The Proviso (44 page)

Bryce looked up at her and saw tears running down
her cheeks. He brushed them away gently with the pads of his
thumbs. She gave him a watery but happy smile and curled up into
his body.

He could get used to this. Nothing sexual about it;
just warm, loving, good-smelling woman sitting in his lap, lying
against his chest. In love. With him.

After a while, Giselle said, “I need to show you the
Den of Iniquity.”

Knox burst out laughing, but Sebastian lost all
softness and growled, “Oh, no you don’t.”

Bryce stared between them all, intrigued. “Den of
Iniquity?” he asked slowly.

“I just want to
show
him,” Giselle
protested.

“No,” Sebastian snapped. “Not happening. He takes
one look at that and your DNA will end up all over my bed.”

“Oh, please. Six forensics labs couldn’t sort out
how much DNA is in that bed. They only wouldn’t find
yours
.”

Knox was laughing so hard he began to cough.

“So help me, Goldilocks, if I find out you’ve been
fucking in my bed—”

“Knox has.”

Knox choked. “Giselle!”

Sebastian’s jaw ground as he slowly turned his gaze
on Knox. “Is that true?”

“I don’t remember,” Knox said blithely,
unsuccessfully trying to keep a straight face, and Bryce
laughed.

“Sebastian’s going to Italy next week,” Giselle
whispered in Bryce’s ear while Sebastian glared between them. “I’ll
show you then.”

“And if you think I’m not going to change the door
codes when I go to Italy next week, you’ve got another think
coming.”

“He won’t change them,” she whispered. “He’ll
forget.”

Sebastian began to rant at Knox, who smirked and let
him do so, flinging back barbs that hit their targets a little too
often. Under all that, Giselle murmured, “I don’t have much and
it’s in the hallway. Can you help me—?”

He would do anything for her; everything for her.
And once he got her boxes and bags loaded in the SUV, he felt
suddenly light, as if a great weight had been lifted off his
shoulders that he hadn’t ever known he carried.

* * * * *

41:
FIRST, DUST

Sebastian sat at the massive table in Eilis’s huge
conference room directly across from Eilis’s private office. The
officers and tier two executives, the contract employees, were
gathered around the table as Eilis gave a brief summation of
Sebastian Taight’s presence, though everyone already knew. They
were nervous but confident that even if they were on the block,
they had their golden parachutes.

He had to admit that after all his silent bitching,
her Jackie O. persona was a particularly effective weapon and he
wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it.

She spoke at the same volume all the time—loudly
enough that people toward the front heard well and softly enough
that it forced people in the back to be very quiet and pay
attention. She had her inflections down to a science. Not monotone
enough to bore; not dramatic enough to be a caricature.

Her costume, as badly fitting and unattractive as it
was, and in such a bad color as usual, allowed her to blend in with
the background. Only her luscious fuck-me voice (was he the only
one who noticed this?) and her very well-prepared presentations
carried her business deals. She always anticipated every question
so that she didn’t have to answer any. She left
nothing
to
chance. She made sure no one could think of any questions or raise
any objections she hadn’t already thought of and prepared for. She
had an answer, an option, an alternative, or a work around solution
to every conceivable nasty situation.

She was about six steps ahead of the game,
especially if it was her game.

Of
course
she didn’t understand ADD. She was
an analyst, a preparer. She did
not
improvise. She didn’t
fly by the seat of her pants and she wouldn’t put herself in any
situation where it might be required of her. She looked at things
from every angle, she planned everything down to the most minute of
details of each of those angles, and internalized her plan so
deeply that it became part of her soul.

Friday, he’d shared with her Knox’s reasoning for
her ability to rescue her employees’ pensions, and that her
marriage to David was necessary: It was fate, inspiration, karma,
divine intervention, whatever she wanted to call it. Serendipity
had saved her company; what would surely have been an otherwise
very foolhardy decision made in the face of a national trauma had
turned out to be the deliverance of two hundred and fifty people’s
savings.

Eilis could never have saved all those 401(k)
accounts if she hadn’t lived with Webster, found his stray
doodlings, watched him, caught his little slips, stayed with him
long enough to find and fix what he had done to her employees.

But she didn’t buy his explanation; it didn’t fit
into her paradigm. On the other hand, no one else believed him,
either. He could talk until he was blue in the face about the good
things, things he could work with, but people only saw the bad. He
supposed that was a human condition and Eilis was no more or less
human than any other business owner who was in trouble they
couldn’t climb out of alone.

Sebastian started when his Blackberry began to
vibrate:
SEC APPV 6% BUY DONE

“Thank you, Jack,” he muttered under his breath,
then almost smiled when the numbers flashed at him. Fen was going
to shit a gold-plated brick when he got the SEC’s paperwork
granting one Bryce D. Kenard approval to purchase six percent of
OKH stock.

Sebastian didn’t know who had hated whom first, but
Sebastian’s instincts about Fen had borne fruit over the years. He
would’ve moved in on OKH Enterprises long ago just to crush Fen if
he’d known how Knox had dreaded taking it over all these years, and
Sebastian had to admire Knox for knowing his limitations. He was no
kind of manager, that was for sure. He didn’t manage his
prosecutors; his executive AP did that. He didn’t manage the inn he
half owned; his business partner did that.

Given that the SEC had spanked Sebastian and sent
him to his room, he’d had to recruit another partner in crime to
keep the OKH stock plunging. Fortunately, Kenard had been all too
willing to play a little tag-team chess. Sebastian couldn’t be
happier that the man had fallen in with their war and would be
thoroughly assimilated into the tribe by the time he became a
Dunham on Friday.

“Sebastian will now present the first step in our
reorganization.”

Eilis thought he wasn’t paying attention, which was
true, but he’d sat in too many of these types of meetings not to
know his own drill. He stood and looked over the table filled with
people who looked arrogant and smug in their own indispensability.
They thought they knew his reputation, but they also believed that
whether they stayed or went, they’d be just fine.

Heh.

He stood silent, looking at each individual,
examining them, assessing them one by one until they’d lost that
smug edge and began to squirm. He did this every single time, with
every single company he salvaged. It shifted the power a little
more his way at a time he needed every ounce of his reputation for
ruthlessness. He cocked his eyebrow, which he knew made him look
positively satanic.

It was time to clean house and Eilis was present and
accounted for. He had to give her a lot of credit for that,
especially since she did care about her people.

Sebastian looked at one man in particular. “Jason
Hearst.” That man shifted in his seat nervously, suspecting what
was about to hit him yet confident in his severance package.

“You’re vice president in charge of product
development, right?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me something. When you’re in charge of
developing products, how do you go about actually developing those
products?”

Sebastian waited patiently until Jason’s miserable
speech filled with corporate doublespeak bullshit jargon was over,
then he said, “Okay. What products have you developed in the last
five years?”

“The screening tests.”

“Wrong. That pre-dates you. Try again.”

He flushed a bit, his confidence taken down a notch.
“The check printing module of the HRP Full Management System
software.”

“And how much direction did that, ah, project
require from you?”

His face flooded completely then. Sebastian could
feel Eilis getting squeamish and he didn’t care. She’d always
needed someone who could clean her house for her because, for
whatever reason, she hadn’t been able to.

I like to do things in their proper order.

Yes, that explained everything. Nothing else could
get done in this company unless and until this happened, and was
exactly the reason she hadn’t done anything else. Well. She’d
chosen the route guaranteed to cause the least amount of damage,
given her inability to fire anyone—which was exactly what he would
have expected her to do.

“Under the terms of your contract, you were to
produce five new products per year for three years to qualify for
your golden parachute clause. You didn’t do that; hence, you’ve
broken this contract.” For effect, Sebastian held up the contract
and tore it in half slowly, deliberately. “No golden parachute for
you. As we speak, Security has packed your belongings and is
waiting at the front door to escort you out. Don’t bother trying to
get unemployment. I’ll fight you for it and win. Hand over your
security badge and get out.”

Truth be told, Sebastian loved this part. Not that
he liked firing people, per se. What he liked was streamlining
operations, throwing out the clutter, getting rid of the moochers.
He did not like clutter, but he despised moochers.

Jason Hearst exited without a speck of dignity to
his name. Heaven forbid someone should expect that they do what
they said they could.

“Who wants to be next?” he asked blithely, looking
around at the collection of now terrified upper management. Of
course, today he was enjoying himself all that much more because
these people had mooched off
Eilis
for years. That was as
much her fault as theirs, but he couldn’t very well fire
her
for not firing people.

“In the interest of saving my time because I have a
lot to do today, I’m just going to tell you who gets to stay.”

Michael Pritchard, the CIO, that funny MIT kid who
tripped over his shoelaces and refused to use screening tests and
knew exactly what he was looking for in programmers. He knew
computers and software and somehow managed to herd the cats that
programmers were.

Karen Cheng. Naturally.

Sheila Navarre, the accounts manager, who was
responsible for getting money in the door and did it very well. She
had a deft hand with clients. She knew how to massage pissed-off
people and coax money out of lagging payers.

Conrad Fessy, the head of the accounting department,
who also had an eye for good staff and desperately wanted some
input on the accounting portion of HRP’s proprietary software
package. He had ideas coming out his ears and he used the screening
test religiously—it was perfect for him.

“Okay, you four—” He pointed to them and they
started. “You move on back to the back of the table there. Eilis,
next group, please.” He looked at her then and the only emotion he
could determine was a slight hesitance to bring the next flock of
lambs to the slaughter.

The bloodbath continued all day. He was going to
dress her down but good when he was done. This was all part of
being a CEO and she needed to man up. Not only did she not know
people, she had a weak heart for firing and it was part and parcel
of human resources.

Contract after contract had been torn up and he was
down to the next level of management. Manager after manager was
escorted to the door. No severance. No unemployment. He’d made sure
his lawyer was downstairs checking people off as they left and was
ready to fight any and all claims. Some he’d lose, but that was
okay.

He’d saved millions of dollars today.

It was 6:30 p.m. before Sebastian had finished
cleaning out the top-heavy corporation. He still had more to go,
but those were legally sensitive. They were people who got things
done and were not in any way candidates for firing. However, they
were unpleasant people to work for and/or with. Sebastian didn’t
like morale killers any better than he liked superfluous
people.

By this time, the last few dozen who were
questionable or definitely on the block had been sent home to await
tomorrow. The remaining employees had been asked to go to the small
theater on the second floor that was used for big presentations. He
escorted Eilis down there to address them all. He’d just fired two
thirds of her employees today and by tomorrow night, he’d have
fired three quarters. He didn’t give a fat rat’s ass what Eilis
thought about it, either.

“Tomorrow,” Sebastian boomed to Eilis’s now skeleton
crew because he hated microphones; way too officious, “we’re going
to further winnow this operation until it’s as clean as can be.
However, I need your honest opinions. You’re still here because
you’ve proven your worth and I trust what you have to say. As of
tonight, none of you have job titles or descriptions, except for
Sheila, Michael, Karen, and Conrad—for now. Sheila, you’ll need to
continue to serve the customers and keep the hubbub outside these
walls to a minimum. Go put your phones on voice mail because you’ve
got meetings all this week. Have a good evening.”

It was 7:30 p.m. before the building was empty
except for security.

“So,” Sebastian said once he and Eilis were back in
her office suite and he was putting his things in his backpack,
“are you going to yell at me now or wait until you get home and
change, then call me to kick my ass?”