The Proviso (85 page)

A wide yellow rubber band of the type used in
offices and around newspapers held her hair back. She reached down
between her legs to rub her sore muscles and the scent of soap
drifted up to her nostrils. Her brow wrinkled. He’d
bathed
her? Well, sponged her off, anyway. She was pretty sure she’d
remember if she were given an actual bath. Curiouser.

She sat back down on the edge of the bed and closed
her eyes, her body tense, her fingers curled into the edge of the
mattress. She relived every second of what had happened out there
in the yard, confused and . . .
angry
. . . for the wrong
reason.
Why
had it hurt? For all her lack of opportunity to
practice with another human being, she knew what sex was about,
what she should expect and not. A woman wet, ready, wanting a man
should
not
have pain. She didn’t expect to have had pleasure
her first time, but never had she imagined having such pain.

And she
had
been wet, ready, wanting. She’d
begged
him, just as he’d told her she would.

Heat suffused her face at that, her embarrassment
mitigated only by the fact that he hadn’t gloated, that he had been
equally stunned. His voice hoarse with a touch of desperation, he’d
apologized. Over and over again while he stroked her hair and held
her close and kissed her ear and cheek and temple while she cried.
Why
had he done that? That wasn’t the ruthless and cruel and
untouchable Knox Hilliard she’d come to know.

He’d given her a glimpse of the power he had over
her when he’d slipped his fingers inside her and his thumb had
manipulated her clitoris just
so
, and she’d come with a fire
she’d never known by her own hand. He had great skill to make her
want things from him that she should
never
want from a man
who’d taken away her freedom, her choices.

She felt shame for that, for giving in to him up
until the point he hurt her, to the point where even now, though
her body felt empty and sore and ragged, she wanted to try again,
to know what it was like to have him fully inside her, making her
pain go away. If he hadn’t hurt her, she’d still be with him, in
this bed, still feeling—acting—as if she were there of her own free
will.

Justice stopped thinking and rose to waddle to the
bathroom, hoping to walk it off.

Once there, she saw a dim glow coming from the
backyard where they had—what? What
had
they done? He’d given
her an orgasm, an entirely inadequate word for
that
, but it
wasn’t sex. Wasn’t making love. Wasn’t rape. Wasn’t the F-word. She
didn’t know how to label it and Justice was all about labels.

Something had happened, for sure, but—what?

Out the bathroom window, she could see an old barn
back there lit up like a Christmas tree. It was some distance away,
maybe half a football field; she vaguely remembered seeing it on
her mad dash out the patio door. Her brow wrinkled. What was he
doing out there?

She had to talk to him, to beg him to let her
go—from this marriage, from this house, from that office, and she
would go to Washington, which wasn’t far enough away from Knox
Hilliard to suit her. She couldn’t live or work this way: Without
her freedom, yet wanting to be with him.

What would she do if he wouldn’t let her go? Was she
willing to take the chance he’d really kill her father if she left
him anyway?

Once she’d made up her mind about seeking him out,
Justice didn’t hesitate to walk outside in the nighttime barefoot,
the grass wet and spongy under her feet.

Strange music—classical? opera?—with a thumping beat
floated over the distance to her ears. There was something familiar
about one phrase of it, but she was pretty sure she hadn’t heard
any of the rest of it. She wasn’t even sure she liked it, and she
liked pretty much everything, especially if it had a driving bass
rhythm.

The barn itself looked like it was about to fall
down. Light sprayed out from in between every vertical clapboard
and every piece of wood on that barn was the odd
gray-gold-green-silver color of disintegration. The roof wasn’t
much better, and she could see that a blue tarp or six had been
strapped down over it.

It took her a minute to find the barn door, thrown
open wide to let the summer night breezes cross through to the
other end, those doors also open. She flinched. The music nearly
deafened her and the light nearly blinded her. She put one arm over
her eyes and the other hand over one ear so they could adjust.

There, in the middle of the barn stood a canvas
twelve feet high and at least twenty feet wide, leaning back on the
edge of the hayloft. A man—not Knox—was on a high scaffold in front
of it, painting. Odd. In his left hand was a large drywall knife,
and in his right, a spackling tray full of paint.

Through the scaffold, she could see that not much of
the painting was done, only the dullish gray torso of a man visible
and complete. She got caught up in watching the artist work and in
this music she didn’t know if she liked but attracted her anyway.
The paint shimmered in the light and cast sparkles over the
opposite wall. After a while, she decided to step into the barn and
sit, with some pain, her knees drawn up to her chest and her ankles
crossed, enthralled with this process.

Justice had no artistic talent; she wished she did.
Her talents only lay toward scholarship and lately, she didn’t seem
to do that very well, either. She’d never had the opportunity to
observe someone creating something so lovely instead of always
seeing or hearing or reading the end result.

After a while, the man—a huge man with black hair
and pale skin who wore only an old pair of cutoff denim
shorts—began to slow, then sag. He gripped his left shoulder with
his right hand and rotated it, then rolled his head around on his
neck. He stretched, yawned, then turned—and jumped back when he saw
her.

He grabbed a remote and turned the music off. The
sudden silence almost nauseated her and her ears rang most
annoyingly.

“Who the hell are you?” he barked, nearly
identically to Knox, but he didn’t scare her. How could he? Knox
had scared every bit of fright out of her already.

She looked into his ice blue eyes and knew that he
too was related to Knox, thus to Giselle. Probably not a brother;
they were all too disparate, so she would assume he was another
cousin.

“Justice,” she said. “Who are you?”

Staring at her for a long while, he finally said,
“Ford. Or Sebastian, take your pick.”

Huh. She didn’t understand the Ford reference, but
that
was not what she’d expected Sebastian Taight to look
like.

“What are you painting?”

He looked at her strangely before turning and wiping
his face on a discarded tee shirt, then drew it over his head.
“What time is it?”

“I don’t know. I woke up and saw the light, then
came out to see.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Half an hour, maybe.”

“No, I mean, how long have you lived with Knox?”

“Oh. Just today.” Not even that, really.

He climbed down the scaffold and began to clean his
knives and brushes in a makeshift sink connected to a garden hose.
His back to her, he threw a question over his shoulder.

“When’d he marry you?”

She blinked. How did he know that? “Today,” she
murmured. “Er, well, yesterday. I guess.”

“Not too happy about it, huh?”

“No,” she said flatly.

“I’m guessing that means the wedding night wasn’t
terribly successful.”

Justice blushed and looked away.

“I see. Well, I’m sorry.”

She was silent for a moment and then said, “I didn’t
know you could paint.”

He looked over his shoulder, his brow wrinkled.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I’ve never read anywhere that
Sebastian Taight painted anything ever.”

He dropped his knives in the sink and turned, his
arms crossed over his chest. He looked at her for a long while,
then, “That’s because Sebastian Taight
doesn’t
paint. Ford
does. How much do you know about me?”

“I started hearing about your ‘Fix-or-Raid’ policy
when Senator Oth got upset with you. I like it, even if it is
rather . . . Randian.”

“You read Rand?”

“Everybody reads Rand at some point. It’s kind of a
political rite of passage, like Marx, but most people grow out of
it.”

“I take it you’re not a fan.”

“No, but it doesn’t take much to see you’re a
devoted disciple.” Sebastian laughed. “I’m curious: What made you
interested in raising up Kevin Oakley for Senate?”

“You
are
full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“I guess that depends on what you assume I
know.”

“Oh, you’ve got a smart mouth. You’ll fit in with us
just fine.” She smiled, comfort and warmth spreading through her
inexplicably. “I’m going to go ahead and
assume
you know the
answer to that question and you’re just fishing.”

She pursed her lips and realized she liked this man.
He was warm and funny; she needed that right now—but more
importantly, she had a lot to say to him. She picked up a random
twig and played with it, studied it, while she spoke. “In
Atlas
Shrugged
, when Hank Rearden was put on trial for being a
‘greedy enemy of the state,’” she began and, out of the corner of
his eye, saw his body stiffen in shock, “he had already decided to
destroy his company and his metal for the sake of Galt’s
revolution. I didn’t like that. I think it was childish for all the
producers to destroy their own work to prove a point, then ride off
into the sunset.

“I know what Congress wants from you and why. They
want to know why you make some companies better and why you take
some companies completely out of the picture. They want to turn
that on you and use it against you and people like you. Don’t give
it to them. If they haven’t figured it out by now, they don’t
deserve to know.

“On the other hand, don’t just take your ball and go
home to Bora Bora, either, because people need to know people like
you exist and they need your strength and example to become you.
You need to teach those people for your own benefit, to better
your
bottom line and
your
strength as an
entrepreneur—not theirs. Stay in the game. Keep doing what you do
and thumb your nose at the looters. The moochers are
unavoidable.”

Justice had the satisfaction of watching his
incredulity grow as she spoke, though he did recover himself enough
to say, “Well? How do I decide?”

She laughed. “Three of the five senators who were
calling for your head are ones whose companies you took and
destroyed or handed over to someone else to run after you took them
and fixed them. They’re bad leaders. They’re stupid. They’re
arrogant in their place in life and feel entitled to it.”

“Of course they do. They’re old-money back-room
Republicans.”

She inclined her head. “Yes. So I’m going to assume
that they were the same way as businessmen. Put that together with
your very obvious worship at the altar of laissez-faire capitalism
and any fool can see exactly what you do and why you do it.”

Sebastian threw back his head and laughed. After a
moment of utter hilarity, he calmed and said, “Well, Justice, I
have to tell you—you’re the first outsider who’s figured it out
from scratch.”

“Kevin’s not going to be able to protect you from
congressional hearings, you know. He’ll have no position of power
when he gets there and it’ll take him years to build that kind of
clout. So that’s what I’m asking. What do you think he can do for
you the minute he gets into office?”

“It’s not what he can do for me once he gets there.
It’s about what he can do for me just by running. I’m stalling for
time.”

Justice pursed her lips and thought about this for a
moment, looking at it from every angle she could think of, then
laughed and gave him a small salute. “Very clever.”

He looked at the floor and fidgeted, then looked
back up at her. “So since I’m not assuming what you know, what do
you actually know about Fen Hilliard?”

“I know he’s Knox’s uncle and that you definitely
don’t want him to win that Senate seat.”

Sebastian nodded absently, then said, “What do you
think of OKH Enterprises?”

Justice’s brow wrinkled at the odd question.
“Hilliard’s the CEO and I’m not impressed with his politics.
Why?”

He glanced at her, then at the floor. “No reason, I
guess.”

He turned back to his cleaning, and at that moment,
Justice felt more normal than she had since she’d come to the
Chouteau County prosecutor’s office.

She jumped when she first felt, rather than saw,
Knox sit on the floor beside her, so close up against her that her
shoulder overlapped his, and she looked at him. He wore only a pair
of gray jersey biking shorts. He didn’t look at her, but stared at
the enormous canvas mostly hidden behind scaffolding.

“Did you tell her who you are?” Knox asked hoarsely,
and Sebastian threw another quick look over his shoulder before
continuing to clean his tools.

“So nice of you to join us. Yes, I did. She doesn’t
know Ford. Or the proviso.”

Knox sucked up a quick breath, held it, then
released it with a soft, “Oh,
shit
.”

“Yeah.”

Justice didn’t bother questioning him about this
turn of the conversation, as she knew she’d get no answers. She
simply tucked the information away in the file drawer of her mind;
it could wait until she’d sorted out the most pressing points of
her situation first.

“Iustitia,” Knox murmured and she blinked. He
reached a hand up to smooth some of the hair out of her face, and
his mouth thinned when a stray tear tracked down her cheek. “I’m
sorry.”