The Proviso (50 page)

“No, you don’t underst—”

“What I understand,” he murmured, narrowing his
eyes, “is that you have a body Rubens would have sold his soul to
paint and you don’t need to fix it.”

She swallowed the mouthful of food. “Rubens painted
fat women,” she whispered, obviously horrified.

“Bullshit. He painted goddesses. Now eat like one
and quit trying to be something you’re not.”

Eyeing him warily, she took one bite, then another.
With a little further urging on his part, she finally allowed
herself to eat her fill. She couldn’t eat the whole thing, but he
didn’t expect that. As far as Sebastian knew, only he and the other
men in his tribe could put away a whole sandwich
and
the
fries. Morgan and Kenard could eat two. Certainly his female
cousins couldn’t do it and even the Protein Princess could only eat
a whole sandwich because she abstained from the bread and
fries.

As they cleaned up their mess and left the
restaurant into the relative heat of an early October day in
Missouri, Sebastian thought he’d push his luck, so he found Eilis’s
hand and laced his fingers through hers. He smiled and watched her
out of the corner of his eye as she started, looking at him in
shock. He didn’t say anything and she didn’t pull away.

“Mr. Taight! Mr. Taight!”

Sebastian and Eilis stopped then and turned to see a
woman and two men jogging toward him and he sighed. There went his
day, right down the tubes.

“Mr. Taight, I have some questions for you if you
wouldn’t mind.”

“Yes, I do mind.” He turned his back on her and
continued to walk, Eilis in hand.

“Mr. Taight, wait!” The woman ran around him and
spoke into a recorder. “Is it true that Kevin Oakley’s bid for the
Senate seat was initiated and is being funded by you and Bryce
Kenard?” She stuck the recorder in his face.

“No comment.”

“Mr. Taight, how do you feel about your growing
reputation as the second incarnation of Boss Tom Pendergast?”

The questions all began to run together and
Sebastian only wanted to get away from this pack of rabid
hyenas.

“Mr. Taight, do you know why Senator Oth is backing
off his anti-Taight rhetoric?”

“Mr. Taight, is your defense counsel your cousin,
Chouteau County prosecutor Knox Hilliard?”

“I know who all my cousins are, thanks,” he snarled
and refused to say anything else. They’d spoiled the mood and now
Eilis wasn’t amused anymore. The reporter kept after him even as he
handed Eilis into his wreck of a pickup and then went around to his
side to climb in and start it. It was at that point that cameras
began to flash and Sebastian let out the clutch and nearly hit some
of the reporters in front of him—and he would’ve been okay with
that had it happened.

He was furious and he wasn’t even fit company for
himself.

“I’m sorry, Eilis,” he said before they got back on
the highway and wouldn’t be able to hear each other at all given
the open windows and the loud engine.

“Is it like that all the time for you?”

“If any reporters are around, yes. I should’ve known
better than to say my name out loud where someone could call one to
the spot.”

“Boss Tom?” She snickered, but tried to hide it when
he slid her a look.

While he was happy she was still amused . . . “Yeah,
I’m not thrilled about the comparison. It was funny the first
sixty-two times. Now, not so much.”

Then they were on the highway, and Sebastian only
knew one way to salvage everything. He passed Eilis’s exit, the
engine’s roar making it possible for him to ignore her yell that
he’d gone too far. He took the next exit and pulled into the
drive-through of a frozen custard stand behind three cars.

“Okay, Eilis, what’s it gonna be? Chocolate, cherry,
strawberry, banana, or what? ’Cause I’m going to hold you hostage
until you eat whatever I choose for you if you don’t make a
decision.”

She stared at him like he was nuts. “Okay, look. You
made me eat half a brisket sandwich, but I am not eating any ice
cream.”

“You are too.”

“No, I am not!” she repeated heatedly.

At that point, he leaned toward her until his nose
touched hers, looked in her eyes and said, very quietly, very
deliberately, “If you don’t eat at least half a small concrete,
I’ll take you home and strip you naked. I’ll smear ice cream into
every nook and cranny in your body and lick it all up. Then I’ll
put you in a shower and soap you down myself—and possibly lick that
off, too, if it smells as good as you do.”

Her eyes widened and she pulled away from him.

“Was that a ‘Yes, Sebastian, I’ll have some ice
cream’ or a ‘No, Sebastian, please lick ice cream out of my nooks
and crannies’?”

“I’ll have some ice cream,” she whispered.

He smiled and sat up. “Very good. Pick a
flavor.”

“You’re a bully, you know that?” Eilis said finally
once they’d settled at a wrought iron table on her back patio,
eating ice cream and enjoying the garden she’d built that Sebastian
loved.

“That’s what the Journal tells me,” he replied
smoothly, very, very pleased with himself for having a nice date
and not making a fool of himself, for amusing his date instead of
pissing her off or scaring her half to death.

Except for that ice-cream-licking thing.

“Did you have any big rebellion like most kids
do?”

He smiled. “Oh, sure. A couple of them, actually,
but they weren’t like normal rebellions so I wouldn’t actually
classify them as that.”

She waited a beat or two. “Well?”

“Oh, you wanted me to tell you what they were.”

She rolled her eyes and he laughed.

“The first one was the oddsmaking, but my mom never
found out about that. The second was art. I wanted to study art and
she thought that was an extremely unproductive thing to do. She
doesn’t like that I speculate in art, either, even though I make
money at it. She doesn’t understand that I need the art as much as
I need the game of money.”

“How did you get to Paris in the first place? Did
you run away?”

He drew in a deep breath and wondered how much he
wanted to tell her. “I was a missionary for my church and that’s
where they sent me.”

Eilis looked up at him sharply. “You’re Mormon?”

“No,” he said, hoping she’d take the hint and not
push, but she didn’t.

“Okay. Were you Mormon
then
?”

He grunted. “Yes.”

“And? What happened?”

“Not quite sure,” he finally said. “Several things
went wrong and then I just got tired of the politics of the
mission. So I left after almost a year.”

“Left? Like left, how?”

“I mean, like I left the apartment I shared with my
companion one day without a word. That was my third rebellion. I
called my mom, told her I was done with it and why, that I was
going to roam Europe and to wire the rest of my money into my
European accounts.”

“And she actually sent you the money?”

“Of course she did. It was my money and my mother is
nothing if not scrupulously honest. She was seriously pissed that
I’d left, but she wasn’t going to withhold my own money from me.
Well, I went and saw Europe and learned enough to know that not
only did I find the whole process hypocritical, I wasn’t even sure
what I really believed.”

“Then what?”

“I got done with the rest of Europe, though I spent
a lot of time in Seville because I finally got seduced.” He laughed
again. “Twenty years old. I guess better late than never. So
anyway, I went back to Paris and pretty much ate, slept, and lived
in the Louvre and at school.”

“Didn’t you stand out there, an American in Paris?”
she asked, a quirk to her mouth.

He laughed. “You’d think so. The black Irish look
doesn’t do well in Paris unless you can speak French like a
Parisian, but I passed for a native because of my accent.”

“Did you do those little sidewalk chalk
drawings?”

“Oh, yes. I wanted to see if I could actually earn
money as an artist. Only I didn’t do the normal reproductions like
they did. I picked odd things to rip off and did a little of my own
work.”

“Did you make money?”

“Not enough to support myself in the style to which
I wanted to become accustomed—” Eilis rolled her eyes and he
chuckled. “—but enough to buy basic necessities. Didn’t need it
because I had a bank account and money sitting in it collecting
interest, but it was validating and I made an attempt to live on
it. That wasn’t hard because I spent so much time out of my
apartment I didn’t need anything to put in it except art supplies,
good bread, good cheese, good wine, and absinthe. I made more money
than the students who did the reproductions. I’d be damned if I was
going to spend my entire time there drawing the
Mona Lisa
three times a day for ignorant tourists.”

“What did you draw then?”

“Well,” Sebastian said, looking out at the garden
Eilis had built, beginning to remember all he had done twenty years
before. It’d been a long time since he’d talked about Paris and
now, in talking about it, he missed it. “Have you ever seen
Mary
Poppins
?”

“Of course.”

“I did the same chalk drawings that Bert did when
they went riding the carousel horses through the animation—only
much, much bigger and much, much better.”

He was gratified when she let out a little squeal of
laughter and put her feet up on the edge of the wrought iron table,
completely forgetting that she hadn’t wanted to eat the concrete
and slurping happily along.

“Why didn’t you stay in Paris?”

“I was homesick.”

She looked at him and tilted her head as if she
found that fascinating. “Really?”

“Really. I didn’t pay much attention to European
politics, so it didn’t bother me until they began to mess with my
investments. I took my ball and went home.”

She looked at him, an amused question all over her
face, so he answered it. “My basic philosophy is Objectivist and
maybe, if I’m having a particularly practical day,
Libertarian.”

Sebastian could tell she still didn’t really
understand because those labels weren’t common conversation fodder.
“I know Libertarian,” she said. “I didn’t know there was anything
beyond that.”

“Ayn Rand?”

“Oh,
The Fountainhead
. Yes, I understand now.
Excellence, reason, enlightened self-interest, egoism.”

“Right. The concept is best explained in
Anthem
and the nitty gritty of it’s more understandable in
Atlas Shrugged
, but yes. It’s one of the reasons I’m
starting to get pissed off about the Pendergast references.”

“The comparison’s unavoidable, Sebastian. No, you’re
not a politician and no, you don’t have the entire police force as
your thug patrol. But setting up a senatorial candidate . . .
?”

Sebastian snorted. “If Kevin hadn’t wanted to run,
he’d have said no. He was recommended to me as someone who wanted
to get on with the next phase of his career. He just happens to
have politics that I can live with, if not thoroughly embrace. He’s
not a puppet and he figured out the entire game plan the minute he
was approached about running. My goal and his goal just happened to
be mutually beneficial.”

“And your goal is to make Congress think twice about
demanding your presence unless Fen is actually sitting in
Congress.”

“Ooh, you’re kinda savvy that way, Eilis.”

She laughed delightedly and Sebastian thought he
could watch her laugh forever. Her eyes sparkled like sapphires and
emeralds, and her tear-track scar glimmered spectacularly in the
sunlight. “When Knox assigned you to me as my trustee, I spent all
night on the computer, googling and sifting for information; I had
to build a flow chart to figure out what was fact and what was
fiction. There were a lot of holes in the story I pieced together
from that, but now you’ve filled them all in.”

Sebastian shook his head, then took another bite of
his concrete—mint chocolate chip. “Not all of them, no.”

“I’m guessing murder’s a part of it.” He started and
looked at her. She grimaced. “Do you know if Fen— I mean, Knox’s
bride? Did Fen really—?”

“Yes,” he sighed, and explained. Then, “Fen really
kicked my ass with his Senate bid. I didn’t know what to do.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Eilis,” he drawled, “I
live in my own little world.” She snickered. “Practical politics
don’t register. Ideals? Yes. Principles and concepts? Yes. The
everyday nitty gritty bullshit? No. Which is why I came home from
Europe.”

“Okay. I can see that. So you came home from Europe
and went to Harvard. How’d you get into the MBA program with an art
degree?”

“They thought it was very, ah, chic to admit a
twenty-six-year-old self-made millionaire with an art degree from a
European school.” He took another bite. “So, all right, Eilis. I’ve
talked more about myself today than I have in, well,
ever
.
Your turn.”

Her smile faltered infinitesimally, and her laugh
was a bit stilted. “Not a lot of highlights. You know, your
ordinary poor kid from the ghetto stuff.”

Secrets. Interesting.
He wondered how far in
he could get until she shut him out.

“What about your folks? I told you about mine.”

She hesitated. “You didn’t say much about your
father. I’m guessing he wasn’t in the picture much?”

Very good, Eilis. Distract and redirect. I’ll go
with it. For now.
“My father died about ten years ago, but he
was always around. Just very distracted.” Eilis chuckled. “ADD. He
had the potential to be a great artist, but he couldn’t afford more
than number two pencils and typing paper. And even if he had, he
would’ve had no idea how to capitalize on his talent and further,
I’m not sure he would’ve if he could’ve. It would’ve taken away the
magic of the creative process.”