The Proviso (71 page)

Eilis said nothing to that because it was so
profound, so—validating. But then, that was what Sebastian did.
That was his purpose in life, not just for her, but for Karen and
everyone else he came in contact with.

She realized that they had gone quite a way when she
asked, “Where are we going?”

“Mmmm, I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”

Just then her stomach gurgled and she laughed. “I
want to go get something to eat; I didn’t eat my lunch.”

“Okay, and I know just the place to take you.”

Sebastian and Eilis still ambled along, their
fingers entwined, and he said, “Have you ever been to Central
Park?”

“No. I’ve never been here to
see
anything. It
never occurred to me to look at things while I was here doing
business.”

“Every time I travel for business, I book at least a
week on the back end for sightseeing. It’s kind of a drag by
yourself, but I want to see and experience the world. And
obviously,” he muttered wryly, “since I can’t show you anything new
about Kansas City, I had to bring you to New York.”

He stepped over and bumped into her so she stumbled,
and then she laughed when she saw his wicked smile. She bumped him
back and he grabbed her around the waist, picked her up, and spun
her around until she was squealing with laughter. He stopped
abruptly and her head spun, which made her laugh more.

Eilis found herself sliding down Sebastian’s body
slowly and she stared at him when they were eye level again. She
thought he was going to kiss her and she bit her lip, but then he
tickled her and she broke away from him, laughing. She ached from
laughing.

And desire.

Sebastian took her hand and began walking again, a
crooked smile on his face. They didn’t speak again until Sebastian
stopped at a hot dog stand and got several. “Eilis, you’re gonna
have to help me here.”

So they ended up juggling hot dogs, topping them off
with condiments, then they picked out pop and water, sticking the
bottles into pockets and waistbands. And they picnicked in Central
Park as the sun got lower in the sky.

“Why did you come back to Kansas City?” she asked.
“You could live anywhere in the world and do what you do.”

He didn’t answer her for a long time, eating while
he thought. “Kansas City’s in my heart. I grew up there. I explored
every single alley with my cousins. My comfort food is there. I
learned about money and art there. My family is there. Nowhere in
the world is going to have
that
place in my heart. So I stay
to soak up the comforts of home and family. When I get tired of
that, I leave for a while.”

Eilis could understand that. “What neighborhood did
you grow up in?”

“I went to East High School. You?”

She laughed. “Northeast.”

“Ghetto kids. Why don’t you leave?”

“I’m afraid,” she admitted with alacrity, somehow
knowing that he wouldn’t make fun of her. “I feel safe and secure.
I don’t want to go somewhere else to live by myself, no friends,
not knowing the local spots, not knowing how to find the local
spots, not knowing how business is done there, who to talk to, how
to get things done.”

“That’s why you hire an agent.”

She shrugged.

They ate for a while, not speaking, then Sebastian
asked quietly, “Do you want to go to Ground Zero tomorrow?”

“No,” Eilis whispered. “That was the beginning of
the end for me. I— I was here that day. I saw the planes crash into
the towers. I— Um, David and I— We— That’s why—”

“Don’t,” he said sharply. “It’s gone, past. You’re
done with what he did to you and he’s
dead
. Let that be
enough.”

She looked up at him and watched him look at her
with an intensity that wasn’t passion, but something warm she
didn’t understand. She nodded. “You’re right.”

“Good. Do you have clothes for the opera and
Broadway?”

“Yes,” she said, delighted, her soul coming alive at
the thought of seeing such things with a man, a man who did care
for her.

Sebastian laughed at her. “There’s a little girl
inside there somewhere just dying to come out and play, isn’t
there?”

Eilis threw back her head and laughed a great
rolling laugh that had been building inside of her all day long. It
washed away the stain of Fen’s intrusion. It washed away her shame
and guilt. It washed away all the bad things in her life because
she was laughing with Sebastian, and to laugh with Sebastian was to
experience life to its fullest, to have no pain, no failure.

And then she was in his arms and he was kissing her,
his lips and tongue thoroughly engaging hers and she watched him
kiss her, watched him watch her as they kissed. He deepened the
kiss, pulled her down to the soft grass of Central Park so she lay
half atop him, kissing. His hand cupped her buttock and caressed
her, there where her buttock met her thigh, and she sighed.

“Eilis,” he whispered, “I want to make love to you
so badly I can’t stand it, but I won’t until we get home and I show
you my secrets. Then you can make the choice. Will you trust
me?”

“Yes. I trust you, Sebastian,” she sighed.

* * * * *

63:
MORNING & EVENING

The next day they went to the Metropolitan Museum of
Art and held hands again, which she still found oddly and
deliciously endearing and oh! so twelve years old. That night,
Sebastian took her to the Metropolitan Opera to see
La
Bohème
, which, he said, was his favorite.

The day after that was the American Museum of
Natural History, which amazed Eilis and without doubt, she could
feel Sebastian watching her wander around in delight, unable to
hide it. “Someday I want to take you to the Smithsonian,” he
murmured in her ear.

Someday.

That night, Broadway, and he asked her to choose.
Phantom of the Opera.
They walked back to the hotel,
Sebastian’s arms around her and holding her tight, then stopping to
kiss her every so often. It was difficult parting company at their
respective hotel room doors, but Sebastian was insistent.

Every evening, Sebastian took her to a different
hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurant. The night they went to the
opera, they had Thai. The night they went to the theater, they had
Greek.

The day after the theater, they went to the Central
Park Zoo and their only evening plans consisted of meeting Jack
Blackwood and his wife Lydia for dinner at a cozy place in Little
Italy.

Jack wrapped his arms around his wife, took every
excuse to touch her, looked at her as if she were the embodiment of
everything wonderful in the world. She returned his affection
shyly, as if they’d just met. Every once in a while, though, she
glanced at him as if she resented every minute she couldn’t spend
in bed with him.

The contrast between Jack and Lydia, whom he called
Daisy for no reason either of them would explain, was stark: He,
five-ten, dark, half east Indian and half English; she, shorter
than he, fair, with a mop of old gold curls and blue-gray-purple
eyes that seemed mystical. With a breath, she could transform
herself from a cute-cum-pretty woman to a great beauty and get any
male within speaking distance to do her bidding. “I call it her
magic trick,” Jack murmured wryly. “It doesn’t work on me.”

“Which was why I married him,” Lydia returned
smartly.

Jack and Lydia Blackwood were gorgeous together and
suddenly, Eilis wondered if this was how people saw Eilis and
Sebastian, that dark male and sunny female. She ached to know if
that was true.

She got her chance to find out the next night, their
last together in New York, when Sebastian took her to the ballet.
Eilis didn’t bother to lie to herself that she wasn’t dressing for
Sebastian. He loved her body, loved her face, and he made sure to
let her know as often as possible.

. . .accept that you’re a
bomb
shell, and
revel in it.

Even if she didn’t really believe that, she
determined to fake like she did. She went to the hotel’s salon and
got her hair curled and pinned up. The cosmetician could not stop
exclaiming over her unique features.

Then she returned to her room and put on the
dress.

Kelly silk charmeuse and chiffon. A very low-cut
pleated silk charmeuse bodice that emphasized the size and curve of
her breasts, with halter straps that tied at the nape of her neck.
Empire waist, from which flowed a generous cut of chiffon-overlaid
silk to the knee. Very high heels with straps that crossed over the
top of her feet. Pearl studs.

Eilis couldn’t remember ever having shown this much
skin or even wanting to. She certainly had never dared to wear a
color so striking and vivid that it would attract attention all by
itself. She looked at herself in the mirror and didn’t really
believe that the woman looking back at her was . . . her. All she
wanted was for Sebastian to look at her the way he’d looked at her
the day he’d had her on the conference table.

She dug out the sterling silver repousse purse that
she had fallen in love with oh so long ago, but had never used. She
didn’t know why she’d brought it with her, but tonight was worth
it.

One final check in the mirror and she was ready to
meet Sebastian in the lobby, where a pianist played the Rach
Three.

The look on Sebastian’s face when he saw her was
beyond anything she had ever dreamed, ever hoped for, ever wanted
from him. She wished she could paint, so she could remember that
moment forever.

In his trademark crisp black, he strode toward her
and met her more than halfway. Uncaring that they were in public,
in a five-star hotel in TriBeCa, he wrapped his big hands around
her face, his fingers in her hair, and kissed her. Deeply,
passionately. The way people in love kiss.

And she kissed him back with everything she had, so
pleased she’d made this beautiful, notorious man, whom every woman
and some men in this place lusted after, desire her. Publicly.

“
La fée verte
,” he whispered into her mouth
before he continued to kiss her. “
Ma chère
,
si c’était
pas pour peur de la loi
,” he murmured heatedly as his lips
skittered across her cheek to her ear, “
je me dresserais un
chevalet . . . te déshabillerais . . . peindrais ton image . .
.
”

She gasped at his mouth, trailing kisses down her
neck and across her shoulder, whispering to her, hot, rapid. She
didn’t understand a word he said and she wasn’t even sure he
realized he was doing it.

“
Et puis
,” he whispered as his teeth nipped
her earlobe, “
je te brouterais le cresson devant toutes ces
personnes . . . ”

Her head was back and her eyes closed, Sebastian
licking, nipping, and kissing in a line from her collarbone up her
throat and chin, back to her mouth, speaking to her in the language
of love. She didn’t need to know the language; she knew what he
meant.

The complete lack of human voices in the lobby,
which underscored the pianist’s exquisite playing of the urgently
romantic piece, finally soaked into both their brains around the
same time. Sebastian stopped speaking, stopped making love to her
neck. They opened their eyes together and turned their heads
slowly, to see the entire population of the lobby staring at them
agape.

“I’m so embarrassed,” Eilis said, feeling her face
flushing and turning her face away from the largest cluster of
people.

“Why?” Sebastian asked, looking back at her and
tilting her face up to look at him with two gentle fingers on her
chin. “Eilis, you’re beautiful. Of course, they’re going to
look.”

“You’re far more beautiful than I,” she whispered,
staring into his purple eyes, “and everyone here knows who you are
anyway. It’s not me they’re looking at and I only dressed for you,”
she admitted.

He grinned then, lopsided, and studied every feature
of her face. “You are so wrong, but that’s okay. Come with me.”

Sebastian turned then and offered her his right arm,
and she took it, though glancing at him questioningly. He looked
only at her, his eyes sparkling and that same lopsided grin never
dimming. “I use my right hand when I think in numbers and money, my
left for images, language, and sex. That’s why I offered you my
right arm.”

Eilis couldn’t look away from him, either, but she
was acutely aware of the stares they still garnered, although most
everyone had gone back to their conversations.

“And the French?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were speaking in French.” She couldn’t help the
delighted smile that spread across her face. “I didn’t understand a
word you said.”

He looked genuinely intrigued by that. “I did?
Really?”

“Yes. You threw in an English word here and
there.”

Sebastian chuckled. “Stands to reason, I guess. I
learned how to make love in French.”

He stopped then, drawing her around until she saw
that they faced a mirror. There was a gorgeous couple there. Tall.
Well built. The man was behind the woman, his arms wrapped around
her waist, his chin on her shoulder.

The man had a heart-
stoppingly
handsome face,
his eyes purple, alive, sparkling. Fair skin, blue-black hair
sprinkled with white, broad shoulders, long legs, strong body.
Crisp black suit and crisp white shirt.

The woman had a face with character and interest,
one green eye and one blue eye, both dancing. Lightly tanned skin,
sunny blonde curls piled on top of her head, pretty shoulders and
arms, beautiful breasts, long and well-shaped legs whose
musculature was defined sharply by the height of her heels.

The contrast between them was striking and she
sighed.
What a beautiful woman.