests.”

Only too glad to comply, she went to her office and
got one out of her own files and brought it back to him. He looked
it over, then began filling in the bubbles. He did it faster than
anyone she’d ever seen. Once he was finished, he gave it back to
her. “Score that, if you would, please.”

She called to her assistant Louise and asked her to
take it down to the scoring room, then wait for the results and
bring them back. Sebastian turned back to his laptop and tapped
into her server, as her CIO had granted him access to the wireless
network. He said nothing as he perused digitized employee files.
Every so often, he said, “Huh.”

Louise came back and gave the results to Eilis. When
she looked down, she gasped—actually gasped.

She looked at him and he smirked.

“You flunked this on purpose,” she stated
matter-of-factly and laid the test and results on the table.

“You’d really like to think that, wouldn’t you?”

“No, I know it.”

“Eilis, if I did it on purpose, it means your test
can be beaten and is therefore worthless. If I didn’t, it means you
wouldn’t have hired me. Now, which one would you prefer to
think?”

Eilis didn’t know what to think. She calmly sat and
looked her test over, looked at his answers and could verify that
they were consistent with the little bit of Sebastian Taight she
knew. She swallowed.

“I wouldn’t have hired you,” she said softly.

“Object lesson number two. You and your clients are
missing out on a lot of good, productive people. Even if you can’t
get your clients on board, you would be well served to give people
like me a second glance. Give them challenging work they enjoy and
lots
of it.” He stopped to peruse the employee database
again, then, suddenly, “How does your CIO hire programmers?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does he use the screening test?”

“No. He refuses to, but he does an excellent job, so
I let him do what he wants.”

“Do you know why he refuses to use it?”

Eilis looked back at Sebastian’s test then and
thought about the collective strangeness of the programmers who
worked for HRP. Then she understood what he was saying, now on an
even deeper level. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I know why.”

“Object lesson number three. Now,” he said, picking
up the employee list, “I need to have the hard copy contracts of
your officers and executives.”

* * * * *

Eilis Logan had no business in human resources, that
was clear to Sebastian. She didn’t know what kind of talent she had
working for her. She didn’t know how to delegate effectively. She
didn’t know how to match weaknesses and strengths to the
workload.

She couldn’t fire anyone. And because of that, she’d
been suckered by a thief.

On the other hand, she had built a very successful
business in spite of her deficiencies. She was doing something
right and Sebastian knew where the disconnect was: HRP grew. It
just did it very slowly and very inefficiently.

Well. Sebastian would fix that pronto, with some
very well-placed dynamite.

He sent the digitized officer and executive
contracts to his employment lawyer for dissection, along with a
detailed list of accomplishments for each, provided by Eilis, her
computer files, and by listening to the employees. What they
didn’t
say was more telling than what they did, and their
body language screamed paranoia.

HR Prerogatives was not a fun place to work and
Sebastian was all about having fun with one’s work.

* * * * *

33:
OPPORTUNITY LOSS

Sebastian and Knox were clearly startled when
Giselle came in the front door from work at one in the morning,
hauling the forty-pound bag of textbooks she’d bought that day.
They watched her as she dumped them on the table across from
Sebastian, then pulled her gun from her waistband and put it on top
of her books. Knox sat at the foot of the enormous conference
table, the files spread out in front of him covering more than half
the length of the table. Banker’s boxes full of papers sat in the
two chairs that flanked him, his laptop was open, and his Glock
served as a paperweight.

She went to the fridge. She was
not
happy and
while Knox would mind his own business, it wouldn’t be long before
Sebastian started with the third deg—

“Uh, Giz, it’s Tuesday. Shouldn’t you be going to
Kenard’s every night and fucking his brains out? I thought you’d be
practically moved out by now.”

“I’m re-thinking,” she said shortly. Knox raised an
eyebrow.

Sebastian sat back in his chair. “Oh, don’t get all
squeamish now that you’re out of bed and back to real life.”

“I’m not. He’s fixed.”

Silence. Then, “Well, Giz, there are worse things in
the world than not having kids. Like, oh, spending the rest of your
life alone with your vibrator.”

She snarled at him, then dropped into the chair
across from him with a package of pepperoni. “Coming from you,
that’s rich.”

“She’s got a point,” Knox muttered. “You want
sixteen kids, but you’d settle for eleven.”

Sebastian grunted.

Knox sat back then and folded his arms over his
chest. “So, uh, this weekend—?”

“Better than I ever dreamed possible. It’s like the
evening couldn’t have turned out any other way. Went to dinner and
talked for hours and hours and hours. Man’s brilliant.”

Sebastian snorted. “So he fucked your mind
first.”

“Oh, yes,” she sighed.

“What did he have to say to get you in bed?”

She looked at the wall behind Sebastian, a smile
twitching at the edges of her mouth. “‘I want to fuck you,
Giselle.’” Both of them stared at her, their mouths open, before
they burst out laughing. Sebastian laughed until tears rolled down
his cheeks. She went on. “I mean, what’s any girl in her right mind
gonna say to that? No? Hardly.”

“Giz, that’s not exactly a normal seduction
technique. And coming from a man
that
big with
that
face? Trust me. I know from seduction.”

“Oh, please. You don’t seduce. You overwhelm. How’s
Ms. Eilis Logan, by the way? Let me guess. Tall, blonde,
rubenesque. You met her a whole week ago and you haven’t railroaded
her into bed yet? Or did you decide not to bother getting her to
the Den of Iniquity?”

“Shut up.”

“I told him I’d find a way to throw him in jail if
he fucked her before her receivership was over,” Knox offered.

“Oh, nice job,” Giselle said and bumped fists with
Knox.

“We are not talking about me!” Sebastian roared.
“We’re talking about Giz.”

Knox laughed. “I’m stuck on ‘I want to fuck you,
Giselle.’” He wiped his mouth, contemplating Giselle, still looking
a bit stunned. “This would never have happened when we were at
college. Look at you,” he said, pointing to her arms. “Those are
just the bruises I can
see
. What’s that on the back of your
neck? He
bit
you?” Sebastian looked terribly smug then.
“Does he look any better?”

She popped a piece of pepperoni in her mouth. “No.
And I have fingernails.”

“Freak. I knew there was a reason I didn’t want to
marry you.”

“Yeah, the same reason
I
didn’t want to marry
you
.” She sighed. “I honestly don’t know how
any
woman could pass him up.”

Sebastian said, “You’re the only woman in the world
a man like that could’ve said ‘I want to fuck you’ to and expected
it to work. And you think
I’m
a freight train.” He paused.
“Remember Francisco’s speech to Rearden.”

She sat up suddenly, her eyes wide. “Oh! He quoted
that at me! Before that, I’d told him I was looking for Rearden and
it was like, he went from gentleman to predator in a microsecond.”
She smiled wistfully. “He made me choose between Rearden and
Galt.”

“Crafty bastard. What’d you say?”

“Kenard.”

Sebastian’s face softened a bit and Knox sucked in a
breath. “Giselle,” he said. “That’s— That was profound.”

“I didn’t even have to think about it.” She sobered
and slid down in her chair again, unhappy. “Then he saw that
painting.”

“Uh, Giz. I was there. He
loved
it.”

“Yes. Except for the pacifier part and he realized
kids were going to be an issue.”

Sebastian stared at her for a long time, making her
squirm. “What?” she snapped. Then his jaw dropped.

“You’re scared,” he said in wonderment.

“Pffftt. Not.” Not of Bryce, anyway. Exactly.

He began to laugh again. “He is precisely what you
thought you wanted and now you don’t know what the hell to do. He’s
a whole ’nother animal than what you thought he was going to be,
isn’t he? Somewhere deep down inside, you thought you could keep
the upper hand with a Rearden. But Kenard doesn’t let you. He
doesn’t need your protection. He can’t be terrified or intimidated.
He’ll win any game you play with him.”

Giselle sat quiet for a while, eating, thinking,
ignoring Sebastian’s pointing and mocking, though he soon subsided
when she didn’t respond.

“That’s not it,” Knox murmured, still staring at
her, studying her. “Or at least not all of it. Obviously she likes
the Tarzan thing as well as she thought she would or she wouldn’t
have spent the entire weekend being his rag doll and using him for
a scratching post.”

“Well, that’s true,” Sebastian murmured after a bit.
“All right, Giz, out with it. Remorse? Guilt? What?”

She swallowed, unwilling to confide in her family,
her best friends in the world, but needing guidance. “All I wanted
to do was tell him I lied to him and let him rant at me, then leave
so I could come home and cry. I expected to never see him
again.”

“But you ended up in bed with him instead.”

“At the gallery,” she said, nodding toward
Sebastian, “you told me he was on the fast track to bishop and it
didn’t take long to figure out that wasn’t true. But I guess I
thought he would know— I thought he’d want— I mean, he grew up the
same way we did and he knows the routine: date, temple marriage,
sex, kids. Okay, so we had sex first, but I assumed he’d eventually
want to get back on the straight and narrow.”

“And he doesn’t,” Sebastian said flatly.

She shook her head. “No kids, no church, no
repentance, no temple. Take it or leave it.”

“Don’t confuse remorse with betrayal, Giselle,” Knox
said. “You’re not sorry you fucked him before he married you.
You’re sorry you got two-thirds of your dreams blown away.”

“For nothing,” Sebastian said.

“No,” Knox snapped. “Not nothing. Bryce wouldn’t
fuck her and dump her. I’ll bet
she
walked away from
him
.”

“That’s not fair!” she protested. “I just need some
time to sort all this out.”

“Do you
want
to be with him?”

She looked at Knox. “Yes, but he— He’s so
wounded.”

Sebastian started. “I thought you liked that.”

“Not on the outside. The inside. What if all he
wants is someone to heal him so he can move on? Nobody can heal
anybody else. I don’t know what I’d do if he left me now that I’ve
given him everything I have.”

Neither had anything to say to that. Sebastian
wouldn’t; he’d never been in love until this woman whose
receivership Knox had given him. He didn’t have a clue.

Finally, Knox spoke. “Bryce isn’t like that,
Giselle. When he made snap decisions, they were excellent ones. It
was when he started listening to what other people wanted him to do
and second-guessing himself that he got into trouble. Somewhere
along the line, he’s learned to trust his own judgment. Okay, so
he’s a freak in bed, but he’s an honorable man. Honorable men don’t
expect their women to heal them; they either deal with it or their
women heal them with their presence and their love. Don’t assume
that’s what he wants from you and don’t try to do it for him. All
you have to do is be there and love him. He’s
never
had
that.”

“Just because he’s never had it doesn’t mean I’m
obliged to give it to him.”

“True, but do you want to ditch him just because you
think
he
might
suck you dry and leave you? Don’t you
want to find out for sure? Ride the ride and see where it goes. For
you, not for him.”

Coming from Knox, that was significant and she
looked at him. “How do you deal with that, people sucking you dry
and leaving you?”

He shrugged and looked away. “I teach. Comes with
the territory.” He cleared his throat and looked down at the table.
Suddenly she realized she had never known how deeply that affected
him. No wonder he had always clung to her when everything else in
his life went south. No matter they had never been lovers and
weren’t in love and wouldn’t have been able to live together, she
was his only constant.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d talked to Bryce in
March? In fact, why didn’t you tell me about him and what I needed
to know when I came home from the Nelson that night? You saw what a
wreck I was.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “You could’ve made it so
easy for me.”