The Proviso (53 page)

It didn’t take nearly as long as Sebastian had
predicted and it would’ve taken even less time had they not gotten
into a manure flinging contest. Sebastian actually played to win,
but Eilis bided her time and finally smacked him square in the face
with an entire shovel full. “Okay, okay, uncle,” Sebastian groaned,
trying to pick pieces of hay from his tongue. “You don’t play
fair.”

“Of course it was fair. You should’ve known better
than to take me on on my own turf.”

The last of it was swept out of the bed and they
climbed back into the cab to go up to the house.

“Come in this way,” Eilis said, leading him across
the back patio and around the house where there was a large atrium
with an outside door. It was a bathroom.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Floor to ceiling, wall
to wall glass in a bathroom?”

“Who’s going to see? Besides, the hot water makes it
steam up fast. Go ahead. I’ll wait since,” she smirked, “I didn’t
get a face full.”

Sebastian curled his lip at her and she laughed as
she went back to the truck to get the change of clothes he’d
brought and had asked her to retrieve.

While she was in his truck, she snooped.
Shamelessly. On his key chain was a Ferrari key, which wouldn’t
have surprised her before she saw him driving his ancient pickup.
Nothing in the ashtray. Nothing under the seats. It was probably
the cleanest rattletrap truck she’d ever seen, in fact. It was in
the glove compartment she hit pay dirt. There was a hardback
sketchbook and a case with pencils in it. It seemed there were very
few blank pages left. She opened it and her soul filled with
wonder.

Page after page of his visual impressions of people,
places, and things. There were many pages dedicated to Paris: women
in various stages of undress, the Moulin Rouge, the Seine, Notre
Dame, a small café with a very old man and a concerned child.

A bedsit with a full-size bed, a small table with a
paper-wrapped loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, a small wheel of
cheese on a board with a small knife. Apples, lemons, pears,
grapes. A stack of clothes folded neatly on a chair pushed up
against a wall. Canvases scattered around, an easel.

It was a travelogue of Europe and she knew these
drawings were twenty years old, done through the eyes of a
twenty-year-old boy with an extraordinary talent. If he had been
that good then, she wondered what he’d have turned into if he’d
pursued it professionally.

She flipped through the book and saw sketches of
Kansas City: Bryant’s, May’s Grocery, a ghetto neighborhood
honestly but lovingly drawn. There was a portrait of an older woman
she assumed to be his mother, and a portrait of a devilishly
handsome man with a peaceful aura and a blinding smile, yet he was
haggard and worn, old before his time. His father.

There was a candid drawing of a young Knox Hilliard
passionately kissing an even younger girl. Eilis’s breath caught in
her throat and she thought she’d cry, so she turned the page
quickly.

There was another picture of a twenty-ish Knox
Hilliard in a courtroom giving a speech to the jury. This, too, was
a study of a face: young, confident, and beguiling. Directly across
from that page was the same picture, only the face was different:
hard, cynical, and cold. Eilis felt tears well in her eyes again at
the difference in the two men.

Still only halfway through the thick book, she kept
going, seeing the world through Sebastian Taight’s eyes. More
random people in random circumstances, some funny, some touching,
some heartbreaking. She skipped over the pages of that terrifying
September day in 2001.

There was another drawing of the girl Knox Hilliard
had been kissing, only now, an adult and much more serious. Her
hair was in a ponytail tied with a ribbon in a bow. She stood
holding a gun in each hand on two faceless men. That drawing was a
study of her face—ferocious, lethal, the face of a warrior.
Giselle, the cousin who had threatened Fen with his life. Eilis
shuddered and turned another page.

There were only a few pages left and she turned one
only to gasp. It was her, Eilis, the way Sebastian saw her. And
the way Sebastian saw her was . . . beautiful. It was her as she
had been the day they’d gone to Bryant’s and he’d stood in line
entertaining not only her but the entire line of people. He’d
caught her in a laugh, the early afternoon sun bright, white, her
hair swirling around her face on a breeze.

Somehow, he’d captured a sparkle in her eyes and
he’d managed to make her scar and her nose look attractive. He’d
made her eyes actually look two different colors—in pencil.

The next page was her again, as she looked in
costume at work, which was definitely not lovingly drawn. He must
despise the way she dressed for work. She almost let a tear loose
then, but she turned the page quickly—but then she couldn’t
breathe, couldn’t move. She felt desire well up within her.

This was what he imagined Eilis must look like
naked, which, she had to admit, was dead on. He’d drawn her nude,
lying on her side in one of her flower beds, asleep. If she hadn’t
known it was her, she’d have thought he’d drawn a fertility
goddess. But she knew that though the proportions were right, right
down to the pooch in her belly, that wasn’t her.

That woman had—something—that Eilis didn’t see in
her reflection. She didn’t know what bothered her more, that he’d
never seen her nude but had been able to draw her accurately or
that he’d bestowed upon her a mysterious something that made this
woman beautiful, but that she didn’t have.

“Eilis! Where the hell did you go?” The bellow
startled her and she put the book back in the glove compartment.
She picked up his backpack full of clothes, then scurried toward
the house.

* * * * *

Sebastian smiled to himself when she came around the
house in a huff. He figured he’d given her enough time to thumb
through his sketchbook pretty thoroughly. He wanted her to know how
he saw her. Not that she’d believe him, he thought wryly.

“Geez, Eilis,” he groused as he took the backpack
and she led the way into the breezeway where it was warm, “took you
long enough. Standing there freezing my ass off, yelling at you.”
She wouldn’t look at him. He didn’t know if that was because he
only had a towel on or because now she knew how he saw her.

“My turn,” she murmured and brushed by him through
the inside doorway to the bathroom, slamming and locking it behind
her.

He dressed as quickly as he could. The last thing in
the world he needed right now was for her to see his nude
backside.

* * * * *

47:
GRIS GRIS

Eilis kneaded sweet bread dough while directing
Sebastian as to which paintings he should take downstairs to her
vault to make room for decorations. As he’d suspected, she had not
one, but two Georgia O’Keeffes and he didn’t care what Georgia
said, those weren’t just irises.

Once down in her basement, he saw that she had a
pretty thorough understanding of how much money hung on her walls.
The vault was an actual bank vault that held millions of dollars in
art. He wasn’t sure why she just hadn’t sold a few of these to get
her company out of hot water, but then he was startled to see what
it was she had. He understood.

Valuable, yes, but probably not what she’d paid for
them and certainly not enough to make much difference in HRP’s
situation. She was waiting for a market upturn on specific artists
before she sold them so she would at least not lose money. Some of
these would never regain value.

“Eilis!” he called and it was a minute before she
came to the top of the stairs. “Can you stop and come down here a
minute?”

“Hold on. I have to set the bread to rise.” It
wasn’t too long before she entered the vault. “What?”

“I know you didn’t ask for my advice,” he began,
“and I’m probably going to offend you, so fair warning, but—” He
flipped through the canvases, culling as he went. “These are worth
as much as they’re ever going to be worth. I suggest you sell them
as soon as possible. We could slide these in the lot going to
Christie’s in February.”

He glanced up at her and her mouth was tight, her
eyes hard.

“Uh oh. I’m in trouble.”

“No,” she murmured. “Those were David’s picks. I
don’t like them and I didn’t think they’d appreciate at all, but he
was insistent.”

“All right,” Sebastian said, releasing his breath in
a whoosh. It helped to know she hadn’t been the one who’d selected
those. He continued to pull out canvases and put them in a separate
stack. “These are questionable. I wouldn’t buy them, but you could
get your money back if you wanted to. I doubt they’ll go up in
value.”

“I agree.”

He looked at her again. “Why haven’t you done this
yourself?”

She swallowed and looked away. “I haven’t been down
here since David lived here.”

“Why?”

A slight hesitation, then, softly, “He raped me
here.”

Sebastian’s breath caught. “Oh. I— I’m sorry. I
won’t keep you.”

“No, it’s okay if you’re here. That’s why I asked
you to help me. I couldn’t come down here myself. I suspected you
might start sorting through things, but I didn’t expect it of you.
I only needed you to bring the Christmas decorations up the
stairs.”

“Do you want to stay?” he asked gently, not daring
to touch her.

Eilis looked around then and didn’t answer. She
stepped outside the vault and looked at the rest of this part of
the basement that was used for storage of things that weren’t
valuable. She motioned him to join her outside the vault and took
his hand to lead him across the room to an outside corner. She put
her finger on a dark spot that was about six inches in diameter and
wrapped around the bead of concrete that was the corner, covering
both walls. Sebastian knew that was blood before she spoke.

“That’s where he broke my nose and gave me this
scar,” she said tonelessly. Sebastian could feel horror rise up in
him at what she’d suffered personally.

No wonder she’d not been able to salvage her company
or take the time to get to know her employees. She’d been too busy
trying to survive, trying to save their pensions, trying Webster.
Trying to salvage her own soul.

Suddenly, he realized that he hadn’t taken the time
to get to know her the way he’d gotten to know her employees. If
he’d known any of this, he’d not have reprimanded her so sharply
and he felt sick to his stomach about that fact.

“Eilis, you don’t have to tell me this,” Sebastian
murmured.

“No, it’s okay,” she insisted. “You know every
detail of my company, what he did to it. And you fixed it.”

Maybe you can fix me, too.
The unspoken wish
hung heavy in the air, and he was only too glad to see what he
could do about that.

He laid his hand on her cheek and drew her face
around so she was looking at him. Then he laid his other hand along
her other cheek.

“Eilis,” he whispered, intent on her scar and her
nose, both of which he thought were lovely and made her even more
beautiful than she would have been without them. “David. Is.
Dead.”

Her eyes popped open. “What? When? How do you know?
I wasn’t notified.”

“Monday. Knox must not have gotten around to telling
you yet. Did you know David had a heart condition?”

“Yes. He took a lot of medication for it.”

“Apparently, he just keeled over at mess. Heart
attack. Knox thinks it’s very . . .
possible
. . . that the
infirmary screwed up his meds, but they won’t admit it.”

She looked at him for a long time, and he waited for
whatever she was going to say. She took a long breath. “Thank you,”
she whispered, “for . . .
telling
. . . me.”

“You’re welcome,” he said with a warm smile and
gathered her into his body when she began to cry. He let her
continue until she hiccuped, then finally, he pulled her down to
the floor and leaned back against the wall. He sat her in his lap
and let her cry some more until nothing was left and she simply sat
between his legs and pressed her cheek to his chest.

It was a while. Sebastian ran his fingers through
her pretty pale butter-blonde hair and caressed the nape of her
neck. He rubbed her back and arm.

“Oh, shit!” she said and popped out of his lap to
sprint upstairs.

Sebastian sat confused until he heard the slap of
bread dough on the counter, and then he chuckled. He spent the next
hour sorting her vaulted art and assumed that he’d be the one to
broker these for her if she wanted. He found paper and pen, then
began to catalog them according to his breakdowns and what he
thought they might fetch at auction.

“Eilis, are you done up there?”

“Just a minute.”

When she came back downstairs, she had two more
canvases. She showed them to him and without a word, he pointed to
which piles they should go and marked them on his scratch
paper.

“Any more?”

“No. That’s it.”

“Okay.” He went back into the cleaned-out vault and
said, “Come look.”

The minute she entered the vault, he again framed
her face with his hands, but this time, he kissed her. He would
kiss her until she forgot what had happened here, what David had
done to her.

“Mmmm,” she hummed into his mouth, her eyes closed.
He watched her face as he kissed her, unable to not watch her flush
with desire.

Then the kiss slowly ended and her eyes fluttered
open.

“Look around you, Eilis,” he murmured and let go her
face. She looked. “Remember this. It’s clean. Your good art is
coming back in. Your bad art is out there and going to auction with
your Fords. And remember, your Fords are only going because the
corporation owns them. When Christmas is over, I’ll help you
undecorate and you’ll have all your good art to put back. Bonus!
You have been well kissed.”