THE PROVISO

THIRD EDITION COMING JULY 2025

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In 1985, Knox Hilliard’s uncle killed his father to marry his mother and gain control of the family’s Fortune 100 company. Knox is set to inherit it on his 40th birthday, provided he has a wife and an heir.

Now, in 2004, after his bride is murdered on their wedding day, Knox refuses to fulfill the proviso at all. When a brilliant law student catches his attention, he knows he must wait until after his 40th birthday to pursue her—but he may not be able to resist her for four long years.

Sebastian Taight, eccentric financier, steps between Knox and his uncle by initiating a hostile takeover. When Sebastian is appointed trustee of a company in receivership, he falls hard for its beautiful CEO. She has secrets that involve his uncle, but his secret could destroy any chance he has with her.

Giselle Cox unwittingly exposed the affair that set her uncle’s plot in motion twenty years ago. Because she holds his life in her hands, he’s tried—and failed—to assassinate her. Twice. Then she runs into a much bigger problem: A man who takes her breath away, who can match and dominate her, whose soul is as scarred as his body.

Knox, Sebastian, and Giselle: Three cousins at war with an uncle who will stop at nothing to keep Knox’s inheritance. Never do they expect to find allies—and love—on the battlefield.

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1: SAFE SPACE

August 2004

“I AM GOING TO hook up with him if it’s the last thing I do.”

Justice McKinley looked down at her notebook, feeling violated by the woman in the row behind her. Justice thought she’d missed all that queen bee mean girl business, but apparently, law school had its share.

Queen Bee Sherry was beautiful, with glossy black hair and a slender figure dressed to perfection—and she knew it. She stood out in the lecture hall full of jeans-and-tee-shirt-clad students, and her target was their substitute professor, who didn’t seem to be interested in teaching anybody anything today.

Indeed, he set the tone as soon as the second-hand hit the hour.

“All right!” he boomed cheerfully, rubbing his palms together. “First years. Welcome to the UMKC School of Law. Let’s get acquainted, shall we? Name and a few words on your career goals. I’ll start. I’m Knox Hilliard, and I’m the prosecutor up in Chouteau County. I also teach white-collar crime on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, but today Dr. Grady called in a favor, so here I am.”

While he continued to speak, Sherry’s friends laughed and slid comments back and forth about what Sherry intended to do to Dr. Hilliard, which Justice did not want to hear, and she tossed an irritated glance over her shoulder. Immediately, the back of her chair was kicked, startling her. Another irritated glance. Another kick, harder this time.

“Sherry,” Worker Bee Number One whispered, “stop. She’s gonna get mad.”

“What’s she going to do, read me Bible stories? Look at her! She’s drooling all over her shabby little dress. She wouldn’t know what to do with him if she had him.” Justice swallowed at the cruelty in the woman’s voice, the nanny-nanny-boo-boo tone now close to her ear. “I bet she wants to fuck him as much as I do.”

Justice averted her gaze from Dr. Hilliard and tried to cool the rage and humiliation that welled up inside her, the color that flooded her face. It wouldn’t have bothered her if Sherry hadn’t seen Justice stop cold to gawk at him when she came through the door.

He was at least six feet of big-boned muscle, primitive masculinity encased in a gray suit, crisp white shirt and contrasting tie, with tasseled loafers, as if fine clothes would make him look civilized.

He had an aristocratic face with a square jaw. His nose was long and straight, his mouth hard. His short light golden hair contrasted sharply with his tanned skin and made his cold blue eyes seem sharper, more omniscient.

His voice was deep and rich, filled with amusement as he walked back and forth across the room with an easy grace, a relaxed purpose to his long-legged gait that would allow him to stop on a dime or slow to accommodate the shorter stride of a person he respected or a woman he loved.

If Justice had ever needed to see the perfect example of male beauty and masculine grace, Dr. Hilliard was it. Apparently, everyone else agreed, which made Justice ashamed of herself for being so … common.

“Doctor Cox!” Dr. Hilliard boomed up toward the back of the lecture hall. “You’re next.”

Justice and everyone around her turned. A woman’s voice rang out, but Justice couldn’t see where it came from.

“I’m Giselle Cox and I’m one of your TAs for this class, and please do not call me ‘doctor.’”

Sherry and her worker bees murmured amongst themselves.

“And what are you going to do with your law degree, Doctor Cox?” Dr. Hilliard taunted.

“I have no idea,” she said lightly, setting a few students to chuckling.

“Are you one of those for whom a law degree is a last-ditch attempt at a career?”

“Isn’t that what happens when you’re pushing thirty-five and don’t know what you want to be when you grow up?”

Justice only then noticed the number of much older students in her class, and wondered if that were more true than not.

“You do have a PhD in eighteenth-century British literature,” he mocked. “Couldn’t find a teaching gig?”

“You can talk. You teach a night class at a state commuter school and prosecute cow tippers in Podunk County.”

He laughed, his humor transforming him from merely perfect to majestic, and because he could laugh at himself, it meant everyone else was free to laugh too.

“Also,” Dr. Cox said to the class in general, “please turn in your assignments to me or Neil before you leave today.”

Dr. Hilliard worked his way around the room, starting from the back where the TA was. Justice watched him surreptitiously, trying not to reveal how attracted she was. She’d never had this problem before. Her life was laid out in front of her. She didn’t have time for distractions and she had zero interest in getting involved with a man.

You will go to law school, Iustitia, and you will graduate with honors and you will become a prosecutor. No argument.

Her late grandfather’s voice rang in her head. She was four-sevenths of the way to being able to fulfill that mandate.

This is your home and you’re going to stay here and take care of me.

Except that her very alive father resented every second she spent off his property not working, not catering to him, not taking up the slack her mother had left behind.

I need you to promise me you won’t be stupid like I was and let a man sucker you. That’s a trap and I got caught.

Her late mother’s desperate plea had informed Justice’s view of romance, but since she had never been susceptible to a man’s charms, she hadn’t worried about it.

Until now.

“Ms Quails,” Dr. Hilliard said. “Your turn.”

“Pay attention, little girl,” Sherry whispered in Justice’s ear before sitting back. “Corporate,” she answered shortly. “But what I really want to talk about is what you’re doing this weekend? All weekend.”

Justice almost choked. The room held its collective breath at her brazenness, and Dr. Hilliard gaped at her. Then a smile, quick and blinding, flashed across his face. It turned into a smirk as he got closer to Sherry and therefore, closer to Justice. “After class,” he murmured, his predatory tone matching Sherry’s perfectly. “I’ll see what I can arrange.”

“Certainly … Knox.”

Justice thought she was going to puke.

He continued with the next person down the row, but Justice spaced out, ignoring Sherry and her friends, ignoring Dr. Hilliard because after that … Thank God the regular prof would be back Friday.

“And what about you, Ms McKinley?”

Justice, startled, looked up to see him watching her expectantly. Her face burned. She cleared her throat. Her nerves were pinging and she was nauseated. “I— I want to be a prosecutor,” she said and then, to her horror, she added, “like you.”

Sherry and her friends snickered openly.

Surprise flickered in his ice blue eyes. His grin faded to a kindly bemused smile. “Why?”

Justice swallowed again. He hadn’t asked any other students why or probed beyond the quick outlines of their career goals. She felt as if she were on trial, as if her answer would determine her whole future.

She knew that in three years, a third of the people in her graduating class would be competing for a coveted position in the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office specifically to be trained as litigators by Dr. Hilliard. Yes, her answer today would determine her whole future, and she had his complete attention.

“I— I want to help people,” she began nervously, acutely aware she had everyone else’s attention, too. “I think criminals … that they get off too easy sometimes.” She went on because she couldn’t not. “Um, personal property rights—meaning oneself and one’s belongings—were meant to be held sacred. That’s what the Founding Fathers wanted. Life and valuables are cheap because the legal system doesn’t punish real criminals well enough and petty crimes too much. There’s no real sense of justice for the victims. I mean, yeah, you can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride, and the poor and minorities who are unfairly and disproportionately targeted can least afford the ride, even if they’re completely innocent. Their lives are ruined for … what? Driving while black?

“Then there’s the police—they take what they want and get away with it because of qualified immunity, which is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, RICO statutes and the IRS weaponized against political enemies, normal people being treated like criminals for no reason. I want to help make the law a deterrent again—to, oh, legally avenge those whose lives are violated by someone else, especially by the people who are supposed to protect them, to restore people’s constitutional rights. To give victims of real crime a sense of justice and closure.

“But I also want to do right by people who are accused of crimes they may or may not have committed. The point is innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. It’s not the prosecutor’s job to put everyone in jail and it’s not the defense’s job to prove innocence. Sure, I could do that as a public defender or activist, but as a prosecutor, I can work to change the system from the inside.”

Silence reigned throughout the lecture hall, and because Justice couldn’t quite meet Dr. Hilliard’s probing gaze, she looked at his collar and tried to hold back tears of frustration and embarrassment.

Then Sherry laughed. Her friends laughed. The room exploded in laughter—raucous, jeering guffaws aimed at Justice, who was only now aware that she had displayed an appalling naïveté.

This was going to be a long three years.

“ENOUGH!”

The roar echoed off the walls and immediately silenced the room. Justice’s head snapped up to see Dr. Hilliard strolling away from her, his hands in the pockets of his fine gray suit.

“How dare you,” he growled. His lazy syntax and rural twang were gone, replaced by crisp upper-class hauteur. His cheer had turned to rage in a blink, and Justice watched, confused. The switch had been so immediate, so effortless. For … her?

“How dare you denigrate the career goals of a fellow student. I daresay none of you has thought that deeply about what you want and why you want it. None of you has expressed yourselves so passionately that the room was enthralled with what you said. None of you was courageous enough to say what you really thought. How dare you sit on your pretentiously cynical asses and laugh at idealism. Idealism is what created this country; it’s what drives it; it’s what allows you to be here on daddy’s money.”

He pointed to different sections of the room in turn. “You. You. You.” He began the slow trek back across the platform toward Justice. She caught the faintest whiff of an elegant cologne as he leaned alongside her toward Sherry. “And you, Ms Quails,” he purred. It was not a nice purr. “You can go fuck yourself, because I certainly won’t.”

There was a collective gasp and Sherry squeaked. Dr. Hilliard’s expression softened when it settled upon Justice who, with tears of mixed gratitude and mortification, looked away from his large harshness and golden darkness.

Fingertips under her chin gently forced her face around and up. She blinked to get rid of her tears before he saw them.

“Do you believe in vigilante justice, Justice?”

“No,” she croaked.

“What about theft versus crimes against the body?”

She cleared her throat and said in a stronger voice, “Property is to be held as sacred as the body and vice versa.”

“Revenge?”

“Law.”

“Black and white?”

“Right and wrong.”

Justice followed his line of reasoning without effort because she knew these things, believed these things, believed in the brilliance and genius of Frédéric Bastiat, the Enlightenment, the Austrian school.

They had touched, somehow, an experienced attorney somewhere in his mid-thirties and Justice, a twenty-two-year-old law student who’d been in classes three whole days.

His thumb drifted across her cheekbone as he stood looking down at her. Justice was only vaguely aware of the profound silence around her. His mind was connecting with hers the way his fingertips were connecting with her skin.

“Very good, Justice,” he murmured.

She stared up into Dr. Hilliard’s gorgeous blue eyes and fell in love.

GISELLE STOOD AT the door to the lecture hall collecting the students’ assignment as they filed out quietly, either carefully avoiding Dr. Hilliard or giving him the side-eye. Justice McKinley lingered for a bit, waiting, hoping he would speak to her, but he was looking down at the front table pretending to sort through papers and ignoring everyone, especially Justice. She finally gave up and left, handing her assignment to Giselle without a word.

Giselle stuffed the papers in her bag and rushed out into the hall to catch up with her, reaching out to brush her on the shoulder. She started, turned, nearly cowered, her amber eyes wide. “Um … hi. Did I— Did I forget something?”

“I’ll let you know,” Giselle said quietly, aware of the wary glances cast their way because she got attention wherever she went whether she wanted it or not. Today, she wanted it. No one who knew any better would bother Justice now that Giselle had marked her just by talking to her. “You were very good in there.”

Justice looked at her warily, as if she were making fun of her. “Uh … I don’t know— I mean—” She stammered nonsense words Giselle ignored while taking inventory.

She was taller than Giselle by at least three or four inches, and she was in a worn gaudily flowered chintz Gunne Sax dress straight out of 1985, complete with a large white collar. Giselle couldn’t even begin to guess what was under that poor dress, but if her legs were anything to go by, she had a lot of potential.

Her dull mahogany hair was in a thick waist-length braid limned in frizz that caught the sunlight and made it look more out of control than it was. Her face was odd, with a thick coating of foundation as if she were trying to hide acne, but it was smooth, so she must be hiding freckles. That’d go with the hair. Too bad, too, because she had exquisite bone structure. She couldn’t tell if the girl was more clueless or poor, but it didn’t matter.

Giselle was tempted to take her for a makeover just because she’d been so fabulous in class, but letting that butterfly loose would unleash a hurricane all over Knox’s already chaotic life. The last thing he needed was more chaos, especially considering what had happened in class. He’d be lucky if he didn’t get fired or sued or both.

Way to go, Dr. Dumbass.

No, better Justice look like this for as long as possible in case he was tempted to do something even more stupid. Besides, Giselle didn’t have any money, either.

Justice continued to mumble things Giselle couldn’t hear. Then, over the girl’s shoulder, Giselle saw Knox in the stairwell staring at her. She tilted her head in question. He slid a cold glance over to Sherry and the outraged women around her. Giselle looked at them, looked back at him and raised an eyebrow. He gave her a curt nod.

Justice was still muttering, dammit. Giselle wished she didn’t have to talk to the top of her frizzy red head.

“Justice,” Giselle murmured, leaning over to look up into the girl’s eyes. “Illegitimi non carborundum.” Justice blinked and slowly raised her head. “There you go,” Giselle murmured with a smile. “Take heart. You impressed the only person you needed to impress, just by being yourself.” Impressed? The man had fallen in love, which was unfortunate and inconvenient, considering he was getting married next month. “Keep doing that.” But for heaven’s sake, don’t do it in front of him. After casting Justice another encouraging smile, Giselle left the building.

To lie in wait.

“Sherry!” Giselle chirped as she came around a corner. “Can I, uh, talk to you a minute?”

“Sure, Dr. Cox!” she called with a bright, slightly predatory smile, and Giselle almost rolled her eyes.

Giselle was a minority here. Ten years older than most of the other students, she did indeed have a PhD, and law school was in fact a last-ditch attempt to have a career she could marginally stand. The University of Missouri at Kansas City being a commuter school, a quarter of the students in her class were her age and there for the same reason.

However, she had owned her own business for several years. It had been her life’s work, her passion, but it had been torched three years before, leaving her bankrupt and homeless. She couldn’t rebuild it and she was still heartsick. The only other thing she’d really ever wanted to do was out of reach for her.

Thus, the only people who called her Dr. Cox were Knox, who publicly mocked her with it, students in the classes she TA’d, and anybody else who wanted something from her—which included Sherry, who now followed Giselle eagerly to an out-of-the-way spot in a thick stand of trees.

Giselle turned only to find the girl backed up to a big oak, preening for her. Giselle smiled seductively. “You got my attention, Sherry,” she murmured.

“Finally,” she purred.

“Going after Knox like that was pretty ballsy.”

“You think?” she asked coyly.

“Oh, yes,” Giselle cooed, caressing Sherry’s cheek, then trailing her fingertips down her neck.

Sherry gurgled when her head was snapped back against the tree, Giselle’s hand clamped around her throat. “And stupid,” Giselle whispered in Sherry’s ear. “I’m going to tell you this once and I want you to make sure it gets spread around. Leave—Justice—McKinley—alone. If I hear even a suggestion of a rumor that you, your skank patrol, or anyone else not even associated with you are giving her a hard time, you’ll regret it. This is fucking law school, and I am not going to tolerate playground bullying.”

“No, no,” she whimpered, desperately clutching at Giselle’s hands and gasping for air. “I’m sorry. Please let me go. Please.”

She did, with a sneer.

Giselle let Sherry run crying to her friends, but no one ever approached her with accusations of assault. She went back to her soul-crushing grind. Justice went about campus as if everyone were out to get her. Knox went back to his day job, Tuesday-Thursday evening class, and planning the wedding of the century.

Until his fiancée was murdered four weeks later.

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2: THE FIRST WIFE

September 2004

THE KANSAS CITY crime scene unit had had to dredge Leah Wincott’s body from a pond, so the casket remained closed. There was only one reason any bride of Knox Hilliard—especially one who had a child—would turn up dead.

Bryce knew he should be more mindful of his friend and client lying at the front of the chapel garnering her due respects. Leah’s death had too many implications for him to allow himself to be distracted, but he’d taken one look across the room and now he could think of nothing but the woman who’d caught his eye.

She was sitting in a dark corner alone, her body slumped down in the chair, her stilettos hanging on the rung of the folding chair in front of her, her arms folded across her chest, her left hand holding a paper cup. He could only see her in profile, straight nose, full mouth, high cheekbones, all framed by dull blonde curls that dripped over her shoulders. She took a sip from her cup, then scowled down into it.

Bryce didn’t know who she was or what kind of a relationship she had had with Leah, but usually people didn’t reach the anger stage of grief until after the funeral, so what intrigued him even more than her beauty was her anger.

She raised a hand to plow her fingers through her curls in a futile attempt to keep them out of her eyes. She huffed, set her cup down on the chair next to her, reached up, and began to braid it.

Bryce sighed. He wished she hadn’t done that.

The black velvet of her short bodice shimmered subtle gold and stretched over her breasts. He wanted to reach out, cup one in his hand, flick her nipple with his thumb, bend down and suck it into his mouth.

Her knee-length silk-and-chiffon skirt inched up her thigh until the hem caught on something distinctly out of place. It took him out of the moment of sexual fantasy and into the realm of curiosity as to why she’d have a wide black strap around her thigh. He couldn’t think of a reason at the moment, but it didn’t matter. She’d finished braiding and returned to slouching and scowling.

An older woman passed behind her, pulled her fingertips lightly across her back in a loving caress, and said something to her when she looked up.

“Oh,” he breathed, captivated by her face. He’d seen that face before, in a Pre-Raphaelite painting he remembered studying in freshman humanities more than twenty years before. Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who demanded equality with Adam and left Eden in a snit when he refused.

Bryce had never forgotten that tale, nor the painting. The concept that Adam had had a wife before Eve had shocked the hell out of him. Further, the particular point of Lilith’s complaint against Adam had aroused Bryce painfully. As he watched the real-life Lilith across the room from him, he didn’t have to wonder if she’d demand to be on top.

He wondered how she’d go about demanding it.

The older woman had stopped speaking and waited for Lilith’s response. Her mouth tightened and she looked away, off into nothing, thinking. Finally, she glanced back up at the woman, nodded, and spoke.

Okay, Mom.

The mother walked away with a pat on Lilith’s shoulder. As she arose, her full skirt caught again, on the chair this time. He blinked and looked again. Was that a … gun strapped to her thigh? The delicate black lace of the top of her stocking juxtaposed against the cold, deadly steel aroused him further.

This Lilith had him harder than Collier’s painting.

Dammit, she mouthed as she swept her hand down her body to straighten her dress and cover the gun. The black-and-gold fabrics flared and shimmered when she turned away from him. Her stilettos forced the muscles of her legs into sharp relief and he sighed when she strutted away into the dark recesses of the funeral home.

He hung back, loath to follow her. He raised his left hand to feel his face, the burn scars that disfigured him, mocked him, kept him from approaching women because he hated the flinching, the fake politeness.

My God, what a monster. You’d have to turn the lights out.

Long ago, when the scars were still relatively fresh, he’d overheard a woman whisper that to her friend. Though it didn’t make him angry anymore, it did serve to remind him of his sin, the punishment for his sin.

An image seeped into his mind of that woman, Lilith, dangerous, muscular, on her knees in front of him, her mouth around him and his hand in her hair.

His feet took it upon themselves to trace her path, his nose following a scent that would belong to a Lilith: fruit and flowers and almond with a hint of sex. Far away from the chapel, toward a small, dimly lit room at the other end of the building, he rounded a corner and heard a delicate female voice.

He stopped, ducked back a bit, listened.

“Say it, Knox,” she demanded angrily.

A whoosh of air. “Okay, okay,” the deceased’s groom said wearily. “You were right. I’m sorry, Giselle. You don’t know how sorry I am.”

She-SELL.

Not Lilith.

Bryce’s disappointment was deep and sharp.

“Oh, I’m sorry, too, Knox,” she whispered with sorrow and regret. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

There was a pause, then the sound of rustling fabric. Bryce risked a peek around the corner and saw her engulfed in Hilliard’s arms, his face in the crook of her neck, her arms wound around his shoulders and her fingers in his hair.

Bryce’s heart thundering in his chest, he pulled himself away from the tableau in front of him and dropped back against the wall.

“Come home with me tonight,” Hilliard murmured. “Please. I need you.”

Immediately nauseated, pissed off, Bryce pushed away from the wall and stalked out of the funeral home.

Leah Wincott, Bryce’s friend and client, had died for the sake of a man who had a mistress.

Bryce had a hard-on for a woman he didn’t know, who wouldn’t be interested in him anyway, who was the mistress of Leah’s fiancé. Lilith, succubus.

That the man between Lilith and Leah was Knox Hilliard—

Bryce took a deep, shuddering breath.

He felt thoroughly betrayed.

Again.

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3: GIRL WITH GUN

GISELLE JERKED AWAY from Knox, scowling, now madder than she already was. “Seriously?” she gritted, trying to keep her temper under control. It wasn’t about her right now. It wasn’t her lover of five years who’d been kidnapped and brutally murdered twenty minutes before saying I do.

She studied Knox’s tanned, ruggedly handsome face and noted he didn’t look handsome right now; he looked aged, haggard. Thirty-five going on sixty. “All you want is comfort and I deserve more, especially from you.”

He sighed and stepped away from her, rubbing his mouth.

“Besides, what about last month?”

His eyes narrowed. “What about last month?”

“I was there, remember? You were a gonner the minute Justice opened her mouth.”

“I am not going to discuss that with you right now. Maybe not ever.”

Giselle watched Knox pace in utter turmoil, but her conscience was equally tormented because she could have prevented Leah’s death if she’d followed her gut.

Honey, thank you, but I don’t need a bodyguard. I’m the most high-profile woman in the country right now and your uncle wouldn’t dare have me killed. Once I’m married to Knox, Fen won’t have any reason to try to kill you again.

Leah, I don’t have a good feeling.

Giselle! Put that gun away and stop pacing. If you can’t do that, leave. I’m about to get married in front of five hundred people. I don’t need your fidgets on top of mine.

But—

Out!

Okay, you know what? I’m going to go get Knox.

You do that.

Leah’s rich south Texas drawl still echoed in her head. Knox had been in love with Leah for the entire five years they’d been together and had been eager to marry her. But his guilt over having taken Leah’s side of the argument, leaving her alone and unprotected, was exponentially worse:

“Now you’re stuck with the added guilt of falling in love with a different woman a month before your wedding.”

He winced.

“And you want me to kiss your wittow owwie and make it all better.”

“Yes, I do,” he shot back, jerking her into his arms and kissing her with the worn familiarity of thirty years of history.

She needed somebody, too, but it certainly wasn’t Knox. It wasn’t anybody, because she couldn’t find the kind of man she wanted, and had stopped looking. Thirty-four and at the breaking point of her quest for celibacy until marriage, finally giving in and making love with the man who’d spent a quarter of his life being her occasional faux boyfriend would be convenient, an elegant solution to every issue that surrounded them: She wouldn’t die a virgin and he would get his inheritance.

Gross.

“Now, see, that’s the answer to the problem right there.”

The brief kiss ended abruptly, and she wheeled away, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

“Fuck you,” Knox snapped at the man who’d appeared in the doorway.

“No, fuck her,” Sebastian drawled. “Marry her. Knock her up. I don’t care in which order that happens.”

“Dude, I do not need this right now. I’m burying my wife.”

“Yeah, and we’re going to be burying you next since Giselle refuses to die.”

That was possible, if not probable, so Giselle said nothing. Knox, too, remained silent.

She looked at her cousin out of the corner of her eye as he glanced between her and Knox with his trademark scowl. Sebastian, at thirty-eight, was six-feet-two of classic black Irish, his face sinister even without the glower.

“We’d kill each other before a year was out,” Knox muttered.

“Why? You two have been together on and off since before you knew what tongues were for.”

“We have never been together,” Giselle snarled.

“Lots of people get married with less than what you two have. You don’t have to live together.” He pointed at Giselle. “Fen is never going to believe you won’t marry Knox just to take OKH away from him. You will have a price on your head unless or until you marry somebody else, and the odds of that happening are nil. Marry Knox and voilà, you’ve got the protection of the entire KCPD and the FBI. Everybody’s safe and happy until Knox inherits OKH.”

Giselle wrapped her arms around herself, chilled to her soul, and murmured, “The goal is for Knox to fulfill the terms of his inheritance. Marriage and a child. Leah was perfect because she already had one.”

“Yeah, okay. You both want kids, so—”

“Sebastian! You are asking me to have a child! Knox’s child. For what? Money.”

“Noooo,” Sebastian drawled. “To destroy Fen.”

“I can deal with him without whoring out my uterus,” she sneered.

“You’re not using it for anything else!”

She looked at him stonily. “I do not want to have sex with Knox, I do not want to live with him, and I most certainly do not want to have children with him.”

“That’s what adoption’s for. Get married, adopt a kid, live separately.”

“So it’s totally okay with you that an innocent human being gets dragged into this just so Knox can inherit and then gets shuttled around between two different homes. What, a child is just a tool to you? A working part?”

He bowed his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “No,” he said low. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” she drawled sarcastically. “That’s my point.”

He shot a glare at her. “Then make Fen go away.”

Her mouth tightened. Fantasizing about murdering the man who wanted to keep her from facilitating Knox’s inheritance was one thing. Doing it was another thing entirely.

“You know what?” Knox said. “Forget OKH. I don’t want it.”

Giselle whirled, her jaw on the floor, and Sebastian asked slowly, “What do you mean, you don’t want it?”

“I have no interest in it and it’s not worth the price.”

“Uh,” Sebastian said after a moment of stunned silence, “you’ve spent twenty years preparing to take over that company when you turn forty. When, exactly, did you have this change of heart?”

“The minute I took over the prosecutor’s office,” Knox snapped. “I can’t manage shit. I put people in jail and I teach. That’s all I’m good at.”

“That was eight years ago. Could you not have told us this sooner?”

He groaned. “I didn’t know how much I dreaded it until I was waiting for Leah to walk down the aisle, having to take a job I’m not suited for and don’t know how to do.”

“There are exactly two immediate solutions to the problem, neither of which you or Giselle are willing to do. So, of course it’s up to me to bail your ass out.”

“Nobody asked you to!” Knox nearly roared. “You’ve got your own agenda, which is to take Fen down, not to help me. My agenda is to not have to deal with it at all.”

Sebastian stared at him in stony silence. Giselle watched. Waited.

“Two people are dead,” Sebastian said low in his throat, “your father and your wife. Fen has taken out two hits on Giselle and she’s walking around with blood on her hands, looking over her shoulder. And you want to cut and run?”

That found its target.

“You’ll take out a serial killer to save people you don’t know, but you won’t do it again to avenge and save the people you love. Nice.”

“That’s not fair,” Giselle interjected. “He and Leah were twenty minutes away from solving the problem. In the last two weeks he’s been frantically looking for her, watching her get pulled out of a pond, and identifying her body. Then, while he’s making funeral arrangements, he has to deal with federal agents wanting to charge him with her murder. Have a little empathy for once in your life, and give him time and space to grieve and get his head together.”

Sebastian said nothing, but he was angry. With whom or what, exactly, she wasn’t sure, but he looked away first.

“Thank you,” Knox croaked.

“I’m not finished,” she said, looking at Knox now. He was adrift, needing to be told what to do and it was her job to get him anchored. It always had been. “Go back to your crooked little outfit up there in Chouteau County and think about your options for justice.” Knox’s nostrils flared and his face hardened to a glare. “The only way you’re going to get out from under OKH is by being dead. You,” she said, pointing at Sebastian, “business as usual. Any which way this turns out, you win, so stop whining. You would’ve done this a long time ago if Knox had come to his epiphany earlier.”

“You do remember Congress wants my head, right?”

“Stop it. There’s not enough brawn back there to string you up, much less brains. If you do get called up, you’ll find the whole thing a lark.” Giselle strode toward the door, expecting Sebastian to move out of her way. “I’m done talking. All we do is talk.”

“And what are you going to do then, my lovely?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“DON’T MOVE.”

The distinguished silver-haired gentleman halted at the cold round pressure at the back of his head. He stiffened when Giselle wrapped her hand around his throat, thumb and middle finger pressed into his carotids to keep him still.

She leaned forward.

“You are alive by Knox’s grace,” she whispered conversationally, “who has requested in good faith that I not kill you. If you try to have me killed again, if you attempt to kill Knox at all, if you pull any more stunts like killing any future brides, I’ll consider that a breach of good faith on your part. I should blow your head off for murdering Leah.

“I didn’t die in the fire your goons set. I didn’t die when your goons shot me. I’m alive and both of your goons are dead and barbecued—and the prosecutor was happy I did him the favor of cleaning up after him. So instead of being in the ground, I’m here. With you. Your security hasn’t a clue and the only thing keeping me from putting a bullet in your head right now is Knox. Have you learned nothing about me over the last thirty years? Do you really think you can take me on and win?”

She felt his throat bob against her fingertips.

“I didn’t think so. Have a nice evening, Unk.” She paused. “Oh, I almost forgot. Mom said to tell you Thanksgiving dinner will be at her house this year, two o’clock sharp, as usual.”

---

4: FREAKONOMICS

“BRYCE, ARE YOU okay?”

Bryce sat in his leather chair looking out over the city. High up in his corner office, all glass, he could see for miles—so very à propos for a pit bull of a trial lawyer.

He pursed his lips as he held his fingers steepled under his chin, feeling more like a teenager with his first crush than a thirty-eight-year-old mover and shaker.

Lilith.

“I’m fine,” he muttered, lying to his assistant without a thought.

Arlene snorted. “Fine, my ass.” Normally that would’ve pulled a grin out of him. Today … no.

Giselle.

Knox Hilliard’s lover.

He’d spent the last two nights googling that damned painting, studying it, re-reading its history and provenance and myth, comparing it to the woman who’d made him fantasize about things he hadn’t bothered to fantasize about in years. The work was part of the permanent collection in a gallery in England; he knew he had no hope of buying it, but he’d sent an email of inquiry anyway. Just in case. No one had responded.

“Have you seen the news today? Leah’s everywhere.”

Bryce spun around and googled.

OKHE bride murdered, groom suspected

He clicked the article and skimmed until his attention caught:

Bryce’s lip curled with cynical resentment. Fen should not have been released so easily from questioning since he had so much to gain from Leah’s death. When Bryce’s wife and four children had burned to death, the police had been waiting for him to be discharged from the hospital to arrest him for their murders because he’d had so much to gain. He’d been charged, spent weeks in jail, and his criminal trial began before the fire investigator had come back with the evidence that cleared him.

There were still people around town who thought Bryce really had murdered his wife and kids, then bought his way out from under the charge.

“I think Knox did it,” Arlene offered.

Bryce grunted. “He had no reason to, but Fen sure as hell did.”

“Fen Hilliard would never do something like that,” Arlene growled. He looked up, puzzled by her anger. “He signs the paychecks of half my family. He rescued OKH when we thought it was going to go under and he saved us. He’s a good man.”

Ah, yes. J. Fenimore Hilliard, a modern, moral version of Boss Tom Pendergast, straight out of 1930s Kansas City, its industrial knight in shining armor. Unlike Pendergast, however, Fen didn’t have a monopoly on government concrete contracts, nor could he use the Kansas City police department as his personal messenger service, nor did he have enough political power to put a man in the Senate.

He didn’t need it. He was on the right side of the law, his business acumen was unquestionably sharp, his philanthropy was sincere, and he employed a thousand people he paid very well. It was enough to make people forget he’d taken OKH over completely after his brother Oliver died, then married the widow, Trudy, a month after the funeral.

Bryce shouldn’t have been surprised at Arlene’s vehemence. She idolized Boss Tom, too.

By comparison, Knox Hilliard, Oliver and Trudy’s son and the heir to OKH, was hardly a model citizen. As the elected prosecutor of a neighboring county, he did have political power Fen didn’t have. Furthermore, his office was corrupt and he’d murdered a man in an act of vigilantism that kept him in power.

Those were the rumors, anyway. Knox had been brought in to be questioned for the execution-style murder of a serial killer Knox had tried—and lost—but the investigation had stalled out and no charges were ever brought. Everyone “knew” he’d done it, so it wasn’t difficult for anyone to believe he was capable of murdering his bride. Except … he had too much to lose by doing so. It simply made no sense that a man that brilliant would kill a woman he had seemed to love, who would also secure his inheritance for him.

“And,” Arlene added, “I would think you of all people would know better than to assume someone’s guilty just because everything points in his direction.”

His eyebrow rose at that, just enough to let her know she’d gone too far. Her mouth tightened and she turned to walk out of his office. He would’ve fired anyone else for saying that, true or not.

He turned back to the article.

Bryce wasn’t going to argue Knox’s worthiness to inherit OKH or ability to run it, but Fen wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns, and Knox did have his selling points, to wit: He was one of the best white-collar prosecutors in the country. His true talent, though, lay in turning baby lawyers into courtroom lions. His name on an attorney’s CV guaranteed a stellar career path. Under Knox’s leadership, the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office had evolved into a residency program for litigators whose tales of corruption and dirty money had yet to be substantiated by the FBI.

Not that it didn’t try. Every lawyer in town joked that the FBI had been back and forth to Knox’s office so many times, the Missouri Department of Transportation had to repave that section of highway every six months.

In a sidebar:

And Sebastian Taight was the monkey wrench in the power play between OKH’s CEO and its heir. Venture capitalist Taight had his fingers in so many pies nobody could keep track of them all; he even speculated heavily in art. Though scrupulously honest, he had a reputation for taking any leverage where he could get it, being completely ruthless about it, destroying anyone who even marginally pissed him off, and remaining silent to the press.

Taight had a lot of bitter enemies in Congress who wanted to get their hands on him, so the drumbeats on Capitol Hill calling for his head got a little louder every time he thumbed his nose at the SEC, every time he refused to explain his Fix-or-Raid policy. His aggressive takeover of OKH had made it worse: the Senate was agitating to haul him before a panel hearing.

But even with Congress against him, Taight had the power to crush both Fen and Knox Hilliard. Until the night of Leah’s visitation, Bryce, along with the rest of the financial industry, had assumed Taight to be on the warpath with both Hilliards, but now …

Before Lilith—Giselle—had caught his eye, Bryce had noted Taight shouldering up with Knox, giving him support, not leaving him to face the cream of society and bona fide mourners alone. The men were cousins, but they had acted more like brothers, which only left the question of why he wanted OKH so badly he was willing to destroy it to get it away from both Fen and Knox—and why Knox treated him like a brother anyway.

Fen Hilliard, Sebastian Taight, and Knox Hilliard, three of the most brilliant men in the country, were a family very publicly at war.

Bryce’s email dinged and he glanced at it to see if it required immediate attention. The art gallery that had Lilith. Heart pounding, he clicked on the subject line.

Though Bryce knew he wouldn’t have been able to have it at any price, disappointment stabbed at him anyway. He pulled up Lilith, and as he stared at her, he wondered what it would take to possess the real one, the one in the little black dress who answered to the name of Giselle.

---

5: OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE

October 2004

JUSTICE BOUNCED along the rutted driveway toward the farmhouse, her old car’s struts unable to absorb the shocks. She had no idea how much longer it could take the three-day-a-week eighty-four-mile round-trip from her village of River Glen, just north of Chouteau City, to the University of Missouri at Kansas City. It had made it through four years of undergrad needing only the repairs she could do herself. It was now slowly acquiring problems she could not repair herself because she didn’t have the equipment. If she believed in a god at all, she’d be on her knees begging for its longevity, at least for the five and a half semesters until she graduated from law school. With any luck, she’d continue to be able to arrange her schedule as well as she had this semester—

—even if that meant she wouldn’t have Dr. Hilliard, who only taught Tuesday and Thursday evening classes if he taught at all. She needed those two days during the week to work the farm, to the point that it was non-negotiable.

It didn’t matter anyway. There were so many women vying for his classes she’d never be able to register for them in time. It distressed her that she was only one amongst many of his admirers, so she tried not to think about it.

Sherry, however, was not one of the many. In fact, Justice, who had had three classes with Sherry, hadn’t seen her since the end of the second week. Had she been kicked out? Had she left? She should have been kicked out for outrageous unprofessional behavior, and Justice certainly would have left in shame if she’d behaved so badly.

There was a rumor that Dr. Hilliard had been sued for his outburst, which was exactly what Justice had expected to happen, and she was quite surprised he hadn’t been fired. One didn’t use the f-bomb in class toward a student, much less in its sexual connotation, without repercussions. He had to have known what would happen and he’d done it anyway—on Justice’s behalf.

Since nothing said crazy like stalking, cyber or otherwise, the only thing she learned since The Incident was that he had indeed been sued, but not by Sherry. The complainant wasn’t even one of her cohorts; it was some random woman who’d been in the class and claimed to feel threatened by his very presence on campus.

Seven figures.

That was what he might have to pay for defending Justice so viciously.

Once she had found the pleading, she had printed it out and carried it around like a talisman, and she felt dirty having done that much.

Of course, she knew that if he lost, he wouldn’t have to pay it. That was what insurance was for. No government employee had that kind of money at their disposal, even if the complainant settled for much less.

Still.

Once she had turned onto her property and parked in her usual spot, she sat for a moment, jolted back to reality at the sight of her lifelong home, trying desperately not to compare and contrast it to the homes in the fine old neighborhoods surrounding UMKC. She pointedly ignored the relatively new subdivisions as she drove into Kansas City, fine new houses she would never live in, in neighborhoods with rich grass and trees and flowers and sidewalks and friendly dogs, where people mowed lawns on Saturday, backyard barbecue was always on the menu, and children screamed and laughed and splashed and played. Loudly.

She shook her head, upset with her fantasies because they made her hurt for a life she would never have. It was time to put Dr. Hilliard and her other fantasies of living well out of her mind until bedtime. Real life was demanding her attention and she had to get to it.

The dilapidated farmhouse, indistinguishable from any other plain, filthy, white-clapboard-clad gothic farmhouse across the Midwest, listed on one corner. That could never be repaired without shoring up the foundation and it wasn’t worth the money. The yard was barren, packed dirt bisected by a poorly maintained gravel drive. It was used to park worn out and rusting farm machinery. The corrugated steel barn to the east of the house displayed a lace of rust. The abandoned chicken coop hadn’t housed chickens in four years.

The wheat crop would be poor. Justice had wanted to plant corn, but her father had overruled her. The fields were worn out, but her father also wouldn’t hear of letting her turn the cattle out into them. Certainly, it would be more economical to let them eat it than pay for harvesting.

Very good, Justice.

Seven figures.

You impressed the only person you needed to impress, just by being yourself.

She bit her lip, looked at the ragged wheat, at the thin cattle in the too-small pasture grazing on tufts, and made an executive decision. Then she mentally scoured the list of other things she had to do that afternoon and evening. She closed her eyes and sighed, seeing her future in her past, while desperately hoping her future would be a tad brighter once she graduated from law school, had a regular income, and could make something of this place.

Justice got out of her car and walked into the house, hearing the familiar squeaks in the bare floorboards all the way to the tiny kitchen that hadn’t changed since the Depression. There was a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, an ancient stove and refrigerator, a sink she couldn’t get clean, and an even more ancient refrigerator dedicated to her father’s beer. The windows were open and ratty curtains were blowing.

She shouldn’t complain. There were lots of people who had less than she did. She knew. She drove through those inner-city neighborhoods to get to school.

She flipped on the light and looked around. It was cleaner than it looked, but that didn’t say much. She didn’t want to fix her dinner in a dirty kitchen, but she was hungry and she had chores that had to be done before the sun set. Then she had to do schoolwork. She sighed heavily as she looked around. There was no time to clean. If she managed to make her bed every morning and dust mop her room once a week, it was an accomplishment.

“Justice.”

She jumped and looked over her shoulder at her father, standing in the doorway of the kitchen in worn overalls. “What.”

“Your student loan come in?”

“It’s a student loan. I spent it.”

His eyebrows shot into his hairline. “All of it?”

“Yes,” she lied without a hitch. There were no student loans. She’d paid for her BS with grants and scholarships. She was paying for her JD the same way. The farm hadn’t turned a profit for years and now it wasn’t even breaking even, so those funds kept the farm limping along, too.

She was very proud of herself. She had to be.

No one else would be.

“The tractor needs to be fixed or we can’t harvest the wheat.”

“The wheat’s useless,” she said flatly, dumping her stuff on the floor and jerking open the refrigerator. “I’m turning the cattle out into it.”

To her shock, he didn’t argue.

“Why don’t you fix the tractor? You can do it as well as I can and you’re here all day.”

“I got other things to do.”

Like what? She almost asked, but didn’t have the energy for the argument that would ensue.

“Bossy needs milkin’.”

“Bossy’s milked out,” she said wearily. “Has been for a month.” Which he would’ve known if he’d gotten out of bed to milk her in the mornings, but because he hadn’t, she had no milk left. Either he didn’t get that or didn’t care.

“Justice!” he barked, startling her again. “You got your goddamned college degree. Put away that law school bullshit and get back to work here! This is our business.”

More her business than his, since she did the majority of the work and paid the majority of its bills. She had to get this farm profitable before she graduated because she would only qualify for grants and scholarships as long as she was a student. “You do understand I can make more money as a lawyer than I can as a farmer, right?” she asked blithely as she pulled out fixings for a sandwich.

“Fat lotta good that’ll do when we’re starving by the time you get a job.”

Justice had no intention of allowing herself to starve, but she was almost out of beef and she didn’t have any animals worth butchering. She’d have to go hunting this winter. She was ambivalent about the chore itself, but she resented having to do it, because she wouldn’t have to do it if her father pulled his weight. She slid him and his paunch a look. “You got beer, don’tcha?”

“Don’t you talk to me like that.”

She didn’t bother to ask Or what? because there was no or what. There was only Justice going out to take care of the farm, then studying till midnight, then getting up in the morning to do more farm chores before heading off to school.

Not for the first time, Justice wished she had siblings. Several. If she ever had a family, she’d have lots of children so none of them would be lonely.

Munching on her sandwich, she trudged through the wheat to the pasture beyond to let the cattle into the grain. That done, she headed to the barn and stopped at the old boombox, beside which was a box filled with cassette tapes her mother had stashed in the attic before she died. It was in those boxes Justice had found the music of her memories of her mother: Earth Wind & Fire, Carole King, Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Alan Parsons. And the music of her heart: Rush. U2. Led Zeppelin. Boston. Pink Floyd.

Bossy, if she had any milk left, would only cooperate if Justice’s mother’s favorite music was playing.

“What do you want to listen to this evening, Bossy?” Justice asked vaguely as she clicked through the plastic cases. She was greeted with a snort and a huff. “Bitch,” Justice muttered. She and Bossy didn’t get along very well.

She picked one, pressed play, and heard Bette Midler’s voice.

“That’s enough of you,” Justice muttered as she finished milking the old cow. She was shocked she got a full pail of milk, but now she’d have to churn—

She dropped her face in her palm when Bossy kicked it. She hadn’t given milk in a month and the first time she did because Libby’s favorite song was playing, she kicked it as soon as the song was over.

“All right, Bossy,” Justice said heavily as she arose, put the stool and pail away, unclipped the cow from her stall. “I’ll let you out in the field tonight.”

Bette Midler was singing Bossy out the door, but Justice only cared about that one song. She had to push the eject button on the tape deck several times before it would open, and her already bad mood worsened each time it refused. She had very little patience with it, but it was one of few precious links to her mother.

Years ago, with her mother’s hopes and grandfather’s admonitions ringing in her ears, Justice had finally worked out a simple plan and, with some trepidation, informed her father of it: One— Work the farm, get a bachelor’s degree. Two—Work the farm, get a law degree. Three— Get a job, work the farm. Four— Work, work, work. As long as the farm came first, he’d decided to be satisfied with taking potshots at her and taunting her with her imminent failure.

From the moment her grandfather told her to become a prosecutor, she’d been looking forward to a steady paycheck, health insurance, and air conditioning. But in order to do that and work the farm, she only had three counties to choose from: Chouteau, Buchanan, and Clinton. The Clay and Jackson County seats were too far to drive every day. She had always figured this into her plan with no knowledge of the Chouteau County prosecutor until that day two months ago when he had defended her, validated her, touched her. If he wouldn’t hire her, she’d work in legal aid just to have contact with him.

I daresay none of you has thought that deeply about what you want and why you want it.

She swept her fingertips across her chin where Dr. Hilliard had touched her so gently, smiling dreamily as she went back to the house to get another Red Bull and sandwich, then headed to her room to check the blogs she frequented. She wasn’t a regular commenter; she preferred to keep her head down and her politics to herself—although that hadn’t gone very well her third day of law school, wearing them on her sleeve for all to laugh at.

The latest National Review had arrived. “Oh!” She flipped through the pages quickly to find the article she had written and submitted simply because a well-respected man who didn’t know her had found value in her opinions.

She had never expected it to be published.

She had never expected to be paid.

She had also never expected to be asked to write more.

With a wistful smile, she looked up and out the window at the cattle that were chewing their cud. There was Bossy chowing down. Justice hit speed dial.

“Yeah, hey, it’s Justice. Can you send a truck out here tomorrow? I have a cow I want to butcher.”

Her phone chimed, but she ignored it while she made arrangements to put Bossy in the deep freeze. Then she hung up and read her email.

She gasped. Giggled. Squealed, even. TownSquared was the biggest conservative blog on the internet and they wanted her to write for them?

Very good, Justice.

She went to bed that night with her copy of Fawn Ogwin vs. Knox Hilliard and University of Missouri System under her pillow, whipping up scenarios of how it might be with Dr. Hilliard in her life, in love, in bed.

---

6: HOT, LOOSE & CLEAN

April 2005

GISELLE PUT HER backpack on a remote corner of her desk, careful not to dislodge piles of papers and microcassette tapes. She sighed, wishing people would respect her clearly marked IN box and stop cluttering up her space.

She hated clutter.

After collecting a bottle of water from the fridge, she began putting her night’s work in order and checked the server for dictation. It looked to be a light night. If she finished early, she could go home and sleep.

It was four p.m. when Giselle put the buds in her ears and began to type. Briefs, pleadings, letters, contracts—she could do them all by heart. One day, not soon enough, she would be the one dictating and not the one transcribing. She couldn’t wait to get the hell out of this cubicle, which she resented all the more after having built a business and nurtured it for so many years, only to watch it burn to the ground.

Starting over again at her age and with her background really sucked.

Thanks a bunch, Uncle Fen.

Since it was still a half hour before the end of the regular workday, the office was bustling with admins, paralegals, and lawyers going this way and that. Giselle sat off the beaten path, but that didn’t stop many attorneys from making pointed detours to her desk to drop off work, to chat, and every so often, in the case of the more persistent, to ask her out.

She’d typed for three or four hours in the quiet of an empty office building before she caught sight of a particularly persistent attorney heading her way.

“Geez,” she muttered. She had politely declined his numerous invitations, but that didn’t stop him from pursuing her anyway and making himself a general pain in her ass.

Ralph (who insisted everyone pronounce it “Rafe”) propped his hip on her desk and waited for her to acknowledge him. Though she would like to ignore him, she couldn’t. If the attorneys wanted to monopolize her time with chitchat, they could, even though it threw her off her self-imposed schedule. It was now eight o’clock. She wanted to leave by eleven.

She pulled her earbuds out and asked politely, “What can I do for you?”

“Go to the Ford exhibit at the Kemper Gallery with me on Saturday?”

She shook her head. “Study groups.”

“Ford’s an artist. Have you ever seen his art?” he asked slyly.

If he only knew. “You know I’m trying to get through law school, but even if I weren’t, which I have explained to you before, I don’t date outside my faith.” That was her standard lie.

“Right. How could I forget all about you nice little Mormon girls?” It was nothing she hadn’t heard before, with the same contempt, and from more interesting men than Ralph. “I think that’s just a bullshit excuse.”

“Oh? So are you assuming I’m using it as an excuse not to go out with you?”

His face hardened just a bit. She knew men’s moods, so she didn’t miss the change in his demeanor. Ralph had always seemed relatively harmless, but now her annoyance turned to wariness. She kept her face carefully blank until—

He leaned into her personal space and murmured, “I could make things very difficult for you here.”

She stared at him a few seconds before she burst out laughing. “Is that the best you can do?”

Ralph drew back at that, surprised. His lips thinned and he struggled to come up with a reply.

Giselle chuckled. “I thought so. If you have work for me, please drop it in my box and I’ll have it to your admin by morning.”

His nostrils flared at having been dismissed. “I don’t think you want to cross me, Ms Cox.”

“Ralph,” she said slowly, pronouncing the “lph” sound with great precision. Rising from her chair, she closed the gap between them until her nose nearly touched his. “I am not going to fuck you.” Her husky whisper made him breathe a little harder. “Not today. Not tomorrow. Not in a thousand lifetimes. Threaten me. Try to intimidate me. I dare you to go to Hale and make up some story you think will get me fired.”

She rocked back on her heel and crossed her arms over her chest, one eyebrow raised. He attempted to salvage his ego: “You’re going to be very sorry about this.”

“Ralph.”

Giselle and Ralph both started at the deep, hoarse, cold male voice behind them and turned.

Her breath caught in her throat.

Occasionally, Giselle’s eye was caught by a man so captivating, her chest ached with desire. It wasn’t simple lust. It was a craving for the whole package, and she was far more susceptible to a man’s presence, his charisma, than she was his looks. She would want him to notice her and pursue her, but he never would, and she never made herself known because she didn’t want to be sneered at or rejected.

The man in front of her was one of those men, and she had never seen an uglier, more disfigured person in her life. It took her two seconds to assess him thoroughly. Burn scars matted the left half of his face and disappeared down into his collar. He was tall, with broad, strong shoulders and lean torso in perfectly tailored olive silk-and-wool blend. He had vivid green eyes and short black hair. He smelled divine. His left hand was just as scarred as his face, but he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. He had a light tan that made pinpointing his ethnicity impossible.

He was as exotic as he was disfigured.

He was also pissed off.

“Hey, buddy!” Ralph said with nervous cheer. Giselle looked over her shoulder to see her coworker’s now pale face.

“When you’re feeling froggy,” the man rumbled, “you just go ahead and jump.”

“Aw, man.” He forced a laugh. “It’s just a little running gag we have. Right, Giselle?”

She rolled her eyes. “Nice try.”

“Pack up your desk.”

“You don’t work here,” Ralph crabbed.

“No, but I don’t think your boss’ll mind that I’ve invited you to hand in your resignation.”

Giselle took the opportunity to stare at the stranger shamelessly, wondering what lay beneath all that finely tailored silk, wool, and cotton … Wondering how long she’d remain a “good little Mormon girl” if that man had the good sense to ask her out, because she was about to brave her shyness.

“Your office better be cleaned out when I leave here tonight.”

Ralph tried again, as any decent lawyer should. “You can’t prove anything.”

The man crossed his massive arms over his broad chest and drawled, “Does it matter?”

Giselle almost melted and she was sure the stars in her eyes could be seen from space.

“Thanks, Giselle,” Ralph snarled as he stalked away.

“Anytime!” she trilled over her shoulder, then looked back at her rescuer. “Thank you!” she said in her most cheerful voice with her most charming smile. She looked at him wide-eyed, wanting—begging—him to invite her to … something. Dinner, maybe. Ballet, theater, symphony, opera—any one of them would do. She would love to dress up for this man. “I was afraid I’d have to take him out to the woodshed.”

“You’re welcome,” he said tersely without laughing at her dumb joke. He turned to go.

Damn!

“Well, wait,” she said, scurrying after him. She couldn’t bear to let another one of those men go and she needed to stall him long enough to figure out how to keep his attention now that she had it. But her flirting lacked finesse because she was too direct, too open, too … unpracticed. She offered her hand and announced, “Giselle Cox.”

He glanced down at her hand. He didn’t take it. “Ms Cox,” he murmured, looking her up and down with a slight sneer. Then he walked away.

She felt like she’d caught a fist in her breastbone, and she could only stare after him, stunned, speechless, about to cry.

“Oh, so I guess I did something to deserve that?” she demanded.

He stopped short.

Turning halfway, he pinned her with those eyes and his expression was stony. “I’m sure,” he replied, his tone measured and precise, “that you think you’re entirely blameless.”

Her eyes widened and her nostrils flared. Oh, no. No. Men did not talk to her like that. The stars in her eyes were gone. “Fuck you,” she snarled. “You don’t know me from Eve.”

His eyebrow rose at that. “Lilith, rather.”

With that, he continued on his way, leaving her dumbfounded, nauseated, and sick at heart.

---

7: RUSTY ARMOR

WHAT THE HELL had made him say that?

Shock.

Shock at seeing her, of actually meeting her. Here. In his own lawyer’s office. Working as a second-shift transcriptionist.

It hadn’t occurred to him that Knox’s lover might have to work for a living. Knox always took care of his women well; he could afford to with all the untraceable money that ran through his office. Certainly, Leah had had the best of everything and had only worked because her vocation as a dietitian had been a source of joy to her.

Bryce fought the urge to turn around and walk backward just so he could stare at Lilith longer. Her rich golden-red hair—why had he thought it dull blonde?—was in a ponytail bound with a pert yellow ribbon and dripping large, loose corkscrews to her nape. She was wearing faded Levi’s, white tee shirt, flamboyant green, purple, and yellow vest that looked like a refugee from a Mardi Gras rag bag, and moccasins.

If only he didn’t know that she wore a gun under cocktail dresses at funerals.

If only he hadn’t heard her say I am not going to fuck you with the bored amusement of a woman who knew what to do with a man who couldn’t understand the word no.

If only she hadn’t turned on the charm and looked at Bryce like that.

He groaned softly.

Bryce knew when a woman found him physically attractive, but it hadn’t happened since his fire. He’d been intimidating before his fire, with his big body and dark summer tan, but it had always been mitigated by his attractiveness. With his body intact but his beauty long gone, he was terrifying. More than one woman who’d found his wallet intriguing had spoken to his necktie in an effort to avoid looking at his face, and even then they could barely hide their disgust. Most children scrambled to stay away from him, whispering monster to their mothers.

He was used to scaring people, to having to work for their trust, to walking into a courtroom knowing he’d have to charm people into forgetting what he looked like, to get them to hear the care and concern in his shredded voice.

Giselle Cox, a woman who’d tormented him for the last six months, a woman he had never expected to meet, a woman he couldn’t begin to hope would find him attractive … did.

Or did she?

Was he imagining things?

Wishful thinking?

No. She couldn’t be faking it. She was too earnest. Too clumsy. Too obvious about what she wanted from him and it wasn’t his money.

Or was it an act?

That was very possible. Looking into his face without flinching wasn’t evidence of anything. Polite and very well-socialized people could do that.

But what if … ?

What if … ?

Deep breath. He held it, then puffed it out again in a whoosh.

All the way through the meeting with his attorney he felt distracted, scattered.

“Bryce? You with me?”

He shook his head to clear it. “Your typist out there—the redhead—?”

“Giselle?”

It was all wrong, the way Ralph and Geoff pronounced her name, ja-ZELL. “I … think so?”

“What about her?”

“Your idiot attorney Ralph ‘Call Me Rafe’ was hitting on her as I was walking in. Threatened to get her fired if she didn’t go out with him. He was a little too pushy for my comfort, so I suggested he have his office cleaned out by the time I left. I hope you don’t mind me stepping into your business like that.”

Geoff blinked. “Uh … oh. Good. Thank you. He was a problem child anyway.” He turned to his computer for a moment and as he typed, he muttered, “Good thing he hit on Giselle instead of anybody else, though.”

“Mmm?” Bryce kept his voice casual to invite more comment.

He shrugged. “She’s quiet. Keeps to herself.”

“It’s always the quiet ones,” Bryce said with just the right amount of disinterested amusement.

“Yep. But when somebody gets in her face, she takes no prisoners.”

Fuck you. Bryce’s heart was racing. He would’ve fired anyone who said that to a client, but he had no intention of relaying that conversation. “You tolerate that from an admin?”

“I will damn sure tolerate it from women who can take care of themselves and aren’t quietly putting up with it until they quit or running to HR for every slip of the tongue.”

That was not a bad point.

“Brilliant woman,” he went on. “Working her way through law school on the five-year program and this is easy money. She’s interning for me this summer.” Bryce hid his shock. “I cannot wait to throw her in a courtroom. Enough ego and charm to pull anything off and the brains and balls to back it up.”

Fuck you. Now Bryce was wondering if Hale wouldn’t simply find it funny.

“Is she married?”

Hale started to laugh. “I forgot to mention that she’s rather attractive,” he drawled smugly, “but I see you noticed that.”

Bryce kept his expression carefully blank. “I’ll take that as a no.”

He shrugged. “Don’t know, but I can put a bug in her ear if you’re interested.”

“Not on the market,” Bryce murmured, frustrated with himself for going too far. Hale was no fool, but he said no more about Giselle Cox, and for that, Bryce was grateful.

“Oh, by the way,” Hale said as he shook Bryce’s hand at the office door once their annual meeting had come to a close, “my condolences on your client. Leah Wincott, was it?”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Very nice lady.”

“I wish I could believe Knox killed her,” Hale said, “but he’s got too much to lose. Fen’s the most likely suspect, but nobody’d believe it.”

“Agreed,” Bryce said, then started. “Hey, isn’t Fen your client?”

“Oh, no,” Hale returned. “I haven’t met a Hilliard yet that I liked and that includes Knox’s father. My wife’s been bitching about Trudy Hilliard for years, then Fen and I had a couple of meetings before I decided I didn’t want to do business with him.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t know. He’s honest. Smart. He’s good to the community, good to his employees. There’s just  … something … off. I’d trust Knox before I’d trust Fen because you know exactly what you’re getting. And that proviso? Taight? That whole situation’s a nasty tangle.”

And your brilliant budding litigator is intimately mixed up in it.

Bryce kept what he knew to himself because mentioning Ms Cox’s relationship with Knox would get her fired. He didn’t generally volunteer information at all, but that was three times now he’d felt the need to protect her. Why?

“I’m going home,” Hale said on a yawn. “What time is it anyway?”

Bryce looked at his watch. “Little after midnight. Geez, Geoff, I’m sorry.”

He waved a hand. “No need. It’ll be in your statement.”

As Bryce walked to the elevator, he couldn’t help but cast a look toward Lilith’s tidy, empty cube. Disappointment settled in his chest, but he only sighed and continued on his way—

—then stopped cold when he got to the parking garage and stared at the occupant of the only other car in the lot besides his.

She couldn’t see him from where she sat in her older model generic Chevy. The windows were open and from the way her head tilted back against the seat rest, she might be asleep or she might be hurt.

On impulse, he walked across the lot, noting how the April breeze teased her ponytail and the ends of the ribbon. She was dozing, a thick textbook open and lying face down on her chest. Her head lolled to the right exposing the underside of her jaw and throat.

He imagined all the things he wanted to do to that throat; remembered her as she had been that night six months ago with her skirt pulled up enough for him to see the top of her black stocking; wanted to see the rest of her body, naked, underneath his.

But right now he needed to find out if she was faking her attraction.

Bryce squatted down beside the car and watched her for a few more seconds. “Ms Cox,” he murmured, then found himself with the barrel of that gun bored right in the middle of his forehead.

She immediately flipped it up and away from him once recognition dawned, but her face still held that tense, wild look of someone startled out of her wits.

“I am so sorry,” she murmured, her delicate voice husky with sleep. His cock strained at his fly. She rubbed her eyes, stowed her gun in the glove compartment, put the textbook in the backpack next to her, then stretched as far as she could within the confines of her car. Her nipples hardened in the cool night air, through her thin white tee shirt and the nearly nothing bra underneath it.

Bryce released a strangled breath. He’d never wanted a woman so badly in his life.

She came down from her stretch with a hard glint in her eyes, an ice blue that could sear a man in half. He had the oddest feeling that he had seen those eyes somewhere before.

“What do you want.” Clipped, hostile. Not a question.

“I wanted to tell you how foolish it is to sleep in an empty Plaza parking garage in the middle of the night with your windows rolled down, but I see it’s occurred to you.”

“Yeah, I totally meant to fall asleep here,” she sneered. “Anything else?”

She was pulsing with rage and contempt, and he wasn’t imagining that. He shouldn’t be surprised. That bridge’s ashes were already scattered in the wind.

“Actually, yes,” he said, shocking himself. “I wanted to know if you’d like a late dinner.”

She blinked. “’Scuse me?”

He’d boxed himself in well. “Dinner. Or breakfast. Whatever.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she snarled. She shoved her car key into the ignition and turned the engine over.

“I got Ralph off your back.” Lame. True, but lame.

“Lame!” she snapped. “I don’t know who you are or who you think you are, but I assure you: You have never met a woman like me, and you never will again.”

So saying, she reached over and grabbed the knot of his necktie to jerk him to her. Surprised, he didn’t fight, but when her lips touched his and her tongue swept his mouth, he took over, wrapping his hand around the back of her head and crushing her to him.

He directed it.

He deepened it.

He lengthened it.

He opened his eyes to watch her. Her face was a study in desire, her eyes closed, her breath ragged, her tongue matching his stroke for stroke, shift for shift. She sighed into his mouth and released his tie to caress his neck, the scars there, her thumb stroking his jaw line while their tongues mated.

No, she wasn’t faking it.

Which made him harder.

Suddenly she gasped and her eyes popped open, staring at him as if she’d lost herself somewhere inside him. She had. He’d surprised her, taken the power position away from her, and she didn’t know how to take it back.

She jerked away from him, her breathing heavy and her eyes wide. “You—” She stopped. Swallowed. “I—” Bit her lip. Fumbled for the gear shift.

Bryce stood, then wrapped his hand tightly around her chin. He tilted her head up, forcing her to look at him, an odd mixture of panic and passion in her expression.

Now what was he supposed to do?

“Be careful what you wish for, Ms Cox,” he purred with a small, victorious smile. “You might get it.” Then he turned and strode toward his own car without looking back, wondering what she’d make of that.

---

8: ENERGIZER RABBIT

August 2005

“AH, SUNDAY AGAIN,” Sebastian intoned when Giselle opened her bedroom door. He was on the couch watching a movie, an Old Fashioned glass in his hand. “I don’t even know why you bother going to church. You’re not the most sterling example of Mormon womanhood ever.”

“Technically, I am,” she protested as she went into the kitchen to scrounge for lunch before going to church.

“With your mouth? And your body count?”

Once she’d collected her snack, she joined her cousin in the living room, and he put the movie on pause. He wanted to … talk? He was drinking Scotch, so he must have as much on his mind as she had on hers.

“My vocabulary and the souls I have shuffled off this mortal coil wouldn’t keep me from being able to go to the temple if I wanted to.”

“Killing a man in cold blood would get you that excommunication you’ve been bucking for for the last couple of years.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted me to do.”

“I’d settle for quadriplegia so you won’t go to hell.”

“How magnanimous of you. I threatened him. Doesn’t count.”

“Have you ever made a threat you haven’t carried out?”

“Okay, look. Say I go to the bishop¹ and say, ‘Ready to go to the temple’⁵ and he whips out the list of questions. I can answer every single one honestly. I pay my tithing. I don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t do drugs. I’m honest, I believe in the atonement of Christ—” Sebastian rolled his eyes. “—I pay all my child support and don’t batter my spouse—” He laughed. “—I uphold the priesthood² and the prophet of God. I’m thirty-five and still a virgin. Guess what? Instant temple recommend.⁷ And there I go to the temple and demonstrate my obedience to the Lord’s commandments. Except for the husband and kids part, but I can’t do anything about that. My mom would be happy. She thinks it’ll keep me out of trouble.”

“If you do that, you’ll have to trade in your Victoria’s Secret for magic underwear.⁸ Bye bye Daisy Dukes, hello board shorts.”

Giselle glared at him. “Cut it out.”

“And you forgot that general and all-encompassing ‘unresolved issues’ question.”

“I have no unresolved issues. Just because I’m not exactly leadership material doesn’t mean I don’t qualify as a good Mormon girl. And what do you mean, bucking for an excommunication?”

“You know exactly what I mean. Your opinions’ll get you in trouble faster than murdering Fen will.”

That wasn’t true, but he’d made his point. Giselle had always been different; she knew it, everybody at church knew it. She garnered respect and friendly acquaintances across various social strata in her ward, but everyone knew she’d eventually say or do something scandalous because she managed to do it with amazing regularity—usually without meaning to.

“I don’t spout false doctrine and I don’t foment apostasy. Not conforming to tradition and culture and unwritten rules might irritate people but it doesn’t get you ex’d. Neither does having unpopular politics. Besides, my bishop thinks I’m very entertaining.”

Sebastian grunted. “Your real problem is you’re as attracted to the profane as you are the sacred. You can’t bring yourself to pick one and stick with it, so you straddle the fence between them.”

That fence had a lot of splinters, too.

“As far as I can see, there’s no reward in sticking with the church’s idea of sacred. So tell me something: Would you tell your bishop why all the double-A batteries in this house disappear so fast?”

She flushed.

Sebastian smirked. “So technically, you aren’t following all the official rules. He’d laugh you out of his office with a ‘Stop doing that and come back to see me again in six months.’”

“Three,” she muttered.

He burst out laughing. “Standards are slipping, I see. Speaking of that, buy your own batteries or get yourself off the old-fashioned way ’cause I’m not supporting your habit anymore. And oh, let’s not forget your pièce de résistance. Would you tell him about that?”

Something had changed inside Giselle once she’d turned that corner into territory almost no one at church would understand: She had killed and she felt absolutely no remorse.

“No,” she admitted. “Self-defense is fine, but he’s no dummy. He’d ask me if I had anything to do with Knox’s faux pas and then I’d have to lie to him.”

“Faux pas.”

“What am I going to say? ‘He needed killin’’?”

“I think your exact words were ‘He needed to die.’”

She sniffed. “No remorse, nothing to resolve.”

“Giz,” he said with some exasperation, “do you really plan on going to the temple?”

She hesitated. “I don’t want to go alone, no.¹⁰ I’ve been hoping to meet a member … ”

Sebastian snorted. “You aren’t going to find Hank Rearden at church.” Hank Rearden, the protagonist of a political fable by a fringe political philosopher, his name mere shorthand for a characteristic that defied description.

Patheticpatheticpathetic.

“Point taken. But I’m not cluttering up my life with a string of almosts and maybes and potentials, and I’m not cut out for random fucking. If I can’t have exactly what I want, I’ll go without.” She paused when she caught his look and slid down into the upholstery. “Mostly,” she grumbled.

“If your collection of erotica is anything to go by, you don’t know what the hell you want. Some of that shit’s not so fun and the rest of it’s not worth the trouble. And I highly doubt your bishop knows what you read.”

She was too old and too honest with herself to say that she was still technically a virgin because it was what she’d been taught all her life: No sex before marriage. Don’t put oneself in temptation’s way. Avoid the appearance of evil. Marriage to a worthy member of the priesthood in the temple, where the words “till death do you part” were not part of the ceremony. Marriage was for eternity.¹¹

She’d prepared, been obedient, but her childbearing years were fading fast, even as her libido ramped up on her way from thirty-five to forty, and for her, the pool of desirable Mormon men had dried up ten years ago. She personally knew seven other never-married women her age and unless she ran into some smart, educated, divorced man or widower (probably looking for a mother for his kids) who was truthful about his life, who might not be thoroughly disgusted by what she’d ask for in bed, she was shit out of luck.

And now here she was, about to begin her fourth year of law school, still in last-ditch-effort-to-make-something-of-her-life mode.

“You’re not going to find Rearden outside the church, either. Let me fix you up with somebody. I know half a dozen CEOs who’d love a woman like you. They’d respect you, treat you well. So they aren’t members of the church, but they’re good men. If you want to get married and have kids before your eggs dry up, you’re going to have to figure out what you’ll give up for it. Forget the temple marriage¹² and settle for walking down the aisle like normal people.”

Truth be told, she’d rather walk down the aisle in a killer dress than pop into the temple for a fifteen-minute ritual in a plain white dress with a low-key cake-and-punch reception in the church gym¹³ afterward. If she married a non-Mormon, which wasn’t prohibited nor especially blinked at, she could have a big ceremony and reception.

But the simple temple ritual was the goal, had been the goal since she was born, and she was uncomfortable giving up that goal. It was a marker, a signifier of tribal conformity, a rite of passage. It was also very inexpensive. Since most brides paid most of a wedding’s expenses, Giselle would never be able to afford the kind of lavish wedding and reception she’d want.

Was giving up the goal worse than growing older, alone, and more tired?

Tired of going to church every Sunday and hearing about how to be a better wife and mother, being asked to take on extra tasks because she didn’t have a family to take up her time, feeling the outsider not because she had unorthodox opinions, but because she was a thirty-something single woman in a church that was all about family. She hadn’t been to church on Mother’s Day in fifteen years.

“Celibacy’s not natural at our age, Giz. We’ve had this conversation before.”

Tired of not having a warm, breathing, naked man in bed with her every night, a man who would understand her and love her in spite of the sharp edges she didn’t want dulled, a man who would make all these years of celibacy worth the wait.

“The only guys who ask me out are ones I have zero interest in, so it’s a moot point. Besides which, I’m one of those girls who’ll fall in love with the first guy she has sex with and I don’t want to get my heart broken.”

But it was too late to keep her heart uncracked and she hadn’t had to date or have sex to get it that way. She looked down at her scarlet linen skirt and felt her eyes sting. If she started crying, she’d have to explain and then fix her makeup, which would make her late for church.

“Okay, out with it. Who is he?”

Damn Sebastian and his eye for detail. But why not tell him? She didn’t have anybody else to talk to.

“I don’t know his name,” she admitted.

“What did he do to you?”

He stole my soul.

She picked at a piece of nonexistent lint. “He was contemptuous of me,” she muttered wearily. “I don’t know why. It made me mad and then we had an argument and then I— We … kissed.”

There were several seconds of silence before he slowly said, “You let a man you just met, whose name you don’t know, in your personal space, long enough for him to kiss you, after he insulted you?”

She could feel the flush creep back up her face. She cleared her throat. “Um, well, I— I, uh … Actually, I kissed him and … he kissed me back.” Sebastian gaped at her as she haltingly told him what happened, his astonishment growing with each word.

“When did this happen?” he asked when she finished.

“In April. At work. Hale’s client.”

“So that’s why you’ve been moping around like a kicked puppy.” She said nothing. “He was contemptuous of you but he wants to fuck you.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Maybe? Yes? I don’t understand.”

“So find out who he is from your boss and ask him.”

Her head snapped up, her eyes wide in horror. “Oh, I don’t think so. His suit and shoes were bespoke.”

Sebastian would empathize with any man of wealth beset by women whose interest in him was driven solely by his net worth. “But he wants you too, so that doesn’t follow. What makes you think he’s a Rearden?”

“He’s a warrior. You can tell. He’s bigger than you. He’s—” She stopped and thought. “It was the way he looked at me, like he wanted to … do what Rearden did to Dagny.”

Sebastian pursed his lips. “You better be careful with that, Giz. Not many men could throw a woman at a bed, fuck her until she can’t walk, make her do exactly what he wants her to do and then not carry that outside the bedroom. Bigger than me, huh? I can pick you up and toss you over my shoulder.”

“Yeah, a lot of guys could do that. No one’s ever had the balls to try. That’s my point.”

“No, no Mormon man has ever had the balls to try. You haven’t given anyone else half a chance.”

She said nothing else for a moment. There was that other thing—

“He, um … He called me Lilith.”

“So he knows his art well enough to catch the resemblance.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

He gave a Gallic shrug. “That only means he wants to fuck you and he’s pissed about it.”

“But why? I have never seen him before in my life. He acted like I’d wronged him sometime in the past.” She huffed. “Explain this to me.”

“I don’t know, but whatever it is, it doesn’t have anything to do with you personally, especially since he kissed you back and took control.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she mumbled. “I’m not going to throw myself at a rich man, much less one who doesn’t like me, and there’s no way I could work that out without looking like a whore.” Especially with that face, which must make it exponentially more difficult for him. “Or desperate.”

“Would you fuck him if he came after you?”

She looked at her cousin without seeing him, her tongue running over her teeth in thought. Finally, she drew in a deep breath and whispered, “Yes.”

Sebastian squinted at her. “Didn’t you just tell me you didn’t want to get your heart broken by a guy who only wanted to get you in bed?”

“Generally, yes. But sometimes, a guy will catch my eye. And keep it. And I want to talk to him, but I never do.”

“So you are willing to gamble on a guy you’re really attracted to who’s attracted to you too and he doesn’t have to be a member of the church after all.”

She sniffled. “Maybe so. A guy I want who wants me enough to pursue me.”

“He can’t pursue you if he hasn’t seen you, doesn’t know you exist. You have to get his attention and give him the opportunity.”

“I know, but I don’t want to be sneered at.”

He thought about that for a second, then grimaced. “And … the first man whose attention you tried for sneered at you.”

She was silent for a moment. “Not … the first one,” she said low. “And that one sure as hell didn’t sneer at me.”

“What?”

She pursed her lips. “When I was at BYU,” she began contemplatively. She’d never told anyone this story, and had, in fact, forgotten it in the intervening years. “The beginning of my junior year. I was at Knox’s house tutoring one of my karate students.  … I’m in my gi, all nasty, hair frizzed out, face red as a beet because I’d been working out for hours, right? Glasses. Braces. Remington Steele walks through the front door.” Sebastian’s eyebrows rose. “I took a quick glance, died a little inside, and went on with what I was doing.”

“I thought you said you tried for his attention.”

“Oh, I got his attention, all right.” She took a deep breath. “He noticed me. He looked at me like he wanted to drag me off to bed and I’m all sticky and stinky and gross and a walking advertisement for a ‘before’ pic at Glamour Shots.”

He blinked. “Really?”

Giselle nodded. “Like, why?”

“So … ?”

“He was married.”

Sebastian groaned.

“Yeah.” Now she was completely choked up. “I forgot about it after a while, but it kind of set the stage, you know?”

“Then this guy sneered at you but took everything you gave him anyway.”

“Yes. I hadn’t given any of this too much thought before that happened. Too much to do, too much stress, too much drama. But it’s been all I can think about since I kissed him.”

“Eh, if he’d approached you back then, you probably would’ve blown him off.”

Her eyebrow rose. “Would you want to be hit on when you’re fat and smell like you’ve rolled in pig shit?”

Sebastian pursed his lips. “Mmmm, guess not.”

She looked up at her cousin and blurted, “I haven’t gone to the temple by myself because if I do, I feel like I’ll be admitting that I’m not wanted. That I gave up. But I’m at the end of my rope and I don’t know what to do.”

“Give up your virginity instead.”

“I don’t want to screw up!” she insisted. “I don’t want to feel used or stupid or conned. Vulnerable. Weak. Out of control. Caught somewhere between the church and my feminism, between my personality and what I want that I can’t get.”

“It’s not the church,” he said flatly, “and it’s not Betty Friedan. It was all those fucking bodice rippers you tore through when you were twelve. Virginal ingenue. Older, experienced alpha. Her first time is with him because he’s overcome with lust, then he falls in love with her for no discernible reason and it turns out to be true love, happily ever after, amen, and she can’t be blamed for seducing him. You did your dissertation on the ur-romance novel and you opened a bookstore dedicated to them. Hank Rearden is a grown-up variation on your theme, and the church gives you an excuse to hold out for a hero.”

That hurt, but she couldn’t argue it.

“You’re gonna make mistakes in choosing your partners,” he went on more gently. “Everybody does. You’ll get your heart broken a couple of times, and you’ll get through it. But think about this: Would you rather be sitting here stewing over that kiss, crying over that guy, knowing that somewhere in this town, there’s a man you want, who really wants you in spite of himself, whom you do have access to when you’re ripped, your tits are high and tight, and you can dress up and smell good—or would you rather it hadn’t happened at all?”

Giselle opened her mouth to answer that, but slowly closed it again.

“Mmm hm.”

Giselle had nothing to say to that, and apparently, Sebastian had said all he intended to. He slid down into his chair and lapsed into brooding. She waited for him to say something, but his sullen silence was starting to worry her.

“I just tore all my old wounds open and you didn’t throw too much salt in them. What’s your problem?”

Sebastian’s mouth twitched in thought and he still wouldn’t look at her. He poured more Scotch. “Same as yours, I guess,” he muttered. “I want a family. A wife, kids.”

That startled her. “Where’s this coming from? You’ve been a libertine since you decided proselytizing was for the birds halfway through your mission.”³

“I haven’t fucked a woman since Vanessa left. Three years ago.”

“You were with her in New York last week.”

“That … was a mistake I would prefer to forget.”

“Why?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m there in bed with her. She’s asleep. The sex was good. It always is with her. But I’m … lonely. She’s just getting started on her life and I’m doing the same thing I’ve been doing for years and I have no one to share it with.”

He was truly miserable. Giselle could hear it in his voice.

“I’m almost forty. I’d like to have someone at my funeral besides you and Knox, provided Fen hasn’t managed to kill either of you by then. I don’t know. I’m too old to be playing frat boy, plus I think I maxed out my condom budget.”

Giselle chuckled. “When you were with her last week, did you feel like you want it to be permanent now?”

“No.”

“And that’s what’s bothering you.”

“Yes.”

Giselle didn’t say anything.

“What am I missing?” he burst out. “I’m not hideous. I’m semi-literate. I have a fairly decent job and I can pay my bills.”

“How many times do I have to tell you this? For you, it’s all about the clothes. You go around in your cutoff jeans seven-eighths nekkid, strutting around like a Parisian peacock without a dime to your name, you’re relaxed, funny, having a good time. It rains women. I’ve seen you break out that freight train mojo, go heavy on the French accent, and what would get any other man arrested for assault works like a charm. So you pick one or two, fuck ’em, send ’em home, and everybody had a good time.

“But then you put on a suit or a tux, you turn into cool King Midas and everything is serious business. You don’t smile or laugh. You rarely speak. You’re totally unapproachable. The minute you put on that black suit women become the enemy and Versace is your suit of armor.”

“That’s not fair. I never wear Versace.”

“All you have to do is wear your yacht clothes and be you. Interact like normal people without worrying about sex or money.”

“In case you’ve never met me before, money and sex are the only things I think about, but they don’t coexist in my brain. It’s either one or the other and society is all about money. And I’m sure as hell not thinking about money when I’m drowning in burnt umber and beautiful women.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re stuck in a rut. Have you ever approached a woman because she was interesting and you wanted to talk to her?”

He gave her a stony look.

“I mean, after you graduated.”

His mouth flattened. “Tried here and there,” he muttered. “Didn’t go well.”

“What were you wearing?”

“Yacht clothes,” he sneered.

“Were they pitying or creeped out?”

“Pitying.”

“I can work with that.” Giselle thought for a few seconds. “What about one of your clients? Don’t tell me you’ve not run across one tall, rubenesque blonde high-level executive somewhere out there? You can talk to them in that setting, let them get to know you, get to know them and then you won’t be so awkward.”

“I’m Satan, remember? The minute a CEO figures out she has to call me to come bail her out, my chances are reduced to less than nil. She’s embarrassed, pissed off, and feeling insecure. Not much I can do to spin that.”

“Then I got nothin’.”

He sighed and muttered, “So are you going to church today or not?”

She glanced at the clock and saw that she should have left fifteen minutes ago. “Apparently not. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go today anyway, so I got Sister Evans to teach the lesson.”

“Why? You like to teach.”

Giselle pursed her lips. “This week’s topic is the law of chastity.”⁹ Sebastian gaped at her for a split-second before he burst out laughing. She scowled at him. “Shut up. It’s not funny.”

“Yes it is.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, still laughing. “Okay, well. Since you’re not going to church, come play tennis with me. That’ll make us both feel better.”

“All right, but wear yacht clothes so you can at least try to strike up a conversation with somebody. I’ll chat you up or something. Oh, and you have to smile.” He sighed heavily. “We can get cheesecake, too. More opportunities. If you get an impromptu snack date, I’ll disappear.”

“Cheesecake?”

“They have a low-carb version.”

“Fine,” he grumbled.

“You know,” she mused, “trash my teenage fantasies all you want, but I made the first move on a guy I found attractive. Twice. And I’m the girl. You’re the dude. You’ve got money, looks, and power, and you’re still scared of catching cooties from a girl—” He snarled at her. “—if you’re not in starving artist mode. You might as well be living rent-free in mommy’s basement playing Call of Duty and slinging freight at FedEx for Cheetos and Coke money. Oh, wait! You do live in the basement most of the time. It’s not your mom’s, so you’ve got that going for you.”

“What would my ego ever do without you?” he asked acidly.

“Suck it up, princess.”

---

9: WHOSOEVER LOOKETH ON A WOMAN

WHEN IS THIS going to end?

Bryce looked at his watch. Ten more minutes of home and family. Why had he come to church today?

To purge Giselle Cox.

He closed his eyes and swallowed. He was hoping the subject of chastity wouldn’t rear its ugly head, but the second it crossed his mind, the speaker referenced cleaving unto one’s wife. He hadn’t cleaved any woman in years.

An ache grew like a cancer behind Bryce’s breastbone.

Chastity was relatively easy, self-stimulation notwithstanding, when a man had a burnt-to-a-crisp face that made women flinch.

Until her, the Chouteau County prosecutor’s lover.

Brains. Body. Weaponry.

That kiss, the one she’d initiated, the one he’d taken away from her, the one she couldn’t control or take back.

That look.

Bryce always knew what he wanted from a woman, but he hadn’t made peace with it until two-thirds of the way through his marriage. Meryl wasn’t going to give him what he wanted, but he didn’t want it from her anyway. She didn’t mind; she found plenty of men who would cater to her kink, because Bryce sure as hell wasn’t going to.

He looked around at the chapel, the same one he and his family had attended when they lived in Mission Hills, just a couple of miles away across the Missouri-Kansas state line. Fundamentally identical to any Mormon church building, it was comfortable and spartan in its bland décor with no crosses or crucifixes. No distractions.

Bryce had only set foot in this building a few times since the fire. Had he expected anything to change in the past few years?

He bowed his head for the closing prayer, feeling nothing but bitterness and anger at the abandonment of the God he’d served so faithfully for over three decades.

He’d subverted his nature and quelled his base desires.

He’d followed church teachings to the best of his ability, all the while ignoring philosophies that called to his intellect.

He’d fulfilled his father’s expectations as a good and righteous priesthood holder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—

—and spent every day of it in absolute misery.

He should have listened to his best friend, his college roommate, the only person who had ever told him the truth.

Bryce bent over and buried his head in his hands, shuddering from the agony of that conversation ringing through his head even after twenty years. He’d remembered it the day after Leah’s funeral, and hadn’t been able to forget it.

Now, on top of everything else, he lived with the anger and bitterness of a disillusioned zealot: the irreconcilable differences between what he wanted and what his father had expected of him; Meryl’s private infidelity and public piety; her war of manipulation and deceit against which he had no defenses; and most especially the deaths of his four children and in such a catastrophic manner.

Bryce had no place in these pews.

Yet …

This was his cultural identity, a good portion of his own identity and what made him him. This church, this lifestyle, was all he’d ever known, all he’d ever wanted to know. He’d done everything asked of him, but now he felt empty, abandoned, unloved—and had since the week after he’d walked out of the San Diego temple at twenty-four a married man.

Bryce skipped Sunday school and priesthood, and went home after sacrament meeting,¹⁴ unable to stomach any more.

Nobody had approached him to say hello. He’d attracted some glances, but mostly of the preoccupied type, as if everyone had so much on their minds that they didn’t see him. He understood that. He remembered those days, his years as a lay clergyman on the fast track to bishop, when Sunday meant meetings from dawn until dusk, when he had too much to think about to welcome new people. He didn’t want to have to re-introduce himself to people who already knew him and forgotten him and wouldn’t recognize him if they did remember. He didn’t want to have to talk about where his family went, what happened to his face.

As for the people who had noticed him and shied away, he couldn’t judge them any more harshly than anybody else, since he had that effect on everybody.

Except one.

Giselle Cox.

Knox Hilliard’s lover.

Who had made herself very clear about what she wanted from him, what she knew he could give her.

He’d never known temptation like her. He lusted after her and his breath shortened at the thought of her body under his, what he wanted to do to her, what he wanted her to do to him.

He wondered if could bury his pride enough to pursue her, to seduce her away from her lover. The only thing keeping him from doing so was the knowledge she was with Knox Hilliard, because he did not want to go where Hilliard had been.

---

10: GREEDY ENEMY OF THE STATE

November 2005

GISELLE AND SEBASTIAN sat in their open-plan dining area at the vast table that more often than not served as a conference table, she studying and he tapping away on his laptop, national news on in the background. Knox came through the front door, bringing the cold, wet November air with him, up the four steps to the “conference room” platform, dumping his briefcase and computer at the far end of the table. He too sat down to work without a word.

After a while, Giselle asked, “How expensive did your little temper tantrum turn out to be?”

“Not a red cent,” he said with great satisfaction. “Not even legal fees. I also refused to apologize and insisted on a gag order.”

Giselle gasped. “How?! That claim was for two million dollars!”

“I was gonna pay it just to make it go away, but I sat on it until I cooled off. When I told Eric what happened, he ordered me to keep my checkbook and mouth shut, and proceeded to go kick some ass.”

She supposed there was a reason Knox’s executive assistant prosecutor was also his personal attorney.

“He informed the complainant’s attorney that I was originally the target of sexual harassment, and since the actual perpetrator was A, female and B, a student and C, broke, and D, not the claimant, and I am A, male and B, an instructor and C, loaded, that I and the university were now targets for extortion by an opportunist, if not outright grifter. He explained that she could walk away and forget it ever happened, but if she pursued it, I would prefer to spend my fortune on lawyers than give it to her. Then he would arrest her for felony extortion for shits and giggles, whether he could make it stick or not. She decided she couldn’t afford to go up against my bank account or risk a night in lockup. He waved goodbye with a smile and a ‘Better luck next time.’”

Giselle snickered.

“He can be a mean little shit when he has to be. I’m so proud of that kid.”

“What are you two talking about?” Sebastian said.

“Knox popped off in class rather inappropriately last year and got his ass sued.”

“Were you there?”

“Sadly.” Giselle slid Knox a glance. His sudden glower was all the warning she needed to keep her mouth shut about the catalyst. “An entitled special snowflake mean girl thought she was going to be cute and propositioned him in class. Instead of saying, ‘Get out’ like a non-dumbass would’ve, he decided to one-up her. Hard. She didn’t sue him, but a different snowflake did.”

“Why didn’t she sue him?”

“I dunno,” she said airily, then blew on her fingernails and buffed them on her shirt. “She dropped out the week after.”

“Uh huh,” he drawled wryly, then looked at Knox. “You didn’t get fired?”

“I reminded the dean there isn’t another white-collar crime instructor who’ll do Tuesday and Thursday evening classes until next year, and that Eric did the university’s dirty work, too. UMKC didn’t have to pony anything up, put their lawyers on it, or make a statement. Complainant can’t talk about it, Sherry’s gone—thank you—and all the people who were there will be perpetuating an urban legend that makes me even more evil. Everybody’s happy.”

“All that and you’d do it again,” Giselle said dryly.

“Hell, yes, I would! I get tired of those little bitches and there are a handful every semester. It was bad enough getting obliquely propositioned in private, then it happens in public? That was the last straw. Worth every second because I am not going to have that problem anymore.”

Giselle raised her eyebrow at him, and he scowled again. No, he wasn’t going to have that problem anymore, but he still had his Justice McKinley problem.

They went back to working quietly for a while until—

All three of them turned toward the TV and gaped. Giselle felt the blood drain from her face.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Sebastian whispered. “SHIT!” he roared, slamming his hands on the table as he got up and started to pace, his hand rubbing his mouth. “I gotta go make some calls,” he muttered finally, his long legs eating up the distance from the dining area to his office. Giselle winced when the door slammed.

She and Knox traded sober glances. Fen had put Sebastian in check brilliantly, thus setting Knox and Giselle back in play if he decided to call Giselle’s bluff. Giselle never bluffed. Though she dreaded the consequences of taking Fen’s life, she would do it.

“Murder never washes clean,” Knox offered softly.

She looked away, biting her bottom lip, nauseated.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Knox muttered. “Wish the FBI would inform me when they decide I didn’t do something.”

The office door flew open and Sebastian was even more angry. “Gets worse,” he snapped, leaning over the table toward Knox. “Kenard’s on the guest list for the fundraiser next month.”

Knox heaved a longsuffering sigh.

“This is what’s going to happen,” Sebastian said. He took up pacing again, his expression one he got when he had to churn through thousands of possibilities to deal with a problem. “You— Giselle—” She started, but he went on. “You are going to go to that fundraiser with me next month and if Kenard shows up, you are going to keep him away from Fen. I’ll attempt to keep Fen away from Kenard.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Knox demanded.

Sebastian stopped and stared at him, an eyebrow cocked wickedly. “Are you concerned for Fen’s life, his war chest, or that—Bonus!—Kenard will love her?”

Knox looked at him stonily.

Sebastian smirked. “That’s what I thought.”

“Wait,” Giselle said. “Who is this person and what am I supposed to do with him and why am I doing it and why doesn’t Knox want me to?”

“Bryce Kenard,” Sebastian explained, “is one of the most powerful tort lawyers in the country. He’s filthy rich—like, maybe he has a couple bucks more or less than I do—and he has influence. He keeps his politics to himself, and for Fen to court him means that he can’t come up with enough campaign money from amongst his cronies. Kenard’s support could be the difference between his running for Senate and not, and he has a personal reason to—”

Knox growled, and Giselle glanced at him.

“Giselle,” Sebastian continued, his tone urgent, “it is imperative that you keep him away from Fen. If Fen doesn’t get Kenard’s support that night, he’ll have to work that much harder to drum up the kind of cash Kenard could give him.”

“That makes no sense. Why couldn’t he get it any other time?”

“He could and he might, but Kenard gives people one chance to pitch ideas at him. If they don’t get him in the first thirty seconds, they don’t get him at all. You know Fen’s patient and he likes to put on a show. He’ll think that’ll impress the hell out of him without having to say a word.”

“Okay. What am I supposed to do with him?”

“All you have to do is be yourself,” Knox mumbled. “He’s brilliant and he likes nothing more than erudite conversation.”

“Your job is to lead him away from Fen—preferably out of sight and as far away from the party as possible—and fuck his mind. He’ll forget everything else but you, and Fen will know that he was singularly unimpressed.”

“I don’t like this idea,” Knox pronounced.

“Of course you don’t,” Sebastian snapped. “Pee on her leg before she leaves for the party, whydon’tcha?”

“Why is Knox being pissy?”

Sebastian looked at Knox and smirked. “Ask him. If he tells you the truth, I’ll give you three months’ rent free.”

Knox sat stone-faced.

“Well?”

Knox reached across the table, tore a piece of paper out of Giselle’s notebook, and scribbled an IOU to Sebastian for three months of her rent. Sebastian howled and Giselle decided she didn’t care why Knox was upset; she’d take the money and keep her curiosity to herself.

Once Sebastian had calmed down enough to get back to business, he leaned across the table and got right in Giselle’s face. “This is very important. You must have scared Fen enough to get him to back off you two, but now he’s coming after me. There’s just too much anti-Taight sentiment on Capitol Hill, especially after the way we conned the Department of Justice. He could easily get me shut down—and he’d most definitely be able to haul my ass in front of the Senate. Wouldn’t Fen love to have me and Knox sitting at a table in front of him and the nation, grilling us like he did when we were kids.” He dug a credit card out of his wallet and flipped it at her. “Go get a dress. Make sure you have cleavage.”

---

11: MARGARETHA ZELLE

December 2005

“VERY NICE,” SEBASTIAN drawled approvingly when Giselle emerged from her bedroom on the evening of Fen’s exploratory fundraiser.

The strapless dress, reminiscent of 1950s Hollywood glamor, had two layers. The pencil underskirt of white brocade was beaded and sequined around its floral motif and the hem just kissed the toes of her red strappy heels. A long slit up the right side allowed Giselle her full stride and relatively quick access to her gun without marring the skirt’s narrow lines.

The full black silk taffeta overskirt had a slight train. The front of it parted in an A shape from waist to floor and flared out like a cape when she walked, framing the white underskirt with stark elegance. Above her skirts, a lightly silver-embroidered and jet-beaded black corset hugged her torso so that just the right amount of bosom blossomed over its top, enough to tease without being vulgar.

She’d dressed her hair in Gibson-girl style, and her evening makeup was on point. A diamond and ruby bracelet, borrowed from Aunt Dianne, Sebastian’s mother, sparkled around her wrist and Giselle’s own tiny diamond earrings dangled from her earlobes.

“Do you have red earrings?” Sebastian asked once he’d carefully assessed the details of her presentation. At her nod, he said, “Wear those. The flashier the better. Are you sure about going strapless?”

Giselle glanced down at the puckered indentation in the soft hollow just under her left shoulder. “Fen needs to see it so he can commence kissing my ass.”

“Make sure you don’t let Kenard wheedle the story out of you.”

“Pffftt.”

“I’ve heard he’s clever like that.”

Once she’d swapped her demure diamond drops for garnet chandelier earrings, Sebastian held out a white mink bolero jacket for her, also borrowed from his mother.

“This is what you need to know,” Sebastian told her in the limo on their way to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. “Kenard’s a widower, about my age. He’s an honorable man and a consummate gentleman. He’s also a member of the church—”

“Really?!” Giselle perked up, suddenly a lot more interested in this project.

“Don’t. He’s apparently one of those super-strict letter-of-the-law Pharisee types, and he was on the fast track to bishop before his wife died. He won’t appreciate any seriously heavy flirting—not that you know how to do that anyway. Talk about philosophy, art, literature, music. If you do end up talking about the church, keep your heresies and sacrilege to yourself. No profanity, no off-color jokes. Whatever you do, do not talk about politics. Don’t give him any reason to ditch you and go back to the party. If he shows up, it’s because he thinks Fen is an honorable man and he’s seen no evidence to the contrary. Don’t begrudge him that.”

“What’s Knox’s problem with him?”

Sebastian slid her a look. “He paid your rent, so he must not want you to know.”

“Yeah, that was his transaction. This is yours. Two completely different obligations.”

Sebastian laughed. “I really am a bad influence on you. Knox and Kenard have history that involves Kenard’s late wife and they haven’t spoken in ten, twelve years. Something like that. Either Kenard didn’t want to face reality or he didn’t get the memo about Knox’s taste in women.”

“Which does not include married ones.”

“Better. Young married anorexic blonde ones.”

“Ooh. Four strikes, he’s out.”

“Considering he thinks Knox was fucking his wife, it’s possible he’d throw money at Fen just to stick it to Knox. He may already have, for all we know, or he may not want to talk to you. If he takes the bait, keep your mouth shut about Knox. I don’t know anything other than what I’ve told you, but there has to be a lot more to the story. He’s pretty tight-lipped about him.”

No wonder Knox had reacted so vehemently to this little scheme. There were few things he wouldn’t share with her, but if he didn’t, it had hurt badly enough that he’d buried it. Once he buried his pain, he didn’t dig it up if he could help it.

“I haven’t felt inclined to socialize or do any business with him because of that. I’ve seen him around here and there, but I’ve never met him.”

She looked out the window, her fist clenched between her mouth and the cold glass.

“Hey, Giz.” Sebastian snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Do what I told you to do and don’t let your outrage on Knox’s behalf get in the way. Shit, I shouldn’t have said anything at all, ’cause now you’ll wear it on your sleeve and fuck it all up.”

She sighed, unable to deny that. “I’ll try.”

The limousine came to a halt in front of the art gallery’s great wrought iron doors festooned with enormous lit Christmas wreaths, the windows aglow with the lights of a grand party. Sebastian swept her into the building and checked her jacket.

Kirkwood Hall, the heart of the gallery, was marble-clad, four stories high, and punctuated by twelve enormous marble columns. In the center of the hall stood a twenty-foot Christmas tree decorated with white lights, enormous silver and gold glass balls, and red velveteen ribbon. To their right was the Rozzelle Court restaurant, a faithful replica of a fifteenth century Italian villa courtyard, full of tables laden with hors d’œuvres. In the open arcade above the courtyard, a chamber orchestra played Christmas carols.

Many important people milled about, all dressed in high fashion, all vying for attention, but Giselle wasn’t particularly impressed, considering she had arrived with King Midas. The place echoed with the sounds of titters and guffaws, murmurs and bluster, and the click-clack of women’s heels.

“So, where is he?”

“I don’t see him. It’s possible he won’t show.”

“There are too many variables for this to work, yanno. I’m just here for the clothes.”

“I’m out of ideas, Giselle,” he said impatiently. “And when I said a dress, I didn’t mean a whole new designer wardrobe.”

“You are asking me to keep a man I don’t know in my personal space and talking for three hours. You’re going to pay for that.”

“I created a monster,” he grumbled. “Let’s go find Fen, and make nice. You hurt his feelings at Thanksgiving, ignoring him like you did. You were downright rude about it, too.”

“Oh, fuck him. I haven’t heard any apologies coming my way, and until I do, he’s not funny.” After wandering a bit, they found him almost where they came in, going from one cluster of chatting people to the next, shaking hands, laughing, introducing Trudy. Fen was a very handsome man, as tall as Knox, his near-white hair coiffed with refined elegance, his face pleasingly carved, his nose perfectly straight and patrician. Incredibly fit, he wore his tuxedo with aplomb. Charismatic, generous, and blessed with a silver tongue, he was the perfect picture of a senatorial candidate and cameras adored him. He turned the heads of women a fraction his age.

Knox would look exactly like Fen in twenty years, a true Hilliard but for the blond hair and blue eyes Trudy had given him. Not for the first time, Giselle wondered if Fen was Knox’s father, but the family had worn that topic out years ago.

Knox’s mother was exquisitely made up and coifed as usual (albeit thirty years out of date), her blonde hair in a French twist and her slim figure wrapped in a mint silk ruched gown that had a few too many ruffles for Giselle’s taste. She resisted the urge to rip one or two of them off to streamline the damn thing, but as she and Sebastian drew closer to Fen and Trudy, she contented herself with one contemptuous glance up and down her aunt’s body.

Trudy clenched one fist at her side, as if she wanted to hit Giselle. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t before, but now Giselle wasn’t an awkward thirteen-year-old slavishly devoted to earning the approval of her beautiful aunt. Nor was she a fourteen-year-old unwittingly blowing the lid off Trudy’s affair with Fen.

Giselle raised an eyebrow, daring her to say a word, and smirked when Trudy looked away.

“Ah, Sebastian, Giselle.” Fen greeted them expansively, as if he hadn’t tried to kill Giselle twice, murdered her life’s work, and threatened Sebastian with a seat in front of a Senate panel. “So glad to see you here. I didn’t realize you would be interested or I would have invited you myself.”

“I’m always intrigued when the CEO of a company I have a controlling interest in decides to run for Congress.”

“Come, come, Sebastian. I’m sure nothing will change for you when I get to Congress. Giselle,” he murmured, taking her hand and air kissing it. “How are you?”

“I’m just fine, thanks; haven’t seen any goons lurking around corners lately.” She smiled sweetly.

Fen leaned toward her. “You just can’t help it, can you?” he gritted, his mouth locked into a strained grin. “One of these days, I’m going to slap the teeth right out of your smart mouth, little girl.”

She turned her head so that she could whisper in his ear. “Aw, I did hurt your wittow feewings.”

He drew away from her slowly, still in candidate mode, still smiling. When his gaze caught on her shoulder, his smile faded and his mouth tightened the slightest bit. Giselle snickered and a faint flush rose in his cheeks.

“Is that remorse I see, Unk?” Sebastian drawled. “And you didn’t even send her a get-well card.”

Fen’s jaw clenched behind his smile. “Move along, children. I don’t want to babysit you all night. I’d prefer you leave altogether.”

“No can do,” Sebastian replied smugly. “We’re just here to eat your food, drink your booze, and be a general pain in your ass.”

“As usual.”

They left him there fuming. Giselle was still amused, but Sebastian was tense and his muscular arm felt like cast iron under her hand. He picked up a glass of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray and downed it in one swallow.

“I gotta figure out how to get out from under Fen’s thumb,” he muttered. “Remember when he caught us at that dive bar across town at three in the morning that once? And threatened to tell my dad? I feel like that right now.”

“I’ve been thinking about this since he announced last month,” Giselle murmured, disengaging from him to snag a waiter for ice water. Sebastian looked down at her, his eyebrow cocked, waiting. “It’s a threefer. First, you need to block as much of Fen’s fundraising as possible, like tonight. I’m sure all your friends feel just as threatened by whatever Fen plans to do to you.”

“Already done. Next?”

“You need a Truman.”

He looked upward. “Hmmm. Raise up a rival candidate. ‘Senator from Taight.’ Wouldn’t that be hilarious? Rather not back a Democrat if I can avoid it, though.”

“The Jackson County prosecutor. Kevin Oakley.”

Sebastian started. “Isn’t he the guy who decided you’d done him a favor by taking out the assholes who shot you?”

“Yes, he is, and there are rumors around school he’s itching to get on with the next step in his career. He and Knox are friends, so there’s your in with him.”

Sebastian rocked back on his heels, his hands behind his back, and stared off into the distance.

“And did you read the National Review article I left on the conference table?” At his absent nod, she said, “The one on intellectual property rights? Byline Justice McKinley?”

“I googled her, read some of the stuff she’s been writing on some of the smaller conservative blogs. Economist, right? She’s like a baby Bastiat.”

“Baby’s about right. She’s twenty-three.”

That actually shocked Sebastian. “How do you know?”

“I go to school with her, that’s how I know.” Giselle kept the other little piece of information concerning Justice McKinley to herself. “She’s a regular little political prodigy, all strict constructionist pro-life atheist, anti-war, anti-war-on-drugs, practically anti-cop to boot, but wants to be a prosecutor to change the system from the inside. Nobody quite knows what to think about her, but she’s tying the religious right up in knots, which is always fun to watch.”

“Shit. I could barely spell my name when I was twenty-three, but now that you mention it, she is a bit irrationally exuberant.”

Giselle laughed, then continued, “If she and Kevin click, they may be able to help each other further their own careers.”

Sebastian pursed his lips. “Even if he wins, he’ll be powerless to help me. Fen has no such problems because he wants my head more than the rest of the looters and he’s the only one who can actually deliver it via the SEC. He’ll have instant clout.”

“All Oakley needs to do is give Fen a good fight. The Senate’s not going to want to yank your chain too soon and show its hand if there’s a good chance Fen’ll lose the election. Running Oakley as a Democrat will only get us through primarying Fen, which won’t do us any good if he loses. Running him as a Republican means he’ll be virtually unopposed in the primary and that will buy you enough time to get through the transfer or takeover of OKH and it won’t matter if he loses the general.”

“When he loses.”

“Because after that, when you do end up sitting in front of Fen and his newfound senatorial friends, it’ll be a whole different fight that you can win on your terms without the distraction of OKH or the threat of the SEC, especially considering your attorney—you know, that poor young man who was cheated of his rightful inheritance on his wedding day when his bride-equipped-with-child was tragically and mysteriously murdered. That evil Fen Hilliard, just like OJ Simpson. Ya know he did it, but the glove doesn’t fit.”

Sebastian actually smiled in public, which made Giselle blink. “Go on, Giz,” he muttered over another glass of champagne. “I’ve always admired your deadpan delivery.”

“Third. When reporters start calling you for comments on Senator Oth’s hatred of you, refer them to the unions’ PR departments. They can hem and haw—‘now, y’all know this is off the record, mind’—mumble a few things about how they ‘doan know nuttin’ ’bout nuttin’,’ but seems to them maybe Oth either wasn’t a very good businessman—and what does that say about his leadership in the Senate?—or Taight caught him with his hand in his employees’ cookie jar. Oopsie. His employees lost their jobs, yeah, but that Taight, you know, he made sure they got to take their 401(k)s with ’em and then his good buddy Mitch Hollander hired ’em all. That rabid skunk’ll back off fast. You’ll end up looking like a martyr saint. Bonus! If the DoJ tries to get in bed with Fen now, the unions will kick its ass for you. There are going to be a lot of strange bedfellows throwing gold at a candidate who might be able to keep Fen out of DC. When Kevin loses, he can go back to being a Democrat and try for a seat in the House and move up from there.”

Sebastian stared at her without speaking for a while.

“What?” she demanded.

“Bless your little politico heart,” he said slowly. “You do come in handy occasionally.”

Surprised, Giselle didn’t know whether to preen or break his face. “Hrmph. The only downside of that is if it makes Fen feel totally irrelevant—which it very well could—he may go off his rocker and three years is long enough for him to devolve back to primordial ooze.”

“Well, thank you, Giz. Sometimes I forget just how damned smart you are.”

Immediately irritated, she said, “That’s Dr. Cox to you, asshole.”

“Sorry.” Then he started, his attention caught elsewhere. “Oh, damn. I almost forgot why we’re here. There’s Kenard,” he said, turning toward the south end of the hall where there were more clusters of people chatting. “He’s the man with the burn scars on the left side of his face.”

---

12: HIGH-RENT RENDEZVOUS

BRYCE HADN’T WANTED to come to this thing, especially considering how he felt about Fen Hilliard and what he suspected about the man’s involvement in Leah’s murder, but curiosity won out. Bryce had spent every weekend the past two months on the golf course with Fen and various other business leaders from around the Midwest just to see how he played chess.

Fen had treated Bryce like an old friend without once mentioning his campaign. He was likable, suave, and not in the least bit slick or smarmy. No hint of good ol’ boy politics. Not a whiff of courtship. He had his act down cold and Bryce could appreciate Fen’s patience, shrewd strategy, and forethought.

In all that time, however, Bryce hadn’t said much, preferring to listen instead, to observe Fen’s modus operandi, to wait for the thirty-second pitch that never came. Even the invitation to this little get-together had no hint of political purpose in it, but Bryce laughed when the courier delivered it. So. This was the thirty-second pitch.

At least now he knew Fen’s campaign had nothing to do with political ambition and everything to do with Taight’s takeover of OKH. No, Bryce didn’t know Sebastian Taight personally and he didn’t give a shit about OKH, but he strenuously objected to the witch hunt Fen’s announcement had triggered. It would’ve happened eventually, but if Taight went down, half the country’s extraordinarily successful entrepreneurs and exponentially more small businesses would go down with him.

Bryce sighed as he nursed his Coke, disengaged from the people who had clumped around him. The company he kept at these inane functions was the most amusing he could find, but some evenings, like tonight, that didn’t say much. Bored out of his mind, he wondered if this was preferable to knocking around in a dark, silent, empty house at Christmastime with nowhere else to be or go, and no one to go with.

Absorbed in watching the play of light on the surface of his soda, Bryce thought he saw a head of honey-colored hair in his periphery and his gut clenched. He had no reason to think she would be here, but he turned and looked for her anyway. He froze, shocked, when he saw her on Sebastian Taight’s arm chatting amiably—almost familiarly—with Fen and Trudy Hilliard.

Bryce thought he’d had the wind knocked out of him.

First Knox, then Taight and the rest of the Hilliards. It stood to reason that if she was fucking Knox, she would know Taight and definitely Knox’s mother, but what kind of typist and law student had these kinds of connections? He knew no one in society by the name of Cox or who had ties to a Cox family.

Bryce observed her, taking his time, noticing small details that pleased him but didn’t surprise him. Her black and white dress showed off her pale, exquisitely carved shoulders and back, and gave her hair a subtle brilliance. Rubies dripped from her ears and just brushed the pale skin of her neck. The plump of her breasts above the black corset filled his mind with images of them nude, flushed with passion, nipples begging him to lick and suck. Her legs were hidden by her long skirt and he found himself hoping she was carrying a gun under all that understated elegance.

Collier’s Lilith was delicate.

I assure you: You have never met a woman like me, and you never will again.

Giselle Cox was most definitely not.

Taight led her away from the Hilliards, strolling a bit before coming to an abrupt halt. She began to talk and gesture, an Old Fashioned glass of something clear over ice in her ringless left hand, while Taight listened intently. He sipped at his champagne, never taking his eyes off her, then he grinned at her. She returned it, but began to speak again and did so at some length. Taight’s expression gradually transformed from amusement to— Respect?

Bryce wondered what she could possibly have to say that would have a notorious and semi-reclusive billionaire’s rapt attention. Taight very rarely attended society events and if he did deign to grace an affair with his presence, he mingled very little. He rarely spoke and he never showed any emotion.

If someone had told Bryce that Taight would be at a party for a man he had declared war upon, accompanied by a woman, and so much as smirking, he’d have thought it was a joke. Judging by the murmurs behind him, he wasn’t the only one.

And her!

He could only see her in profile, but he could read her amazingly expressive face from where he stood. She wasn’t silently fuming. She wasn’t overtly angry. She wasn’t being smoothly vicious. She didn’t seem to be flirting, clumsily or otherwise. She wasn’t lost in desire. She wasn’t flustered and confused. She was smiling mischievously and easily pulling smiles and chuckles out of a man who had no sense of humor.

Jealousy, hot and vicious, twisted inside Bryce and his lip curled. Knox Hilliard knew her intimately. Sebastian Taight treated her as an equal, though not as a lover—at least, not as Bryce would have treated her if she were his lover.

Who was she? All his adult life, he’d known women who craved attention and did anything they could to get it. He knew when a woman faked obliviousness to attract more attention. This woman wasn’t faking anything and because of it, she had Bryce tied in knots, a room full of men watching her with speculation, and a room full of women studying her as if to learn something.

She laughed, a lovely peal that bounced off the marble walls, and suddenly Bryce found himself staring into those ice blue eyes that seemed so familiar as to be eerie.

She blinked, and held his gaze. She blinked again, but turned away as if she hadn’t recognized him.

As if he didn’t exist.

Regret exploded in his chest. He had ruined any chance he might have had with her and he flinched at the way he had dismissed her with such finality. All he’d had to do was ask her out when she’d begged him to—before he’d pissed her off.

One hand stuffed in his pocket, he looked down at the floor, frustrated, angry, jealous. The embrace between her and Hilliard. It tormented him, now months after it had happened, but between him and Taight, why would she remember Bryce at all?

He thought about going home after all, but that wasn’t going to help. His obsession with her had been bubbling for more than a year, and not a day had gone by since Leah’s funeral that he hadn’t thought of her. Graphically. With his hand around his dick. Nothing was going to make it go away until he got her attention, talked to her, found out who she really was.

Made love to her.

Not necessarily in that order.

This hesitance wasn’t like him. He’d destroyed the fortunes of a few fairly powerful people and a lot of rich but not so powerful ones. Politicians vied for his endorsement and money. A-list celebrities called him for representation. Incompetent physicians and their insurance companies cowered at the mention of his name. He’d shut down more than one medical equipment manufacturer for defective products. He’d gone after far bigger prey than one petite strawberry blonde who considered a nine-millimeter a fashion accessory.

One way or another, this was going to end—or begin—tonight.

Bryce looked up just as Taight bent to murmur something in her ear, then strode away from her. Once she was alone, though, her amusement vanished so suddenly it was jarring. Bryce continued to watch her, puzzled, as she looked down into her glass. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, slowly in her nose, then out through the O of her lips. She did that several times, her breasts swelling with each inhalation.

When she finally looked up, she looked straight at him. Deliberately this time, holding his gaze, not glancing away. Her mouth—that cherry-kissed mouth with full lips that could probably work miracles on a man’s anatomy—twitched. A corner of it turned up; not quite a smile, not quite a smirk.

Oh, no. She hadn’t forgotten at all.

Adrenaline shot through him as he raked her from head to toe and back again, deliberately pausing at her breasts before looking back into her eyes. Bryce cocked an eyebrow at her and she acknowledged him with a minuscule shift of her shoulders and lowered eyelids.

Ms Giselle Cox, whoever she was, promised the fulfillment of every one of his long-denied yearnings. She was the most dangerous prey he’d ever hunted and he’d give up everything to have her:

His pride.

His net worth.

His salvation.

Taight had just lost his mistress. He’d deal with Knox later.

She put her glass on a passing waiter’s tray, then turned without warning and sashayed, not toward him, but across Kirkwood Hall to Sculpture Hall. She disappeared behind the Christmas tree, then reappeared, her steps slow and studied, her back straight and head high, as if she had all the time in the world and nowhere in particular to go. He watched her glide across the marble floor, deftly and graciously weaving through clumps of chatters without fanfare.

He followed her through the grand hall, then through the sculpture room littered with clusters of people. A couple of men started to follow her but happened to glance at Bryce, who merely raised an eyebrow. They returned to their cliques, tails between their legs.

A corner of his mouth turned up, suddenly grateful for the scars on his face.

She reached the staircase that led down to the gallery’s annex, and smoothly descended to the wide landing. But instead of continuing downward, she turned right to go up to the European exhibits. She unhooked the velvet rope that blocked off that section of the museum, stopped, rope in hand, and looked over her shoulder at him, that same not-smile-not-smirk on her face. She raised one eyebrow and deliberately dropped the rope on the floor.

His feet moved of their own accord. He absently excused himself through the crowd, irresistibly drawn after her as if she were Calypso, ensnaring him with his own lust—

—then found himself detained by some policy wonk who not only didn’t notice that Bryce had other plans, but felt entitled to the contents of his brain.

Bryce stood where he’d gotten trapped, watching transfixed as she ascended the staircase step by deliberate step, her white skirt held in her left hand, her hips swaying, the short train of her black skirt slithering behind her, her delicate right hand sliding up the copper banister. Then she disappeared from view behind a waist-high marble wall.

“Shit,” he whispered.

Left or right? A few more of the terminally clueless gathered around him. Which way would she go and why were all these people suddenly demanding his attention? How would he find her? His jaw ground at the thought of losing her to the labyrinthine hallways and myriad exhibits because people he didn’t know wanted a piece of him.

“Excuse me,” he barked, interrupting someone who purposely stood in his way to get his attention, then plowed his way out of this committee of vultures to catch her.

He got to the floor where she’d disappeared, ran to the hallway past the European exhibits, and paused. Left or right?

Then he sniffed.

He went left, following her sillage, as distinctive as she. He turned to take another set of stairs, hitting two landings in quick succession. The gallery, immense and dimly lit, had innumerable nooks and crannies in which to lose oneself by choice or by accident.

As he gained the top step, he turned right to go into the Asian collection, then left, but stopped. He knew she’d passed by here; her scent was lingering and driving him mad. He would not leave this museum tonight without a piece of her, if not all of her.

The trail stopped at the immense Chinese Temple room, two stories high and dimly lit. A section at the farthest end of the room was nearly closed off by a richly carved Moorish mahogany wall. A statue of some sort of god sat prominently displayed against the back wall, framed by the opening of the wooden partition. Finally, his eyes adjusted and he saw her silhouette where she sat on a wide ottoman in front of the statue, very still, her back to him.

Then she spoke.

“Gorgeous, isn’t he?”

He started at the sound of her voice, so smooth, so calm, so … fragile. How could a woman who exuded such primitive sexuality have such a delicate voice?

“Not sure I’d use that term, no,” he murmured vaguely as he entered the room.

She chuckled, then looked up at him once he reached the bench. “This is my secret place,” she said, humor radiating from her like a shimmering silvery heat wave off hot asphalt, “where I come to get away from the world and meditate.”

Bryce stepped over the ottoman to sit beside her, glanced at the god and searched for words while feeling her steady gaze. He turned his head and returned her look, studying her soft face, her full mouth, her patrician nose. Her eyes. He hooked one heel on the edge of the upholstery and laid his arm over his flexed knee, leaning into her just enough so that his lapel touched her bare shoulder.

Now that he’d run Lilith to ground, he had no idea what to say to her. He resented her for her sexual relationship with Hilliard and possibly Taight, but he still wanted her for himself.

Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness.

Righteousness sure as hell hadn’t been a picnic. Wickedness couldn’t be any worse.

Still watching her, daring her to say a word or make a move, he planted his left hand on the leather behind her and slid his fingers underneath her, his thumb caressing her butt. She purred approvingly, her eyelids shuttering, her butt wiggling slightly against his fingers, her hand rising to his face. The pad of her right thumb brushed his forehead between his eyebrows, where she’d last touched him with cold steel. The gesture startled him. He wasn’t used to a woman’s touch.

“I apologize for nearly killing you,” she murmured.

She laid her warm palm flat on the scarred half of his face, nearly covering his eye, her thumb still stroking that spot on his forehead, and her fingers furrowing into his hair. He had never received a touch so intimate from any woman.

“I was very tired that night and you startled me.”

“I doubt I was in any imminent danger,” he replied calmly as she took her hand away. He wished she would continue to touch him. He wished she hadn’t touched him at all. “You seem to be a woman who’s almost always in control.”

Ms Cox flashed him a merry smile and her eyes crinkled at the corners. “Some people think that’s a bad thing.”

“I suppose it depends on context.”

That comment hung in the air as he continued his inspection of her throat, her breasts, her—

“What’s this?” He touched a quarter-sized pucker in the skin below her left shoulder and looked into eyes that had darkened from ice blue to gunmetal gray. “Someone shot you.”

She flashed him a wicked grin. “Two someones, actually.”

He opened his mouth to ask the next logical question, but—

“Why did you follow me up here?” she asked in a rush.

“Why did you ask me to?”

Her laughter sparkled with so much delight he couldn’t resist any longer. He gripped her chin in his palm and brought her to him. He captured her mouth, startling her into opening for him. Her eyes went wide for a second, then her eyelids drifted closed. With a sigh, she returned his kiss and caressed his face again.

He felt a metal-hard bulge under her skirt and decided that was the only thing she’d be wearing tonight when he wrapped her legs around him.

---

13: GRIMM REALITY

KENARD’S STRONG HAND, huge, rough, heavily calloused, held her jaw with just enough force to keep her where he wanted her, and was perilously close to her throat. But his kiss …

“Mmm.”

Acute sensation rolled through her when his tongue found hers, and the feel of his other hand almost right there bordered on sensory overload.

She opened her eyes to find him watching her while he kissed her. With a little shake of her head, she easily dislodged his hand to wrap her arms around his neck. With her fingers in his silky hair, she drew him closer and kissed him heatedly, but she couldn’t direct it. He overpowered her too easily.

Giselle sighed when his mouth left hers to explore her cheek, his now-free hand cupping her breast, his thumb caressing the skin at the top of her corset. The big hand that teased her butt swept up her back and curled into curve of her waist. As he kissed, licked, and nipped the column of her neck, he pressed her down into the bench until she was lying on it.

He was kissing her again before she realized he was kneeling over her, his hands bracing himself on the upholstery on either side of her face, his knees flanking her hips.

Bryce Kenard, conquering lord. Conquering Giselle. On an altar of leather in front of an ancient symbol of enlightenment.

She closed her eyes again to feel everything he did to her. She wound her hands up and around his forearms to clutch his large, tight biceps covered by the fine wool-silk blend of his tux coat. He returned his attention to her neck to tease and nip. She was panting, her breath ragged, as he slowly worked his way over her collarbone, laved the indentation in her shoulder, then moved further down to the skin of her chest.

She gasped and arched her back when he tucked his mouth in her cleavage, licking, kissing. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, then he began to undo the buttons of her corset with his teeth and tongue.

With the brush of air on her naked, wet breastbone, she was instantly flooded with embarrassment, embarrassment that she had lost control with a stranger so completely and voluntarily that she would allow him to undress her. In public.

She made a weak move to dislodge him, but he ignored her. Four, six, eight buttons down, her corset fell open, baring her to the waist. He rose up a bit to stare at her breasts, his expression full of lust, his chest heaving, his nostrils flaring.

Overwhelmed, saturated with adrenaline and desire, she whispered, “Let me go.”

Kenard’s glittering emerald eyes met hers and he cocked an eyebrow. “No.”

She gaped at him, suddenly not knowing what to do. He wanted her. As much as she wanted him. But …

He took advantage of her confusion and kissed her again, his mouth and tongue hard, pressing her into the upholstery. His hand swept up her ribs to cup her breast, his thumb stroking her nipple until she could only think of what he was doing to her, what else she wanted him to do to her.

His mouth left hers, left her wanting, only to trace down her jaw and throat and chest until he was sucking on her nipple. She whimpered with lust, plowing her fingers through his hair and pulling him closer instead of pushing him away as she should. But he let her nipple go with a broad lick that made her whimper, and returned to her mouth, kissing her, biting her.

“Giselle,” he whispered harshly, “come home with me. Now. Tonight.”

If this man was a member of the church, he was most definitely not on the fast track to bishop. And if she did what she wanted to do, she’d be on the fast track to a shattered heart with nothing to show for it.

Would you fuck him if he came after you?

Yes.

Or … not.

She shoved at him, surprising him with her strength and nearly knocking him off the altar. He struggled for balance long enough for her to roll out from under him, desperately clutching her corset, and bolt across the room to one of the glass cases. Her chest, damp from his tongue and brushed by the cool air of the vents overhead, heaved as she looked at him warily while trying to button herself up and wondering what the hell just happened.

She couldn’t make her fingers work, she couldn’t suck in her breath long enough to close it all the way, and she couldn’t lie down on a different bench to do it because he’d trap her again. He arose from the altar and approached her. She was vaguely gratified to note that he was breathing as hard and fast as she was.

“This is insane,” she murmured, watching him warily with her back pressed into a corner of the pillar behind her, still struggling with her buttons. He stopped when he was within an arm’s length and gently brushed her hands aside to button her corset up himself.

“I thought this was what you wanted,” he muttered hoarsely. “Deep breath.”

She somehow managed to do that. “I—” But what could she say? That she was embarrassed at having this sort of intimacy with a stranger, and, moreover, liking it? That she felt more powerful at this moment than she had in her life, like a goddess with the world at her feet? That she wanted him to take her home and keep her forever?

That her purpose was to distract him enough to keep him away from Fen, and therefore, there could never be anything between them because it was all a lie?

“I, um, I—” She cleared her throat. “It was more than I expected, I think.”

“Frankly, it wasn’t nearly enough for me.”

“I don’t know you,” she whispered.

“Ah, but I wasn’t the one who issued the invitation, was I?”

“I think— Um— I think I need to go home.”

“Let me take you there.”

That was out of the question. Her nerves couldn’t take much more of this without giving him everything he wanted. Now. Tonight. As he’d demanded.

He was a stranger.

She’d lied to him.

She did not want him to know where she lived.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

He said nothing for a moment; then, having finished his task with her only vaguely noticing, he drawled, “Not in control now, are you?”

Immediately outraged, she gasped, but he shut her up with a harsh kiss, taking whatever she had to give and a whole lot of what she hadn’t intended to give him at all. It took a few seconds for her to decide whether to break the kiss or not.

Finally, Giselle pulled away from him with some difficulty and only succeeded because he’d once again underestimated her strength. “I don’t—” She hesitated and flinched at how it would sound. She cleared her throat again and said it anyway. “I’ve never done this sort of thing before.”

His eyebrow rose and he smirked. Lilith. She flushed, deeply hurt by his expression. Humiliated, confused, pissed off, and still aroused, she bolted out the door.

“Giselle, wait!”

She slipped into a dark nook to take off her shoes. If she could make it out of the gallery without his catching her, she’d be lucky. Whatever of the evening was left, Sebastian was going to have to do his own distraction because she couldn’t take another second of this.

He blew past her nook and she darted out of it the other way, her skirts hiked over her knees, her gun and stocking top clearly visible, headed toward the closest set of stairs.

“Giselle!”

Away. She had to get away from that man, away from that room where she could never go back without memories of being half undressed and so almost taken on a Barcelona ottoman in an art museum by a stranger, a stranger who’d sneered at her twice already, a stranger who could’ve forced her.

No, no force necessary. She had a gun she’d completely forgotten about. She could’ve wrapped her legs around his hips with it on and she still wouldn’t have remembered she was wearing it.

That was a man who’d fuck her the way she wanted and make her beg for more.

You’ll get your heart broken a couple of times …

Feeling very vulnerable, ashamed of what he thought of her, thus resentful of what he made her feel, she ran through the European exhibit, down the second staircase and up the third, sprinted straight through Sculpture Hall, then Kirkwood Hall, dodging bodies as best she could. Her stockinged feet slid on the polished stone floor when she took the ninety-degree turn to the north exit, touching the floor with her fingertips to keep both her speed and her balance. She looked over her shoulder to see him chasing her. She burst out of the art gallery winded and ran halfway down the drive to the limousine. The driver recognized her and her distress, and quickly caught up with her. She didn’t give him enough time to get out to open her door; she threw it open and scrambled in. She may have shut the door on her skirt. “Go, go. Go, please!”

The limousine had pulled around the horseshoe and down the drive when Kenard burst out of the gallery. She looked at him through the back window. Bent over, his hands on his knees, his chest heaving and his breath white in the frigid December air, he watched her leave.

---

14: CONTRIVED IGNORANCE

January 2006

JUSTICE PLOPPED DOWN in a seat somewhere in the middle of the lecture hall, opened her notebook and marked through the fifth day of January. With three semesters down, semester number four had begun. She would be interning this summer, but for whom, she had not yet decided. She was studying for the bar exam so she could apply for permission to take it next February instead of next July. That way, she would be prepared to show up to work at the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office immediately after graduation without having to scramble to take the bar exam with everyone else or compete with new grads who couldn’t practice until they’d passed the bar.

“ … changed my focus and didn’t get a chance to copy the new text list … ”

Unlike the rest of the class, Justice didn’t have any reason to groan at this news. After her first semester of college, she had learned never to buy textbooks until she knew what was absolutely necessary to her success in a class and hopefully find bargains on the internet. She had no books to exchange.

Her constitutional law professor droned on and Justice glanced down at the sheet of paper, scanning it to calculate an approximate cost. Her eyes widened in shock at one particular author’s name and she swallowed heavily, blinked, looked again. No, that couldn’t be. He would have told her …

Wouldn’t he?

Juell Pope was author of half the textbooks on the list in her hand.

“ … Dr. Pope’s constitutional theories more in-depth this semester … ”

The lecture went on, but Justice barely heard it for the buzzing in her ears and the blurring of the titles in front of her.

“ … country lawyer up in River Glen, just north of Chouteau City, but died some years ago. One of the greatest legal minds of the twentieth century. Ms McKinley, something wrong?”

She looked up slowly at her professor as if in a daze. “No,” she croaked, cleared her throat. “No, I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t. Deep betrayal cut through her soul. Why had she had to go to law school to find out her grandfather had been such a well-respected scholar?

Snatches of his lectures flitted through her mind. When her professor asked her a question meant to stump her, to embarrass her for her inattention, she answered it by rote, only vaguely aware of the semi-tense silence her answer had garnered.

Then, “Ms McKinley, how did you know that?”

Justice panicked, trying to think of an answer that didn’t include because Juell Pope is my grandfather and he drilled this into me in my barn. “Um, I— I don’t know. I, uh—” She cleared her throat. “I happened to have read that for an assignment last semester, is all.”

“Really! Stay after class, please. I’d love to talk to you about it.”

“Um. Sure. Okay. Uh, no problem.”

Her after-class interview with her professor went more smoothly than she had expected, given her state of total shock and her instinct to keep her identity and accomplishments separate from her grandfather’s. The professor seemed impressed with Justice’s answers and requested that she email that particular assignment to her as soon as possible. With a lump in her throat, Justice agreed, though the assignment didn’t exist and it was just another fire to put out, albeit more emergent than the rest.

She did have a marginally related paper she’d written long ago under her grandfather’s direction. He’d decreed it adequate but certainly not up to her capabilities.

It would have to do.

Justice trudged out into the bitter January air in the direction of the student union to eat. She drew wary glances and whispers as she passed clusters of law students here and there, but no one spoke to her. They saw her. They noticed her. But except for the occasional murmured comment or question in class, and no-nonsense discussion in her study groups, they kept their distance.

It was almost as if people were … afraid … to speak to her, but she had no idea why. Justice wasn’t shy; she spoke in class, but took care not to dominate the discussions. She didn’t sit on the front row and she made sure to make herself as inconspicuously conspicuous as possible. She thought she successfully projected the image of ambitious law student without being completely obnoxious about it.

Mindful of the attention, she clutched her backpack straps more closely in front of her and pretended not to see.

It was not only disconcerting, it was disappointing because it meant she had no one to talk to. She couldn’t even talk to Giselle Cox, who flew from classes to study groups to the cafeteria and back again before she left campus around three, and hadn’t been Justice’s TA since the first semester. Justice was completely alone and had been for the entirety of three semesters.

She bowed her head, as much to shelter herself from others’ observation and lack of camaraderie as from the sharp wind. Not for the first time, she wished she could do this law school thing online, where she felt safe, comfortable, confident, where no one could watch her and point at her and whisper about her.

What hurt the most was that she hadn’t had these problems during her undergrad. She didn’t feel suffocated or shunned. Didn’t have to put forward a certain type of image. She hadn’t had any friends, but she’d been able to laugh and joke with her classmates, walk to class together and chat, gather for lunch, trade notes and pointers and gripe about instructors, do some tutoring on the side for extra cash.

She’d been able to ask for help in her humanities classes without feeling stupid because all she had to say was, “I’m an econ major.” She got instant assistance by someone who needed to feel superior. Justice only needed an A, and she very quickly learned how to make her tutor feel like the most brilliant person ever. The tutor got her ego stroked. Justice got her A.

Law school, on the other hand …

She sighed.

She had never seen behavior like Sherry’s before. She’d been home-schooled, and the people in River Glen, especially the guys at the locker and auto parts store, seemed to like her okay. They all got along, laughed and joked, gossiped and snarked. She had no reason to expect bullying in law school, much less be the target of it. It had shaken her up so badly she’d never gotten her social equilibrium back. Was it that different from college to grad school for everyone, or was it just her? She didn’t know because she had no one to ask, and no one from her undergrad classes had continued to law school at UMKC.

In lieu of some manner of socializing, then, and to go where she felt appreciated, she’d taken refuge in the internet. She’d found amusement there when her grandfather was alive. Now she lived there.

Once in the warmth of the cafeteria, she fumbled with her burdens in front of the microwave, found a secluded spot after she’d sufficiently nuked her food, opened her laptop, and sent the paper her professor had requested. She dug into her roast Bossy and began to cruise her blogs.

It had only taken three months as a daily blogger at TownSquared for her to come to some national attention, augmented by the two articles she’d published in National Review; because of that exposure, other blog owners had reached out to her, requesting columns here and there, then more regularly. The blogging position at TownSquared overflowed her schedule, but with each new request came an offer of payment and that she wouldn’t refuse.

She checked the comments section of a libertarianish blog that leaned a little rightward, in which she had engaged in a back-and-forth with one of her favorite commenters.

Going on a year now, arguing with him, snarking back and forth, mocking each other. Half the time he had legitimate issues with what she wrote, challenged her assumptions, threw obscure case law at her and mocked her if it took her more than a couple of hours to throw some back at him.

Lots of lawyers read her blogs and commented in her threads, going back and forth amongst themselves, so the fact that hamlet was a lawyer wasn’t special. She enjoyed sitting back and watching them all slug it out in irreverent ways they couldn’t in court. She enjoyed being dogpiled and successfully fighting her way out of it. She loved them for spilling their brains all over her blog posts and teaching her without their realizing they were doing it.

But when it came to politics, he enjoyed skewering her completely, and she always thought about what he said. She was humble enough to admit that occasionally he might be right and she studied that point more closely until she decided which one of them was right and dug in or moderated her opinion accordingly.

There were several comments either agreeing with her or scoffing at her, some good-naturedly, some not, but she didn’t care about those opinions. She cared about hamlet’s opinion.

She snorted and chuckled.

That was his name for her, mistress j. She was pretty sure he meant it sexually, but she couldn’t imagine hamlet submitting himself to anyone.

Justice laughed outright at that. It didn’t matter how many times somebody said that, it made her laugh. Hayeksplosives was a demolitions expert with the military who sympathized with Justice because they were both women who frequented male-dominated blogs. Grace O’Malley was a feminist who occasionally flashed hot about some men’s cringy view of women and would come out blazing to Justice’s defense if she thought Justice was in over her head. LoBianco was an acerbic accountant who liked to poke at Justice, too, like the rest of the denizens.

But hamlet’s comments seemed personal, especially when he dropped the snark and sincerely complimented or encouraged her.

Sometimes it seemed these people were the only friends she had.

Conversation swirled around her as she began to write a new article. Her sudden brush with her grandfather’s greatness not an hour ago still rattled her, but as she thought about it, ideas for future blog posts inundated her. Her fingers burned through the keys as she typed, vaguely aware that the din and crush of lunchtime diners was swelling.

“ … Hilliard’s not teaching in the fall.”

Justice stopped typing immediately, but attempted to disguise the fact that she’d begun to eavesdrop on the conversation behind her.

“I heard he’s taking a sabbatical for the next three, four semesters. Something about a huge embezzlement case.”

“Shit.”

No kidding.

“I needed him for my white-collar crime section, too.”

“The irony. It burns.”

She felt much better. So what if she couldn’t take his classes. No one else could, either.

“Never had him, never will. Don’t like him, don’t like his opinions, don’t like his politics or the way he runs that county up there.”

“You believe all that bullshit?”

“Look, where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

“But you don’t know who’s setting the fire and why.”

“Explain all the lawyers coming out of that office talking about the mysterious cash that gets passed around.” Justice’s breath caught in her throat. “If one person calls you an ass, they’re having a bad day. If three people do it, buy a saddle.”

She’d heard the rumors, of course. Of that and other things, but she actively avoided such nonsense because, in her opinion, if he were guilty, he would have been arrested and put in prison. That was the way the system worked.

“Fucking Republicans. The only reason he keeps getting elected is because he murdered that guy.”

Justice choked.

“Bullshit again. He wasn’t even arrested for that, much less convicted.”

“It’s a racket. He’s a racket. One big conspiracy and all the rednecks up there love him for it.”

“So do the women.”

“It’s that bad-boy bullshit they like. Leaves us nice guys out in the cold.”

Justice shoved her earbuds in her ears and cranked up the tunes—she didn’t care what—unable to listen to such gossip one minute longer.

There was a reason she didn’t google Dr. Hilliard, which was the same reason she’d shredded the pleading after having it all of three days—she felt dirty and on the verge of being a crazy stalker lady.

There was nothing anyone could say that would diminish the impact Knox Hilliard had made on her that day almost a year and a half before, but she didn’t want to take the chance. Plenty enough time to get to know him after she’d acquired the job that would give her daily access to him.

Her email chimed. The professor who had requested the paper her grandfather had thought merely average:

Justice, please come to my office at your earliest convenience. I would like you to submit this to the law review. —Dr. Smythe

Justice gaped, unable to believe the words in front of her, but her attention caught when the diners around her stirred a bit. She looked to the door to see Giselle Cox walk in—strut, more like—with Neil-something, her co-TA, an older law student with whom Giselle ate lunch every day.

Justice wasn’t the best judge of appearance, but it seemed to her that Giselle was … average. If that. Curly dark blonde hair usually in a ponytail, light eyes, pale skin, orthodontic-perfect teeth, and today, glasses. Short, compact body dressed in the same sorts of things everyone else wore: faded jeans, heavy yellow sweater, hiking boots. Really the woman was wholly unremarkable to Justice’s eye, except for a mysterious … something … that made people notice her and defer to her. It wasn’t just her age or level of education, although that contributed to it; no, it was something more nebulous, some sort of intense energy.

Half the people Giselle and Neil passed stared at them openly, but neither noticed as they continued to talk and laugh on their way to get food.

Justice sighed, pulled the earbuds out of her ears, and began to shut down her laptop. She’d eaten well, written well, and generally done well today, not to mention the fact that she had learned she carried the DNA of “one of the greatest legal minds of the twentieth century.” It might take her a while to get used to the idea, to get over being angry with her grandfather for keeping that from her, but it would help if she knew why. He’d never pulled his punches with her, even when it hurt.

Occam’s Razor, Iustitia! Think!

She thought. The simplest explanation was that Justice had been too young to understand how highly he was regarded, so he hadn’t bothered to tell her. It was possible he was just too modest to say anything. It was possible he may not have known. Why not? Location? Access? He’d been stuck way up in River Glen barely scraping by in a house no better than hers, but he had somehow gotten an IBM 5150 soon after Justice was born and taught himself DOS. He’d skimp on food and gas, heat and hot water in order to have dial-up to get on the bulletin boards.

When he died, he’d had nothing in his accounts, he’d had an outstanding account at River Glen’s microscopic grocery store-slash-gas station, and he’d had to be buried in a pauper’s grave. If he was getting paid royalties, they weren’t much, and the textbooks on the list were very expensive. How was completely connected to the wider world, so how could he have been so out of touch?

Hmmmm.

Justice decided to look into that and woe be to the publishing company who’d cheated her beloved grandfather and mentor.

“I wouldn’t touch Giselle Cox with my ten-inch pole and I don’t care how cute she is,” came the voice of one of the men behind her, startling her out of her burgeoning battle plans. “She’d kick my ass.”

Illegitimi non carborundum.

“You know,” replied his companion, “it’s not like she’s hot or anything, because she’s not, but there’s something about her.”

“It’s the guns. You can’t see ’em, but you know she’s got ’em.”

“Naw, that’s not it. Power. It’s like she’s got some … I don’t know. Power’s not the right word.”

“No, but I know what you mean and it’s better than anything I could come up with. The way she fights with Hilliard is enough for me to know I don’t want to tangle with her.”

Justice watched Giselle across the massive cafeteria, where she sat studying with her friend. Yes, she’d seen how Drs. Cox and Hilliard got along in class, but she’d thought it was just good-natured banter between people of a similar age and education level. Perhaps not.

Power.

How Giselle got it, who gave it to her, why she deserved to have it, Justice didn’t understand, but she wanted to.

She just had to figure out how to get some of it.

---

15: FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES

March 2006

MEET ME AT TASSO’S TONIGHT AT 9:30

THE TERSE EMAIL from Bryce’s former best friend—the one who’d characterized him so neatly so long ago, the one he hadn’t considered any kind of a friend for over a decade now—danced in front of his mind’s eye like the unseasonable March snowflakes under the street light in front of him. As he sat in his car in the restaurant’s parking lot, his vision blurred by the sleet collecting on his windshield, he didn’t have to wonder why he’d actually shown up.

Giselle.

Naturally, she would have told Knox what had happened three months ago, and Knox wanted to stake his claim.

It was 9:39 p.m. and he was still debating whether to go in. The pain of betrayal had lessened with time, distance, and doubt, but had stabbed him again over a year ago at Leah’s visitation.

He braved the wind and ice to get to the door of the restaurant, his collar up and his scarf around his face. He didn’t really want to risk being seen with the Chouteau County prosecutor, but this was a good place to meet: dark and neutral. Plus, he loved Greek food, which was probably why Knox had picked it in the first place. Knox would have remembered that. Knox remembered everything.

Small lanterns on the tables in their private cubbyholes punctuated the dim interior. A floor show of belly dancers was in full swing and the waitstaff yelled enthusiastically back and forth at each other.

“Hi, Bryce,” said the hostess. “Come with me.” She led him to a dark corner. He didn’t sit.

“You’re late,” Knox snapped, glaring up at him.

“I’m always late.”

“You shit. I don’t know what species of thorn is in your paw this time, but it’s affecting me, so I’m here to pull it out.”

Bryce hesitated because Knox only got that sarcastic when he was mocking someone for bone-headed assumptions.

“Well? Sit your ass down and get it off your chest so I can go home because I am not here to make you feel better.”

Resigned to staying confused for a while, Bryce glanced at the glass of what had to be Mountain Dew and signaled a waitress. “Sandra, take this back,” he muttered, swiping it off the table and ignoring Knox’s protests. “For him, a steak and salad, rare, bleu cheese. Milk if you have it.”

“Baklava!” Knox demanded.

“No baklava. The usual for me with a big bowl of tzatziki. Coke. Water. Lots of it. Please.”

“Thank you, Mother,” Knox said snidely once she’d left.

Bryce ignored that and slid into the seat across from Knox. “As it happens, you are the thorn in my paw, and I don’t need you slipping into a coma before you answer all my questions.”

“I don’t owe you anything, because I haven’t done anything to be the thorn in your paw, and I certainly did not do that cunt you married, which you know and always have.”

Bryce’s jaw worked in thought and he stared down at the table, suddenly realizing this wasn’t just about Giselle. Why had he thought it would be?

“It was easier for you to blame me than your own shitty judgment in women—especially considering the fact that I hated her and I specifically told you not to marry her. And on top of all that, she was a blonde and skinny as a rail.”

“You’re right,” Bryce admitted with a heavy sigh. “I knew. I didn’t want to disbelieve her and … I’m sorry.”

“That’s a helluva way to split that hair! Do you actually know how many other men she was sleeping with?”

“So far as I could gather, she didn’t actually have sex very often. That wasn’t her thing.” Knox looked suddenly confused, and Bryce took a deep breath. “She got involved with men who would submit and craved punishment.”

Knox started to laugh. “I knew it!” he crowed. “If I could’ve proven it to you, would you’ve listened to me?”

Bryce looked off toward the belly dancers without seeing anything at all. “I wouldn’t have understood what it was,” he muttered bitterly. “And I was too invested in maintaining my virtue to be willing to sit through an explanation.”

Knox grunted. “Virtue’s overrated. And so … ? I mean, you had four kids.”

“I don’t know which ones are mine. Emme, probably. Luke and Andrea, I don’t know. Randy, definitely not. Every time Meryl did want to have sex, she turned up pregnant, so … ”

Knox’s mouth flattened, but he clearly wasn’t shocked. “That didn’t bother you?”

“Of course it did, but what was I supposed to do? Track down their fathers, hand them over, and walk away? I could’ve, yeah, but they were innocent and I thought I could give them a better life. I compartmentalized them as helpless children without regard to their paternity, and as long as they called me Daddy, snuggled up to me, and ran to me for protection, I could love them. Turns out, they didn’t have a better life with me, then they burned to death.”

Knox sighed heavily. “Sorry, pal,” he muttered. “That bites.”

They sat in companionable silence for a long while, their friendship having begun in college and never really ending except for Bryce’s determination to be angry with Knox for something he hadn’t done. And, as he always had, Knox promptly forgave and forgot.

“You and Taight are related to Giselle,” Bryce finally said.

Knox barked a laugh. “It’s the eyes, right?”

“I’m going to assume,” he muttered wearily, rubbing his forehead, “for the sake of my own sanity, that neither of you is her brother.”

“Cousin,” he confirmed with alacrity. “But why do you care and what’s your sanity got to do with anything?”

Again Bryce hesitated. Knox didn’t mean to tell Bryce to back off? “Leah’s visitation. I overheard you ask Giselle to go home with you.”

Knox’s jaw hit the table. “You know,” he gritted once he collected himself, “you’ve always been stupid about women, whereas I am not. First of all, if you were eavesdropping, you deserve what you hear. Second of all, if you’re going to eavesdrop, you could have the courtesy to stick around for the whole conversation. Third, didn’t you learn your lesson about believing the worst about me the first time I was accused of banging a woman you thought belonged to you?” He threw his napkin on the table and started to rise. “You know what, Bryce? Fuck you. I’m tired of being the one getting the shaft when a woman’s got you in knots.”

“Siddown,” Bryce growled. He wasn’t surprised when Knox looked at him expectantly, waiting. It was a familiar exchange. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Again.”

It took a moment before he heard Knox settle back into his seat. “Yeah, I asked her to go home with me,” he said, his voice unusually raspy. “Don’t tell me you’ve never needed to hold on to somebody when your life’s been ripped out from under your feet.”

Bryce swallowed.

“But I forgot,” he continued cruelly. “You don’t have anybody like that. You’ve never had anybody like that.”

Bryce’s jaw clenched.

“She said no,” Knox muttered. “Actually, she damn near bashed my head in for asking, which is a good thing because that would have been an epic mistake.”

“Because she’s your cousin,” Bryce shot back.

Knox squinted at him. “Call one of your expert geneticists. See what he says.”

Knox didn’t make claims he couldn’t back up, but Bryce made a note to do just that.

“Well, this is fucking hilarious. You showed up to get me out of your way so you can sleep with Giselle.”

“I don’t want to sleep with her,” Bryce found himself replying. Knox’s expression went from smug to confused. “I want to fuck her.”

Knox gaped at him and Bryce thoroughly enjoyed his shock. “Consider me never having been in your way,” Knox finally said. “Happy now?”

“I’ve never been happy,” Bryce shot back.

Knox stared at him for a few seconds, then murmured, “I know.”

One moment of pity was bad enough. Two was— “What, no ‘I told you so’?”

Knox gestured at Bryce’s face. “I don’t need to.”

Bryce looked away.

Conversation didn’t resume until after their food arrived. Knox’s grumpy mood improved markedly once he got some real food in him and the sugar wore off. It’d always been that way, and now they were just taking up where they left off twelve years ago.

“Before we get to Giselle,” Bryce finally said, “I want to know about Leah.”

“Well, I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I never thought you did.”

Knox’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth as he stared at Bryce. “You didn’t?”

“Nooo,” Bryce drawled warily. “Fen’s the only likely candidate.”

“What do you know?” he demanded.

“I don’t know anything,” Bryce returned, irritated. “You’ve got no reason to kill her. He’s got every reason in the world, and I don’t know anyone who thinks you killed her. Your problem is your track record and his lack of one.” After a minute, he gestured at Knox with his fork. “I’m listening.”

He took a deep breath. “Backstory. Fen killed my father. Insulin overdose. Obviously looks like natural causes for a diabetic with heart disease.”

Bryce’s eyebrow rose.

“Remember I told you my mom kicked me out of the house when I was fifteen because I accused her of having an affair with Fen? And I went to live with my aunt and cousin?”

Bryce nodded, recalling his shock over finding out that his roommate was the heir to a fortune and how that had come about—

“Giselle was the cousin. The proviso’s dated just about a week after Trudy kicked me out, and then my dad died the week after that. I tell you what. That thing’s been the bane of my existence, stuck in professional limbo, marking time, never feeling like I had a place in life until I turned forty. And hell, when I was fifteen, forty-year-olds were on their deathbeds.”

—and all the sleepless nights when the nineteen-year-old heir had paced their dorm room trying to figure out how to pass the next twenty years or how to weasel out of the course his uncle had set for him.

“What was your father thinking?”

Knox sighed. “I don’t know.”

“So … how do you know Fen murdered your father and why haven’t you had him investigated?”

“’Bout six years ago, Giselle and I were over at the estate clearing out my childhood. My mother was out of town. Fen didn’t know we were there. We went to his library to ask him something and overheard him confessing to his bishop in a very roundabout and non-incriminating way.”

“So this war is a relatively recent development.”

Knox nodded.

“Did you confront him?”

“Yes. All but dared me to prove it. I’ve had him under investigation ever since. Short of exhuming my father—and insulin is a perfect weapon, so I haven’t bothered—I can’t find anything.”

“Why hasn’t he come after you?”

“He likes me and he’d rather not kill me. First, I’m the heir. Besides the fact that it looks bad, he’ll know I have a dead man’s switch and that I keep the FBI’s attention for a reason. Second, with my track record—” Bryce snickered. “—he’s not sure I wouldn’t murder him. Fen doesn’t have the balls to come after me, vicariously or otherwise. Third, he’s squeamish and he has a tendency toward half-assed contrition. He won’t dirty his own hands, and he’ll kinda-sorta confess to the bishop and leave the church, but he won’t give any of it up.”

“Wait. I thought he was training you to be able to take over when you turned forty. Didn’t he tell you he wasn’t going to let you be a trust fund frat boy and you were going to work?”

Knox shrugged. “Somewhere in there he decided he didn’t want to let it go. And you know what? I don’t blame him. My dad had a little machine shop that grew beyond his managerial capabilities, so he hired Fen. Fen was the one who turned it into a billion-dollar corporation.”

“Didn’t he take your trust away from you when you decided not to work for him and took the job with Chouteau County instead?”

“Yes, but with good reason. He wanted me to get some job experience in a different corporate environment. He wasn’t particular until he found out Claude Nocek—the Chouteau County prosecutor at the time—was courting me, then he went ballistic. I thought he was exaggerating, telling me shit straight out of some southern gothic crooked-sheriff movie. But I was young and dumb. Flattered. Took the bait. Fen cut me off because he knew Nocek was dirty, and he knew every dime I had access to would somehow end up in Nocek’s bank account. I was pissed at first, but once I got in there and saw he hadn’t been exaggerating, I was really glad, because it gave me an iron-clad out, but you better believe Nocek made me pay for it.”

Bryce could remember how tense Knox had grown, how closed-mouthed he had been about his new job and boss. “That bad, eh?”

“Worse. The sheriff’s office was Nocek’s personal thug patrol and they were running a protection racket, which Nocek got a cut of. He ran unstamped cigarettes, moonshine, and marijuana. M&Ms, he called it.” Bryce chuckled. “Every drug you can think of. Prostitution. Guns. The works. He also made money fixing cases, so when he informed me he expected me to contribute to the widow’n’orphan fund, I quit. He then informed me I wouldn’t make it past the county line if I tried to leave, and backed it up by having a couple of deputies escort me back to my desk.

“So I bided my time till I could figure out what to do, cut my teeth on the hardest cases they could foist off on me, and found out I really liked the job. There were other attorneys who weren’t on the take, but only one was subtle enough that Nocek didn’t notice. I latched on to him, but I wasn’t very successful at hiding my winning streak and Nocek rode my ass constantly to bring money into the office. Then after I was alleged to have murdered Tom Parley—”

“Heh.”

“—and that circus died down, Nocek was happy I’d gilded his lily and he left me alone for another couple of months before he started dropping names of other people whom he thought needed a dose of lead poisoning. At that point, my back was to the wall and it was either kill or be killed. So I forced him to resign and name me as his successor.”

“And the untouchable Knox Hilliard was born, all with the tacit approval of the federal prosecutor.”

“Well, you know. A prosecutor turns vigilante—”

“Twice.”

“—and you get the undying loyalty of every decent cop in the state. I couldn’t get rid of the sheriff himself, elected position, too many good ol’ boys, but I could call in the state troopers to clean out my sheriff’s department. That made the governor get off my back, and Fen released my trust to me with a big grin and a slap on the back.”

“So two wrongs really do make a right.”

Knox laughed. “Yeah, I guess so.” He took a bite. “Thing is, I’m happy with what I do. I’m not cut out to be a CEO of anything, and I don’t even manage my own staff; my executive AP does that. I don’t know how I got anything accomplished before he came to work for me. I’m just a redneck lawyer in a backwater of a county that’s still a cesspool. And I like it that way.”

“A redneck lawyer who teaches law classes and writes textbooks,” Bryce drawled.

“Everybody needs a hobby.”

Bryce chuckled.

“The irony is, if Fen had asked me if I wanted it before I found out he killed my dad, I’d have sent him an invoice for a few million dollars and that’d be that. Now I’m stuck in limbo again, between the terms of the proviso and Sebastian’s hostile takeover. I can’t have any kind of relationship before I’m forty because Fen’s going to go after whoever I’m with. Sebastian’s getting blocked at every turn so his takeover’s stalling out.”

“So just wait until you’re forty.”

“Ha! You might be used to being alone and celibate, but I am not. I want the same thing I’ve wanted since I was nineteen years old. Wife, family. Can’t do that while my uncle’s killing off all my women.”

Bryce’s brow wrinkled. “There’ve been others?”

“Not since Leah, no,” Knox grumbled and went back to his meal. “But Fen thinks Giselle is my trump card, so he’s been trying to get rid of her in case she and I get married at the eleventh hour and have a kid waiting in the wings somewhere.”

Bryce stared at Knox for a few seconds, trying to work through that. “‘Get rid of her’?” he asked carefully.

“He’s tried to kill her twice.”

Bryce’s heart stopped. “Uh … ”

“Yes. Really. The first time, he had her bookstore burned down. She got out with her purse, phone, and laptop, but that was only because she couldn’t sleep that night.”

Bryce’s heart had stopped at the word “burned,” the memory of his nine-year-old daughter disappearing into an inferno screaming Daddy!

Knox looked up then and said, “Oh, dude, I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

Bryce shook his head to clear it. “I— It’s an excruciating way to die,” he croaked, trying to stave off hyperventilation. He knew Knox was watching him carefully, but he didn’t care. Of all the people in the world he could trust to see his weakness, it was Knox. Bryce didn’t speak again until he had recovered himself, cleared his throat, and said, “Go on.”

He didn’t. “You okay? You’re white as a sheet.”

Bryce cleared his throat. “I’ll be all right. Thanks. Giselle’s bookstore burned down and … ?”

Knox decided to go with it. “Then Fen sent two thugs after her.”

“That explains the bullet hole,” Bryce muttered.

“Holes. They had to dig the other one out of her hip. But she’s alive and they aren’t.” He paused. “I will never forget that night. They came charging across the street at her, and she nailed ’em both before they could aim right. One gun in each hand. No hesitation, no remorse.”

It was just so … wrong … that Bryce found that arousing.

“Then Fen had Leah killed. Giselle hunted him down, put a gun to his head, told him if he pulled any more stunts like that, she’d kill him.”

The gun strapped around her thigh under a cocktail dress. The bulge pressing against his thigh through the thick layers of her evening gown.

Bryce didn’t know what to do, what to think.

“I don’t know if he’ll be willing to test the limits of Giselle’s patience, but I wouldn’t put it past him to try if he manages to cozy up to her again.”

Bryce’s brow wrinkled.

“Giselle is to Fen as a queen bee mean girl is to her bitchy gay best friend,” Knox said blithely. “They amuse the hell out of each other. Did. They’d sit around and snark at each other and everybody else, playing off each other like two insult comics at a roast, and they were hilarious when they got rolling, but—”

“And he tried to assassinate her?” Bryce demanded.

“It’s not personal,” Knox said. “It’s business. She is a convenient way for me to fulfill the terms of the proviso, and he is trying to close all avenues down. And this is why I’m sleeping alone, which I loathe.”

It was odd to hear Knox speak this way. The Knox he knew from college and law school was a good Mormon kid in control of his sex drive with an iron will to keep himself chaste until marriage. This one …

“You became Don Juan all of a sudden,” Bryce grumbled, envious Knox had been able to turn that corner so easily.

“You cannot half-ass sin, my friend,” Knox said archly. Bryce barked a surprised laugh and then Knox joined in. It was good to laugh with an old friend, the way they had when they were in college, hanging out, studying, going to church, shooting the breeze after shooting the curls. “I’m not,” he finally said amiably. “Don Juan, that is. I haven’t slept with that many women and sex isn’t as important to me as companionship with a woman I love. It’s the icing on the cake, but I made sure I was damned good icing.”

The two of them ate and reminisced, relaxing again into the rhythm of the friendship of young men. It was only after Bryce was fully relaxed did he feel ready to continue the real conversation.

“I understood that Leah didn’t want to get married,” Bryce finally said.

“Right. She didn’t want her daughter to have squatter’s rights to OKH, and I didn’t either, so we were on the same page.”

“Why the change of heart?”

“To keep Fen off Giselle’s back. Leah was postmenopausal and Fen didn’t know she had a daughter. Giselle was more of a threat because she’s of childbearing age and has a long history of doing things specifically designed to tell Fen to go fuck himself.”

Bryce snorted wryly.

“I,” Knox continued, “being more than a little pissed off he killed my dad, have a huge motive to tell Fen to go fuck himself. So he does have a legitimate reason to believe we’d do it just to piss him off. We won’t, but he wouldn’t believe it if we told him straight up. Leah and I couldn’t have a small wedding because Fen needed to be informed that the Giselle option was off the table. But when the financial press got hold of our wedding plans, it went digging and found Rachel.”

Bryce sighed. Leah had lived her life as a sacrificial lamb, and died as one.

“Giselle was so nervous before the wedding she was radioactive, so Leah told me to make her go away. Stupid shit that I am, I decided that Leah should have her way on her wedding day.”

“Is that why she was so mad at Leah’s funeral?”

“That and a shitload of guilt for not following her gut regardless of what Leah wanted. I should have trusted her instincts, but I didn’t want to upset Leah. If Giselle had been with her … My fault. All my fault.” His voice, now heavy with regret, trailed off. He reached for a napkin and blew his nose.

“Who can blame a guy for taking his wife’s side over everybody else’s?” Bryce asked blithely. “That’s what good men do, isn’t it?”

Knox stilled, then sighed heavily. “All right. You made your point.” They were silent while Knox collected himself. “Anyway,” he continued, his voice still low and hoarse, “my plan to remain unattached until I turn forty isn’t working out very well, particularly since I somehow moved from the May end of the dating pool to the December end.”

Bryce was surprised. “What?”

Knox didn’t say anything for a while. “I met somebody,” he said low. “She’s twenty-three.”

“What’s so special about her that you’d go from cougar to Lolita?”

“You ever heard the name Justice McKinley?”

“No.”

“High-profile conservatarianish blogger. Amateur economist, still in law school. Getting a lot of attention from the conservative and libertarian press because she says she’s a conservative, but holds some very liberal-cum-libertarian views and makes good cases for them. I was subbing for a friend for one class period and there she was, right in front of me. And don’t think that doesn’t give me the willies because that’s the kind of bullshit my colleagues indulge in. Once this semester ends, I won’t teach any more classes until she graduates. After I turn forty, I’ll go find her and hope like hell she’s not attached.”

“Have you—?”

“Oh, hell no! She has a crush on me and no idea I have one on her. At least,” he grumbled, “I hope that’s what it is. Maybe it’ll go away in the next three years.” His forehead dropped on the table with a thunk. “Make it go away.”

Bryce had no idea what to say to that. It’d been twelve years since they’d talked. So much had happened to both of them, so much about each of them had changed that Bryce had the vague sensation of starting over as freshmen roomies with a common culture meeting for the first time.

“Midlife crisis,” Knox said, his voice muffled. “Has to be. How long do these last?”

Bryce made a noise of commiseration. He certainly wasn’t one to scoff at a midlife crisis. He sighed. “Moving along. Sebastian and OKH.”

Knox sat up and shrugged. “Not that much to tell. Standard hostile takeover with the added benefit of being able to personally threaten the CEO with dismemberment of his company. Every last employee, every last nut, bolt, and washer. Sebastian has OKH’s parted-out resale value calculated to within ten bucks.”

“He wouldn’t. Hundreds of people?”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Knox drawled. “But he has to think like he will, act like he will, because he bluffs and Fen knows that.”

“What’s his problem with Fen?”

“Putting those hits out on Giselle. You fuck around with Sebastian’s sidekick, expect him to hand you your ass in the most painful way possible.”

That made sense. Bryce gestured for Knox to continue.

“Sebastian’s been able to buy enough OKH stock to have a voting bloc that he’s used to shit-can major business decisions. Everybody on Wall Street’s selling OKH short, the SEC is about to cut Sebastian off, and Congress is generally pissy about Sebastian’s inability to keep his mitts off people he doesn’t like. The Department of Justice’s antitrust division wants our heads because we pulled a fast one on them when Sebastian took over Senator Oth’s company. So we’ve got the DoJ, the SEC, Roger Oth, and six other senators on our backs. But Oth’s the only one with a semi-legitimate reason to whine about Sebastian taking his company, the DoJ can’t get to us legally, the SEC’s just following protocol, and Congress has bigger priorities.”

Bryce had started to nod halfway through. “That explains Fen’s run for the Senate.”

“Right. Oth and Jep Industries is a tertiary issue at this point, but where Fen goes, OKH goes and Sebastian would have to account for it, then everybody involved in Jep Industries will throw that on his funeral pyre, too. Making the DoJ our bitch, deliberately crashing stock prices, and threatening to lay off a thousand workers in a right-to-work state aren’t exactly ways to win friends and influence politicians.”

“Did your fight with Fen over Jep Industries have anything to do with OKH? Some knock-on effect?”

“Not with regard to the proviso. We made the decision on what to do with Jep based on the needs of Hollander Steelworks. OKH could limp along without Jep’s products for a while before it had to either find another vendor or start changing over to more standardized machinery. But one busted machine at the steel mill, and it would almost immediately close its doors without Jep’s parts. Time was of the essence and Fen’s quite … leisurely about his decision-making. Mitch Hollander happened to be in a position to act quickly. Huge risk, because Hollander had just enough cash to cover the bills, but one bounced check and boom. The whole house of cards would come down. It was a choice between the mill maybe collapsing or definitely collapsing. Fen had more money, yes, and really, we would have preferred he take it over, but he wouldn’t have been quick enough. Distance was a big factor, too. Hollander’s a stone’s throw from Jep’s facility. OKH is eleven hundred miles away.

“So Fen took us to court on an antitrust claim because what he really wanted was my cousins’ intellectual property that Jep was licensing. He thought we iced him out because of bad blood and to keep the family’s IP away from him—which was a bonus—but he never asked us why we did what we did, and then it comes out in court and you could see his face, when he finally clued in that it wasn’t personal. We did what we thought was best for the employees and to keep both companies healthy, as quickly as possible.”

“Mmm, okay. So what’s the plan now that Fen’s suddenly playing politician?”

Knox paused for a moment as if trying to decide how to articulate it. “This threw Sebastian for a loop. He doesn’t think politically because he’s never had to, and he’s got the attention span of a hyperactive five-year-old hopped up on sugar. I engineered Hollander’s takeover of Jep because it was too complex for Sebastian to deal with it by himself. Furthermore, my cousin Morgan—”

“Ashworth? Short list for Fed Chair or Treasury Secretary?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know you were related to him.”

“Very few people do. Or did. They do now because he trashed his career to get Oth’s company folded into Hollander to keep the production lines open. Morgan was laundering those transactions while we were in court slugging it out with Fen. We were losing. The DoJ came in on a white charger and won it for us. When they found out what Morgan and Hollander were doing, they went apeshit. Then Hollander refused to sell his steel to Fen, so the other mills jacked their prices up and Fen had to pay a premium because there is no way he’d ever buy inferior steel from China. Therefore, profits are down.”

“But now Hollander’s violated antitrust, but the DoJ can’t come after you for those because precedent’s been established, and they helped establish it.”

“Exactly. From the outside, it looks like Sebastian started the OKH takeover for no reason and keeping Fen away from Jep Industries was just a vendetta. Fen’s fighting back, and the financial press is just parroting Fen’s story. They haven’t dug for the truth and Sebastian is like Mary Poppins—he never explains anything. We exhausted every trick, favor, and ally we had to get that done, and we thought we had Fen cornered. So when we heard he decided to run for Senate—” Knox groaned. “Shit. The only thing we could do was try to block his fundraising efforts as much as possible.”

“That’s weak.”

“Yep.”

“So you have no plan.”

“We do now. Blocking Fen’s access to money is the first part. Second part: A very quiet PR campaign against Senator Oth that’s gathering steam, implicating him as the real villain at his company, and the unions are talking Sebastian and Hollander up as the white knights because they know exactly who saved those jobs. Oth’s not evil. He’s just stupid, but he doesn’t want that out, so he backed off, but Fen’s looking more and more like a victim and has enough political allies to both slap Sebastian down and sponsor anti-dog-eat-dog legislation.”

“If he’s elected.”

“Part three. We’re putting up the Jackson County prosecutor, Kevin Oakley, against him. He’s building his war chest right now.”

“Clever, but can he win?”

“He doesn’t have to win. We just need a wall between us and Congress until after my fortieth birthday when Sebastian’s restored OKH to its former glory and he’s found someone to run it. After that, Sebastian and Hollander can recruit new allies to help him fight any future anti-Taight legislation on his terms instead of trying to do it alone under the Senate’s terms. Nobody can help him while OKH is in the mix, but they can contribute to Oakley’s campaign.”

Bryce chuckled. “What do you mean, Taight doesn’t think politically? That’s brilliant.”

Knox looked up at him sharply. “He didn’t come up with this. This is Giselle’s brain child.”

Bryce stilled, then slowly closed his eyes and sat back, taking a deep breath. He could feel every last drop of blood in his heart and lungs head south. He didn’t even care enough to keep his reaction from Knox and he figured he deserved it when Knox started to laugh at him.

“She just gave your IQ a blow job and she’s not even here. Priceless!”

Bryce couldn’t deny that. He took another deep breath. “Okay, so you can cross me off your list of people you need to convince to stay away from Fen.”

Knox suddenly grimaced. “Yeah. About that. You got crossed off the list at Fen’s fundraising party. That’s why you’re here wanting to know if Giselle and I are lovers.”

Anger exploded in Bryce’s gut. His jaw clenched. His nostrils flared.

“Oh, simmer down,” Knox drawled. “I told you taking over Oth’s company wrung us dry. It was the only idea Sebastian could come up with on short notice. All he knew was he had to keep your money and Fen separated. I didn’t think you’d take a call from me and you’d be suspicious of Sebastian calling out of the blue and we were worried you’d donate to Fen just because you were pissed at me.”

Bryce sighed. It had never even occurred to him to do that, and the fact that Knox thought he would … He sighed.

“He sent Giselle in to get you the hell away from Fen and fuck your mind. She didn’t know your name and we didn’t know she’d met you before. Sebastian said you followed her like a wolf in heat and a half hour later, she came flying through the gallery looking like she’d been thoroughly fucked. You ran after her, missed her, and went back in so pissed that you sucker-punched him when he wouldn’t tell you where she went. Since she didn’t shoot you, we figured there was something else going on.

“What we do know is that something happened between you, what—a year ago?—you kissed her or something? And she was fidgety for months. We’ve never seen her like that before. When she came home alone from the Nelson that night, she was a hot mess, and she’s been a hot mess ever since.”

Bryce thought about that, thought about how fidgety he’d been after that kiss in the parking lot, the mess he’d been when he’d gotten home from the gallery. Thought about the fact that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her and had from the moment they’d met at Hale’s.

But he needed some clarification, because he wasn’t about to assume anything else.

“Okay, I can buy that you needed a pity fuck at Leah’s visitation and were willing to take what you could get, but what I saw was a lover’s clinch.”

Knox looked at him speculatively and waved his fork, not answering Bryce’s question. “I might have turned into Don Juan, but what happened to you? You’re dropping the f-bomb like it’s the word of the day and you took Giselle on and won, which is amazing, especially for the Bryce Kenard I knew way back when.”

Bryce grunted. “I don’t know why you have to ask. Meryl. Then it was the fire and my kids dying.”

“That can’t be the only thing.”

Bryce paused for a long time, then said, “I don’t know. I lost some memories after the fire, don’t know if it was the fire or the coma. I think something happened early in my marriage and I think it was significant.” He shrugged. “Then I read Atlas Shrugged.”

Knox burst out laughing and he laughed until he was coughing and wiping tears from his eyes. “Oh, damn. That’s our family manifesto. If I’d known you were going to go that nuts, I’d have shoved it in your hands in college. You were a downright prude.”

“I would’ve been horrified. Attracted, but horrified. Now … ” He shrugged. “What can I say? You were right.”

Knox, still chuckling, said, “Congratulations on getting in touch with your dark side and for picking the right woman.”

“I didn’t pick her,” Bryce grumbled. “She picked me and she made sure I knew it. Now explain, and don’t skimp on the details.”

“We’re only a year and a half apart,” he said amiably enough, “and we grew up together under siege from my mother, so we were already emotionally attached by the time I went to live with her. We taught each other to kiss so that when The One came along, we’d know what we were doing. Then at BYU, neither of us could get dates, so we went out and did stuff and let people think we were together because it allowed us to pretend we weren’t total losers. We … ” He stopped to think. “We survive together.”

Again Bryce felt as if he were meeting someone he knew nothing about. “Why weren’t you dating? You did just fine in L.A.”

“I didn’t go on a mission.”

That explained it. Knox had always wanted to marry a nice Mormon girl, which was why he’d gone to law school at BYU, in defiance of Fen’s orders to capitalize on his degree in accounting and get an MBA at an Ivy. But nice Mormon girls were scarce on the ground for guys who hadn’t served a mission. It was a marker, a signifier of tribal conformity, a rite of passage for Mormon men. Where’d you serve your mission? It was the first thing a girl asked a guy who was interested in her. Even though Bryce had gotten married before he went to law school, he knew the drill.

“And Giselle?” he asked low. “She’s gorgeous.”

“She’s cute,” Knox shot back. “And back then, she was chubby and her self-esteem was in the tank. You get it? Convenience. Desperation. Call it what you want, but sex is not part of our dynamic. She goes to church, works out, reads stuff I’m pretty sure her bishop would frown upon, and pulls forty-hour work-weeks while going to law school. That’s her life, and there is no way in hell she’s going to waste her virginity on me.”

“Virginity?” Bryce asked, shocked. “And she’s how old?”

“Thirty-six next month.”

Bryce raised an eyebrow.

Knox stuck his tongue in his cheek. “She’s not sexually naïve. She can’t be, with all the shit she reads, and her taste runs to kinky.” He grimaced. “But for a woman her age with raging hormones, she’s holding out as well as can be expected. She is also very shy, so whatever happened at the gallery with you was completely out of character for her. Sebastian’s tired of her twitching, so he told me to deal with it.”

I’ve never done this sort of thing before.

Not only had Bryce not believed her, he’d thrown it back in her face for daring to say it. No wonder she’d looked so horrified. So … betrayed. He bowed his head and rubbed his eyebrows as if that would alleviate some of his guilt and regret.

“Are you done with the church?”

The question jolted Bryce out of his thoughts. “Um, maybe,” he said slowly. “I think so. I don’t fit. I never did.” Knox sighed, but said nothing. He didn’t have to; Bryce knew his opinion and it wouldn’t have changed in twenty years.

“At the gallery,” he began slowly, “she and I … ” What did he really want to know? “She hasn’t been shy with me,” he said in a rush. “Far from it.”

Knox shrugged. “She’s been waiting for someone to sweep her off her feet, and you seem to have hit all her buttons just right.” He waved a hand. “Congratulations.”

“I hope she’s not expecting a righteous priesthood holder who’ll take her to the temple,” Bryce muttered as if it made any difference now.

“She knew you were a member before she met you. She went in thinking she’d get a nice evening of philosophical discourse with a well-educated but unthreatening male about her age she could relate to on a cultural level. As for good … ” Knox shrugged helplessly. “I can’t say. I don’t know what she’s willing to compromise for a relationship with a man who wants her and loves her. You got to her, yeah, but she probably doesn’t know what to do with you. She may use your current attitude about the church as an excuse to keep you away from her.”

Bryce sighed wearily. He wasn’t going back. Not for her, not for anybody. “So be it,” he muttered to himself, then looked up at Knox. “We were all at BYU at the same time?”

Knox nodded. “She was a junior our first year of law school.”

“Why didn’t I ever meet her?”

Knox abruptly stopped chewing and stared at him for a moment with an expression Bryce couldn’t decipher, which was rare enough that it made him uncomfortable. “Huh,” he said after another few seconds. “Um … ”

Bryce scowled. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“You were married,” he burst out. “Why in hell would I introduce you to her when I knew she would fall for you? That would’ve been cruel. Especially,” he continued, “when I know you well enough to know you’d have fallen in love with her too.”

Bryce felt like his chest had been kicked in. All those years of agony, four dead children …

Knox glared at him. “She’s exactly what you’ve always liked in women, hard-ass on the outside, submissive on the inside. Brilliant, well educated. Petite, muscular, nice rack. Not nearly as attractive as what you preferred or were used to, but Giselle’s very charming when she wants to be. I may block out a lot of noise, but I know people, especially the ones I love. And oh, look, I was right. Again. Because it’s almost twenty years later and she’s moping around about you and you’re here in a jealous rage over her. You weren’t ready for each other then and it would have been a train wreck. I saved her a broken heart and you a lifetime of guilt and now that the time’s right, you found each other anyway without me sticking my nose in it. You’re welcome.”

“You’re the only person in my life who knows me that well,” Bryce grumbled. “And I hate that.”

“No, what you hate is that you were a coward and followed your dad’s instructions instead of growing a pair and doing what you knew you should’ve done. I just happened to be the— What’d he call me? —‘snot-nosed trust fund brat with no respect for priesthood authority’ who cared enough to go to bat for you, get in his face, and try to get you to follow your gut.”

That found its mark and Bryce’s mouth tightened with guilt and regret, which seemed to just keep coming and coming and coming … He looked at the tablecloth and fiddled with a fork. “I’m sorry,” he said for the umpteenth time tonight, not knowing how he could really make it right.

“Look,” Knox finally said. “It’s done, gone, kaput. Ding dong the bitch is dead. Now, what are you going to do about Giselle?”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I … blew it,” he muttered wearily. “Twice.”

Knox grunted. “You probably shouldn’t assume that. Whatever you did, which I don’t want to know, it wasn’t enough for her to write you off or she wouldn’t still be moping. You want her. She wants you. I think you’re perfect for each other. So if you have an ounce of common sense and half that much courage, you’ll find a way to get to her.”

---

16: THE ISLAND OF THE DAY BEFORE

May 2006

GISELLE WALKED OUT of the law building into the gorgeous May Friday after she’d finished her last final, headed for her car, breathing a sigh of relief. Only one year left. She clutched her books to her chest, and as she walked, she wondered how she’d survived the semester. It was irritating enough that she had to listen to people wax poetic about Dr. Hilliard’s brilliance and marvel in scandalized whispers about his reputation up in Chouteau County for murder and corruption. Amongst Giselle’s study buddies, the inexplicable hostilities between her and Dr. Dumbass had turned into a running joke. But then …

Like a new word that she’d learned and kept hearing in conversation, Bryce Kenard’s name had haunted her all semester. Snatches of overheard conversation here. Classroom examples of clever courtroom strategy there. One professor had even made him the subject of an assignment, which had required an unbelievable amount of research.

Before it had come out of Sebastian’s mouth in November, Giselle didn’t remember hearing his name at all. Now she knew almost every professional thing there was to know about the man.

Kenard was practically a god at the UMKC School of Law, a god she’d experienced intimately, a god who wanted her. A god who would take everything she let him have but sneer at her while doing it.

With every mention of his name, with every telling of the tales of his genius, his cunning, his ruthlessness, she felt a dagger slicing through her soul.

Giselle … Come home with me. Now. Tonight.

She wished she had; she’d have something of him to keep in her heart.

She was glad she hadn’t; she couldn’t bear any more of his contempt.

It had occurred to her (mostly only every other day) to go to his office and explain that she hadn’t wanted to run away from him, to explain why she had shown up at the gallery, apologize for lying to him, rip him apart for assuming things about her, then walk out and never think about him again.

That wouldn’t be the end of it, though. At least, not for her.

By the time she’d finished her Bryce Kenard malpractice assignment in late March and had almost grown used to hearing his name wherever she went, her mind started playing tricks on her. She saw him everywhere, usually at the courthouse. Just glimpses of tall and dark, nothing solid. One day she could swear he was trying to catch up with her to speak with her, only to be waylaid by people needing his attention. The next day she would chastise herself for being such a tween. Why did she think he would come to her? Why did she hope? She had run away from him; no man with an IQ point to call his own would pursue a woman after that. No woman with a decent self-esteem would accept his attention.

She swallowed the misery collecting in her throat.

The bottom of her world had dropped out and she didn’t even know why. What was it about him that made her do crazy, risky things she’d never considered doing before? And with a stranger?

At church, she had learned not to put herself in temptation’s way, so she hadn’t.

At karate, she had learned not to put herself in danger’s way, so she hadn’t.

Then a man she didn’t know had hurt her feelings, so she’d kissed him in retaliation and then she’d put herself at the mercy of the same man, with little more information than she’d had before—

—except that he knew the rules of engagement for faithful members of the church as well as she did. Clearly he had left the church behind, and she couldn’t say she didn’t want to follow him right out the door and into bed, whether it would reinforce his opinion of her or not.

She was so conflicted, it scared her to death.

“First rule of karate,” she affirmed to herself as if it would help. “Don’t be stupid.”

She reached her car and sagged against it, her eyes closed, to relive that night: his tongue sliding against hers, his mouth on her breasts, his lips surrounding the hole in her shoulder, his voice in her ear—hot, insistent, demanding.

Not in control now, are you?

His sardonic challenges of her power. She could feel her body’s arousal at the thought of how brazen it had been to take him up the stairs and lie under him half naked in a public place: how wonderfully, deliciously wicked.

“Shesell!”

She gasped and whirled, embarrassed that whoever had said her name right could read her mind, see her arousal. The wind whipped her hair across her face, but when she pulled it aside, her eyes widened.

She backed up, closer to her car, even though he kept a respectful distance between them and she wasn’t physically afraid of him.

Shame. For his undeserved judgment of her and that, instead of simply telling him who she was and explaining the situation up front, she’d gone ahead with the plan to deceive him. The femme fatale she’d summoned to lure him up the stairs wasn’t her, and she’d been so uncomfortable with it, so aware she’d be destroying any opportunity to have something real with him, it couldn’t be anything but a big con.

She wasn’t what he thought she was, but she’d certainly acted like it. What else was he supposed to think?

“Giselle, I—”

Giselle couldn’t read the expression on his face. A hodgepodge of things flitted across his scarred features that she didn’t understand.

“I— I, um— Please go away,” she blurted. “It was a mistake; I’m sorry.”

Don’t cry. Don’t cry don’tcry dontcrydontcry

He looked at her with that same unreadable expression and spoke carefully. “Sorry for what?”

Frustrated, she let out a whoosh. “Just— Everything, okay? I’m sorry I yelled at you, sorry I put a gun to your head, sorry I led you up the stairs and gave you the wrong idea about me.”

“What idea do I have?”

You think I’m a slut.

She gritted her teeth to keep the tears at bay and snapped, “Didn’t anybody ever tell you it was rude to answer a question with a question?” She turned and opened the door, threw her books and her purse across to the passenger seat, and dropped behind the steering wheel.

“Giselle, please wait.”

“I can’t,” she answered as she started her car and put it in reverse, though she didn’t lift her foot off the clutch enough to actually move. What was she waiting for?

“Please have lunch with me. Talk with me. That’s all. Please.”

And have him yell at her in the middle of a restaurant? No thanks.

“I can’t,” she said again, too ashamed now to even look at him. “I— I have plans.”

After that, he caught her when he saw her; not often, usually at the courthouse and apparently only when he had a free moment. He knew where she worked, but now she was interning during business hours. Unless he had her surveilled, he wouldn’t know where else to find her or when.

“Giselle, please,” he said every time. “One meal, please. I just want to talk. That’s all.” He didn’t bother to hide the pleading in his voice and it broke her heart, made her breathless at what she had done to a god.

To herself.

In late June, he found her at the library, standing in the fiction stacks, perusing Umberto Eco. Incredibly intimidated, achingly aroused, still embarrassed and hurting more than she thought possible, she let her anger take over and snapped, “Stalking me?”

His nostrils flared and his eyes blazed. Without saying a word, he turned on a heel and left.

She stepped out into the aisle to watch him walk away, anger in every long stride, in his back, in the shake of his head, in the violent punch of the elevator button. He looked back and glared at her until the elevator arrived, his mouth tight, his jaw clenched, his gaze hard.

Ducking back into the stacks, she put her forehead down on the bookshelf to cry.

---

17: RECOVERING BITCH

August 2006

“GOOD LUCK,” SAID Miss Logan’s attorney as he squeezed her upper arm lightly, then disappeared through a set of courtroom doors to give her a moment to prepare.

She glanced in a mirror that complemented the décor of the quaint mid-nineteenth century American county courthouse, and sighed at her reflection. Taken as a whole, she was entirely underwhelming. Taken in parts, she was even less interesting than that.

Her hair: Dirty-dishwater blonde in a tight French twist.

Her eyes: Brown.

Her face: Plain, though perhaps sporting a little too much makeup.

Her body: Tall, big boned, nearly five feet eleven inches barefoot. She was decidedly less than svelte. Her DD breasts were nicely shaped, but they were still too large. Her belly protruded enough to make her look about six weeks pregnant, but all her attempts at flattening it failed. Her hips matched her breasts.

Her outfit was utterly ridiculous. She was no Audrey Hepburn or Jackie O., and she didn’t carry classic Chanel well at all. The color, dusty pink, would have washed her out but for her makeup. Sensible low black pumps and badly matched brown nylons did nothing for her feet or calves.

She had crafted every detail of what she saw in the mirror, so her sudden melancholy over it irked her. She had done this for twelve years. She had the act down cold.

As she intended, the world took her at face value. She relied on her talent and her comportment to carry her through her workday and to garner the respect she required to do business. Once she got into character each morning, she could rely on her persona to keep her on the cutting edge of her industry.

What she looked like at home, in private, shopping, traveling, attending new artist debuts or gallery openings—well. She did the best she could with what she had, which, honestly, wasn’t much.

Now she was loitering in the foyer of the Chouteau County courthouse waiting to hear her fate, as decided by the Chouteau County prosecutor.

She turned and gracefully sat on a bench by the courtroom doors, as ladylike as ever. She stared across the foyer to the grand walnut staircase, lost in her thoughts.

“Miss Logan?”

She turned, startled, and saw the almost ridiculously young underling sent to fetch her. The time had come. She arose from the bench. Slow. Easy. As if she were the most gracious hostess of the most magnificent mansion on Ward Parkway.

She stepped through the door he held open for her and murmured, “Thank you,” in her perfectly modulated tone. Thank God, no trembles and no squeaks, though her life’s work hung in the balance.

Her heart was racing. Her throat was parched. Her stomach was queasy with fear as she took measured steps through the almost-empty courtroom toward the prosecutor and the judge.

Calm, poised, gracious as always, she stood at the defense table by her chair, but she did not sit. It finally occurred to her attorney, who should have figured this out by now, to arise and pull it out for her. She nodded her thanks as she sat.

It never failed to surprise men when she refused to pull out her chair. Most had forgotten what a real lady was, if they ever knew in the first place, the etiquette lost to history. She used that to her advantage, without fail and without mercy.

“Thank you for joining us, Miss Logan,” Judge Wilson began. “Let’s recap for the court reporter, shall we?”

No, let’s not.

He looked down at the papers in front of him.

“You are the founder and CEO of Human Resource Prerogatives, an outsourcing payroll and employee benefits administration company.

“In May of 1999, you hired David Webster to be the chief financial officer. You and he never had any relationship other than work until you were in New York on a business trip on September 11, 2001. You witnessed the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, and under the stress of that, you married him. During your marriage, he raped and beat you, but his behavior at home was so at odds with his behavior at work you became suspicious of him.”

He should have won an Oscar.

“Then you realized he had been embezzling from you his entire tenure at your company. You felt the only way you could prove it was to stay in the marriage.”

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Judge Wilson looked over his spectacles at her. “You should’ve called the police.”

Pigs. Too stupid to understand the scheme.

“He had access to your cash reserves and set up offshore accounts to receive the transfer of your employees’ 401(k) funds, which you found out only an hour before all the transactions were to go through. You hacked into your own computer system from a remote location and killed the pension transactions, but he did manage to take your reserves and left your company deeply in debt.”

He paused and still she remained silent, impassive.

“You realize, of course, any other prosecutor in the metro would’ve charged you as well.”

“Your Honor,” Knox Hilliard said with a bit of impatience, “she doesn’t need to be sent to her room to think about what she did or didn’t do.”

The judge glared at the prosecutor. “One more crack like that and I’ll send you to your room to think about a contempt citation.”

Hilliard’s cough didn’t quite disguise his laugh.

“Miss Logan, Mr. Hilliard has a proposition I hope you’ll be agreeable to.”

She had no choice and the implication that she did was insulting, but this proposal was coming from a man she’d learned to trust. During the three years of investigation into David’s embezzlement schemes, hours of testimony prep, and a year-long trial, the prosecutor had never treated her with anything but genuine courtesy, if not downright compassion. She counted him a friend, and she didn’t have any of those.

“Eilis,” he addressed her then, respectfully and, as always, pronouncing her name correctly: eye-lish. He had used it from the very first, never asking her her preference. Such behavior by any other man would have warranted a cold, ladylike set-down, but not for a man significant to her in ways he would never know. After the stress of her four-year journey with him, his saying her name had become a comfort to her.

Until today.

This was the tone one took to fire an employee as gently as possible.

“I would like to propose putting HR Prerogatives in receivership.”

Receivership! No, she didn’t like being herded into this, but it might give her some protection from her enemies, depending on whom he appointed as her trustee.

That was a double-edged sword.

He went on. “I think you know me well enough by now to know I am not out to punish or destroy you.” That was reassuring. “Should you agree to receivership, your appointed trustee will be Sebastian Taight.”

She kept her composure—but she fought for it. Her attorney nodded sagely.

King Midas. An eccentric, obscure, unpredictable venture capitalist, corporate raider, and institutional hammer.

Sebastian Taight in charge of her company frightened her. Knox’s motives for choosing his enemy to restructure her company terrified her. Did this mean Knox had found out about her connection to OKH Enterprises and really did want to punish her?

Or … did it mean Knox and Taight were not at war? She didn’t know how that could be, considering Taight was in the process of taking Knox’s inheritance away from him.

But did it matter? The familiar sensation of abandonment trickled through her chest, because the only friend she had in the world had just turned into her enemy.

No, Knox wasn’t her friend. He had never been her friend and she shouldn’t have given in to the illusion that he was just because she’d allowed herself to think she needed one.

She spoke finally. “Is that the best offer I can expect?”

The prosecutor nodded solemnly. “Yes.”

The judge broke into her silence and said, not unkindly, “Mr. Taight has never before agreed to be the trustee for a receivership and I’d take it if I were you. You couldn’t be in better hands.”

Still silent, Eilis studied the worn tabletop. She finally nodded because she had no choice.

“That would be acceptable. Thank you.”

---

18: BRASS IN POCKET

KING MIDAS WALKED in like a medieval marauder, his stride long and arrogant. He had nothing with him: no legal pad, no briefcase, no laptop, no manpurse. With every step, he looked around, taking inventory of her company as if it were about to become his.

She hated him for that.

Eilis had never met him, never seen him. No one, woman or man, had ever told her how tall, lean, and achingly, heart-stoppingly handsome he was. Because she’d only heard the horror stories, she had visualized him as an aged Quasimodo with a god complex.

His slightly salted raven hair gleamed and his ice blue eyes shimmered so light against his hair and his suit, she could see them from a distance. He was classic black Irish and made her immediately, unexpectedly, shockingly breathless on first sight.

She hated herself for that.

She still had no idea what to expect, but corralled as she was by the Chouteau County prosecutor, the Midwest’s most notorious financial guru, and the CEO of OKH Enterprises, it didn’t matter.

The news reports of the OKH Proviso Instrument were vague enough that no one knew quite how, other than being related, the three players were allied. Monday, she could have drawn no conclusions other than the one everyone drew: Sebastian Taight, Fen Hilliard, and Knox Hilliard were in a three-way war to determine who’d own OKH Enterprises on Knox’s fortieth birthday. Now, after three days of googling, library research, making spreadsheets, and building flow charts to see if she could make a connection, she didn’t know what to think.

She didn’t want to hate King Midas in the abstract or otherwise. She had observed the OKH debacle silently from afar ever since the man had begun his hostile takeover. Knox’s announcement of his engagement to Leah Wincott meant nothing because she was significantly older than Knox and had no children.

But then it came out that Leah did have a child and everyone who had a vested interest in Knox inheriting breathed a sigh of relief. Taight’s takeover became pointless, the stock price went back up, and the manufacturing sector went back to minding its business. The bride’s murder—on her wedding day, yet!—shocked the financial and manufacturing community to its core. The Street rumbled and cracked with theories as to who was behind her murder. Knox had become irrelevant again, collateral damage unless he could scrounge up some woman brave or desperate enough to take those odds, especially with a child in the mix.

So Taight’s war on Fen had become important to Eilis. She had needed him to take OKH away from Fen. Now … Well, now she was also at Taight’s mercy. The irony was too rich to stomach.

Scylla, meet Charybdis.

From where she stood behind the all-glass walls of her mezzanine office suite, she could look down into the labyrinth of cubicles filled with people whose livelihoods depended on her. For now.

Taight walked down the main aisle alone and unnoticed, though how such a man could go unnoticed was beyond her. If he looked up, he would see her there, but he didn’t. His initial inspection over with, he stared straight ahead, his long-legged gait eating up the yards between them as if he knew exactly where he was going.

He disappeared underneath her feet, and it wasn’t long before she heard him coming up the stairs twenty yards behind her. She watched his reflection in the glass as he passed through the mezzanine’s lobby, the reception area, into her office suite, and toward her. He stopped beside her, slid his hands in his pockets, and looked down at the patchwork of cubicles without speaking. She was far too aware of his presence, his fragrance, his height, for her peace of mind.

“You’re not a good gambler,” he said after a while, immediately irritating her.

“I built this company,” she asked, her voice, as always, perfectly modulated. “How do you suppose I did that?”

“And you lost it. How do you think you did that?”

“I made one bad hiring decision,” she answered calmly, “based on a fraudulent identity and references. Anybody could have made that mistake. Senator Oth did.”

“Roger Oth,” he returned, “is an idiot and Jep Industries isn’t a company whose raison d’être is hiring the right people. Your mistake is inexcusable.”

“Yet I found my snake, got him out, and saved my company.”

“And here I am, to finish the job for you.”

“I could have done it myself had Mr. Hilliard given me a chance.”

“Mmm hm.”

Of course he didn’t believe her. Why would he? He got called into companies all the time whose CEOs thought they could dig themselves out of their holes. But Eilis had pulled herself most of the way out and what remained to be done was the easy stuff, albeit long and tedious. There was no reason for this receivership, so she found herself even more angry with Knox and feeling even more abandoned. Didn’t he know her better than that?

No, Eilis was an excellent gambler.

When backed into an emotional corner, however, she invariably zigged when she should have zagged.

“Believe it or not, Knox did you a favor,” Taight added, as if for good measure.

“I’m quite sure you would both like to think that.”

He slid a glance at her. “I don’t have to do this, Mrs. Webster. I can find someone else to do it if you’d like.”

“Would it make any difference?” she asked coolly.

“You know better than that.”

Eilis said nothing. She was struggling to keep her façade intact because her Inner Bitch was knocking on her skull, wanting attention.

Eilis had begun her career as hard and ruthlessly as she’d gone through her childhood and adolescence, but as her reputation grew, her enemies used it to sabotage her business deals. Forced to abandon that approach, she had concocted Miss Logan, splendidly, flawlessly ladylike.

She hated it, but it worked exponentially better than she could have ever dreamed. The intimidation and discomfort men felt when she forced them to pay her homage as a lady never went away and its element of surprise was ever present.

Oh, yes, it was an effective power play, but it had taken a heavy toll on her over the years, and now Eilis was about to hit the wall. That was always when her mask started slipping, when her Inner Bitch came up for air. She’d been getting louder and louder over the last couple of years, trying to shout over the Chanel and pancake makeup and impeccable manners.

As hammers went, King Midas was one of the best in the country. If he had no ulterior motive, he would do a good job with fairness and honesty. If his track record held, she would have her company back sooner than the three years the receivership was slated to run, unless he chose to buy her out. He could do anything he wanted with her as long as the bills got paid.

“Mrs. Webster—”

“I don’t use that name,” she murmured. “Miss Logan, if you please.”

“Miss Logan.” He complied so easily. Why did that irritate her? “Shall we get started?”

---

19: ID

MISS LOGAN’S CHILLINESS annoyed the hell out of Sebastian, but he hadn’t expected anything less. Being considered a villain on first sight was so common as to be a cliché. The frigid beginning of this relationship was mild compared to the rest, and she had more reason than anyone else in the world to hate him. It wasn’t as if she had called him to come rescue her, and she was right about Senator Oth falling prey to his CFO.

Of course, Oth hadn’t married his CFO, either.

Sebastian had walked in irritated about being here. Now he was unreasonably aggravated because he’d taken one look at the CEO and wanted to drag her off to bed.

Her clothes, shoes, and makeup were almost a caricature, but he was gifted at seeing through costumes. She couldn’t hide that aristocratically sculpted face, the nose that had been badly broken and never set straight, high cheekbones, fine forehead, and strong but not masculine jaw. Her mouth was full, though she wore a color of lipstick designed to hide that fact. She was wearing brown contact lenses—why?—and there was something under all that foundation that looked like a thin scar running from eyebrow to jaw.

And her body— The badly fitting Chanel emphasized her breasts and hips, but in a way she intended to be unflattering. Her legs were long and strong, her sensible low-heeled pumps also designed to show them at their worst. Sebastian didn’t fall for optical illusions, and he could see exactly what was under her costume. She was tall and lush, a fertility goddess, a Viking queen.

She was perfect.

Damn Knox for badgering him into being this woman’s trustee, and damn that judge for being such a good friend to Knox that he’d ordered it. In Sebastian’s opinion, his relationship to Knox made this whole thing one big fat conflict of interest, and if he thought he had a chance with Miss Logan any other way, he’d tell Knox to find someone else.

“If it makes you feel any better,” he heard himself saying as, together, they moved away from the glass toward her private office, “I don’t want to do this any more than you want it done. I do have better things to do with my time than rescue a company that doesn’t interest me.”

“I see.”

Stifling a sigh, he went through her office to her desk, sat in her chair, in front of her computer, to gain access to her company’s records. He did this every time he went into a company, to establish who was in charge without having to say a word.

He was surprised when she spoke again, her voice still measured and perfect. “I’m curious, Mr. Taight. If this is such a burden to you, why did you accept?”

He grunted. “Knox flexed his muscles.”

She showed no emotion at that and, unsatisfied that she hadn’t cracked, he started clicking through her computer files. He made note of spreadsheets and databases, mentally mapping out matrices and indices to begin his work, all too aware she stood only two feet from him, watching. Silent, relaxed. With dignity. Smelling of a generic soap.

He’d never before been a trustee for a company in receivership, but he had hauled enough companies out of bankruptcy by a breath to know what he needed to do and what to look for without preparation.

Eilis Logan’s company was very well positioned for salvation. It surprised him that Knox hadn’t talked to her before putting her in receivership and Sebastian was curious as to why. He probably had other, more sinister ulterior motives, which he would find out eventually because Knox never did things the easy way.

Sebastian happened across a file of digitized documents that hadn’t been in the paperwork he’d received and saw at least one reason why Knox had told him to do this. He sent a text: FOUND THE ART THX

“Mr. Taight—”

“Sebastian, please.”

“Mr. Taight,” she went on in that passionless, ladylike moderation that grated on his nerves. “It appears you won’t need me here while you do your work, in which case, I would like to take a vacation.”

Sebastian stilled and looked up at her, seizing the opportunity to get a good eyeful. Unlike all the women Sebastian had found attractive enough to approach at society or business functions, Eilis Logan wasn’t afraid of him. She looked him straight in the eye, unintimidated by his cold detachment.

She hadn’t requested a vacation. She’d told him to go fuck himself.

He would rather she fuck him, but he had learned through the years that he couldn’t seduce any woman when he was thinking in dollar signs. Unless a woman was thoroughly entranced by a discussion of the inflation-proof bond, nothing would happen while he was in a suit.

He’d tried that. It had gone very badly—several times.

With every minute that ticked by, his odds of getting a date with Miss Logan decreased. And he’d only been here fifteen minutes.

“I would prefer you stay involved in the process, Miss Logan,” he said slowly, not really sure how to deal with the request itself, because no one he’d worked with had ever made such an outrageous one before. “Your employees will need you here to give them confidence and you might learn something you could use in the future. I’ll also need your input and assistance with things I can’t know.”

“I have a phone,” she said levelly.

He didn’t know if that was a bluff or not, which irritated him further. “Okay,” he said flatly, “if that’s how you want to play it, the answer’s no. I’m not going to let you walk off the field just because I’m the one quarterbacking now.”

“Mr. Taight,” she said patiently, folding her hands in front of her as if she were a kindergarten teacher and he was five, “I’ve been kicked off the team. The team I own. And replaced by ringers. Ringers I don’t need.”

He stared at her, his aggravation turning to anger. This was not normal. Whether they liked it or not, his clients listened to him because they’d hired him to tell them what to do. Eilis … had a point.

“No,” he snapped. “If this is going to be a problem for you, take it up with Knox. And don’t even think about calling in sick.”

That got a reaction. Her nostrils flared a tad and her jaw clenched only the slightest bit. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“One of the things I’m going to do,” he continued in a heartless tone that should tell her his patience had run out, “is sell off every piece of art this corporation owns. I’m requesting, nicely, that you hand them over so that I can start building your cash reserves. Your collection is worth millions of dollars, which will be a good head start.”

Her silent stoicism told him everything he needed to know. She had expected this; she had probably even thought of doing that herself and hadn’t been able to bring herself to. The vacation was probably to avoid watching her art being sold out from under her.

“If you had done that six months ago, I wouldn’t be here,” he said, now thoroughly pissed off that she hadn’t blinked an eye. Taunting a client was uncharacteristic for him and he didn’t like the fact that he wanted to get a reaction from her so badly that he was willing to shove her face in it. “It’d be nice if you coughed up your personal art collection, too.”

He saw a split-second flash of heartbreak in her face that must have been extreme to be seen through her mask of makeup. She turned away. Finally, she said, “May I keep one of the Ford pieces? It’s not on the books.”

“Does the corporation own it?”

“Yes.”

For reasons he didn’t understand, instead of the same “no” he’d given her about a vacation, he asked, “Which one is it?”

“Morning in Bed.”

He almost choked. “You own Morning in Bed?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you had it?”

“I bought it three days after its debut.”

Sebastian took a shuddering breath and looked away, rubbing his mouth and chin, thinking. He knew how much it had sold for and he had a pretty good idea how much it would fetch now.

But that painting— What were the odds?

He hesitated. “Let me think about it. In the meantime, I would like you to go to the Ford exhibit with me tomorrow evening so that you can see for yourself the value of letting them all go.”

“Thank you,” she said smoothly, “but I can’t. I have other plans.”

Anger and adrenaline shot through Sebastian so fast he was nauseated. A woman who owned nine Ford paintings, including the most notorious one, would not miss the unveiling of a new one in her own city. It wasn’t the first time a woman had lied to him to refuse an invitation, but it had always been because she was afraid of him. Unnerved by him. Unable to distinguish sinister from shy. He’d finally stopped asking because it was so discouraging.

Eilis hadn’t declined. She’d said, May your ass get reamed by a thousand barbed penises without lube.

He inclined his head. “As you wish.”

---

20: CLINICAL, INTELLECTUAL, CYNICAL

GISELLE SAT ON a picnic table by Brush Creek just off campus, feeding the ducks, trying to meditate. She hadn’t been back to the bodhisattva to meditate since Fen’s fundraising party. Bryce Kenard had seeped into every cell of her brain, every minute of her life, every corner of her spaces.

She couldn’t take it anymore.

Sebastian was mad at her and accused her of “moping around the house like an emo sixteen-year-old girl for the last seven months.”

Knox was furious because she had successfully avoided him for weeks, not returning his texts, emails, phone calls, or answering his knocks on her bedroom door (which she kept locked so he couldn’t barge in). Fortunately, he didn’t have any classes to teach, he had a heavy case load, and he wouldn’t dare show up at her work.

She hadn’t returned her mother’s phone calls or emails in two weeks, barely texted just to let her know she was still alive, so Lilly had resorted to hounding both Sebastian and Knox as to Giselle’s state of mind, which made them both even madder.

She hadn’t shown up at any of her extended family’s frequent functions because she couldn’t take Fen on any level after he’d called her to yell at her for going to his party armed.

All she wanted was to be left alone with no one jabbering in her ears, questioning her moods, making demands, lecturing her on propriety, threatening her life and livelihood and grades, shaming her for running a con, or sneering at her.

She knew Kenard’s office address: downtown, in a prestigious skyscraper convenient to the Jackson County Courthouse. She still had no idea what to do with it.

“Boy, you just don’t know a good thing when it steps right in front of you, do you?”

“Go away,” she muttered, irritated because Knox had to have put an APB out on her to find her here. “Don’t you have fathers and wives to avenge, women to marry, and children to sire?”

“You’re a hot mess,” he drawled. “Move over.”

She did and he climbed up onto the table beside her.

He leaned in to kiss her and she leaned away from him. “No more. I’m done with this.”

“Done with what?”

“Done with you and the Shakespearean tragedy that is your life. Done with OKH. I’m tired, Knox. I want— No, I need a resolution.”

He handed her a bottle of cold water, which she took. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know,” she replied with a sigh. “Me too.”

He surprised her by kissing her anyway and she found herself comparing him unfavorably to Bryce Kenard, so that was yet another thing that had been taken from her.

“Cut it out,” she grumbled, shoving him away from her then wiping her mouth on her arm. “What if somebody saw us?”

“They did.” He gestured some way off to a gaggle of law students she knew, who were gaping at them. “Giving your reputation another layer of mystique.”

“You shit!” she screeched.

“Heh. Successfully got one over on Dr. Cox.”

She sighed. “You know when to leave me alone, so I’m guessing Sebastian told you to do something.”

“Nope. Your mom dropped by last night to interrogate me. She thinks I know all your little hiding places.”

“Well, you don’t.”

“You’re right about that. I’ve been to every shoe store in town.”

She cracked a reluctant smile.

“Let’s talk about Bryce Kenard.”

“Let’s not.”

He waited.

He waited a long time.

“I don’t know what to do!” she finally burst out. “He, um— At the gallery, he—” She stopped. Took a deep breath. “He wanted— He asked me to go home with him and— Um, and I wanted to, but I was there to trick him. I mean, I couldn’t— Not on a lie.”

“Is that what this is about?”

“That and the fact that he thinks I’m a slut,” she said in a rush. “I’m mortified.”

“It’s not about the church?”

She sneered at him. “If it were, I wouldn’t have considered going home with him, would I?”

He said nothing for a moment. Then, “So tell him the truth. Throw yourself on his mercy. You’ve got nothing to lose.”

“Like I want to invite someone to flog me?”

“That’s a dodge. He intimidates you and you don’t like it.”

“Oh, fuck you!” she screeched again, immediately pissed off. “You did hear the part where he thinks a thirty-six-year-old virgin is a slut, right? I spend all these years keeping myself in check, looking for a husband, and for what?! I do have some pride.”

“Giselle—”

“Shut up! I am the only one of us with no investment in OKH, but I am the one sacrificing my life for your inheritance. No, I’m not dead, but years of my life are gone with nothing to show for it. I get my life’s work stolen from me, I almost die in a fire, I go bankrupt, I end up with a string of shitty jobs when I have a PhD and had my own business I can’t rebuild because your stepfather just couldn’t resist making it look like arson, I land back in school for a law degree I don’t want, I get shot and arrested for homicide, I’m fucking broke! and Sebastian still makes me pay rent, and I finally meet a guy I might have been able to have a relationship with and he all but calls me a whore for reasons I don’t know so he feels free to proposition me.

“And neither of you gives a shit! You just tell me what to do, I do it, and then what? My life falls apart and you don’t even notice. Intimidated and I don’t like it? Fuck you! I approached Kenard. I kissed him first. Which is probably why he thinks I’m a slut. So fuck you again! I better get a good chunk of OKH’s cash reserves—and a fucking job!—on your birthday because I’ve earned it. If I’m going to be a whore, I’m going to be a very expensive one.”

He grimaced. “Yeah, okay, I see your point. I’ll pay your rent.”

“And while you’re at it! Pay my student loans, finish putting me through school, pay my bookstore debt so I can get my bankruptcy discharged, and find an insurance company who’ll cover me for a retail establishment! I’m also going to give Sebastian an invoice for consulting fees, and you better make him pay it!”

“Okay.”

That surprised her, but she’d take it and be grateful. That was a lot of money, but they could afford it and they owed her.

“Can’t promise anything on coverage, though.”

“Oh!” she barked, now remembering her biggest beef with Knox personally. “Also! Change my grades.”

“I can’t do that,” he said tightly.

“Won’t. You have damaged my GPA for no reason other than to poke at me.”

“That is not true and you know it,” he snapped back. “You aren’t working up to your capabilities. I’ve told you that before.”

That pissed her off even more. “I don’t give a shit about my capabilities! Unlike everybody else, law school is for me a fucking trade school! It is tedious and time-consuming and a pain in my ass, but it is not difficult! I want a fucking job that does not involve transcription, minimum wage retail, teaching English at a shit-paying junior college or with awesome hazard pay in the Kansas City School District, or becoming a plumber! I want my fucking bookstore back!”

His jaw tightened and his nostrils flared. “You won’t even need a job after I pay your bills and Sebastian pays your invoice, which, I assume, will be six figures.”

“Seven! But that’s totally irrelevant. I am not asking you for special favors. I’m demanding you give me what I earned, which you should have done in the first place. If I have to sue you, I will. Discovery will be a barrel of laughs, won’t it?”

His mouth tightened. “Fine,” he muttered. “Is that all?”

“For now. Don’t expect me to thank you.” She pulled her tank top up to mop her now-wet face on the hem, and sniffled. She took the handkerchief Knox offered her and blew her nose.

“Why didn’t you want me to go to the Nelson that night?” she muttered as she cleaned herself up.

“Kenard’s your romance-novel hero come to life,” he said promptly, “and I suspected you’d fall for him, but under those circumstances, it’d be a big train wreck. And I was right. But I also thought you’d come to me before it got this far.”

“Sebastian said you two were on the outs and you don’t meddle under any circumstances, so I didn’t bother.”

Knox grunted. “You want me to, uh … ?”

“No,” she muttered. “I don’t know. Maybe. He’s been trying to catch me since March, asks me to lunch, but I finally told him to fuck off. That was a little over a month ago.”

“Aaaand you’re still moping after successfully shooting him down.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Look, Giselle, you generally do your own dirty work, so I’ll stay out of it. But all you really need is one long conversation, which it sounds like he’s been trying to make happen. Grovel for not telling him up front what Sebastian wanted, although I don’t think you have anything to apologize for, or hand him his head for being an ass or both or give him sad puppy-dog eyes across a crowded courtroom, but at least start the conversation. If nothing else, you’ll get closure.”

She hiccupped, took a deep breath, released it long and slow, sniffled and hiccupped again.

In the silence that fell, he took some of her cracked corn to throw to the ducks. They both did that for a long time, then he muttered, “I need to ask you something. That day in class, the day I subbed for Grady. With Justice.”

Disoriented by the abrupt change of topic, it took Giselle a little bit to shift mental gears. “I thought you didn’t want to discuss her?”

“I do now.”

She waited.

She waited a long time.

“On the scale of evil,” he mused, “where is it that I want a second chance with her, when meeting her, being that affected by her, is tainted because I was with another woman at the time? Should I just let it go?”

She wondered how long it would take him to ask her this. “You want me to tell you it wasn’t cheating on Leah and you should get a mulligan.”

“Yeah. That’s the only thing I regret about that day. I went home feeling like the worst bastard who ever lived. I could barely look at Leah, I was so ashamed.”

“And what happened in that month between Justice and the wedding?”

He shrugged. “Lavished attention on Leah, listened to her bridezilla rants—” She really had been. Giselle thought it was adorable. “—did what she told me to do. I had way too much to do and think about, so I was fine by the wedding. But then she died. Once I grieved and everything started getting back to normal, I kept going back to that moment and wondering if taking the chance I wasn’t going to take the first time is … ”

She waited for him to finish the thought, but after a while, she said, “You have to figure out if it’s really her or if she’s just the fish that got away. I have one of those.”

“Yeah?”

She told him about the guy at BYU, the one she’d seen in the doorway of his house. “Does that make me bad, still carrying a married man around when I’m in love with someone else?”

Again he was silent. Then, “Huh. That’s … interesting. Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

“Same reason it took you two years to talk to me about Justice. I buried myself in school and work, but when I was quiet, I’d fantasize about the wife kicking the bucket and having a rom-com meet-cute with him, and of course, I would be looking fabulous when that happened. But after a while, I forgot about it.” She paused. “What bugs me is that it resurfaced when I met Bryce. Why now?”

“What if the wife had kicked the bucket and you met him now, in spite of Bryce?”

“Bryce is alive. Leah isn’t. Lots of men marry very soon after their wives die. Sometimes they rediscover a high school sweetheart. Men don’t do well without a woman in their life, and you certainly never have, wanting to snuggle up with me when you’re between women, which is another shitty thing you do. Between you and Sebastian, I’m about ready to go move in with Morgan.”

He had the grace to look ashamed. “Are we really that bad?”

“Yeah,” she drawled. “You’re both on my shit list.”

He sighed heavily. “I’m sorry.”

They were silent for a while, listening to the hum of people’s conversations, the buzz of traffic, the flow of water down Brush Creek, the rustle of the leaves.

“Did you bail on OKH because of Justice?” she asked quietly.

“No.” He shrugged indifferently. “I realized at Leah’s funeral, if I really wanted it, I’d have married her straight out of the gate, worked Rachel out of any claim on OKH, and none of this would ever have happened, including your bookstore fire. Which is why I’m going to pay all your bills.” He paused, then muttered, “Wish I could bring Leah back that easily.”

Giselle started when a duck nipped at her toes. “Worse than toddlers,” she muttered and threw some more corn. “And that adds to your guilt.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “Well, I see your point about OKH. And I agree with it. But this really is your fight and Sebastian has a right to resent that you gave up and left him holding the bag. You loved Leah. Still do, I think?”

He nodded.

“She’s been gone for two years now and you’ve respected her memory. What you want is no different from any other widower who loops around to a former love. In this case, you already know there’s an available woman out there who’s head over heels in love with you.”

He scoffed. “She thinks she’s in love with me. She’s not old enough to know what she wants or what love is.”

That got Giselle’s back up, considering her own situation. “I don’t think that’s fair. If I were her, I’d want to know that the man I wanted actually wanted me too. I wouldn’t want to live my life wondering and dreaming and wishing. I knew that man wanted me. Is it awful? Yes. But I do have the chance with Bryce. The ball’s in my court. My decision. She can’t make that decision with you, so seek her out and tell her how you feel, lay it all out for her, and let her decide whether she wants to be with you or not. You don’t have to marry her or have a child. You just have to see if it’d work and if it does, wait until after your birthday to get married.”

“No, you don’t get it. I can’t tell her the problem. ‘Hi, will you go out with me? If we get together, my uncle will try to kill you. But I’m really good in bed so it’ll be worth it.’” Giselle chuckled. “She’d agree on the spot, with some romantic notion that love can conquer all, and it wouldn’t matter if we got married or not because, as you should know by now, Fen makes preemptive strikes.” That was a good point. “I just need to keep her attention for the next two and a half years.”

“The way you’re doing it right now isn’t going to work that long.”

He cast her a worried glance. “You don’t think?”

“No, especially if she runs into somebody who takes her in hand, because the second the world finds out she’s as gorgeous as she is entertaining, she’ll be on cable news. New York. Bright lights. Huge audience. Big salary. Lots of men just as smart and handsome as you. Younger. Wining and dining. Maybe politically simpatico. She could decide Dr. Hilliard’s a lost cause and move on while you’re walking your high wire.”

“Shit,” he whispered, rubbing his mouth.

“Knox, she’s got a lot of growing up to do. She didn’t get it in college. She’s not going to get it in law school. She’s not shy at all, but she doesn’t have enough life experience to cop an attitude and plow her way through being socially ostracized. She’s all wit, no spine, but she thinks she wants to be a prosecutor instead of writing amicus briefs at a chichi think tank at ten times what the county pays. So, okay. Give her what she wants. Recruit her.”

“Don’t have to. Her CV is on my desk.”

“She came to you?” Giselle gasped, shocked. He nodded morosely. “Already?”

“She got permission to take the bar exam early.” It took a lot to impress Giselle. That did. “I’m debating whether to have Eric interview her because he’ll send her packing, which will give me plausible deniability.”

“There’s only one place she could get a backbone in a matter of weeks instead of years, only one person who could turn her into the badass she wants to be. Thing is, if you really don’t want to put her on Fen’s radar, you have to keep your hands and thoughts to yourself. You get to see her every day for a year and a half. She can find out if she’s suited to criminal law, but even if she isn’t, she’ll get her mind fucked the way she likes. You can keep tabs on her dating and adjust your strategy. Then, on your fortieth birthday, you can ask her if she wants to have cake and ice cream with you. Win-win.”

“No,” he muttered. “My world would crush her. I would crush her.”

“You’re afraid that once she sees you in your natural habitat she won’t look at you the same way she did that day and you don’t want to watch her get disillusioned with you.”

“I find it inconvenient that you can read my mind.”

That made Giselle laugh. “Master of the overstated understatement.”

He flashed her a grin. “Did you like that?”

“You dumbass,” she said and pushed him off the table.

That made him laugh in turn and he hopped back up on the table. He sobered then. “I just want to see her again, let her go, and I can go find her when this is all over with.”

“And if you meet somebody else?”

“I’ve got the exact same problem, so why bother? I’m fucked until my fortieth birthday. Or not fucked, which is the problem.”

Giselle sighed. “Oh, Fen. You assclown.”

“Mmm hm. I agree she needs to spend some time in the trenches, but not in my office. I don’t want her anywhere near me before my birthday.”

“That is a helluva pickle,” she said slowly, looking off into the distance and throwing more corn at her demanding duck. “Well,” she concluded without concluding anything at all, “I can appreciate that you want to take the high road, so I’ll not argue with you about it.”

“Giselle, do you know why I’m so good at what I do?”

“Not really, no. I don’t think of you that way.”

“Huh. Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s my memory. So this is what I have to say to you: ‘If it were me, I’d want to know that the man I wanted actually wanted me, too. I wouldn’t want to live my life wondering and dreaming and wishing. I do have the chance. The ball’s in my court. My decision.’”

“Bastard,” she grumbled.

“Coward.”

---

21: FENEMIES

GISELLE LAY AWAKE all night with Knox’s parting shot ringing in her ears.

Coward.

Her situation and his weren’t perfectly analogous, but he wasn’t wrong. An hour after she left the park, he showed up at her and Sebastian’s house with barbecue as a peace offering. Then he promptly tattled on her to Sebastian, who said, “If Kenard hadn’t been interested in talking to you, he’d have let you know. If he hadn’t wanted you, he wouldn’t have followed you. If he only wanted to fuck you, he wouldn’t be prostrating himself to get you to listen to him.”

Knox agreed.

That’s a dodge. He intimidates you and you don’t like it.

Kenard was her romance-novel hero come to life and yes, that intimidated her, but it wasn’t why she was keeping the man at bay. She didn’t want to be thought of or treated like a liar or a whore, and she wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to accuse her of things that weren’t true. What about that made her a coward?

“You’re afraid of getting your feelings hurt,” Sebastian answered her. “Suck it up and find out what he has to say. You can always walk away if he starts being an asshole. But don’t talk to him before you get the monkey off your back. He doesn’t need to be dragged into OKH.”

Knox agreed with that, too, and since they so rarely agreed on anything, she supposed she should take their advice.

As she lay there in the dark, she realized Sebastian was right about how badly Kenard wanted to talk to her, and from what she’d read, he wasn’t a man to beg. She could be wrong about what he wanted to talk about.

I wouldn’t want to live my life wondering and dreaming and wishing.

She called in sick the next morning, dressed carefully, and drove straight to OKH. She ignored the front lobby receptionist who demanded she sign in. She ignored the guards who were scrambling to keep her from going any farther into the building.

“Stand down, gentlemen,” boomed a deep voice from the mezzanine above the massive terrazzo-and-maple lobby. “Everything’s fine. My wayward niece just wants to throw a little hissy fit at me.”

Protests followed her as she took the stairs of the grand staircase two at a time, her strong legs eating up the distance between him and her.

Giselle had a strange balance of power with her uncle she’d had since she was a child.

Yes, he’d tried to kill her twice, which had bankrupted her and obliged her to undergo emergency surgery, respectively.

Yes, she’d calmly and deliberately threatened to kill him, a hand on his throat and a gun to his head.

Yes, he felt as free to dress her down as any of her other aunts and uncles and yes, they’d had a good time together once upon a time.

Fen was part of her earliest memories, good ones, far more so than her Uncle Oliver, whom she never knew very well because he was always at church or Scouts. Fen had teased her, pushed her to dream big and strive harder, and made her sharpen her wits on his. And since her and Sebastian’s adventures kept her in funds, she was free to refuse Fen’s offers of help and money.

I know you like him, Giz, but keep him out of your business. You let him start paying for stuff and he’ll expect you to obey the way Knox does.

And she certainly did not want that. It was this that gave her the upper hand with Fen. It was what enabled her to see Fen’s motives and still enjoy sitting on the sidelines of life with him, pointing out the ridiculous, mercilessly mocking him and others, constantly trying to one-up him with clever insults and acerbic quips.

But then he’d killed Leah.

“Come in, Giselle, come in,” Fen said graciously. He held the door to his office suite open and guided her through the floor of assistants’ desks arranged as if it were a bank lobby. They all looked at her warily, this sacrilegious woman appearing at the CEO’s office wearing tight leathers and boots, with a gun stuck in the back of her waistband. She smiled slightly at one young man who couldn’t take his eyes off her. She winked at him and he blushed.

“Stop flirting with my people,” Fen hissed once he had ushered her into his private office and closed the doors behind them. “You dare come to me armed?”

“Pffftt. I’d be a fool not to.”

“I wouldn’t be stupid enough to kill you here.”

“There is that. You don’t have the balls to do it yourself.”

He ignored that and rocked back on a heel to rake her with a glance and gesture at her clothes. “And—and this,” he sneered. “You couldn’t have dressed properly? You could’ve at least worn a thicker shirt and a goddamned bra. You disrespect me in my own house?”

“Do you mean the house that Uncle Oliver built?”

His jaw clenched. “Oliver built a shack. I razed it and plowed the fields and built a plantation.”

“Wasn’t the only field of his you plowed, was it?”

He slapped her. She retaliated immediately with the back of her fist. He stumbled backward, holding his bleeding nose. Fen was as big as Knox, but he wasn’t as strong as Giselle.

Panting, she watched him warily in case he decided to finally show a little courage, but the blood kept him occupied. “Now that the niceties are out of the way, I’ll state my business.”

He stared at her stonily, pressing a handkerchief to his nose. “Make it snappy. I don’t have time for your little-girl shenanigans.”

“My shenanigans?! You burned down my fucking store!”

“You have been sulking about that for years, so stop it. It annoys me when you sulk.”

Any other time, she would have pursued that, but not today. “I want to go about my merry business without having to look over my shoulder. You leave me be. Today. Forever.”

Fen’s expression turned speculative. “Kenard.”

Shocked, she drew back. “How did you know that?”

“Please. After you pulled a Cinderella and he rearranged Sebastian’s face? Half of Kansas City’s moneyed thinks Bryce Kenard is fucking Sebastian Taight’s mistress, and isn’t that deliciously scandalous. I was wondering if you’d go down that road with him, because you don’t seem terribly invested in a temple marriage anymore and he is completely disillusioned with the church. So since you’re here, I’m going to assume you’re not sleeping with him. Yet.”

“No and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to, considering why I was at your party that night.”

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” he murmured. “Deceit’s not your style.”

“Huh. He doesn’t know me, so that’s not the way he’s going to see it.”

Suddenly, Fen laughed. “Believe me, he’ll forgive you for it. Seduction’s not your style, either, though you did display amazing potential. I knew the minute you led him up the stairs you weren’t playing any game at all, much less the one Sebastian wanted you to play.”

Giselle huffed. “Look, Fen, I don’t want you wrapped up in any relationship I might have with him. You and I are not a package deal and I want your word.”

“If I honor your request and if he doesn’t work out the way you hope, then you decide to marry Knox just to flip me off— All bets are off. I’ll go back to seeing if you can be killed. Color me curious.”

She looked at him for a bit and decided to let him think she’d marry Knox at the last minute in case Knox got to Justice McKinley before his fortieth birthday. Giselle nodded. “I’ll agree to those terms. But. What I told you after you killed Leah still stands. Any more of Knox’s women die, you die. And oh, in case you are elected—not likely—and the ATF or whoever pulls a Waco on Knox and he dies ever so conveniently? Being a senator won’t protect you from me.”

He held his nose and stared at her, not speaking for a long time. She waited for him to close the deal, but he didn’t.

“Why,” he finally said, slowly, “couldn’t you have been my daughter?”

Giselle’s breath caught in her throat and her eyes widened. “What?!”

Fen gestured to one of the wing-back chairs in front of his desk. He sat in the other once she took the seat he offered.

“Didn’t you ever wonder why I took such an interest in your life?”

“I thought you just wanted to boss me around the way you bossed Knox around.”

Fen grunted. “No. I wanted to be the father of a girl who took life by the throat and throttled the hell out of it.”

“I had a father.”

“Who was my best friend, remember.”

“Augh! Fen! I am not here to have a bonding moment or fulfill your paternal fantasies. You are standing between me and Bryce Kenard and I want you out of my way.”

“Well, now that’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t trust you.”

“Really,” she said flatly. “You went there. Murderer. Adulterer. Liar. Thief. Did I miss anything?”

“I prefer ‘rascal’ if you must get nasty about it. Let me rephrase: I won’t trust you until you’ve got a ring on your finger. You’ll do a whole lot of things to get in my way, but one thing you won’t do is cheat on your man. And Kenard is not a man to tolerate split loyalties.”

“You wrote the book on split loyalties.”

He gave her an odd look. “What makes you say that?”

“Me versus Trudy. She can’t be happy about my relationship with you.”

“Friends close, enemies closer, although she is quite angry about the fact that you’re still gracing the planet.”

“I’m flattered.” Delighted! She paused, then decided to go for broke. “Speaking of her, I’m curious. How long have you two been lovers?”

“Oh. Since sixty-four.” He said it so forthrightly it shocked her. “Oliver was gone to ’Nam. She was lonely. I was available and all too willing to climb in bed with a beautiful woman who wanted me there. Then I went in sixty-seven and that was about the time Oliver came home.”

“So, Knox … ?”

“Not my son. Wasn’t possible because I was in Vietnam then. Came home. She and I took up where we left off.”

“But … why’d you have to murder him?”

Fen looked straight at her and said, very deliberately, “Giselle, there comes a time in a man’s life when he has to protect the people he loves. You of all people should know how that feels. I know you’re not wearing a wire, but if you ever repeat what I’m about to tell you, I’ll put you in the ground myself.”

Giselle smirked. “Yeah, okay.”

Fen ignored that. “Oliver had fists like hams and he used them.”

Giselle’s mouth dropped open, but once she recovered from her shock, she snapped, “I don’t believe that. Knox would’ve done something about it and he certainly wouldn’t have practically worshipped him.”

“Oliver’s rage was directed solely at Trudy, in private. No man’s going to risk having a willful son turn on him for beating his mother, and for all Knox was well behaved, he would stand up to what he saw as wrong, no matter the cost. Even to his dad.” Fen leveled her a stony glance. “Even to the point of murder. And if you think I don’t know who cleaned up after his little foray into vigilantism, you’re not as smart as your PhD looks.”

Giselle pursed her lips.

“Uh huh. The fact is, Trudy was terrified.”

Trudy. Giselle’s mouth flattened. That explained everything. “Did you see this for yourself?” she asked carefully. “Bruises?”

“Bruises, yes. Black eyes.”

Trudy was a magician with makeup, but Giselle didn’t dare accuse her of gaslighting Fen into getting rid of her husband. “Oh,” she finally said because she had to say something.

“Killing Oliver wasn’t about my affair with Trudy and it wasn’t about OKH. It was about keeping Trudy safe and, considering Knox and Oliver’s relationship, I didn’t feel Knox needed to know what his father was doing to his mother.” Trudy had done her work well because he really believed that. “When she kicked him out of the house, it was to protect him in case Oliver got it into his head that Knox was my son. There were no DNA tests at that time, remember.”

Giselle’s eyes narrowed. “Fen, you know that’s bullshit. She’s always thought of Knox as an occasionally useful nuisance.”

He shrugged. “Okay, point taken. But,” he added, spearing her with a glance, “if you’d kept your mouth shut—” Giselle felt the color drain from her face. “—it would’ve ended with just Oliver dead, no one the wiser, Trudy and Knox safe, and no proviso to fight over.”

Suddenly dizzy, Giselle closed her eyes and put her face in her palm because that was absolutely true. She’d spent the last two decades carrying the guilt of a fourteen-year-old girl’s mistake, but she’d never thought Fen would throw it at her like that.

Fen began to laugh. “Ah. I see you’ve been flagellating yourself for this entire fiasco. Good. Keep at it.”

Intellectually, she knew she wasn’t responsible for any of it. She’d even discussed it with her bishop. But the day she walked in on Trudy fucking Fen was indelibly etched in her mind, and if she just—hadn’t—said—anything …

“Why didn’t you tell us this when we confronted you?” she asked wearily, rubbing her forehead.

“By then it was irrelevant. I didn’t feel guilty for killing Oliver and I didn’t kill him for OKH. In fact, I didn’t even find out about the proviso until after the funeral. He was overwhelmed, didn’t want it anymore, and knew I was planning to buy it from him. But then he slipped that damned proviso in when I wasn’t looking.”

She looked up at him, puzzled. “Why would he do that?”

“I have no idea! I was furious because he made an end run around me for no good reason, and I felt guilty for resenting a fifteen-year-old kid for something that wasn’t his fault. I always loved Knox. He was a good kid, easygoing, did what he was told, and I daresay that proviso’s been as burdensome to him as it is to me. I didn’t want to make his life miserable, and he was happier living with you anyway. It was easy to be kind to him and support him when I never had to look at him.”

“Well, okay, I get all that. But you didn’t feel guilty enough to give it up, and now you’ve sunk to the level of murder to keep it. There’s no honor in that.”

“True.” He rose then, which cued her to do the same. “It’s a deal, Giselle,” he said, offering his hand for her to shake and she did, firmly. “As long as you and Kenard are engaging in some sort of mating ritual. The second you get married to anybody but Knox, I’ll get out of your hair for good. If not … ”

“If not, I will put you out of my misery.”

“Pistols at dawn, eh? Fine. One other thing. Keep your mouth shut about Oliver. I think you’ve learned your lesson about speaking out of school.”

Her mouth tightened. “Done.” She turned to go.

“Giselle?” She looked over her shoulder to see his stone-cold expression. “Don’t ever come back here armed, and next time wear a damned dress. A modest one.”

She flashed him a wicked smile, winked, and walked out, unwilling to let him see how shaken up she was. Fen was right; she’d definitely learned her lesson about keeping her mouth shut.

---

22: MISFIT SO ALONE

ONCE GISELLE TOLD Bryce’s frigid assistant her name, she warmed instantly, eager to tell her where he could be found. Giselle smiled in spite of herself, then blushed when the woman gave her a conspiratorial wink.

At the courthouse, Giselle patiently subjected herself to being searched, and surrendered her weapon. After being frisked, wanded, and all but tossed on the x-ray conveyor belt, she was finally allowed in.

All the way through the building, up stairs and through doors, she garnered stares. Some of these people knew her from law school and gaped at her. Kevin Oakley saw her, tried to catch her attention, but she ignored him. Though she hadn’t spoken with him since the day he’d declined to charge her with homicide, he could wait. Politics could wait.

She got to the right division before she slowed at all. Her heart pounding and her mouth dry, she ducked into the restroom to calm herself a bit before getting on with her business here. Leaning back against the wall, she bent over and took some deep breaths, not thinking about what she intended to do. If she thought about it at all, she knew she’d change her mind and then she’d regret it for the rest of her life.

She looked in a mirror once her breathing had slowed and she felt more capable of acting like a civilized human being. Her face was red, as she had expected, thus hid any marks Fen’s hand might have made. She bent down to splash cold water on her face and gargle some of it to ease the dryness of her mouth.

The restroom door opened suddenly and though Giselle took no real notice, a flash of dull, frizzy, indeterminate red did catch in her periphery and she looked up. There, Justice McKinley staring at her in the mirror, frightened determination written all over her face.

I’ll be damned.

She wondered if Justice knew or suspected what Giselle had done for her, or if she knew about her connection to Knox, because she couldn’t think of any other reason the girl would detain her, now of all times and here of all places.

“Um … Dr. Cox? May I, um, have a sec? Not about grades,” she tacked on hurriedly.

“Giselle,” Giselle said, trying to hide her impatience. Couldn’t she have done this at school, when she had unlimited access and time? “Only a sec, though.”

Justice, looking very young and naïve, swallowed a bit. “I— I want—” She pursed her lips and looked away, shaking her head. “Never mind. It’s stupid.”

Giselle turned, leaned back against the sink, and crossed her arms over her chest. “Say whatever you have to say to me, Justice,” she demanded not so gently this time. “Clock’s ticking.”

She started and opened her mouth. “I want to be like you,” she blurted.

Giselle blinked, surprised. “Why?”

“You— You’re powerful and—” She looked at the floor and whispered, “I want to learn that.”

Giselle watched her for several long seconds before Justice raised her eyelashes. “I can’t teach you how to be that,” she said abruptly. “You have to come to it on your own, through hardship and fear. You have to know who you are and what you believe and you have to take stock of that every day. You have to walk barefoot through fire on broken glass. You have to stand up to people who frighten you under conditions that terrify you. You have to be honest with yourself about what you really want. You have to be willing to fail.

“Power is acquired, earned. You’ll have many opportunities in your life to earn bits and pieces of it. You’ll make bad choices; learn from them and do the best you can with them. Do not, under any circumstances, dither over what the right choice might be every single time you’re presented with one. It won’t teach you anything and you’ll be a bore at cocktail parties.”

Justice’s hazel eyes were suspiciously moist and Giselle smiled, reaching out to rub her shoulder, surprising both of them. Giselle almost never touched people she didn’t know, or allowed them to touch her. But she’d touched this girl once and at that moment had become vested in keeping her safe, in smoothing her road for her, in helping her travel the path that led to Knox.

“You’ll do fine. Now,” she said briskly, turning away from Justice and back to the mirror to do some last-minute primping, “I need to go take some of my own advice.” She caught Justice’s look of confusion when she turned to walk toward the door. She opened it a crack and then looked back over her shoulder. “Acquiring power is a never-ending process. Every day you have to wake up and prove to the world all over again that you deserve it. There should never come a day when you wake up and say, ‘Okay, I’m powerful now; I’m done.’ Never.”

With that, she left the restroom and found the correct set of courtroom doors. She opened one quietly, tiptoed in, and stood silently against the back wall to watch Kenard do what he did that made him the god of the UMKC School of Law.

---

23: CAPTAIN FURY

BRYCE HAD USED the architecture of this closing argument so often he could recite it in his sleep. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe it—no, he believed every word of what he said and because of that, he could sell it to the jury. Every time. Sadly, he had too many cases that required this closing argument; thus, he had to deliver his closing by rote. Otherwise, he could make himself insane with the grief of his own loss.

“This trial is not and never was an issue of suing a poor, hapless doctor who tried his best yet lost the struggle between life and death. It’s about a little girl who had a bad doctor and died as a direct result of his incompetence.” His client had bowed her head and her tears fell slowly and silently. That wasn’t an act on her part, and he felt her pain acutely for a moment before forcing himself to shake it off.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said as he placed his hands on the jury box and leaned into them, making sure they could all see his scars up close and personal. “The medical community saved my life; I’m grateful every day that I have my life because of a team of brilliant surgeons, specialists, nurses, and therapists. I’m immensely grateful that my caretakers are so competent and dedicated to their art and their patients.

“I’m not here to ask you for money for my client. I’m not asking you to pass judgment on the medical community. I’m not even asking you to send a message to it that it should police its own so that people like us, you and me, don’t have to. I’m just asking you to help me clean it up one incompetent doctor at a time, and maybe Melissa Hawthorne’s mother can start sleeping a little better at night.”

He nodded his thanks to the jury and walked to his chair. There weren’t that many people in the gallery, so the woman who stood against the back wall was hard to miss. He stared for a couple of seconds, unable to believe what he was seeing, then turned to sit. His heart suddenly began thundering, and it seemed like an eternity before court adjourned for the weekend. He arose and clutched his sobbing client to his chest.

Bryce released her after a while so she could leave, and turned back to the table to gather his papers and laptop and phone, to put his briefcase back together before he confronted Giselle. He talked to his interns, piled his things into the box one of them carried, and gave them instructions.

He took his time, sorting through the remnants of his closing argument, feeling his client’s grief and his own wrapped up in it, but now …

“Stalker,” he muttered, still feeling the sting of her parting shot at the library. He’d be damned if he appeared too eager to talk to her after that.

Even though he was.

She awaited him patiently as he dawdled. Then, when they were the only two people left in the courtroom, he strolled up the aisle toward her, taking his time, blatantly looking her up and down.

Tight oxblood leather pants clung to her legs like a second skin. She had heavy Doc Martens on her feet. A voluminous but thin white cotton blouse floated around her torso. The ties that held the front together were undone, leaving it to drape open a little and she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her honey corkscrews fell past her shoulders and a wide fringed-and-beaded black scarf from her forehead to her crown held her hair away from her face. A small dog could’ve jumped through the golden hoops that hung from her ears. Her face was slightly flushed and the heavy black eye makeup enhanced her exotic look. The thought crossed his mind that he could certainly stand to look at her for the rest of his life.

He stopped and glared at her. “Stalking me?” he snapped.

She pursed her lips “You tell me. Your admin all but drew me a map when I told her my name.”

His jaw clenched. Of course she’d have noticed that.

“I want to talk to you,” she continued breathily. “I’ve needed to since December and I— I just haven’t been able to.”

“So say it.”

“Mmmm, that’s going to take a while. Tell you what,” she said, pushing herself off the wall. “How about you meet me at Kauffman Garden at six?”

He considered. Finally, he figured that if this was all he would ever get from her, he’d take it and tuck it away in his memory.

“Fine.” Unwilling to leave her but needing to make his point, he walked away and didn’t look back.

---

24: NO ONE BRIGHTER THAN YOU

GISELLE STOOD IN the V between her open car door and her car, facing west and watching the sun on its course toward the horizon. Waiting.

She had dressed carefully in a sundress of navy linen with white polka dots. The modest bustline fit closely without a hint of cleavage between the triple spaghetti straps, covered by a light white short-sleeved shrug. The full skirt fell from the empire waistline to her knees. Navy high-heeled sandals boosted her height and her courage.

She’d replaced her black hair scarf with a white one. She’d removed the kohl and kept the makeup to a minimum. She’d changed out her gold hoops for pearl studs.

This was her Sunday best.

Six o’clock came and went. Her pinging nerves settled into disappointment so acute she was nauseated. So. He decided to get back at her for calling him a stalker by standing her up. She couldn’t say she blamed him for that. “Stalker” had baggage. But twenty minutes later, she was still standing there because she didn’t know what else to do, where else to go. If he had been trying to punish her, he’d chosen the perfect weapon.

Her nose started to sting and she blinked back tears. She chewed on the inside of her bottom lip. She heard several cars turn in the lot, but she had her back to the drive so she didn’t know when he drove in and parked. She only knew that by six forty-five, when he approached from behind her and leaned against her car, she was such a jumble of emotion it was a miracle she hadn’t already broken down sobbing. She didn’t turn to face him because the reckoning had come after she’d let down her guard, forgot her speech, and her defenses had crumbled under her hurt.

“You rang?” he said after a moment.

Her heart was racing and she was trying not to sniffle, but there was nothing to be done except say what she needed to say so she could leave. ASAP. “I lied to you.”

She felt his body shift against the car as if she had startled him. He said nothing for a long time. “You said you gave me the wrong idea about you. Is that what you mean?” he asked, his voice grainy and hoarse.

She blinked. “I … guess you could look at it like that.”

“Is that why you’ve been brushing me off?”

“Mmm … ”

Another few seconds ticked by in silence. Silence was good. Wasn’t it? He hadn’t asked her what she’d lied about. She didn’t know what that meant, either.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on in court today, with the exception of his suit coat and tie. The sleeves of his white dress shirt were folded and bunched at his elbows and the two top buttons at his neck were undone.

“What happened between June and today that made you finally willing to talk to me?”

She paused to choose her words carefully. “I had to tie up some loose ends.”

“I see,” he said, though clearly he didn’t. “Have we talked enough for you to lie to me?”

“It wasn’t what I said. It’s what I did.”

“Okay. So—talk.”

And there it was. Her gut clenched and she felt as if she had jumped out of a plane without a parachute, but she turned a little and leaned back against her car, her fingers digging into the linen of her dress to have something to hold onto.

“I … um, went to Fen’s party specifically to keep you engaged and occupied so Fen couldn’t find you to beg for money. I—” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I didn’t know who you were,” she said in a rush. “Bryce Kenard was just a name to me. It was a favor for people who respect you enough to want to protect you. Then I saw you and … ”

“You did it anyway.”

“Yes.”

“The bench—was that part of your master plan with this guy?”

“Hardly. My master plan was to bump into him and say something appropriately bitchy about all the guests coming straight out of Monty Python, which would hopefully spark a lively conversation that would last until the party wrapped up and we went our separate ways.”

He laughed, surprised. “And if you’d been there for any other reason, would you and I have ended up on that bench anyway?”

“Um … ” Would they? Finally, she shrugged helplessly. “I … Something would’ve happened, I suppose.”

“Okay. So what’s the problem?”

“What do you mean, ‘What’s the problem?’”

“I mean, a year and a half ago, we met at Hale’s, I insulted you, you put a gun to my head and told me I was six kinds of a bastard, then I kissed you. And you ran away.”

“I kissed you and I did not run away,” she corrected calmly, though her heart was pounding.

“Eight months after that,” he continued right over her as if she hadn’t made a sound, “not only were you not mad at me, you lured me to a dark and quiet place where I had my way with you. And you ran away.”

She had run away that time.

“I’ve tried to talk to you several times since March. And you’ve run away.”

“Augh! I was not running away!”

“Was there more that happened any of those times that I didn’t notice or don’t remember?”

He knew. He knew what he did to her, taking her on and making her back down. He wanted her to acknowledge it, give it words, make it real.

“I just wanted to talk to you, Giselle,” he finished wearily. “I thought I made that perfectly clear.”

His suddenly resigned tone caught her off guard. “I was … ashamed.”

He looked at her sharply. “Why?”

“Because that woman who lured you to the dark and quiet place is not me. I don’t know where that came from, so if that’s what you’re expecting, you’re not going to get it.”

“We already had something between us. Why didn’t you just come over and tell me the problem up front?”

“That wasn’t the point!”

“The point is that you wouldn’t have done that with anyone else, and I didn’t do anything to you that I wouldn’t have done anyway.” She went hot as he held her stare, one eyebrow cocked at her as if daring her to comment. “Does your boss know you’re Knox’s cousin?”

Giselle’s mind went blank. “Excuse me?”

He grinned suddenly, wickedly, his teeth flashing white, pretty against his dark face. Giselle’s heart picked up its pace. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“It’s the eyes, right?”

He barked a genuinely amused laugh and wiped a hand over his mouth, but his amusement slowly faded. After a very long silence, he murmured, “I … have my own confession to make.” He took a deep breath, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and bowed his head. “I saw you at Leah’s visitation. I overheard Knox ask you to go home with him.”

Her heart cracked further. “Oh,” she croaked. “That’s why you were angry with me.”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t— I didn’t—”

He held up a hand. “You don’t owe me an explanation for anything, Giselle. I was wrong and I was wrong to take it out on you.”

“Did you think—” She didn’t want to know. “I just found out everybody in society thinks I’m Sebastian’s mistress. Did you?”

His hesitation was all the answer she needed and tears stung her eyes. “Well,” he began doubtfully, “I wasn’t sure. You didn’t act like lovers and he’s not known for his prowess with women, so it was shocking that he showed up with any woman at all.”

“I knew that was what you thought of me, but I thought it was because I kissed you and then because of what I did with you at Christmas.”

“That’s really why you were avoiding me, isn’t it?” he asked quietly. “You didn’t think I’d believe you.”

Her mouth dropped open. “The hell?! You sneered at me! Twice! Why would I think you’d believe me?”

He took a deep breath. “Um … yeah. The look on your face was—heartbreaking.” Giselle pulled her lips between her teeth. “When you ran out on me, I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t care who you were sleeping with, Taight or whoever or how many—it was that it was Knox.”

She was still hurt, but now also completely confused. “What?”

“Knox is my best friend from UCLA,” he said flatly. “We were roommates.” Giselle was so shocked she squeaked. “A couple of years after my wife and I moved here, she told me she’d been having an affair with him and I … didn’t know what to believe.”

That wasn’t what she expected. “Did you sneer at him too?”

“I don’t remember,” he snapped, but then he took a deep breath and said with forced calm, “He walked away.”

“Well, gee, do you blame him?”

“But after Fen’s party,” he continued, ignoring her jab, “Knox summoned me and told me the whole shebang. Fen, the proviso, Taight.”

“When did this happen?”

“In March.”

That explained that. “If you were so mad at him and you thought I was a whore—” He grimaced. “—why did you bother going?”

He sighed heavily. “You. I needed to know what I was missing. He knows my taste in women and he knew I’d be stewing about it. He gave me the answers but he refused to give me your phone number, tell me where you live, set up a date. Nothing. He said he wasn’t going to make it easy for me and I needed to pay penance for being a bastard to you both. That I needed to work for it so I’d value it.” He paused. “Hence, stalking. I knew where you worked, but Geoff told me to back off because if I hadn’t gotten your phone number by then, you must have your reasons. I knew you were in law school, so … ”

She wrapped her arms around herself, even though she had no reason to be cold. “I’m assuming Knox did tell you what he and I haven’t done?”

“Yes. He was very clear on that point.”

“So now I don’t know if you were chasing me because Knox redeemed your low opinion of me or if you want me in spite of your low opinion of me.” Dammit. She really was going to cry. “That’s just so … flattering. I should’ve gotten a clue when you called me Lilith.”

He sighed. “When I first saw you, before I overheard your conversation— You look like a woman in a painting I saw once.”

“So I’ve been told. But usually people aren’t calling me a slut. Is that why you asked me to go home with you that night, thinking I was sleeping with Knox and Sebastian? To get back at Knox? Getting laid by someone who wanted you for something other than your money was a bonus?”

His protest was purely defensive. “It wasn’t like that. I wanted to stake my claim. Take you away from … whoever. Keep you.”

“Keep me?” she squeaked. “Like a hunting trophy?”

He groaned and dropped his face into his hand, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Giselle, I wanted you. I was pissed off you weren’t mine and I’ve been pissed off about it for two years. I really didn’t think about it too much.” He turned his head to look at her without raising his head. “It was the heat of the moment. I’m a guy. We aren’t that complicated.”

“And this?” she asked quietly, his I wanted you whispering to her, his keep you softening her. “You’re a trial lawyer. Think deeper and explain it to me.”

He shrugged helplessly. “Giselle, I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do or say so you’ll give me a chance?”

She hooted. “I came here thinking you were going to truss me up like a Christmas goose for conning you and send me packing. Now I’m pissed off and you’re the one begging forgiveness. What am I supposed to say?”

The silence fell between them. She was dizzy, spinning between anger and giddiness. She was sixteen again, and her crush had just asked her to dance—but only because he thought she was an easy lay.

Oh, yeah. That. “I’m a virgin.”

“I know,” he said low.

“And I don’t like people in my personal space. Even men I find attractive.”

He tensed. “Um … then why did you haul me into your car that night?”

“Because you hurt my feelings,” she snapped. Anger was so much easier. She could hide her bruised infatuation behind it. “Would you rather I have slugged you? I have a hell of a right cross.”

His mouth quirked then and she suddenly saw the humor in what she’d said. He slid her a wry look. “Do you kiss every strange man who hurts your feelings?”

That pulled a puff of wry laughter out of her and her smile came with a blush. “Well.” She ducked her head and cleared her throat.

“So … your feelings are hurt again, right?”

She glared at him from under her brow. “Don’t even.”

He grinned and pushed himself away from her car, striding around the back to the passenger side. “We have to hash this out and I’m not going to do it in this heat on an empty stomach,” he said. “Find us a place to eat.”

It occurred to her to protest his abrupt command, but she figured this was a battle best left un-picked. She dropped into the driver’s seat and watched him fold his big body into her little car. Once he’d settled and returned her look, he did a double take. “Who hit you?” he demanded.

Now Fen’s handprint decided to show up. A chuckle escaped her, then it turned into a rolling laugh. “The other guy looks worse.”

He reached up and lightly caressed that cheek with his knuckles, melting her. She wanted to close her eyes and press her cheek into his hand.

“I’m so sorry, Giselle,” he whispered. “All of it, everything. And I’m sorry for being late; I had an appointment I forgot about and I didn’t know how to get in touch with you. I was so glad to see you—” He took a deep breath. “Can we start over? Where we should’ve started a year and a half ago if I hadn’t been an ass? Please?”

“I’d like that,” she said softly.

He flashed that pretty smile for her again and said, “So are you going to drive or are you going to let me starve?”

She laughed then. “Now, you know I’m going to pick the most expensive restaurant in town, right?”

“I was counting on it.”

Still chuckling, she started the car, then drove them to a steakhouse on the Country Club Plaza. Although it was only a mile away from Kauffman Garden, the silence during the drive made her even more nervous than she already was. She was a wreck by the time she found a parking spot.

She turned off the engine and bolted out of the car as fast as she could, needing to get away from his raw sexuality so she could breathe again. She sensed him coming up behind her, and when he splayed his large hand across her back, it was all she could do not to lean back against his body.

His momentum took him around her. She looked up just in time to close her eyes as he kissed her. Softly at first, and then a little deeper. Her hands— She didn’t know what to do with her hands and her arms, and she oh, so wanted to touch him. Hesitantly, lightly, she furrowed her left hand in his hair and laid her right hand on his chest, her thumb on the little nub of nipple through the fabric of his dress shirt and undershirt. He pulled her breath from her, and she stopped thinking, stopped caring about everything as his tongue found hers.

They kissed. Long, slow, lazy. Giselle hummed into his mouth.

He pulled away from her finally and she opened her eyes to again find his vivid green eyes studying her. “I’m hungry,” he repeated softly, though this time the words held so much, much more. “Come eat with me. Talk with me. Laugh with me.”

---

25: COCKED & LOCKED

WHILE AWAITING A table, the conversation turned awkward, as Giselle was unsure what this evening would bring. Eating with him—kissing him—had not been on her short list of possible endings to her quasi-confessional. Hearing his confession …

She was nervous. Fidgety. Upset. He must have known that because though he was still in her personal space, he wasn’t crowding her. He was trying to put her at ease by asking good questions, listening to her halting answers, and gently encouraging her into talking more. When the maître d’ led them to their table, Bryce followed Giselle closely, his big hand in the small of her back.

She did not mind that one bit.

It was a gesture of intimacy that said we’re together, and she had never been together with a man in her life. It was heady, having his hand on her back, knowing that anybody who noticed would know they were together.

“How did you come to work for Geoff?” he asked after he’d seated her.

“Um … ” This was where the talking started, laying the groundwork for … the inevitable. She busied herself with her napkin. “Answered an ad. It’s good for law school and I needed the money. Transcribing has always turned out to be my fallback position. I’m ambivalent about the work itself, but it’s a good job and I like him. And no, he doesn’t know about Knox, so I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.”

“I could’ve busted you out on that that night if I felt like getting you fired, and the ‘fuck you’ was the cherry.”

Her head snapped up and she glared at him. “Don’t expect me to thank you for sneering at me.”

He took a deep breath and looked away. “Point taken. Can we … ?”

“I’ve been mad at you for almost a year and a half,” Giselle gritted out, on the verge of tears yet again, “and with good reason. I’m trying.”

He nodded slowly and murmured, “So am I.”

They were silent as the bread was put on the table, and he nudged the basket toward her. “No, thanks,” she muttered absently as she perused the menu. “I don’t eat bread.”

He paused. “Okay.”

A litmus test! Exactly what she needed. “Knox’s wife was a dietitian. Did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve always been fat,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Oh?”

She nodded. “I was starving myself but gaining weight. Leah came along and figured out my problem the first time she saw me eat. She wrote up an eating plan for me and sent me to a trainer she worked with and … ” She spread her hands a little. “I’m not fat anymore and I don’t have to starve to stay that way.”

He looked around. “You chose a steakhouse, so … low-carb? You’re a weightlifter, right?”

She blinked at his interested tone, his lack of judgment, and his knowledgeable question. “Yes. How … ?”

He shrugged. “I have a racquetball partner who does that.” He puffed a little laugh. “Actually, she told me the same thing, almost verbatim. Starving herself, lots of carbs, low fat, gaining weight. She’s sixty. Looks better, younger, than I’ve ever seen her and I’ve known her for fifteen years. Right now her goal is to beat me on the court.” He chuckled. “She’s beaten me in court a couple of times.”

Giselle bit her lip, her eyes wide, because she hadn’t known how much of a litmus test that was until he’d answered her so very perfectly. They were, blessedly, interrupted by the waiter requesting their order.

“Speaking of Leah,” he began once the waiter had vanished, “Knox said you felt guilty for her death. Why? It was her decision to go without a bodyguard and he backed her up.”

She wasn’t expecting that turn of the conversation, either. “Oh. Because my gut told me what to do and my gut has saved my life twice.” Sadness and guilt trickled through her as it always did when she thought about Leah. “I loved her. I miss her. She was the best thing that ever happened to me and I should’ve listened.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, but Giselle merely nodded. Thank you was so inadequate, but then so was I’m sorry. It was just something to say when it was uncomfortable to say nothing. Giselle didn’t need to speak. Apparently, he didn’t either because they were both silent while their salads were put in front of them.

“For the record,” he said, gesturing to the chef salad she was digging into, “I do like to see a woman eat.”

That caught her off guard, and she froze, her fork halfway to her mouth.

“I didn’t mean to step on your toes,” he said quickly. “I mean, I really do like it.” He laughed wryly and rubbed his mouth. “It’s been so long since I’ve been on a date I forgot how to talk to a woman.”

She saw a little flush under his dark tan, and decided to take him at face value. She saluted him with her fork and said, “Then you’re going to like me a lot because I eat a lot.”

“I already like you a lot.”

“You don’t know me well enough to like me,” she said dryly.

He tilted his head a little. “That’s why we’re here tonight, right? Figure out if we can get along?”

“Yeah,” she agreed with a smile she couldn’t quell. To see if they could get along. It was all the clarification she needed to relax. “Where’d you go on your mission?”

He burst out laughing. “The first thing a Mormon girl asks.”

She groaned good-naturedly. “Oh, my bob! How predictable am I? Sebastian told me you were on the fast track to bishop, so I assumed a couple of things. One was that you were a returned missionary, but then you undressed me in public and propositioned me.”

“I don’t know how to talk to women, remember?”

That startled a giggle out of her, but she put her hand over her mouth.

His green eyes sparkled. “Scotland and Ireland. Did you go on one?”

“No. But I did go to Europe one summer between my junior and senior years at BYU. Sebastian lived in Paris, and he took me everywhere.”

“What else did you assume?”

“That you are no longer interested in the church.”

“You didn’t seem to care in December.”

“I wasn’t thinking with my head,” she drawled.

“And now that you are?”

She took a deep breath. “Um, I … care.” She paused, looking down. “If I didn’t, I would’ve gone home with you.” She sensed his surprise. “Well,” she said, feeling defensive. She wanted to explain, but not sure why or how to say it. “I’ve waited a long time, but I feel like … ” She raised her eyes to his. He was watching her with patient interest. She bit the inside of her cheek. “I feel like it’s my time,” she blurted. “I mean, like it doesn’t apply to me anymore. Not— Augh!” She huffed. “I’m thirty-six. I’ve done things the women at church who get married when they’re barely out of their teens can’t possibly imagine. The only thing they’ve done that I haven’t is have sex.” She put her hand to her chest and leaned forward. “And yet I’m the little girl, like it’s the only rite of passage to becoming a real woman that means anything.”

She snapped her mouth shut, leaned back, and looked away, embarrassed by her outburst. She didn’t know where that had come from and it was far too telling. “I guess I don’t know how to talk to my dates, either,” she muttered. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t directed at you.”

“Giselle.” She peeked at him cautiously only to see him watching her with a warm, gentle smile. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “I grew up the same way you did. I get it.”

Their entrées arrived just as the conversation was starting to stall out. It wasn’t the kind where neither had anything more to say; it was the kind where they had so much more to say they didn’t know where to go next.

“That looks wonderful,” Giselle murmured as she took her time cutting into her steak. The silence was uncomfortable, but not. The conversation needed to rest. She needed to rest. Her mind and soul were too ragged to continue. “Hungrier than I thought,” she muttered.

He hummed in agreement, and after a few bites that took the edge off her nerves, she said, “You say my name right. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said huskily. “What’s your middle name?”

That got a laugh out of her. “Giselle.”

“Okay. What’s your first name?”

“Celia. My mother insisted I be named after my four-greats grandmother—but so were my mother, all eight of my aunts, and six of my cousins. We all go by our middle names.”

His eyebrow rose. “There’s a story behind that, I bet.”

Giselle nodded. “Family lore has it that she was a privateer captain in the American Revolution who reported directly to George Washington.”

Bryce laughed wryly. “Your grandmother? Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

Giselle grinned. “We know for sure our grandfather from that time was an English earl. Elliott Raxham. Earl Tavendish.”

“Tavendish?” He looked surprised. “That’s in Northumberland, Berwick-upon-Tweed, about two miles from the Scottish border. It’s an old name, back to Hastings.”

“You know it?” she asked eagerly, leaning forward, her eyes wide, her heart racing now for an entirely different reason.

His mouth quirked. “I did some genealogy while I was there. My people are from northern England up to the highlands, but I talked to the locals wherever we went. Drove my companions nuts.”⁴

“We think Tavendish was a pirate.”

Bryce shook his head. “The title didn’t die out until World War I. Revolutionary War? No, he wouldn’t have been able to pull that off without killing it and getting the rest of his family thrown out into the streets to starve.”

Giselle knew that, but her sense of disappointment was so visceral it shocked her. “It— It’s a thing with us,” she said quietly, “being descended from a pirate earl and an American privateer.”

“Ah … ” Bryce ventured, “I wasn’t trying to rain on your parade. I’m sure there’s a way it could have been done, but … ”

She rolled her eyes. “Fantasy. Where were we? Oh. Yes. What’s your middle name?”

“Duncan.”

“You’re a Scot through and through, aren’t you?”

“Not quite. My mother was one-quarter Apache.”

“That explains the tan,” she said and he laughed.

He asked her little questions until he got her talking about herself again, which she hardly ever got to do, so it was nice for someone to be interested in her.

They traded opinions of music, and found out they both loved heavy metal. “I listen to a lot of classical music, though,” she said.

“I have a huge jazz collection,” he replied.

“Ballet? Symphony? Opera?”

“Symphony, absolutely. Ballet, maybe. Opera, definitely not.”

They traded opinions of movies, and found out they both loved Quentin Tarantino. “You know, somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” he drawled with a wicked grin. “You classify your taste by director, too?”

“Not always. You?”

“I’m a Kubrick fan. I bet you don’t like rom-coms.”

“Ha! How’d you know? I don’t know why, though. I’m a romantic at heart.”

“Neither of those surprises me,” he said with a mischievous smile.

They traded opinions of books, and found out he read nonfiction almost exclusively and she read fiction almost exclusively. “Romance, right?”

Giselle pulled her lips between her teeth. “Yes,” she said in a small voice, trying not to laugh. “I haven’t read for pleasure since I started law school,” she added matter-of-factly while he chuckled. “I used to read a lot of science fiction, mainstream stuff. Those big, thick, soap opera books. Hope I can get back to that once I graduate. I just want to be entertained. What was the last book you read?”

“A physician’s memoir. His protégé was a drug addict.”

She blinked and started to laugh. “Of course it was. And then you tracked down the author for more details?”

He grinned. “That’s why I read it.”

They traded their preferred sports. “I don’t play anything,” she admitted. “Winning doesn’t do anything for me, but I’m a sore loser.”

“Meh. Other than racquetball, I play golf and occasionally a pickup game of basketball. One’s for business. The others are for letting off steam.”

They went from one topic to the next seamlessly, with deepening intellectual exploration and increasing laughter, from the sacred to the profane, from topics achingly tender to bitingly sarcastic.

He was trying to make her comfortable, but he wasn’t quite sure how to do that and was a bit clumsy about it. She was so touched and charmed, she made an effort to lean toward him, to let him know she appreciated it and would try to meet him halfway. She was a bit clumsy about it. They were both relaxing, trying to get over the last year and a half of anger and longing, immersing themselves in each other’s company.

She was almost floating at being here, being together with a man she wanted so very badly, knowing he wanted her just as much, talking with him, laughing with him, eating with him.

Eating with a man, especially if you let him feed you, let him watch you savor the flavors, is like making love in public. I seduced my husband that way. Her cousin Victoria’s matter-of-fact lecture vaguely flitted through her brain. Feed him. Let him feed you. In, out. It’s a promise more binding than kissing.

Giselle had read it in many books, too, but she’d never believed it—

You won’t understand until you see food as something other than the enemy, eating as more than a chore. Sex makes life. Food sustains life. You can see them as chores or you can find joy in them. That’s the choice you make.

—until Bryce offered her a bit of his lobster, letting her eat off his fork. Her heart thundering, trying to be more like her unfettered cousin, she held his gaze and closed her mouth over the fork slowly. His eyelids shuttered and he retrieved his fork just as slowly.

“Good?” he asked with that low, smoke-damaged rasp.

She felt drugged. “Uh huh.”

His chuckle wasn’t audible, but she felt it vibrating the air around her.

And that was as much as she could manage before she was too far out of her comfort zone, so she sat back, breaking the spell, to take a deep breath, look at some point over his head, and try to think in words and find a way back from the edge.

“You said you and your wife moved here,” she finally said. “Where are you from originally?”

“San Diego,” he replied huskily. She met his eyes then and he smiled wryly, going with her, coddling her through this mating ritual. “I met Knox at UCLA after my mission; we were roommates in the freshman dorm. He and I got along. I got married right after we graduated, then we both went to BYU for law school. I got a good job offer here straight out of law school, liked it, and stayed. I’ve lived here since ninety-three and I have no plans to move back to California.”

“Surely you had job offers elsewhere?”

“None where I had friends who could introduce me to the city.”

“What was your major?”

“Finance.”

She paused for a second. “We were at BYU at the same time, weren’t we?” she asked, confused. “I practically lived at Knox’s house. I’m surprised I didn’t meet you then.”

He looked at her strangely for a moment, then blinked and shook his head. “I was married. Meeting then would not have been a good thing.” He paused for a long time, studying his plate, then he looked up. “What was your major?”

“English lit,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

He chuckled.

“And if that weren’t useless enough, I came home and promptly got a PhD in eighteenth-century British literature.”

His bottom lip dropped open a little. “Really! So law school is … ?”

“Did Knox tell you I owned a bookstore and what happened to it?” When he nodded, she went on. “I shared space with a patisserie on one side of me and a confectionery on the other. Maisy and Coco weren’t my business partners, exactly; we just figured if we knocked down our walls, unified our décor, and put up some tables, we’d all make more money and it worked.”

“How long were you in business?”

“Seven, eight years, and growing.”

“An indie bookstore’s risky, with the discounters and big boys. I’m impressed you kept it open that long.”

She waved a hand. “Decadence wasn’t a bookstore with food. It was a destination. I stocked romance novels of all kinds, religious and wholesome to erotica. Couple that with Maisy’s gourmet chocolates and wine, and Coco’s pastries, the events we put on every weekend, the book clubs we hosted, wine tastings and readings … I was doing well; we all were. I was never going to be independently wealthy and I don’t really know what I would’ve done to deal with Amazon in the future, but I made a good living doing something I loved.”

“Decadence?” he purred.

She could feel herself flush with the innuendo, but her smile was slight and sad. His smirk faded. “Wine, chocolate, sex.” Then she laughed outright. “We had PMS survival kits. Better than Midol. Men came in specifically for those.”

He burst out laughing, and she smiled again, genuinely happy to have made him laugh. She hadn’t noticed how tense and guarded he was … until he laughed. His smile was so pretty, so warm and free. His green eyes sparkled and his face relaxed. But when his amusement faded, his face and body would tense up again, like it was doing right then.

“Then Fen burned it down,” he murmured finally.

Giselle nodded, her melancholy creeping back. “Bankrupted all of us. We’d taken on new debt to expand and the insurance wouldn’t pay out because it was ruled arson. At the time, we were just happy not to be suspects, but then we couldn’t get insurance, so we couldn’t have started over even if we had the cash. There’s not much else out there for an English degree that I wanted to do and certainly nothing that makes any money. I don’t want to get caught up in university politics, either; I’d rather teach than publish and that’s a no-no. After I’d spent about six months curled up in bed, Knox and Sebastian kicked my ass to do something and I decided to be a bit more practical in my education than I had before.”

His brow wrinkled in slight confusion. “So … do you want to be a lawyer?”

“Ehhh … ” She grimaced a little. “The only thing I ever wanted to do was have a bookstore.” Get married and have children, but she wasn’t about to say that. “I got a PhD to see if I could and to give me a little educational credibility. I had no backup plan. Being a lawyer was as good as anything else and at least I could call it a career instead of a job.” When he opened his mouth to ask the next of about a dozen logical questions, she murmured, “You know, um … I’m still grieving and I’m overwhelmed with law school and working, neither of which are very fun, so if you don’t mind, I’d rather not reminisce about my murdered dreams anymore.”

“Uh, okay. I’m sorry.”

“Tell me about your family,” she said lightly, to let him know she wasn’t upset.

He waved a fork. “I’m the youngest child of three in a family with not too many people in it to begin with. My sister, the sibling right before me, is fifteen years older than I am. My brother is almost twenty years older than I am. My mother had cancer and died about six years ago and my father died soon after that. I was in the hospital then and didn’t know for a while.”

“That’s horrible.”

He shrugged. “My mother was forty-five, my dad fifty-five, when I was born—and I wasn’t a welcome surprise. They thought they were finished. My dad had climbed pretty high up in the church hierarchy and he wasn’t prepared for another child. I didn’t see him much because he was always at church meetings, so he didn’t get to know me as well as he did my siblings. And I always knew my parents wouldn’t be around as long as other people’s.”

“Do you talk to your siblings at all?”

“No. I never really got to know them and I never will because they’re thousands of miles away and a generation older than I am. I might as well not have any family for how much we interact. I’m not even sure they know where I am. Or care.”

Giselle was appalled, but he must have known what she was thinking because he shrugged and said, “Doesn’t bother me.”

“What about your wife and kids?”

He hesitated and his face tightened even more. “My marriage was hell and my kids are dead,” he said flatly.

She bit her lip. She hadn’t actually connected My wife said she was having an affair to my marriage was hell, although she should have. It was her turn to murmur, “I’m sorry.”

“Giselle,” he said lightly, “we have a lot of ground to cover. Let’s save the difficult stuff for later.”

That surprised her into a laugh. “Okay.”

“What about yours?”

“My father was killed in Vietnam, so my mother’s had a hard life, being a young widow with nothing. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, but I have lots of cousins so it feels like I do.”

“Knox used to say your family was a hundred people looking for any reason to have a party.”

She grinned. “Yeah. We all interact in some way. I’m kind of the go-to person for everybody.”

“Like?”

She thought for a moment. She helped so many family members she didn’t keep track. “Well, my cousin Étienne and his wife, Tess, are having some problems. They’ve been married twenty years. Five kids. Multimillion-dollar business. If they go kaput— But Tess is the one who’s getting the brunt of it.” She paused, then shrugged. “I’m kind of the family nurturer. I’m involved in almost everybody’s drama, and not because I want to be.”

“And … no one helps you out.”

Giselle looked away. “My mom lets me cry on her shoulder,” she muttered. “But you know, there are some things you don’t tell your mother.”

He chuckled.

“She’s retired and doesn’t have any drama. But she’s not physically capable of helping out the way I can. And she and Sebastian’s mom live so far away from the rest of us, up by the airport, by Knox. It’s difficult.”

“I see,” he murmured. “And where do you live now?”

He didn’t push. Giselle was so, so happy he’d decided to move on, but he seemed sensitive to those things.

“With Sebastian. A few blocks from here.” The look of shock on his face made her laugh, if a bit shakily.

“How did that happen?”

“He came and got me the night my bookstore burned down and I just never moved out.”

“Why don’t you live with your mom?”

“My life and most of my family is down here, and my car can’t take the punishment of the commute. I can walk to school and work if I want or need to. She’d rather I live with her because she thinks Sebastian’s a bad influence on me.”

“Is he? A bad influence on you?”

“He’d corrupted me by the time I was six.” Now pulled out of her melancholy, she grinned at the confused look on his face. “We grew up together, in the ghetto. My mom and I lived across the alley and up three doors from Sebastian and his parents. I’ve been his sidekick since before I could walk. He taught me how to use a gun, how to spin cash out of thin air, and run a business.”

His eyebrow rose. “Oh? What business?”

Giselle dipped her head and said coyly, “Let’s just say it involved baseball bats and kneecaps.”

“He made his money loan sharking?” Bryce asked, shocked.

She flashed him a mischievous grin. “And bookmaking. Just seed money, really, but he’ll tell you it’s because he’s never borrowed money in his life.”

“Good point.”

“Once he started making serious money, he needed someone at his back he could trust. Knox was too busy squiring debutantes on Trudy’s command and being her perfect country club trophy son to be available when Sebastian needed him to be. That left … me. So my family thinks that Sebastian taking me in hand so early has left me completely unmarriageable. I’m the … hmm, feral old maid.”

He grinned. “And then,” he said slyly, “you went from being his collections sidekick to his political consultant. Senator Oth and his cronies are noticeably backing off.”

Giselle laughed. “Knox told you about that.”

“That was brilliant. I’m very impressed.”

She waved a hand. “Don’t be. I wasn’t sure any of the parties would react the way I hoped and too much depended on decisions other people had to make.”

“When’s Kevin going to announce?”

“Not sure. September, possibly October. I’d rather he wait until he finds out whether Justice McKinley will endorse him or not. I’d also like to know how Fen’s fundraising’s been going. I know he’s spent quite a bit of money, but not as much as I wanted him to by now.”

“Justice McKinley—she’s the girl Knox has a crush on.”

“That’s a good way to put it. Poor girl’s a mess, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“She—” Giselle looked up and gestured with her fork. “Well, first of all, she needs a makeover.”

He looked Giselle up and down, but not in a suggestive way. “Why don’t you give her one?”

“Because she’s gorgeous and if I did that, all the guys on campus would notice.”

His expression cleared in understanding. “Ah. Keeping her hidden until Knox can get his hands on her.”

“Right, and you probably know Knox isn’t particularly choosy with regard to a woman’s looks.”

“True. He doesn’t notice, as long as she’s got red hair and an IQ higher than his.”

She nodded. “He wouldn’t have noticed Justice, either, except she opened her mouth and got him where he lives.”

“Huh?”

Giselle told the story, and by the end of it, Bryce was laughing, his elbows on the table, the back of his hand under his nose and his fork dangling from his fingers. “That’s hilarious.”

“Well, it wasn’t at the time!” she objected good-naturedly. “She’s still traumatized. Then—” she continued, leaning toward him and putting her elbows on the table to tell him what Justice had done just hours ago. “ … teach her how to be powerful. So I said … ”

Bryce’s smile faded when she finished. “That’s what you told her?”

Giselle nodded, wondering where his humor went and feeling insecure.

“That was a profound bit of philosophy,” he murmured. “Off the cuff, too, right?”

She blinked and sat back, warmth suffusing her because he wasn’t mocking her. She nodded.

“I’m even more impressed.”

She bit her lip, and she had to scramble to think of something else, something that wouldn’t make her start—

“Hey, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he said softly, leaning over to dab at her cheeks.

She brushed his hand away, embarrassed. “I— Thank you. I didn’t mean to cry, either. It’s just … I don’t get— Um. Hm.”

“You don’t get many compliments,” he said low.

She shook her head and tried to blow her nose discreetly. “Knox grades me more harshly than he does everyone else, which has tanked my GPA and— Well, not tanked it. But it’s not reflective of what I’ve done.”

“Grades rarely ever are,” he said soothingly. “But you have a PhD, so … ”

“In underwater basketweaving,” she said sarcastically.

“That’s more than most people can do, and you’re almost through with law school. So your family holds you to a higher standard and nobody says anything when you hit it?”

She nodded, still trying to get the moisture out of her eyelashes without smearing her eyeliner. “Or even if I hit it. I’m just … In my family, I’m just the heavy. The brawn, not the brains.”

“And the forklift. And the nurturer.”

She didn’t answer that.

“Giselle,” he said quietly, and she looked up at him. His expression was intense, but she couldn’t read it. “That plan you came up with— Knox acted like that was par for your course.”

Giselle shrugged a little, warmed in spite of herself. “He says he grades me like that because I’m not working up to my capabilities, but … ”

There was a little silence when she didn’t finish the thought.

“From what I’ve been told and what I’ve seen,” he murmured, “I think you’re extraordinary.”

The smile and blush appeared by themselves, and she ducked her head again.

“You strike me as a sensitive woman, so I can see you as a nurturer. But,” he added, “I do find it disturbing that the men in your family depend on you to protect them. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.”

Giselle’s brow wrinkled. She liked being needed. Liked being important to her family. She had always taken pride in that, taken pride in being the heavy as well as the go-to girl—right up to the point someone had expressed appreciation for her brain, too.

“Knox said Sebastian ordered you to fuck my mind.”

She nodded absently.

“How many women does he know to whom he could say, ‘Go fascinate a man’ without once doubting she could?”

She shrugged helplessly, now completely embarrassed she was breaking down in front of him on their first date, exposing all her insecurities. It’d be a miracle if they had a second date, she had so much baggage.

He leaned across the table and took her hand. “Look at me,” he whispered, caressing her knuckles with his thumb. That big hand, scarred, dark, warm …  surrounding her small, flawless, pale one.

Her eyelashes fluttered up. “You know who I am,” he murmured, “what I do, how well I do it. Fucking my mind is a very difficult thing to do. They know that, so what does it say that they assumed you would succeed? Right now, you’re fucking my mind very well, and you’re not even trying.”

Giselle couldn’t look away from his beautiful green eyes, watching her intently, then looking at her mouth. He lifted her hand and pressed his mouth to it, meeting her eyes again while he did it. Her bottom lip fell open a little and her breath caught.

They broke apart when the waiter came to clear their table, inquire about coffee and dessert, both of which they declined, and requested more water for Giselle and more Coke for Bryce.

“Who slapped you?” Bryce asked quietly.

She rolled her eyes, and huffed. “Fen.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I insulted my aunt. That’s his tipping point.”

“Why were you there?”

“He was one of the loose ends I had to tie up before I sought you out.”

“Ah.” He wasn’t going to press the point. “What was with the pirate queen outfit? Channeling your grandmother?”

She chuckled. “That’s my kickin’-ass-and-takin’-names outfit. Fen hates it when I’m not perfectly coiffed and attired for the occasion, so I wore it to annoy him.”

“You said he looked worse.”

“I broke his nose.”

Bryce burst out laughing then and all the people at the tables around them looked up to see what was so funny. He sat back and gave her a lopsided grin. “Knox said you find him amusing.”

“Fen and I have the same twisted sense of humor. In my mind, I know he wasn’t playing when he put out those hits on me—I’ll assume you know how I got shot—” He nodded. “—but it felt like he was, because my Uncle Fen would not do that to me unless he was just trying to one-up me.” She noted his skepticism. “It started when I was a teenager, when I wouldn’t do what he told me to do. As long as Fen was paying Knox’s bills, Knox did what he was told. I didn’t let Fen pay my bills at all so he wouldn’t have anything to hold over my head. It was a competition. A battle of wills. Big game of chicken. See what I mean?”

He grunted. “Leah wasn’t a chicken.”

Her mouth tightened immediately and she growled, “That’s when it sunk in that he wasn’t playing, so I made sure he knew I wasn’t playing anymore, either.”

His eyebrow rose. “But does he believe it?”

Giselle looked at Bryce steadily. “If you watched me,” she said softly, “kill two men you’d paid to kill me, wouldn’t you believe it?”

His mouth twitched with a hint of amusement. “Excellent point.”

“And today,” she said smoothly, running her finger gently around the rim of her water glass, “it finally sunk into his thick skull that I don’t need a gun to kill him.”

“Are you armed?” Bryce rumbled. “Right now?”

Startled by the question and his tone, she watched him warily and asked slowly, “Do you want me to be?”

“Yes.”

Giselle’s heart began to race and she suddenly couldn’t breathe. “I’m always armed.”

Again he reached across the table to touch her, to softly cup her chin in his hand, his thumb drawing lightly across her bottom lip. Her body responded to his caress, as light as a feather. He was devastating the last of her defenses, shattering her world, snatching her soul and wringing it out. Making her like it.

Want me. Need me. Love me. Beg me.

A Cheap Trick song started playing in her head, and she knew she’d fallen in love—but not tonight. Long ago, that night in the parking lot, when he took her kiss away from her and turned it on her.

She was captivated by his eyes, his touch, and wanted to lick his thumb. So she did, lightly, tasting the salt and watching him. His eyelids shuttered, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

“Why does your mother think you’re unmarriageable?” he asked quietly, sitting back once again. She wished he hadn’t touched her. She wished he’d kept touching her.

“Nobody ever asked me to marry him,” she replied vaguely, trying to make her brain work enough to move her vocal cords. “By definition, that’s unmarriageable.”

“Dumb question, okay. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be. You’re smart, attractive, well educated, well dressed, and put together.” He paused and whispered, “Passionate.”

She paused, arousal flaring through her midsection while her mind flashed back to the things she’d told Sebastian so long ago, but she wasn’t going to admit to him that he was the first man whose attention she’d worked up the courage to catch—and then only because he was so compelling she couldn’t control herself. The way she couldn’t control herself on the bench. Or here. Tonight, licking his thumb.

She took a drink because her mouth was unbearably dry. She cleared her throat. Took another drink. “I, um, don’t know how much you paid attention because you were already married by the time you got to BYU, but if a woman’s goal is to get married in the temple, and she leaves BYU without getting her MRS, she’s pretty much shit out of luck.”

He scratched his jaw. “But … that wasn’t your goal.”

Jerked out of her haze, she barked an unamused laugh. “Of course it was my goal, but I wasn’t physically attractive back then and I was looking for a certain kind of man. Generally, they aren’t in the church. So here I am, hanging onto a relic of another dead dream and … ” She bowed her head and watched her hands mangle her napkin. Giving God an ultimatum.

“Is it still your goal?” he asked warily.

“No,” she muttered. “I gave up. The relic isn’t going to get me what I want and it never was.”

“When?” he asked softly.

She raised her eyes slowly to his and said, “When what?”

“When did you give up the relic?”

Giselle bit her lip and shifted her gaze to his scarred jaw. “When I kissed you.”

She heard his slight inhalation. “What kind of man,” he asked slowly, “were you looking for that you gave up your goal when I kissed you?”

She looked up at the ceiling in thought and breathed out a little. He was never going to understand the reference, but she had no other way to describe it because on paper, it was a normal, ordinary wishlist:

Brilliant, capable of long, deep, erudite conversations. Engaged with a profession or hobby he had a passion for and expertise at. Charismatic, knowing how to dress and carry himself like he owned the world no matter how tight his budget was. Dirty and dominant, taking her and making her like it. Chivalrous, fucking her in the bedroom but treating her like a queen outside of it. She wasn’t looking for wealth, power, or good looks; he simply needed to be a smart, educated, passionate, fun companion who loved her.

Lots of men were like that. Her list was normal. It was that indefinable something, and the only thing that was remotely relatable was a character from a book he may or may not have read. Likely not.

She sighed in resignation and muttered, “Hank Rearden.”

“Really,” he purred.

She blinked and looked at him. “You know what I mean, then?”

“Yes, I do. The question is, do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“No you don’t,” he retorted even more hoarsely. “You just told me everything I need to know about who you are and what you want.”

And I’m the man who’s going to give it to you.

It hung in the air as heavily as if it’d been said and again Giselle felt shot up with adrenaline and lust. Her heart thundered with anticipation, with want. She remained silent for a moment because she didn’t want him to know how deeply that touched her, how much she needed to hear that from a man she wanted, too.

When? her eyes asked.

Tonight, his answered.

It was inevitable. They’d been walking this path together for the last year and a half. She just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon—but then he’d fed her.

“What about your temple covenants?” she murmured. “You can’t just throw them aside like it was a coat you were trying on.”

“A coat I wore until it was burned into my skin,” he snarled suddenly, startling her. “Literally. I spent my entire life doing what I was supposed to do, what I was told would make me blessed and happy. Not only was my marriage hell, I wasn’t even blessed enough to keep my children. I hated my life, hated myself for trying to be exactly what I wasn’t, then got caught in a blazing inferno. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain, where everything means you.”

That hit her so hard it almost hurt.

Bryce said nothing for a long, long while and when finally she raised her gaze, she found him staring at her speculatively. He sat relaxed, his elbow on the arm of his chair, his cheek resting on his fingertips.

Desire surged in her belly, the same desire she’d had when she had lain on the ottoman under him and at his mercy. She bit her lip and continued to stare at him. She was going where she’d never gone, trying to flirt without getting in over her head. But she was already in over her head. She’d fallen in the minute she looked in his eyes.

“I am not a Rearden,” he said flatly. “I’m a Galt. ‘The man who is proudly certain of his own value will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer—because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.’”

She gulped.

“That’s how I see you, Giselle,” he murmured, seducing her with his opinion of her cleverness, with his words, using the soft pronunciation of her name to help him do it, watching her with those brilliant green eyes.

She forgot what she wanted to say because she was remembering the feel of his mouth on her neck, her shoulder, down her arms, around her nipple. She was imagining how he’d feel inside her, stroking her.

Bryce spoke again, his voice growing so hoarse he couldn’t vocalize some syllables. “‘Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself.’”

Giselle said the only thing she could think of. It came out in a whisper. “I never cared for Galt.”

“Why not?”

“He was perfect.”

“Exactly. He was superior to Rearden in every way, and I don’t take second place to anybody.” Bryce didn’t smile, didn’t drop his gaze, didn’t do anything else while he watched her struggle with how powerless she felt. How much she liked feeling powerless.

“I—”

I what?

His eyebrow rose, but she shrugged helplessly.

Suddenly, he threw his napkin down on the table and stood, growling, “Let’s go.” Once he’d dropped a pile of cash on the table, he held his hand out to her.

Giselle looked at his hand.

She didn’t know how to flirt or seduce a man. It was her nature to want a man to pursue her until he wore her down, and Bryce had done it. It was her nature to want to be seduced, without having to be suggestive or risking rejection, and Bryce was seducing her. It was her nature to want to be dominated sexually, and Bryce had just told her he would.

All she had to do was let him.

She placed her hand in his and let him draw her to her feet.

She let him twine his fingers with hers and lead her out of the air-conditioned restaurant together into oppressive heat and humidity. Here, there was no cooling off once the sun went down, such as she’d come to appreciate when living in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The air here didn’t wash clean and crisp at night as it did in Provo Canyon and Utah Valley; instead, it was moist, heavy, ripe, fecund.

Like Giselle.

He let go of her hand and said nothing as he kept pace with her, away from her car, toward home. He was still seducing her, but now by giving her the opportunity to think and say no.

She halted him once so she could balance herself on his arm to slip off her heels and loop them in her fingers. It was a convenient excuse to touch him, to feel his strength under her hand, to have an intimacy with a man who didn’t seem to mind her baggage.

Giselle shouldn’t have hesitated to say “no thanks.” It’d been drilled into her from puberty that one didn’t put oneself in situations where temptation could take hold. He knew that as well as she did. Yet … it was her time.

No. It was this man. This man made it her time.

Everything she’d ever wanted had come true for her: The shared faith, culture, language of Mormonism. The shared philosophies of Rand, of excellence, money, sex. The shared political ideals and common goals and higher education. Her desire for a man who wanted her enough to pursue her.

He met all of the qualifications on her list including the nebulous one, the indescribable.

Yes, he was a stranger and her black belt was screaming at her for being stupid, but Knox had vouched for him. Even if she couldn’t trust her IQ, she knew she could trust Knox.

It took a long two blocks of silence before Bryce’s patience ran out. He stopped abruptly, gripped her arm, and yanked her around tight to his big body, his mouth in her ear, hot, raspy, pounding:

“I want to fuck you, Giselle. Hard and fast. Once, twice, a thousand times. I wanted to fuck you at Leah’s funeral. I wanted to fuck you the night we met. I wanted to fuck you at the museum. For two years I haven’t thought of anything but fucking you. Do you understand me?”

---

26: HAMMER OF THE GODS

HE RELEASED HER as suddenly as he had captured her, arms wide, coolly stepping back, watching her expressionlessly. She drew a shaky breath as she stared at him. She had accepted that he’d demand a decision tonight, but not like that.

Her shoulders stiffened and her chin rose in the air.

“We’ve spent a whole, what? maybe half a day total with each other, if that?” she finally said.

“Yes.”

“This would be very stupid.”

“Yes.”

“If we do this, it’s done and there’s no going back. That’s a slap on the wrist for me, but excommunication for you.”⁶

“I know the drill, Giselle.”

For a few minutes more she stared at him, her eyes narrowed, before she made up her mind.

“We’ve been mad at each other for a year and a half.”

“Because we weren’t together,” he countered. “Which, I admit, was my fault.”

“You know what this means to me,” she said flatly, “so you don’t get the luxury of fucking me and leaving me in the morning. You stay with me until we’re mutually sick of each other or we decide we can’t live without each other.”

“I already told you I was going to keep you.”

“Sunrise makes everything look different,” she sneered.

“Two years’ worth of sunrises without you has been pretty fucking bleak,” he snapped back.

After one moment more of staring at him, attempting to suss out any deceit or ulterior motives, she turned and continued toward home, he beside her. A block later, she snatched his hand to pull him into a run toward her house.

By the time they had reached the front door, they were out of breath and he crushed her between his body and the front door for a scorching kiss, his fingers wrapped in hers against the door over their heads.

She needed this man, brash and bold, powerful and brilliant, exotic and hot-blooded. She needed him to want her that badly, too.

Giselle broke his kiss, turned and punched her code into the keypad by the door, then opened it when it clicked. Thundering percussion and operatic voices hit them when they entered the house, the walls and floor vibrating from the bass.

“What is that?”

“Carmina Burana. Sebastian plays it when he’s upset or with a woman.”

Leading the way to her bedroom, she closed the door behind him. Then, suddenly unsure, she dropped her shoes and just stood there, wondering what was next.

Not for long. Bryce knew exactly what to do.

There was no mindless fumbling for buttons and such. He slipped her jacket off, ripped the dress zipper down her ribs, slid the straps off her shoulders, and let the dress fall to the floor.

His gaze swept down her almost-nude body to see the holster and weapon he surely must have felt when he’d grabbed her. She bent to take it off, but he growled, “Leave it on.”

Giselle couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.

Bryce deftly unhooked her bra and let it fall to the floor while lifting her so that he could suck on her nipple. Giselle’s back arched and her head dropped back.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he demanded. He pressed his cock up into the V of her legs, stopped only by two or three layers of fabric. “You want that?”

“Yes,” she whispered, barely able to think, much less talk.

He lowered her just until her mouth was level with his, her arms wrapped around his neck. One big hand cupping her ass, he pressed her tight to him so she couldn’t forget how hard he was. The other big hand cupping the back of her head, he pulled her to him for a kiss.

It was nothing like any kiss she’d ever had, even from him: hungry, hot, wet, nasty. He demanded her submission. He devoured her and she ached in ways she didn’t know she could ache.

Bryce carried her the two steps to her bed and abruptly dropped her. She caught herself on her elbows, her legs spread wide, her holstered gun an odd weight. She looked up, up, up at him, this enormous man who wanted to fuck her and had told her so outright.

Giselle gasped when he bared his chest for her and couldn’t help but bite her lip, then watch as his hands undid his trousers. She whimpered her longing when he revealed his long, hard cock and he let his pants slide down his legs.

“Back up,” he muttered, and she did, then he knelt on the bed, crawling on all fours toward her like a panther. Her chest heaved from how much her intimidation aroused her. He rose tall and proud on his knees between her legs and she was so dizzy with desire and pleasure that she thought she’d pass out.

“Lift your hips.”

She did and he pulled her panties—her last guard—down her legs and tossed them over his shoulder.

“Open your legs.”

She did. He drew his finger down her belly to her vulva.

“Mmmm,” he purred as he ran his finger over all the little creases before he slipped two fingers up inside her. Giselle had never felt anything like that before. She arched her back and moaned, her eyes closed.

“And you’re dripping. Open your eyes. Look at me.”

Giselle opened her eyes and looked up at him, watched him take his fingers out of her and lick them. Her breath caught yet again and he gave her a wicked smile.

“You wanted Hank Rearden.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“He’s a girl’s fantasy. Galt is a woman’s. Choose. Now.”

“Kenard.”

Bryce started in surprise and stared at her for a moment as if dumbstruck. Then he smiled, slow, soft, perhaps even happy, just before that pretty smile turned predatory. He gripped her ankles then released them to run his hands up her legs, caressing gently. Finally, he hooked his hands behind her knees, flexed them, then yanked her across the bed toward him, spreading her legs wider, wider. He nestled the tip of his cock just inside her, teasing her.

“This,” he whispered, his voice nearly gone. He balanced himself over her, his hands on either side of her head. “Is fucking.” And he drove his hard cock right into her, smothering her surprised shriek of pain with his mouth.

And oh, it hurt. He was so big, so powerful. So hard, so solid. He stretched her beyond what she thought possible.

She liked it.

But she broke the kiss to put her face in the crook of his neck. “Wait,” she panted, wrapping one arm around him, gripping his butt with the other to keep him still until the pain ebbed, her body adapted, and her muscles began to work. She clenched around him when he began to nibble on her throat until she couldn’t do anything but release a hard, shuddering sigh and lift her hips, inviting him to take her.

“Fuck me,” she whispered finally when she needed to feel him move inside her. She hooked her legs around his thighs, wondering if there would be anything in her life more wonderful than being filled by this man.

“Say, ‘Please fuck me, Bryce,’” he commanded against her breasts, his breath brushing across her wet skin.

“Oh, please fuck me, Bryce.”

And he did. Over and over again. Hard and fast, as he’d promised. She lost count of how many times she died, how many times she arched her back, meeting him thrust for thrust, her arms stretched overhead clutching the edge of her bed, crying out with the intensity of the sensations gathering in her and bursting.

Bryce pulled her upright, his hand wrapped around the back of her neck, and kissed her cruelly. She wrapped her arms around his neck and sighed when she felt his hands on her hips, rough, sliding down, down between her legs, spreading her apart farther and farther. Again he gripped her hips, pulled her up a bit, then brought her down on him, impaling her. She cried out yet again and collapsed against his chest, holding on because she didn’t have the stamina or strength for much more.

They were so close she didn’t know where she ended and he began. All she knew was how incredible she felt pressed against and connected to Bryce Kenard: two souls, one body.

“Ride me,” he said in her ear.

So she did, finding strength she didn’t know she had. He wrapped his hands around her hips, helped her for several strokes until she thought her legs would give out. Then he brought her down hard, kept her there as he began to come, holding her still, thrusting up into her once, twice, three times.

Bryce came with a hoarse, tortured roar of her name, arching his body away from her, his face and his arms tense, his grip on her hips pleasurably painful. She felt him so deep within her she wanted to weep with joy, even while she watched him take his pleasure from her.

Her thighs trembling, with no more strength left, she wrapped herself around him, out of breath sore, tired, his body still buried inside hers.

Then he ripped the Velcro of her holster, slipped it out from between them, and set it carefully on the floor. He rolled her down into the duvet and covered them both up to sleep.

---

27: LETTER OF THE LAW

GISELLE AWOKE from her doze some time later, naked, snuggled up against a big, strong, warm male, the way she always fantasized. She turned her head and pressed her lips against his scarred left ear, caressed his smooth right cheek, and ran her fingers through his thick, silky black hair.

His hand languidly stroked her arm, and he pulled her tighter to his body.

The house was silent.

“Sebastian told me you were a consummate gentleman,” Giselle whispered.

“I’ve never been a gentleman,” he murmured, kissing her head. “But I was a good actor. This is what I’ve always wanted. It’s what I want with you.”

“I thought it was wonderful. Thank you.”

“What you wanted? Expected?”

“Oh,” she sighed, “much, much better.”

He said nothing for a moment, his chest rising and falling slow and easy under her body. He startled her when he finally spoke. “Thank you, Giselle. I knew it’d be good with you, but if I’d known it was going to be that good, I’d’ve been more insistent.”

Giselle chuckled. “I let you in my bed because you had the balls to try.”

He looked up at her sharply then, his eyebrow raised. “You were looking for someone who could take you. Congratulations. You found him.”

Flustered, Giselle growled and rolled to flounce out of bed, but as fast as she was, he was faster. Mid-roll, he grabbed her around the waist, pulled her backward, and roughly planted her on all fours. She gasped when he plunged himself inside her, digging his fingers into her hips and yanking her back onto him. Half appalled, completely aroused, she closed her eyes and moaned, arching her back in utter ecstasy.

“Not a gentleman,” he murmured in her ear. She sighed when she felt his lips pressing softly against her shoulder once, twice, three times, making her cant her head to give him better access. His calloused fingers caressed her damp hair away from the skin of her neck—

—and his teeth sank into her nape. Giselle’s eyes popped open. She drew in a long, tortured breath and released it the same way. “Bryce!” She felt him smile against her skin before he released her and rose up straight behind her. He withdrew a bit before he thrust again. And again. Hard.

She liked this. It was nasty, savage. A battle. Suddenly, he stopped. “A tattoo,” he murmured reverently as he traced the ink surrounding the puckered bullet hole in her hip. She sighed. She groaned and dropped her head when he buried himself in her yet again, caressing the elaborate paisley with his fingers while taking lazy strokes in and out of her. “That’s not just decorative. What does it mean?”

Eyes closed, she could feel him stretching her even more than before. She could feel her juices flow free with the sensation of the tender flesh of the inside of her thighs sliding along the outside of his muscled legs. She wanted—no, she needed—him to move, to take her again.

“What does it mean, Giselle?” he demanded, pulling away from her, then plunging into her again, twice, three times.

One bite.

She was his.

“Strength,” she whispered. “Fertility.”

He fucked her again. She felt every brutal stroke, coming before Bryce drove himself in her for the last time, snarling like a wolf.

Out of breath, her limbs trembling from holding up so much weight in such an unfamiliar position, she dropped to her stomach and he shamelessly fell on top of her. It was a welcome weight, one she’d longed for her entire adult life, one she’d given up on getting. She felt him entwine his fingers with hers and kiss her shoulder, nip her earlobe, lick that spot on her neck where he’d bitten her.

“You’re nasty,” she whispered.

“Yes, I am,” he agreed with alacrity. “And you knew that the first time I kissed you.”

“And ruthless.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“And vicious.”

“Check.”

“And I’m in love with you.”

“Were you in love with me before or after I told you I wanted to fuck you?” he whispered in her ear as he nuzzled her.

“I fell in love with you the first time I kissed you. Did you think I’d give you my virginity just to check and make sure?”

“Are you sorry?”

She opened her eyes and turned her head to look across the dark of her room, thinking. “Um, I don’t know yet. I might be later. Are you?”

“No,” he muttered swiftly, decisively between kisses, licks, nips. “This is who I am, what I’ve wanted my whole life and fought against. Even if I had acknowledged this part of me, it would’ve horrified me. When I was twenty-four, I would’ve taken one look at you and been forced to accept who I was, what I wanted, and I was already fighting it with everything I had. You would’ve chewed me up and spit me out, which would’ve validated who I was trying to be.”

“That’s … um, interesting.”

“Everything you do, everything you say, everything you think makes you conspicuous in a roomful of Mormon women, but at the same time, you’re just a nice Mormon girl and I like that.”

“Let me tell you something,” Giselle sighed, her eyes closing because what he was doing to her was so … comforting. His weight on hers, pressing her into the mattress, their legs entwined, his cock lying languid in the valley between her buttocks while having a deep discussion. “It’s not easy being me, walking this fine line between the letter of the law and the spirit of cultural expectations.”

“I empathize.”

“No, you don’t. You can’t. You’re a man and it’s different for women. A woman doesn’t have the luxury of being able to be a hard ass when she needs to be, so if she’s inclined that way, she stifles it or channels it in a different direction. You can be a hard ass when you need to be and then you’re praised for being that and a kind and loving father and husband.”

“We don’t get praised for anything,” he retorted bitterly. “Mother’s Day is sacrosanct. Father’s Day is a joke.”

Taken aback by his flash of anger, Giselle didn’t say anything.

“We spend the equivalent of a part-time job doing our church duties and still get told we’re slackers. Not doing enough. Not providing for our families well enough. Not spending enough time at home. I’m working a hundred hours a week to be a good provider. I have huge problems at home only I can solve, but I’m out serving others, sacrificing my kids to try to be all things to everyone else.”

“The wife’s supposed to be supporting you in those things,” Giselle said gently. “If she’s reared in the church she knows what she’s signing up for. It’s what I wanted.”

“Must be nice to live in a world where supposed-to-be’s are reality,” he said snidely. “It was the constant chastisement that stuck in my craw. More more more. Give us more, more time, more money, more. And by the way, quit being such insensitive bastards to your wives.”

Giselle’s eyes went wide because this she had not expected, and she’d never heard any of her uncles or male cousins talk this way. But now that he’d said it, she could see it, and he was right.

“What, exactly, am I doing all this for? Yeah, I know all the Gospel Doctrine answers, but it’s all bullshit. What I did it for is irrelevant when the end result was … this. All four of my children dead, and me turned into a beast.” He paused, then laughed harshly. “And you’re Beauty.”

She took a deep breath. “But Bryce, what you’re talking about isn’t … It’s not— It’s all window dressing. Service is required, yes. But the rest—”

“You’re not a man,” he shot back. “You don’t know what it’s like being me, indistinguishable from hundreds of other Mormon men doing the exact same thing, likely each of us bearing it silently. Some more than others. Some better than others. You can go to church and be exactly who you are and the worst that’ll happen is people sigh and roll their eyes at you a lot. Maybe some of them won’t like you.”

“Touché,” she murmured. “But my family doesn’t—”

“Your family thinks it can run its own plays without consequence. That didn’t work out so well for Knox, did it?”

“I guess that depends on whose playbook you’re working from and how you define ‘consequences.’”

“Yes, I know,” he said sarcastically. “I heard it for years. You’re working from the Lord’s playbook, as opposed to everyone else, who’s working from the church’s. Except you all write that playbook yourselves to fit whatever you just did.”

She couldn’t deny that must be how it looked from the outside. “No. We repent for what we know we did wrong. Otherwise, we’re prepared to stand there on Judgment Day and take what’s coming to us if we were wrong.”

His body tensed a little. “You aren’t going to be so smug and self-righteous when you get there.”

She ignored that. “Is that part of … ” She gestured around her room. “ … this?”

“Partly,” he answered gruffly, “because the subtext of ‘Quit being insensitive bastards to your wives’ is about sex. If you get any, it’s supposed to be soft and gentle, some sort of bonding and procreation ritual that has nothing to do with pleasure. No lust, no taking, no fucking.”

“That’s what you want: greed, lust, taking, fucking. Not just me. Life.”

“Yes,” he growled, stroking her from hip to shoulder, making her shiver. “And it starts with me taking you.”

“I need to turn over. I want to look at your face.”

He lifted himself away from her. She reached over to click on the bedside light that was little more than a glorified candle, then turned and lay on her back, welcoming him to her with a smile and outstretched arms. She wrapped her legs around his thighs and felt the smoothness of his chest on one side where the hair had burnt off and the other where she could feel the ridges and bumps of his scars.

“In the taking,” she murmured, “the giving should be inherent. Yin and yang.”

He closed his eyes and heaved a shuddering sigh, dropping his forehead to her chest.

She played with his silky hair. “Your pleasure is my pleasure. I wanted you. I took you. Pulled you into my car, kissed you.” He snorted. “You took what you wanted from me at the gallery, and now here we are, a year and a half later, giving by taking.”

“I never thought of it that way,” he muttered.

“You wouldn’t deviate from your playbook because you didn’t want to be accused of being selfish. Just like Rearden. Galt had no such issues.”

“Ouch,” he murmured as he lifted his head and kissed her.

She grinned wickedly against his lips. “Seems to me somebody got his themes and characters mixed up. Good thing I picked you, huh?”

He chuckled. “That surprised me.” They kissed for long moments, their tongues playing, not expecting it to lead anywhere. “And it meant a lot to me. Thank you,” he whispered.

“There was no other choice,” she murmured between kisses. She could kiss this man forever and not get enough. “Being open about who you are and not getting what you really want is hard. Settling for something not quite what you wanted in the first place has to be exponentially more difficult.”

“Tell that to a zealous twenty-one-year-old freshly returned missionary who’s one big raging hormone and being exhorted at every turn to do his duty, get married, and procreate. One who knows exactly what he wants but thinks he’s sinful for wanting it.”

She paused, surprised, and pushed him away from her far enough to look in his eyes. “You knew? When you were that young?”

He twisted and fell onto the bed beside her. He took her hand and pressed it to his mouth, then gathered her to his side. “I knew what I wanted when I was eighteen years old. I just didn’t want to think about it. Acknowledge it. Try to find it. I thought—”

She watched him and waited, but when he didn’t finish, she said carefully, “You thought you were sinful for thinking about it?”

“No, I thought I was sinful because I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” he muttered. “Every day. For years. Graphically. With my dick in my hand.”

Good heavens. He had more baggage than she did.

“And then … I got tired of fighting it. I got tired of doing the right things for the wrong reasons with the wrong woman and getting my ass kicked by life. Tonight, I’ve done the wrong thing for the right reason with the right woman. And I don’t intend to get my ass kicked again.”

Giselle smiled. “‘If I’m asked,’” she whispered, stroking his cheek, “‘to name my proudest attainment, I will say: I have slept with Hank Rearden. I had earned it.’”

He blinked, bemused. “What in hell does Rearden have that Galt doesn’t?”

“Men always ask that question,” she said wryly. “Rearden was flawed. He had depth. He learned and grew. He was warm and alive. He fought on the front lines and didn’t give up even though everyone else—including Dagny—left him. Galt was a child deity, omnipotent, unknowable, and wielding his power from on high because he had it. He was cold and flat. An embodied ideology. I want to sleep with a man, not an idea, and I love Rearden for being the man Galt is not.”

---

28: O FORTUNA

SEBASTIAN HAD GONE home after spending the rest of the day with the delectable but politely pissed-off Miss Logan, and went straight to his woodshop to brood. He was in the middle of carving a delicate scroll when the front door chime sounded. He scowled in irritation until he looked up at the monitor and saw Giselle pulling a man into the house, their lips locked.

He grinned and went back to work. There was only one man she’d bring into this house and for only one reason, so his irritation died as fast as it had flared.

He continued to carve late into the night, trying to sift out why HRP’s situation didn’t make any sense. First Eilis politely asserted she could have put herself together again. Then she politely requested a vacation. Then she politely requested he read her company’s history, making it clear she found it negligent for him to have not already done so. He’d skimmed it enough to know that on September 11, 2001, she had been in New York to merge with another human resources outsourcing company.

He grunted as he tapped at a knot in the wood. No, not merge. Buy. Eilis had been about to buy a bigger company than hers, but she’d been late to the closing meeting, the company was destroyed by the hijacked planes, and soon thereafter, HRP had gone into the tank.

Sebastian knew he was missing something. Five years ago, HRP was healthy, a well-oiled machine. Now … it wasn’t. Certainly, other businesses lost money and survived with better management, but HRP had the same management now as it had when it had been about to plunk down a hefty chunk of change—that then disappeared. It had been five years, though. She had the clients and revenues, so she should have caught back up by now, and that was what he didn’t understand.

When the garage door opener jerked awake, he jumped and bashed his hand with his mallet. Sunrise burned Sebastian’s eyes, and he raised an arm to his forehead.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he barked when he could see again, angry at the interruption.

“It’s eight o’clock in the morning,” Knox shot back, slamming his car door and walking into the garage. “And you look like shit. I came to talk to you about Eilis Logan. And where’s Giselle? Her car’s not here.”

That made Sebastian grin. “Giselle is just fine, I do believe. What do you want to know about Logan?”

“How much of a mess her company really is.”

Sebastian pursed his lips while he put away his chisels and mallets, swept and vacuumed the wood chips, and wondered how he’d carved the night away without noticing. When he was finished cleaning up, he followed Knox downstairs.

“Are you sure Giselle’s okay?” Knox asked again.

“I am her landlord, not her mother.”

“What do you mean, you’re not her mother? You act like her mother and mine, too, come to think of it.”

“If you’re so worried,” Sebastian said, just to be obnoxious, “go look in her room and see if she’s there.”

He did.

“Gi— Holy shit.”

Sebastian grinned. The bed was trashed, the room reeked of sex, and the guilty parties were naked. Giselle was asleep, curled up against her first and hopefully last lover, her back against his ribs, his arm her pillow.

“Get out,” Kenard snarled.

Sebastian dragged Knox out, slammed the door, and crowed, “Well, that was refreshing and unexpected!”

“For you, maybe,” Knox said dryly as he led the way up to the dining platform to the kitchen, “but not for me. That was inevitable. You should’ve seen his face when I told him she’d threatened Fen at gunpoint.”

“I’m guessing, since he’s in there with her, that he finds her fuckable because of her proclivities, not in spite of. Any man who can bed Giselle is not a man to underestimate.”

Knox was now rooting around in the refrigerator. “He’s so beyond bitter and angry, he could chew concrete. For him, she’s a walk in the park.”

“That walk’s going to get a helluva lot easier after tonight’s Ford exhibit.”

Knox straightened up so fast he hit his head on the freezer door and gaped at Sebastian, while rubbing his head. Then he began to laugh. “Oh, you are a bastard.”

Sebastian grinned. “Yes, I am. Couldn’t crack that façade Eilis has and your reaction to our initiate was highly unsatisfactory. Now explain why you’re here eating my food.”

“Redistribution of wealth.” Knox took his foraged breakfast and sat down at the table. “I told you. I want to know how much of a mess HRP really is.”

Sebastian was immediately annoyed. “You’re a shithead, you know that? You could’ve just told me she had all that art to begin with, and I would’ve taken the receivership without you having to hammer away at me. Why do you have to do everything the hard way?”

“You don’t seem to mind that when you dig yourself into a hole and you need me to pull you back out.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll be sure to tell Congress you’re the biggest weapon in my Fix-or-Raid arsenal. Happy now?”

“Recognition for my genius at last.”

“Madness, not genius.”

“And always with a method. Well?”

“Relatively speaking, it’s not that bad. What I’m shocked about is that she didn’t clean house years ago. She’s so top-heavy that building should be leaning like Pisa. And why has she never taken her company public? She’s got two great products that she hasn’t put on the general market … why? Her marketing sucks. She hasn’t sold any of the art, and I can’t believe she doesn’t know how much it’s worth. She builds this thing, has it so right and tight before Nine-Eleven she’s about to drop eight figures to buy out a competitor, and then she forgets how to run it? She says she could’ve put herself to rights, that you didn’t talk to her about it before she got the chance, so she’s barely civil—”

“Actually, she’s very personable.”

Sebastian grunted. “Not to me.”

“Shocking.”

“Why didn’t you give her the chance to do it herself and then call me if she fell on her face?”

Knox slid him a glance. “You’re really asking me that.”

“Answer the question.”

Knox snorted and continued to eat without doing so, which meant he wasn’t going to. So Sebastian sighed and hoisted himself up on the kitchen counter to brood. He did that a lot and his family had long ago accepted that they just had to wait until he was finished and then said whatever it was he needed to say. Knox continued to eat.

“She owns Morning in Bed,” Sebastian finally said.

Knox choked.

“It’s not on the books. She ’fessed up—why, I don’t know because I would’ve never found out. I can only conclude she really does value her company more than she values her standing in the art community.”

“Nobody knows who—” Knox coughed. “—owns that painting—” hack hack “—so she has no standing.” He coughed again, then took a long swig of orange juice.

“I’m thinking about letting her keep it.”

It was a while before Knox could speak again without croaking or choking. “That’s very out of character for you.”

“She didn’t have to tell me at all.”

Knox started laughing. Coughing. Laughing. “I get it now. You want to fuck her.”

“Shut up,” Sebastian snarled.

He held up his hands, still grinning. “Hey, I make no judgments. I like her and I respect her. She’s got brains and balls and she can stick your head up your ass if you get out of line, but the Jackie O. schtick leaves me cold.”

Sebastian waved a hand. “Camouflage.”

“Say, where’d King Midas go while you were trying to figure out how to run your freight train over her track?”

“No idea. I was too surprised it was happening at all.” There was silence while Sebastian sorted through all the things on his mind. “Knox, look. I really need to know if you were serious about not wanting OKH because I’m between a rock and a hard place and it’s crunch time.”

“I do not want OKH. I’m not going to change my mind, and no, I do not give a fuck that you’re pissed at me for bailing. Your wife didn’t get killed over it, and I’m not going to put the next one on the block.”

Sebastian grunted, because he couldn’t deny the logic. “Wait, what?” He hopped down from the counter and sat down at the table. “The next one? There is one?”

Knox grimaced. “Ah, sort of. I am interested in someone, yes. But a relationship’s not going to be possible until I turn forty.”

“Oookay. That’s two and a half years away. Are you going to be able to wait that long?”

“I think so. She’s brilliant. Intriguing. Funny as hell. Naïve, but time and experience fixes that. I want to get to know her better. If I get bored in there somewhere, oh well, no harm, no foul.”

“But will she?”

Knox hesitated. “I’m trying to keep her interested in a way that will keep her from volunteering for the job of OKH Bride and Baby Mama in the heat of passion.”

Sebastian didn’t bother to ask. Knox could think up schemes that would make Escher dizzy, but in Knox’s case, it was irrelevant. “Why wait? Since she won’t be able to have any kids—” He stopped. “Baby Mama? She’s got a kid or she still has eggs?”

Knox stuck his tongue in his cheek. “She’s twenty-four,” he muttered. “No kids.”

That was a surprise, but a very pleasant one. “All you have to do is keep it quiet. Secret baby, separate homes, wedding the day before your birthday.” He started to laugh. “The look on Fen’s face the day after— Red hair?”

Knox nodded.

“Pretty?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

“But she’s almost half your age.” Knox winced. “You could wave her under Fen’s nose and he wouldn’t take it seriously.”

“Relationships take time to build, and it’d be tight, trying to keep her from throwing herself on the altar before we find out if it really could work and hiding her from Fen at the same time. The second you take over OKH, I’ll lay my cards on the table.” He paused, then grumbled, “Wait two and a half years for dinner and a movie. It’s not even her. I can’t have a relationship with anybody. Fuck my life.”

Sebastian sighed and mused with no humor whatsoever, “How is it that Giselle is suddenly the only one of us getting laid?”

Knox barked a laugh. “That’s depressing. Have you started building your short list for CEO yet?”

He nodded. “I’ve got a few interesting candidates I want to keep my eye on.” He paused. “Eilis Logan is one of them.”

Knox squinted at him. “She has her own business that you just informed me she can’t fix herself. Why would she want OKH and why would you want her there?”

“I can’t but be impressed by the fact that she was about to buy out a competitor. I don’t know if she got a personality transplant or what, but that CEO—the one in 2001—has to still be in there somewhere. If she could build those kinds of cash reserves to buy and run a company twice as big as hers then, she could run OKH.”

“Sounded to me like you didn’t think much of her management to begin with.”

Sebastian grunted. “I don’t know what to think, honestly, and I don’t know what I don’t know. Not only are you keeping something from me, she’s gearing up to fight me all the way, which isn’t what a smart CEO in her position should be doing. Her opening salvo was a request for a vacation. What am I supposed to say to that?”

“Bon voyage.”

Sebastian gaped at his cousin. “What?”

“Contrary to popular belief,” Knox said haughtily, “I am not the most heartless bastard in the universe.” He put his fork down and leaned toward Sebastian. “I know,” he said earnestly, pressing the tip of his finger into the tabletop, “even if you don’t, that she is perfectly capable of cleaning her own house, selling off her assets, doing whatever she needs to do to right her ship. Yes, she did build it. Yes, it was a model operation on September tenth. Yes, she was about to turn her little company into an empire. No, she didn’t forget how to run it.

“She was traumatized by watching all the people she was supposed to meet get turned to ash, knowing she would have been one of them had she not been running late. She was so traumatized she had comfort sex with her CFO and then got comfort-married. Then found out he’d been embezzling from her for two years and that he’d set her up to take the fall after he left the country. And then she immediately had to deal with this fucker. She didn’t have the time or bandwidth to deal with him after what she went through in New York, but she did it anyway. She didn’t have the time or brain space to fix HRP while the investigations and trial were going on, but she kept it afloat. I didn’t want her to have to keep going when she has even less mental and emotional energy than she did to begin with.

“I put her in receivership to give her a break. She’s alone in the world. She’s completely worn out, but still has miles to go. She’s been through hell and back on behalf of her employees, and risked prison to do right by them. She never once panicked, never broke down, never faltered, never doubted her plan. She rarely makes a mistake and she never cracks. I didn’t hammer you to take the receivership for the art. I did it because she needs someone she can lean on so she can rest. I thought you’d see that right away, but apparently you were seeing her naked.”

“Fuck you. What I saw was a woman ready to go into battle, not one about to collapse.”

Knox’s eyebrow rose. “Dude, she just came off the battlefield after a six-year-long war that she won. If she asked you for a vacation, it means she’s about to crash and burn, so find a way to take over her job so she can have a few months off.”

Sebastian blinked, unnerved by Knox’s little speech. Knox knew human nature, but he was never insightful about individuals or relationship dynamics unless he cared.

“You know,” Knox began blithely as he sat back, “it really bothers me that I have to tell you this. I mean, if you really don’t want to do this because you’d rather get her in bed, I can respect that. Say the word, I’ll appoint Morgan. He’s not doing anything.”

No. Nuh uh. Sebastian had no intention of letting his chance at Miss Logan go. He didn’t want to just have sex with her, and there was no way she’d go out with him now. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’ll keep it in mind and see what I can do. Is she your best friend all of a sudden?”

Knox scoffed. “She doesn’t have friends. She doesn’t want any. She just wants to be left alone.”

“And to keep Morning in Bed,” Sebastian muttered, irritated with himself for not seeing what he should’ve seen, and yes, what he would have seen about anyone else.

“I do find it interesting that not only did King Midas fall for a woman during business hours, he fell for the owner of that painting.” Knox smirked. “I wonder where she hangs it. Her bedroom?”

Sebastian curled his lip. “Shut up.”

“If I were you, I’d ship that fucker off to Sotheby’s as fast as possible, but it’s your call. Letting her keep it isn’t going to get you where you want to be.”

“And you’re the relationship expert.” Shit. As soon as he said it, he knew—

“Why, yes. I have been dating steadily since I was sixteen, and the fact that I didn’t much at BYU and I’m not right now has nothing to do with my relationship skills. It is true that I have had many long-term relationships that fizzled out, but that’s what happens till you find the right one. Furthermore, I am a widower. You can’t even talk to a woman without stammering and blushing if you’re not half naked. Of everybody in this house—” he said, whirling his finger in the air to account for Kenard and Giselle, “I am the only one who can get and keep a significant other and have a decent relationship with her.”

Sebastian growled, but when a squeal and giggle came from Giselle’s bedroom, Knox got to his feet and started toward the garage stairs. “I’m out of here. The second-hand fuckfest is going to offend my delicate sensibilities.”

“You should’ve heard ’em last night,” Sebastian grumbled. “You’d think they were cats. I could hear them over my chiseling.”

“Work up in the glass studio and let them have the basement bedroom.”

“Fuck you. That’s my bedroom.”

“When was the last time you used it?” Sebastian snarled at his cousin, who stopped at the foot of the staircase, his hand on the rail. “I know you don’t want to do this restructuring, but you will because you need the time and the cover to seduce Eilis as you. I get that. I’m even sympathetic. And I don’t blame you for not wanting to do it your usual way, especially since she sent you an engraved invitation. But if you get her in bed before her receivership is over, I will find a way to put you in jail.”

Sebastian gritted his teeth. “Fine,” he muttered, wishing he could be as confident about his amorous odds as Knox was.

Knox smiled benignly at Sebastian, then clipped up the stairs and slammed the garage door behind him.

Sebastian grunted and headed to his office, wondering if giving Eilis a vacation would soften her up. He didn’t really need her there, she apparently could do it herself, and she’d fight him just because she resented his presence. If she hit up a cruise ship or laid on a beach somewhere getting toasted on girlie cocktails, then came back to a spic’n’span company, she might be more amenable to seeing him as a potential lover.

He knew he could have her in bed tonight if he accepted the “engraved invitation” she’d unwittingly given him, but he wouldn’t. This was too important to him. She was too important to him. He didn’t know why nor did it matter. He got what he wanted and didn’t worry about details like why.

He would consider giving her a vacation because Knox had made a good case for it and, he conceded, letting her go might earn him some brownie points. Furthermore, Sebastian was ashamed of his horrible behavior and wanted to make up for it somehow.

He had to figure out how to get her attention and keep it like a normal man, but the probabilities of that happening—

“Oh, fuck my life.”

---

29: MORNING IN BED

A SOFT KNOCK sounded on Giselle’s bedroom door. “Hey, Giz,” Sebastian called politely, “when you come up for air, I want to talk to you. Bring Kenard.”

Giselle sighed and looked over at her clock. “It’s one o’clock and I’m hungry.”

“You always do what he says?” Bryce muttered from beside her, his face buried in the pillow and his arm in the curve of her waist.

“Absolutely not. Sebastian’s all about wine, women, and song and thinks everybody else should be, too. He wouldn’t interrupt if it weren’t important to him. Plus, it’s Saturday. He’ll have Bryant’s.”

“That’s the only thing I needed to hear.”

“But first,” she sat up and announced, “I need to pee and brush my teeth. That is the first thing I do every single morning, without fail, and in that order.”

“Fair warning: I’ll follow you and fuck you in the shower.”

Her eyes opened wide and she looked down at him, grinning like a child at the possibility that she would get exactly what she wanted on Christmas morning. “That would be sublime, thank you.”

“Now you’re just making fun of me.”

She arose with great care and groaned at every slow step she made toward the bathroom. “You have got to be kidding me,” she breathed as she stopped, bent over, and massaged the muscles on the insides of her thighs. He growled with satisfaction, and she looked over her shoulder to smirk at him. “I would never make fun of a man whose idea of sweet nothings is ‘I want to fuck you, Giselle.’”

“I wouldn’t be with a woman who didn’t find that romantic.”

Thirty minutes later, wrapped up in terrycloth from head to toe, she waddled out to the conference room holding hands with Bryce, who wore only a low-slung towel around his hips. He had taken her on a twelve-hour rollercoaster ride and she could feel every minute of it in muscles that hurt so badly she was groaning with every step.

She was so happy she thought she’d pop.

“I know you’ve met already. Sorta. Bryce, Sebastian. Sebastian, Bryce.”

“Sorry about punching you at Fen’s party.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it. It was worth it.” Sebastian shot a glance at Giselle. “Having a little trouble walking this afternoon?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. How long has it been since you got laid?”

Sebastian curled his lip at her and she chuckled.

As soon as they’d settled themselves in with the barbecue, Sebastian’s irritation with her gave way to a calculating smirk and her eyes narrowed. First Knox, then her. Sebastian was on a roll today.

He slid two white envelopes across the table at her and said, “Giz, I would like you and Kenard here to come to the Ford opening tonight.”

She sucked in a deep breath. No. Not that. Anything but that. Sebastian grinned when she slouched down in her chair and glared at him, folding her arms over her chest.

“Something wrong? Is there some reason you don’t want to bring your lover to an exclusive Ford showing?”

“You’re an asshole, you know that?”

She could sense Bryce’s confusion, but she didn’t care to explain and finally Sebastian got down to business.

“I’m actually glad—” He shook his head and let loose a chuckle, his eyebrows raised. “—although extremely surprised—that you’re here. I was going to contact you next week.”

That startled Bryce, distracted him. Yay.

“I need a trust,” Sebastian explained. “I had heard you were especially good at those. And I’m curious. Why are you so good at this? You’re a litigator.”

Bryce shrugged. “I was prepping for divorce, wrapping up my assets so she couldn’t get to them.”

“Ah. That’s a bitch.”

“Yes, she was,” Bryce muttered emphatically, and Giselle grimaced.

Sebastian cleared his throat, then pulled out a thick file. “Knox asked me to be the trustee for a receivership and I’m starting to lay some groundwork.”

Giselle leaned over Bryce’s arm to read and her eyes widened at the red eight-figure number. HR Prerogatives. Eilis Logan. “How do you pronounce it?”

“EYE-lish,” Bryce murmured with a funny little sound.

“It’s beautiful,” Giselle murmured.

“How’d you know that?” Sebastian asked.

“I went to Scotland and Ireland on my mission.”

“Ah. So first, and why I want the trust, is that she owns a great deal of art that I want for my portfolio.” Giselle took the handwritten list Sebastian offered and scanned it, her eyebrows rising when she got to the list of Ford works.

“Interesting,” Giselle said, handing the list to Bryce.

While Bryce and Sebastian discussed this Ms Logan’s situation, Giselle wandered back into her head to relive the most magical hours of her life. She wasn’t unaffected by her decision to bring Bryce home with her, but she could afford to be a little cavalier about it for the moment because he’d be in a lot more trouble with the church than she would be when they repented later and he knew it. As for her virginity, well … He was exactly the type of man she’d always wanted to take it from her.

“Giz?” Sebastian snapped his fingers in her face. “Did you hear me say this woman owns Morning in Bed?”

Giselle sputtered and she sat up to cough into a napkin, unable to speak for a moment. “Are you serious?!” she croaked. Coughed again.

Sebastian shrugged. “I haven’t seen it and it’s off the books, so I can only assume she was telling me the truth. Who’d spin that out of thin air?”

“Okay, stop.” Bryce leaned over the documents, one elbow on the table, his hand rubbing his forehead. “I’m lost. Start at the beginning. I can see Ford’s an artist, but why is it significant that she owns this particular painting and why isn’t it on her books?”

“Ford is a recluse,” Giselle explained. Coughed. Began again. “No one knows who he is or anything about him. The people who do know aren’t talking. Part of the value of his paintings is exactly that, but the work itself is excellent. The fact that she has eight of his paintings means she’s an aficionado, and selling them would cure a good quarter of her ills. The fact that she has Morning in Bed means she’s a rabid aficionado. That one alone would go a long way to getting her out of the red.”

“Why is it that valuable?” he asked absently, still studying the numbers.

“It’s rumored to be a self-portrait,” Sebastian said. “It supposedly has clues painted into it that would help someone figure out Ford’s identity. It was bought anonymously soon after its release by a private brokerage, it’s never hung anywhere but at its premiere, and nobody knows who owns it—except us, now.”

He got up and pulled a coffee table book out from a stack on the buffet. He looked through it until he found the right page and swung it around to show Bryce. “That’s it,” he said, pointing to it.

Morning sunlight streamed through a window on a bed clothed only in white sheets, and occupied by a nude man, whose body was the essence of masculine beauty. He lay on his stomach on the edge of the bed, his head propped on his right arm and turned toward a pillow beside him. His left arm, possessed of a ham-like fist, stretched out across the bed to crumple nearly half of the pillow in his grasp. One leg was crooked, thrown wide and tangling in the rumpled sheets, the other a straight line from his muscular buttocks to his toes. His scrotum lay nestled between his legs. And while the abused pillow and most of the man’s body were bathed in the new sun, his face lay in shadow—no features, no hair, no anything that would make him recognizable to anyone.

Bryce studied it for a moment before noting, “I don’t know how this can be called a self-portrait.”

“Its only real value,” Giselle said, “is that Ford has never exhibited a man and as far as anybody knows, he’s never painted one other than this. Because of that, everyone assumes that it’s him.”

“That makes this the closest thing to proving who Ford is?”

“Marginally. Eilis is a collector’s collector. She can spot a rising star a mile away, and snaps stuff up early when it’s cheap. Buys low, holds, but never sells. The Fords she owns are in the early middle of his œuvre, before he really took off, when his style was growing and changing. Aside from all the other works she owns, owning Morning in Bed makes her fairly powerful in the contemporary art world.”

“Why would she want to keep it a secret if she’s got bragging rights?”

Sebastian coughed into his hand. “Corporate assets are a matter of public record. She’d be hounded for access to it, and bragging rights doesn’t pay your bills.”

“It also means,” Giselle drawled, flicking a glance at her cousin, “she has an emotional attachment to it and wants to keep it to herself.”

Bryce shook his head. “I identify with that only too well,” he muttered.

“Lilith?” she asked slyly.

He grinned.

“Not for sale, I take it,” Sebastian said with a chuckle.

“Nope.” Bryce slid a wicked glance at Giselle. “But now I don’t care, because I’ve got the real thing.” She flushed and ducked to hide her pleased grin. “Taight, what’s your general impression of this painting?”

He took a deep breath. “I believe the rumors of clues as to his identity are a gag to see how high the price can be driven, but I don’t know where they came from or how they got perpetuated. It has value apart from his other work because it’s a rare subject for him and it’s immature, likely one of his first. What could tank the price is, if the subject is not Ford, it’s no different from any other dime-a-dozen pieces of homoerotic art floating around the internet.” He curled his lip. “Clichéd pose, clichéd setting. Little shit probably thought he was being original when he painted it.”

Giselle laughed and took a bite of her lunch.

“Would you buy it?” Bryce asked.

“No. I’m a speculator, not a collector, and Ford is priced for collecting. If it is Ford, but Ford’s a nobody, I can’t predict what it would do to its value. I also hate it for several reasons, only one of which is its unoriginality.”

Bryce looked at Giselle. “So that’s where we’re going tonight? To see this artist’s work?”

She fidgeted a little. “Yes.” She shot Sebastian a hateful glare, but he waggled his eyebrows.

“There’s a new painting to be unveiled,” Sebastian said smoothly. “Supposedly a change in direction. Something about ‘going into his symbolic period.’”

Giselle snorted.

Bryce set the book aside, looking down at the documents again, flipping through the pages until he stopped at a full inventory of her collection, with each work’s appraised value. It was impressive. “If she’s emotionally attached, but she volunteered it to clear her debt, she’s more invested in her integrity.”

“Right. So I told her I’d think about letting her keep it.”

Surprised and confused, Giselle stared at him hard and long. “That’s not your style,” she said slowly.

“Why the trust?” Bryce asked while Giselle studied her cousin, who would now not look at her. “Why can’t you buy what you want?”

“I don’t want her to know in case she thinks I’m bailing her out myself. I also don’t want her to think I’m taking advantage of her, because what I want is the newer art, capitalize on her eye for talent.”

Giselle gasped. “You’re in love with her! If you only wanted to fuck her, you wouldn’t care if she thought you were bailing her out yourself or buying the cheap stuff, and you definitely wouldn’t let her keep Morning in Bed.”

“I am not in love with her,” Sebastian snapped. “Lust does not equal love.”

She gestured toward the art book. “Then why don’t you just—”

“Oh, hell no!”

Giselle started to grin. “That isn’t just lust.”

“Mind your own business.”

“All right, children,” Bryce interrupted with a chuckle. “When I get in the office on Monday, I’ll start the process.”

“Thank you,” Sebastian said, and leaned back in his chair, locking his fingers behind his head. “So, Kenard. What made you chuck a lifetime of being the perfect example of Latter-day Saint priesthood to fuck a virgin renegade intellectual with a taste for rough sex the first chance you got?”

Giselle rolled her eyes, but Bryce only smirked and looked straight at her. “A virgin renegade intellectual with a taste for rough sex.”

Sebastian laughed. “I knew I’d like you. Welcome to the pack.”

---

30: DIRTY WHITE BOY

THEY WALKED INTO the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art & Design that evening fashionably late, Giselle in a pale yellow silk evening gown, the sleeveless top randomly studded with pearls. Bryce wore a dusky royal blue suit and, simply to make her smile, had paired it with a yellow tie. They mingled a bit before making the rounds of the exhibit. A tarped canvas hung from long cables attached to the ceiling and a collection of musicians played unfamiliar, avant-garde music that seemed to appeal to Giselle.

“Well, we’re attracting a lot of attention tonight,” she murmured.

“I guess it’s now been confirmed I’m fucking Sebastian Taight’s mistress,” he returned wryly and she laughed. The corners of her eyes wrinkled in merriment and her ice blue eyes twinkled.

“Kevin!” Giselle called and waved at the Jackson County prosecutor and his wife. Oblivious to the fact that the people around them were vying for an introduction to her, she pulled Bryce through the crowd as the other couple battled to meet them in the middle.

“Well, hello, Ms Cox,” he murmured once they’d shaken hands. Introductions of Bryce and Jill Oakley were made, as Kevin and Bryce did know each other in passing. “Nice to see you again when you haven’t been cleaning up after me or running through the courthouse. Knox tells me you’re the one to blame for my sudden career change.”

“No good deed goes unpunished and I’m always willing to take out your trash—but don’t act like you hadn’t already thought about it. Your boredom can be heard loud and clear all the way from Twelfth Street to Rockhill Road and back. Have you spoken with Justice McKinley yet?”

“Yes. She’s, uh, interesting.”

“Mmmm, but more importantly, she’s getting lots of attention.”

Bryce remained silent while they chatted for another few minutes, listening to her, what she had to say, how she said it.

The sex was as incredible as he’d ever hoped, wanted, craved for so many years with a smart, dangerous woman he could throw at a bed and fuck. That deep feeling of contentment was welcome after a lifetime of drought, but the feeling of security she gave him, as if he never had to worry about another thing in his life, as if it were okay for him to relax now, was something he had never expected. After two years of obsessing over her, their relationship was now barely twenty-four hours old and already he felt at ease with her. It was silly, but he didn’t care.

I’m in love with you.

He was in love with her, too, and being free to acknowledge it made him feel as if he’d escaped from his cage. Finally.

The prosecutor and his wife broke away a little sooner than Bryce would have liked. He found the whole process fascinating—and that Giselle had gotten the political ball rolling made him unaccountably proud of her. Then he wondered if he had any right to be proud of her.

She’d demanded he not leave her once they’d crossed over into sin, but he had no intention of letting her go. Ever. And he had no reason to think she’d ever want to be let go.

Bryce and Giselle were approached in an ever-increasing stream of people eager to learn the identity of the woman who’d made the society grapevines as Cinderella, Sebastian Taight’s lover—until she’d very conspicuously abandoned him and invited Bryce Kenard deep into the bowels of the gallery with a look. Her sprint’n’slide back through the gallery in a serious state of dishabille, Kenard hot on her heels, had only set the gossip mill running overtime.

Everyone wanted to know her name and provenance, but no one had dared ask Bryce once he’d put his fist in Taight’s face and Taight was unapproachable under any circumstances. Likely no one had known to ask Fen but he played his cards close to his chest. No telling what he might or might not have said if he had been asked.

“Giselle Cox,” Bryce said over and over again to people he knew, and tonight, it seemed he knew everybody. “Taight and Hilliard’s cousin. Trudy’s niece.”

That came out of left field for everyone, and Bryce had no idea how his credibility would stand up under the scrutiny of his association with Knox either as friend or relative, but he refused to dodge it. After all these years, Knox deserved whatever support Bryce could offer him.

Fen and Trudy made their appearance to a cacophony of society clamoring for information. Bryce exchanged amused glances with Giselle when the Hilliards were good-naturedly called to account for hiding their relationship to Cinderella. When Trudy shot a hateful look across the room, Giselle chuckled and blew her a kiss.

“I hate that bitch,” Giselle murmured. “It doesn’t matter what Fen does to me, I’ll give him a mulligan before I’ll give Trudy the right time of day.”

“Why?”

Giselle’s mouth tightened. “Trudy,” she said finally, “is not a nice person, but that’s not a discussion I want to have right now because I’ll be tempted to break her face. Steal her beauty the way she stole my self-esteem.”

Bryce couldn’t soothe that level of pain. He hadn’t been able to do it for his daughters and he hadn’t learned anything since, so he simply rubbed her shoulder.

The Hilliards approached, Fen with a subtle bend in his nose that hadn’t been there two days ago, and any bruising artfully hidden. “Giselle, Kenard,” he said expansively as he shook Bryce’s hand and hugged Giselle. Trudy made it a point to ignore Giselle and thus Bryce. She would have wandered off, but Fen kept her at his side. “Well, Giselle, I must give you credit for being a fast worker. You only came to see me yesterday.” Trudy shot a surprised look at her husband, but Bryce just chuckled. “I told you he wouldn’t hold your little, ah, masquerade-that-wasn’t against you.”

“So you did and no, he didn’t. But for all you know, this could be our first date.”

“You look far too relaxed and satisfied for that to be the case.”

Giselle laughed. “You’d have been disappointed in me had I come alone.”

“True, true. Are you armed?” Giselle gave him a duh look. “Of course you are! Does that mean you’re still sulking?”

Bryce bit back a laugh.

“Do I act like I’m sulking?”

“Now that you mention it, no. Glad to see you’ve returned to your usual humor, my girl.” He gestured to Bryce with his champagne glass. “So who’s plowing whose field now?”

“My field was virgin yesterday.”

“And then it was plowed last night. By a squatter. How are you going to explain this to your mother?”

“It’s Sebastian’s fault, naturally,” Giselle returned, which made Fen laugh.

Bryce thought it best not to get in the middle of this conversation, no matter how bizarre. Giselle had had years of practice at handling him and while Bryce definitely didn’t like being referred to as a squatter, it was true.

He would rectify that as soon as possible.

“What happened to your nose?” she asked innocently.

Fen waved a hand. “I happened to be behind a door my assistant came running through.”

“That’s terrible. Is it broken?”

“Yes. But I’m not going to have it reset. I decided that a broken nose lends character to a face. I was simply too perfect as a senatorial candidate before. In retrospect, I believe it’ll be a good thing. I should thank my assistant and give her a raise.”

Both Bryce and Giselle burst out laughing.

“So, Kenard, I will assume you’re not on board with my campaign?”

“Yeah, you’re not going to get any money from me,” Bryce murmured with a sigh of false regret. “If you’d asked me last fall, I would have told you then.”

“Ah, but then you wouldn’t have met my charming niece, would you?”

Bryce inclined his head. “That’s true, but now I have even fewer reasons to donate. Fire. Bullets. Ponds. Insulin. You know how it is.”

His eyebrows rose. “I see the children haven’t wasted any time brainwashing you. And you believe their cockamamie story?”

“Don’t you remember? Knox and I were roommates in college and went to law school together. I have a long history of being able to see your hands pulling the strings.”

“Ah. Well, you’ll believe what you want, I suppose.”

“But I am flattered to be considered worthy of inclusion into such august company.”

“Knowing my nephews, I’m sure you’ll take the alpha position in no time.” They moved on after that.

“That was the most screwball conversation I ever heard,” Bryce muttered, “all things considered. Does he always just casually discuss what he’s done?”

“He’ll allude to it occasionally. He knows we can’t prove it and calling him out publicly would get us a lot of bad publicity we don’t want and wouldn’t be able to overcome.”

“And an easily won libel suit to boot.”

“Exactly. It would defeat our purpose and he knows that. And really, we’re the only ones he can talk about it with. Now that I’m with you and someone else has Knox’s britches in a twist, there’s only one immediate solution to the problem. Neither Knox nor I want to do that and Sebastian prefers financial warfare. That said, if I’d been wearing a wire yesterday, I’d have had him dead to rights, but I had no reason to think the conversation would get that deep. He won’t let me near that topic again.”

“I wouldn’t imagine.” He snagged a couple of hors d’œuvres off a passing tray and offered her one. “You want something to eat?”

“No,” she mumbled absently, standing on tiptoes to look over the crowd. “I don’t trust what’s in some of that stuff.” He thought that a little extreme and said so. That caught her attention. “Do you like what I look like naked?”

“Very much. I also like how you look not-naked.”

“Do you want my nakedness to look the same always until I’m an old lady?”

“That would be nice.”

“Then trust me when I tell you I don’t want food because, as you should know by now, I like to eat. A lot.”

He laughed and picked her up, wrapping her tight in his arms. He twirled her around and around, kissing and nipping her neck. “You’re beautiful,” he said as he let her slide down his body. He chuckled when that firearm bulge brushed against his thigh. “You really don’t trust Fen, do you?”

“Goodness, no. He’s never gone back on a deal, but now he’s just curious to see how many more lives I have. Two down, seven to go.”

For some sick and twisted reason buried deep in his dark soul, Bryce found that hilarious. “Let’s see this exhibit.”

Except for his sudden obsession with Lilith, Bryce didn’t get art. He had none save what the interior designer had hung. That wasn’t to say he didn’t like a few pieces here and there. He simply didn’t care enough to study it, purchase it, and find a place to put it. He certainly wouldn’t dislodge any of his books for it. For Lilith, he would’ve dislodged his books, but now he wouldn’t have to.

Once they reached the entrance of the actual exhibit and he saw what “a Ford” actually was, he was impressed. He knew Giselle was watching and waiting for his reaction, but this he had not expected.

Nudes. On canvases five feet square, each hung at a different angle. Women in all stages of life, in all shapes and sizes, of every race imaginable. The artist had captured them in such a way as to make them all beautiful regardless of one’s personal taste.

“I really like this,” he said, taking it all in. “There are a lot of pregnant women, I notice.”

Giselle smiled and squeezed his hand. “He adores pregnant women.”

That was … an odd thing to say. He slid a look at her, but she didn’t notice.

They went into the labyrinth. Each woman leaped off the canvas at him and Bryce wanted to touch to see if they were real. Neither of them said anything as they roamed through the partitions slowly with the rest of the attendees. Finally, Bryce asked, “What do these do for you?”

“They make me want to be them. See that one? That’s what I wish I looked like. Taller. Narrower, more, I don’t know … delicate. Like—well, like Lilith.”

“Giselle.” She looked up at him, puzzled, and he bent down to speak in her ear, “I hate delicate.”

Giselle looked at him as if he were crazy. “Uh … ”

“You’re solid,” he said flatly. “Built to fuck. That’s what I like, what I’ve always liked, one of the reasons I wanted you the instant I set eyes on you.”

“Oh,” she squeaked with the awed joy of a woman just presented diamonds.

No, he hadn’t known how to protect his daughters’ self-esteem, but the only thing he could give Giselle was apparently exactly what she needed.

They had almost reached the end of the exhibit when the announcement of the unveiling of the new Ford painting echoed over the hum of the partygoers. The crowd began to move toward the front of the gallery where it hung. Giselle stayed back a bit to study another painting.

“C’mon, let’s go find a good spot. Now I’m really curious.”

“Mmmm, in a minute. I don’t like to be too close.”

She was fidgeting when he finally managed to pull her away from the exhibit of old works and ended up toward the back of the gathering. The gallery director had asked for a brush-stick drum roll as he hushed the crowd and introduced the new work.

“This latest Ford painting,” he began, “marks a sharp turn in the artist’s direction, as you will see. It is called,” he said with a pause for dramatic effect, then grabbed the cable and pulled. “Rape of a Virgin.”

The crowd gasped and moved away as one. Bryce’s jaw dropped, stepped back as if shoved.

No breath.

No balance.

The crowd buzzed, turned, stared at him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he noticed this, but he was too shocked to care.

As of not even twenty-four hours ago, he knew that body and bed intimately—and they were on display on a five-foot-wide by eight-foot-tall canvas for the entire world to see. His blood went south as he closed his eyes and let his head fall back with a sigh.

Bryce thought he should feel guilty for enjoying his slide right down into the featherbed of hedonism, but he didn’t. He was achingly aroused by the fact that other men would be looking between her nude portrait and her clothed presence, their lust for her plain in their faces, the same lust that had always tortured Bryce—and they could not have her.

Right here, right now, she stood at Bryce’s side, unabashedly bearing the mark he’d given her that proclaimed her his lover.

He opened his eyes again to stare at that painting, at her—

Mine.

Painted from directly above in the manner of Morning in Bed, laid out on a rumpled white sheet over a mattress supported by a broad black platform, she lay on her stomach at a diagonal, nude. Her right knee crooked across the bed. Her right hand stretched out to the edge of the bed and over it, desperately reaching, her fingers wide. Her left arm was slung high and up over her head, bound to an iron ring in the wall with a white strap secured by a highly stylized and detailed padlock. Her left leg stretched far out under her, her foot dropping off the mattress. A red strap and a padlock of a different design, though equally stylized and detailed, bound the left ankle to the leg of the bed.

Her honey curls, their length greatly exaggerated, fanned out over the bed and glowed like the most vivid of flames. The skin of her back, arms, and legs betrayed the cuts of a weightlifter’s musculature. The paisley tattoo surrounding the gunshot scar in her hip was detailed precisely. Her vulva peeked out tantalizingly from between her legs. All the scars from her teenage back-alley fights and years of martial arts were exaggerated.

An open dog-eared Bible lay on the bed by her pillow as if she had just put it down, and nearly touching her left hip was a well-worn copy of Intercourse, also open but turned over, spine up and broken. She stared at what rested beside the bed with a desperate yearning. There, on a simple chair just an inch or two out of reach, were two gold keys: One graphically carved in the shape of a phallus that was clearly meant to open the lock of the white strap that held her arm; the other in the shape of a baby’s pacifier, which opened the padlock of the red strap at her ankle.

The agony of a woman who couldn’t get what other women got, what she should have expected to get, what she had craved, had been captured with exquisite precision.

It should have been titled The Relic.

Giselle was trembling against him and crushing his hand between both of hers. He returned her squeeze, but he was uneager to break the spell. Finally her discomfort registered somewhere in the depths of his consciousness and it did vaguely occur to him that the silence in the room was not normal.

He was enchanted.

“I— I have no words,” he finally whispered.

Giselle’s sniffling through the deafening silence caught his attention then and he looked down at her. He finally understood the depth of her anxiety when she whispered, “Talk to me, please. Please don’t think badly of me again.”

Again. He almost groaned. “No,” he croaked, pulling her to him fiercely, kissing her as wickedly as he had the night before, taking everything she would give him and hoping she would find value in what little he could give her. Penitence. Adoration.

Thunderous applause broke out when she wrapped an arm around his neck, and Bryce smiled against her lips. He could feel her relieved, delighted laugh and her tears that moistened both their cheeks. “I don’t know what to say,” he murmured against her mouth. “It’s— It’s breathtaking. You’re breathtaking.”

“It’ll be hung all over the world. You don’t mind other men seeing it?”

“No,” he whispered harshly. “I want them to look and know that woman is mine.” His thumb caressed the bite mark on her nape. “Everyone in this room knows that.” She sucked in a sharp breath, closed her eyes, closed her mouth on his so that he would kiss her again. He obliged, then murmured, “You’re not a virgin anymore and I am the one who took it from you.”

She smiled. Blushed. “Maybe we should go home. We’re going to get attacked by the vultures any minute and there’s press here.”

“Nope,” he replied. “We’re not going anywhere. I want to enjoy this.”

That made her laugh but soon she was surrounded for autographs and to field questions about Ford’s identity, camera flashes blinding them.

Kevin and Jill Oakley stared at her in stunned amusement.

Trudy, and to some extent, Fen, struggled with the onslaught of people who, because they couldn’t get to Giselle, hounded them instead.

Bryce simply stood and watched Giselle graciously speak with people and politely refuse to give up The Name. With his arm draped possessively over her shoulders, he answered any questions that came his way. “Really. I don’t know who he is.” The crush around them eventually lessened, then thinned completely as the band reassembled and began its next set. Bryce took her hand then and kissed the back of it. Giselle blushed again and smiled shyly when he murmured, “Dance with me?”

They slow danced for an hour, Giselle staring up at him with a love-drugged expression that soothed his soul and gave him hope for a future.

Hope.

Yet another thing that he’d lacked most of his life, another thing Giselle had given him.

They kissed intermittently, softly, slowly, closely observed but uninterrupted except for Fen, who caught her arm as he and Trudy made their exit.

“Your mother’s going to swat your behind until you can’t sit down,” he murmured.

Giselle laughed. “What, are you going to tattle on me?”

“I will if you don’t tell me who Ford is.”

“Fen,” she drawled, “that keeping my mouth shut thing works two ways. It’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

“Then you asked for it. You’ll get sent out to cut a switch.”

Giselle was still snickering when Bryce swept her around and under his arm for another dance. He looked over the crowd absently until something caught his eye. Across the immense room a man was leaning against a wall, far away from everyone else, in the shadows, his arms crossed, a glass of champagne in his hand. He stared straight at Bryce with a smirk on his face, then tipped the glass at him.

It only took a microsecond before Bryce burst out laughing. When Giselle looked up at him, he gestured vaguely toward the man. Once she saw whom he meant, she chuckled.

“Ford.”

She looked back up at Bryce and murmured, “I knew there was a reason I let you fuck me. Let’s go home so you can do it again.”

“You didn’t let me do anything.”

She snorted, and he grinned.

He took her back to her bed, the one on which Giselle’s torment, her hunger and agony, was on display for the entire world to see. That bed—the one where she’d lain under him, her head, heart, arms, and legs wrapped around him, matching him wit for wit, kiss for kiss, word for word, thrust for thrust.

The bed where he’d unlocked the shackles that bound her and swept up the shards of the relic she’d broken for him.

★