THE PROVISO

THIRD EDITION COMING SOON

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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Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, bear’t that th’ opposèd may beware of thee.

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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 stared 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 said 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.”

Chouteau County!

Justice’s heart thundered. She had exactly three options for an attorney position that would balance her grandfather’s expectations, her father’s demands, and her mother’s dreams, while being hobbled by meager resources. The Chouteau County prosecutor’s office was one of those options, which meant this man was her future boss!

“I also teach white-collar crime on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, but today Dr. Grady called in a favor, so here I am.”

Dr. Hilliard continued to speak while Sherry’s friends laughed and slid comments back and forth as to what Sherry intended to do to him, which Justice didn’t want to hear. 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 hissed, “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 gulped 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 attention 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, tasseled loafers, as if fine clothes could civilize him.

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, chock full of amusement as he strolled back and forth 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 elegance, Dr. Hilliard was it.

Apparently, everyone else agreed, which made Justice ashamed of herself for being so … common.

“Doctor Cox!” He boomed. “You’re next.”

“I’m Giselle Cox—” A woman’s voice rang out from the back of the lecture hall. Justice and everyone around her turned. “—and I’m one of your TAs for this class. Please do not call me ‘doctor.’”

A worker bee whispered, “Hey, isn’t she the one—”

“Oh, yes,” Sherry whispered back. “I’d snack on that one, too.”

Justice curled her lip in disgust. Did this woman think of nothing else?

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

“I have no idea,” she answered lightly, which garnered some chuckles.

“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 older students, realizing this was truer than not.

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

“Bitch, please.”

Justice almost gasped at the disrespect and looked over her shoulder to see how Dr. Hilliard would react, but Sherry and her crew tittered.

“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 hadn’t called her out, had even laughed, it meant everyone else was free to laugh too.

“Also,” the TA said to the class in general, “please hand your assignments to me or Neal 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 let her thoughts show.

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—especially one in whose office she needed to work.

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, and she wasn’t going to allow anything to knock her off track.

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

Not even her father, who 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. … I want you to get out. Find a way to get out.

Her late mother’s desperate plea had formed 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 said in Justice’s ear before sitting back. “Corporate. 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 blinding smile flashed across his face, before turning into a smirk. He drew closer. “After class,” he drawled, 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, too, because after that … The regular prof would be back Friday, but he was still the man she’d have to interview for if she wanted a decent job close to home.

“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.

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

What? He hadn’t asked any other students why or probed beyond quick outlines of their career goals. This changed everything because it was an opportunity to make an impression. Her answer would determine her entire future, and right now, 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. They don’t ever get made whole, and never mind if innocent people get caught in a net that has nothing to do with them. You’re innocent. So what. Cops don’t care. They got their arrest.”

She was settling in, talking faster, stronger, louder.

“As for the police, they can treat people any way they want to, take what they want, then hide behind RICO statutes and qualified immunity, which, by the way, is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Not only are they treated like criminals for no reason, they can’t get their property back. 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. Their lives are ruined for … what? Driving while black? Carrying too much cash? Those people don’t get made whole, either.

“I want to help make the law a deterrent again—to, oh, legally avenge those whose lives are violated by someone else, especially by those who are supposed to protect them. I want to restore people’s constitutional rights. I want 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 try to effect change as a public defender or an activist, but that’s a reactive position. As a prosecutor, I would have a proactive position to change the system from the inside.”

Silence reigned throughout the lecture hall. Suddenly aware she had given her professor—future boss—a lecture he probably didn’t agree with, she couldn’t bear to meet Dr. Hilliard’s probing gaze. She plastered her eyes on his tie 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.

This was going to be a long three years.

“ENOUGH!”

The roar echoed off the walls, and Justice’s head snapped up. Dr. Hilliard strolled 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 precise upper-class hauteur. His cheer had turned to rage in a blink, and Justice watched, confused. It 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. 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.”

The room gasped. Sherry whimpered. Dr. Hilliard’s expression softened when it settled upon Justice who, with tears of mortification, looked away from his large harshness and golden darkness.

Fingertips under her chin gently forced her face around and up. She tried to blink her tears away 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.

Maybe he did too.

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 office her target long before today for reasons that had nothing to do with him.

His thumb drifted across her cheekbone as he stood looking down at her. Justice was only vaguely aware of the tense silence surrounding 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 students’ assignments as they filed out avoiding Dr. Hilliard or giving him the side-eye. Justice McKinley lingered, waiting, obviously hoping he would speak to her, but he was at the lectern pretending to sort through things, ignoring everyone, especially Justice. The girl finally gave up headed through the door, handing her work 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 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. She got attention wherever she went whether she wanted it or not, and right now, she wanted it. No one who knew any better would bother Justice now that Dr. Giselle Cox had publicly taken sides. “You did well in class.”

Justice studied her warily to figure out if Giselle would make 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 a good three inches or more, and she was in worn chintz, a gaudily flowered Gunne Sax dress straight out of 1985, complete with a large white collar. Giselle couldn’t 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. Freckles would go with the hair and it was a damn shame they were hidden, because Justice also had exquisite bone structure.

Giselle was tempted to take Justice for a makeover simply 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 on top of what had happened in class. He’d be lucky if he didn’t get fired or sued or both.

Way to go, Dr. Dumbass.

Giselle couldn’t tell if Justice was more clueless or poor, but it didn’t matter. Justice needed to look like this for as long as possible in case he was tempted to do something stupider. Besides, Giselle didn’t have any money, either.

Justice kept mumbling things Giselle still couldn’t hear. Then, over the girl’s shoulder, Giselle caught Knox in the stairwell staring at her. She tilted her head in question. He slid a cold look at Sherry and the outraged women around her. Giselle glanced at them, 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.

“Hey,” 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.

She gave Justice another encouraging smile, then left the building.

To lie in wait.

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

“Sure, Dr. Cox!” Sherry called brightly.

She almost rolled her eyes. The only people who called her Dr. Cox were Knox, who publicly mocked her with it, students in the classes she TA’d who thought they could wheedle better grades out of her, and anybody else who wanted something from her—which included Sherry, who followed Giselle eagerly to an out-of-the-way spot in a thick stand of trees.

Giselle was somewhat of an oddity here. At least ten years older than most of the other students, she did indeed have a completely useless PhD. Further, she’d built a successful business and grown it over several years. It was her childhood fantasy, her life’s work, her blazing passion, but it had been torched three years before, leaving her bankrupt and homeless. She couldn’t rebuild it for a variety of reasons and she was still heartsick. The only other thing she’d really ever wanted to do was out of reach for her.

Thus, law school was a complete fall from grace, but she wasn’t alone in that. The University of Missouri at Kansas City was a commuter school, so a quarter of the students in her class were at least her age and had their own catalog of mishaps that had led them here.

Once Giselle determined they were alone and well hidden, she turned to find Sherry backed up to a big oak, preening.

“You got my attention,” Giselle said huskily.

“Finally,” Sherry purred. “Was that all I had to do? Go after someone else?”

“I can appreciate the balls it took to do that.”

“Yeah?”

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

Sherry gurgled when her head was slammed 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 a suggestion of a rumor that you, your skank patrol, or anyone else not even associated with you are giving her a hard time, I’ll make you regret it.”

“Okay,” she gurgled, desperately clutching at Giselle’s hands and gasping for air. “I’m sorry. Let me go. Please.”

Giselle allowed Sherry to run, and went back to her soul-crushing grind.

Justice walked around campus as if everyone were out to get her.

Knox went back to his day job and Tuesday-Thursday evening class.

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 attention.

She was sitting in a dark corner alone, slouched in the chair, her stilettos hanging on the rung of the chair in front of her, her arms folded across her chest, her ringless 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’d had with Leah, but usually people didn’t reach the anger stage of grief until after the funeral, so other than her beauty, what intrigued him 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 on the chair next to her, reached up, and began to braid it.

Bryce exhaled. 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 cup one in his hand, flick her nipple, 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. Jerked out of his fantasy and into reality, he wondered what kind of injury would require a brace.

She finished braiding and returned to slouching and scowling. An older woman passed behind her with a loving caress across her back, then said something.

“Oh,” Bryce breathed, captivated when she looked up.

He’d seen that face before, in a Pre-Raphaelite painting he’d studied 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 idea that Adam had a wife before Eve shocked the hell out of him. Further, the particular point of Lilith’s complaint against Adam had tortured him with his own desires—ones that, at the time, he’d been struggling to squelch.

He felt no need to struggle anymore, so 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 demand it.

The older woman stopped speaking and waited for Lilith’s response. Her beautiful mouth tightened and she looked away in thought. Finally, she nodded. Her full lips moved.

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.

That was no brace for an injury. It was a holster, complete with a gun. The black lace of the top of her stocking juxtaposed against the gun 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 her back. Her stilettos forced the muscles of her legs into sharp relief and he almost groaned when she strutted away, disappearing 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 badly disguised politeness.

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

He’d overheard that whisper when his scars were still fresh. It didn’t make him angry anymore, but it did serve to remind him of his sin, the punishment for his sin.

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

His feet took it upon themselves to trace her path, his nose following a scent that should belong to a Lilith: citrus, flowers, 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, listened.

“Say the words, Knox!”

A whoosh of air. “Okay, Giselle, okay,” the deceased’s groom said wearily. “You were right.”

She-SELL.

Not Lilith.

Bryce’s disappointment was deep and sharp.

“I’m sorry.” The man’s voice cracked. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, too,” Lilith groaned. “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 and dropped back against the wall.

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

Shocked, 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 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 face, noticing how aged and haggard he looked. 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 discussing that with you right now,” he snarled. “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 stood her ground. Leah’s rich south Texas drawl still echoed in her head.

Honey, thank you, but I don’t want a bodyguard right now. I’m the most high-profile woman in the country 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.

Nope. I’m staying.

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—

I’ve not had fifteen minutes to myself in over a year! Not even in the bathroom! Can you not give me this much? Let me pray in peace!

It’s going to be over in an hour. You can have your personal space back then.

Ma’am, I agree with Ms Cox. Please let her stay with you.

We are in the middle of a large hotel in a remote gated compound surrounded by security. There are armed men outside my door and all up and down this hallway. What could possibly happen to me in fifteen minutes?!

Leah! Those gates are OPEN and there are almost a thousand people here! He’ll have somebody here somewhere looking for an opportunity.

Out! All four of you!

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

You do that.

Like any good fiancé should, Knox had overridden Giselle’s arguments in favor of his fiancée, tossing her and the other three bodyguards out of the bridal suite, leaving Leah alone and unprotected.

What could possibly happen to me in fifteen minutes?!

It happened.

But now …

“Now you’re stuck with the added guilt of falling in love with a different woman a month before your wedding.” He winced. “And, because you can’t go five minutes without a woman to take care of you, you want me—the person you didn’t listen to—even though you knew better—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 given up, the way she’d given up her dreams and gone to law school. Thirty-four and at the breaking point of her quest for celibacy until marriage, losing her virginity to 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.

That was not an attractive prospect.

“That’s the answer to the problem right there.”

She wheeled away from Knox, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

“Fuck you,” Knox snapped at the man in the doorway.

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

“Get off my back. I’m burying my wife.”

“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.

Sebastian looked between her and Knox with his trademark scowl. At thirty-eight, he was six-feet-two of classic black Irish, intimidating at best, but with that sinister glower, terrifying to most. Right now, he was just irritating.

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

“Why? You’ve 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. “The goal is for Knox to fulfill the terms of his inheritance. Marriage and a child.”

Leah had been perfect because she already had a child, but that was what had gotten her killed.

“Okay, but 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 muttered. “That’s not what I meant.”

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

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

Her heart skipped a couple of beats. 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’s jaw dropped, 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, don’t know how to do, and never wanted to begin with.”

“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 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.

Finally, Sebastian spoke. Low, threateningly. “Two people are dead, 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? 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 found its target.

“That’s not fair,” Giselle interjected when Knox sighed. “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 space to grieve and time to get his head together.”

Sebastian held her gaze second for second. He was furious. With whom or what, exactly, she wasn’t sure, but he looked away first.

“Thank you,” Knox croaked.

“I’m not finished,” she said at Knox. 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 jaw clenched. “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?”

“Fuck that. 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. He did.

“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 you to be fair game. 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 doesn’t know, and the only thing keeping me from putting a bullet in your head right now is Knox. You have known me for 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 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 resentment. Fen shouldn’t 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 who believed 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 stellar, his philanthropy sincere and effective, 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, Fen’s nephew and stepson, 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. Ten years before, Knox had been questioned for the execution-style murder of a serial killer he’d tried—and lost—but the investigation had stalled out and no charges were ever brought. However, 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’d been with five years and 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.”

Bryce’s 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, but Arlene was excellent at her job and had stuck by him through the roughest parts of building his practice.

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 meteoric 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. Although scrupulously honest, he had a reputation for taking any leverage where he could get it, being completely ruthless about it, destroying anyone who so much as looked at him wrong, and remaining silent to the press.

Taight had a lot of enemies in Congress, 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: Now the Senate was agitating to haul him before a panel hearing.

But even with Congress against him, Taight had the power to destroy 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 noticed 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. He glanced to see if it required his immediate attention. It was from the art gallery that had Lilith. Heart pounding, he clicked on the subject line.

Although 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 gravel road to her house, 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 on just the repairs she could do herself, but it burned oil and it needed a new muffler, neither of which she could afford to have fixed. She couldn’t repair them herself because she didn’t have the equipment and even if she did, she couldn’t afford the parts. 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. She needed those two days 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’d 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 such outrageously unprofessional behavior. Justice certainly would have left in shame if she’d behaved so badly.

A rumor started up 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 also 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’d learned since The Incident was that the rumor was no rumor. 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. Of course, if he settled or 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.

Still.

Despite feeling filthy about it, she’d found the pleading, printed it out, and carried it around like a talisman.

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. She 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, peeling white-clapboard-clad gothic revival 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 where she parked 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 as worn out as her machinery, 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 studied the ragged wheat, 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 went 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. There was no time to clean. If she managed to make her bed every morning and scrub the toilet once a week, it was an accomplishment.

“Justice.”

She jumped at her father’s voice. He was 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 made a profit for years and now it was actively losing money, 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 letting the cattle at 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, collecting fixings for a sandwich.

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

Justice slid a glance at his paunch. He’d never starved a day in his life—no thanks to his own efforts—and 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. Again. 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.

“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 ’til midnight, then getting up in the morning to do more farm chores before heading off to school.

“You also have a rifle and ammunition, and you know how to dress out a deer. One weekend’s work, and we have meat all winter.”

“You ain’t givin’ me orders, little girl,” he snarled.

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 or doing all the work.

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.

In those boxes, Justice had found the music of her memories of her mother: Earth Wind & Fire, Abba, Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Alan Parsons. And the music of her heart: Rush. U2. Led Zeppelin. Boston. Pink Floyd. Heart.

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.

That was her life, right there, in the dirt where fresh milk soaked in before she got a taste.

“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 the cow only cared about that one song. Justice 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 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.

He refused and told her he would do everything he could to sabotage her. In utter frustrate and rage, she’d screamed, “I want air conditioning!”

Those turned out to be the magic words.

As long as the farm came first and she promised to put AC in the house when she got a job, 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.

Buchanan and Clinton were no longer options because he didn’t work there. If he wouldn’t hire her, she’d get a public defender position just to have regular 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.

She checked the mail on the table by the staircase and was instantly delighted when she saw the latest National Review.

“Oh!” She flipped through the pages to find the article she had written and submitted 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. There was Bossy, chowing down. She pulled out her phone and 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 email 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. 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 PLOPPED 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 put 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.

At four p.m., she put the buds in her ears and started typing. Briefs, pleadings, letters, contracts—she could do them all from memory. 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 watched her life’s work burn to the ground.

Thanks a bunch, Uncle Fen.

He hadn’t torched her bookstore. He’d torched her soul, and he still hadn’t apologized or made restitution, since, as she had argued numerous times, his failure to actually kill her obliged him to pay for damages.

It’s not my fault the losers you find in questionable locations can’t get the job done.

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 and admins from making pointed detours to her desk to drop off work or, every so often, ask her out.

She’d typed for three or four hours in the peace of an empty, silent, and well-lit office building before she caught sight of a particularly persistent attorney heading her way.

“Shit,” she breathed, irritated. 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. Although she would like to ignore him, she couldn’t. If the attorneys wanted to monopolize her time with chitchat, they could, although 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, but she’d declined so many times he was starting to get pissy about it. “I think that’s just a bullshit excuse.”

“Oh? Are you assuming I use it as an excuse for everyone or just you?”

His face hardened a little. 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 needed to find a way to get him off her back for good, sooner rather than later, because she didn’t want to have to whip out her nine-millimeter restraining order. 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 gaped at him a few seconds before she burst out laughing. “Is that the best you can do?”

Ralph drew back, shocked. That turned into embarrassment, which was usually where men decided to throw their weight around. His lips thinned and he struggled to come up with a reply.

Giselle couldn’t stop laughing. Here she was, expecting— “Are you always this disappointing? 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 so brutally dismissed. “Don’t cross me,” he growled.

Here it was. “Ralph,” she said slowly, pronouncing the “lph” sound with great precision. Rising from her chair, she closed the gap between them until they were mere inches apart. “I am not going to fuck you.” Her husky whisper made his breath catch. “Not today. Not tomorrow. Not in a thousand lifetimes. Threaten me. Try to intimidate me. Go to Hale and make up some story you think will get me fired. Maybe it will. I don’t care, because I’m not going to put up with nice guys,” she sneered, “like you. And I promise you do not want to catch me in a dark alley late one night.”

She rocked back on her heel and crossed her arms over her chest, one eyebrow raised.

He attempted to salvage his ego. “I’m going to make you regret this.”

“Ralph.”

Giselle and Ralph both jumped at the deep, hoarse, cold voice that came out of nowhere.

Then she saw him, and 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.

Severe burn scars matted the left half of his face and disappeared down into his snow-white collar. He was tall, with broad, strong shoulders and lean torso in perfectly tailored olive silk-and-wool blend set off with a red tie. He had vivid green eyes and short black hair. He had a light tan that made pinpointing his ethnicity impossible. He smelled divine. His left hand was just as scarred as his face, but he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

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

She scrunched her face in disbelief. “Really?”

“Pack up your desk.”

“You’re not my boss,” Ralph crabbed.

“No, but I don’t think he’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 brightest voice with her most charming smile. She stared 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 replied 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. “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, his expression stony. “I’m sure,” he replied, his tone measured and precise, “that you think you’re entirely blameless.”

Her jaw clenched and her nostrils flared. Oh, no. No. Men did not talk to her like that. The stars in her eyes were long gone.

“Fuck you!” she snarled. “You don’t know me from Eve.”

His eyebrow rose. “No,” he returned calmly. “Lilith, rather.”

With that, he went 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 walk backward just so he could stare at her 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 wouldn’t back off.

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 looks. 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, sometimes with barely hidden disgust, and 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 his face 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. Kind and very well-socialized people could do that.

But what if … ?

What if … ?

Inhale. He held it, then exhaled 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 her if she didn’t go out with him, not sure if it was her job or more than that. 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. Have him on a PIP.” He turned to his computer for a moment and as he typed, he asked, “How’d she handle it?”

What to say, what to say. “Ah, she seemed to have everything under control, but I wasn’t going to stand there and watch.”

“That tracks. Good thing it was her instead of anybody else.”

“Good?”

“She’s quiet. Keeps to herself.”

“It’s always the quiet ones,” Bryce said with just the right amount of disinterested amusement, but now he was wildly curious.

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

Fuck you.

Bryce’s heart raced. 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’ll damn sure tolerate it from any woman who can take care of herself and isn’t quietly putting up with it until she quits, or runs 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 with benefits. 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 find it funny.

“Is she married?”

Hale started to laugh. “I forgot to mention that she’s 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, thanks,” Bryce murmured, frustrated with himself for going too far. Hale was no fool, but he said no more about Lilith, and for that, Bryce was grateful.

“Oh, by the way,” Hale said as he walked Bryce down to the lobby once their annual meeting had ended, “condolences on your client. Leah Wincott?”

“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, noooo. Nope. I haven’t met a Hilliard yet that I liked and that includes Knox’s father. My wife’s been bitching about Trudy 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.”

On his way to the elevator, Bryce couldn’t help but cast a look toward Lilith’s tidy, empty cube. Disappointment settled in his chest, but he only sighed and headed to the parking garage—

—then stopped cold when he emerged from the stairwell to see the occupant of the only other car in the lot besides his.

She couldn’t see him from where she sat in an older-model generic Chevy sedan. The windows were down, and from the way her head tilted back against the seat rest, she might be dozing 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 asleep, 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; replayed that night six months ago with her skirt pulled up enough for him to see the top of her black stocking; craved 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 said, 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. She yawned, 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.

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 thrummed with rage and contempt. He wasn’t imagining that, but now there was no way he could figure out if she had been putting on a show. He wasn’t be surprised. He’d burned that bridge and scattered the ashes.

“Actually, yes,” he said, shocking himself. “Would you like a late dinner?”

She blinked. “’Scuse me?”

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

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she snarled. She started the car.

“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 tie 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 immediately, 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.

She was definitely not 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 taken her power 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 cupped his hand tightly under her chin. He tilted her head up, forcing her to look at him, an odd mix 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 victorious smile. “You might get it.” Then he released her 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 War Games, an Old Fashioned glass in his hand. “Why do 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 leaving.

“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. 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. 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, and I want to know something else. 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,¹⁰ no. 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 “’til 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, while 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 much prettier than she was, 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.

Her life really sucked.

“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 like an 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 intact and she hadn’t had to do much to crack it. 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 mumbled.

“What did he do to you?”

He stole my soul.

She picked at a piece of nonexistent lint. “He was contemptuous of me,” she admitted 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, I— I, uh … Actually, I kissed him and … he kissed me back.” Sebastian gaped at her. 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.”

“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 groused. “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 through her cousin, her tongue running over her teeth as she thought. Finally, she 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. 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.”

“Explain.”

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’m 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. “Took a peek, 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?”

“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.”

She nodded. “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 April.”

“If Remington Steele had 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.”

“I haven’t gone to the temple by myself,” she blurted before she could stop herself, “because if I do, I’ll have to admit 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 proto-romance novel and you opened a bookstore dedicated to them. Hank Rearden is just a grown-up variation on your theme because you’ve aged out of ingenue, and the church gives you an excuse to keep holding out for a hero.”

That hurt. A lot. And, as usual, she couldn’t think of a scathing response quickly enough.

“You’re gonna make mistakes in choosing your partners,” he went on more gently. “Everybody does. And, yes, 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 now that 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 more to say, and apparently, Sebastian had said all he intended to. He slid down into his chair and lapsed into brooding. She waited for him to re-start the movie—it was one of his favorites—but he didn’t and 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. 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. She’s too young. Too ambitious to settle down right now, especially with someone who’s already established. Too hung up on whatever fish that got away when she was in middle school or some shit.”

That surprised her. Giselle was pretty sure who Vanessa’s fish was, but Sebastian wouldn’t, so she kept her speculation to herself. “Which part of this is bothering you?”

“Her youth and inexperience. I don’t want that. I want an equal. Someone I can really talk to, has life experience, who’ll listen to me, give me good advice. Hopefully have a couple of things in common. Go out and just … be. Together. You know?”

“A companion.”

He hesitated. “Yeah, I think so. Maybe she’s ambitious, maybe she’s not, maybe I don’t care one way or the other. Someone who sees me.”

She didn’t know what to do with this Sebastian Taight. He’d never expressed any desire for a wife or family, never had a real connection with a woman, never wanted one and was vocal about it. Giselle couldn’t remember the last time she genuinely felt sorry for him, but he was miserable.

“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.”

Her sympathy turned to irritation in a heartbeat. “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. At best, you’re completely unapproachable. At worst, you’re about to launch a terror attack.” Sebastian snorted. “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.”

“That is not possible. Money and sex are the only things I think about, but they can’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’.”

“Are you going to church today or not?”

She glanced at the clock and saw she should have left fifteen minutes ago. “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, let’s go play tennis. 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. Blow my count for the day, but whatever.”

“Fine,” he grumbled.

“You know,” she mused as she arose to go change clothes, “you can trash my romance-novel 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 getting cooties—” 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 Grand Theft Auto and slinging freight at FedEx for Cheetos and Mountain Dew. 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.”

“Okay, you made your point,” he growled. “You didn’t have to go nuclear.”

She smiled sweetly. “The only winning move is not to play.”

---

9: WHOSOEVER LOOKETH ON A WOMAN

WHEN WAS 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. He’d hoped 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 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 still ringing through his head 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 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 expected and requested of him, but now he felt empty, abandoned, unloved—and had since 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 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, 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, confront whatever story Meryl had spun before she died, much less gossip about what he must have done to his family.

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 that 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 was studying. He was tapping away on his laptop. National news was 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 went to the kitchen and foraged in the refrigerator before he, too, sat down to work without a word.

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

“It wasn’t. 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, then proceeded to take care of the situation.”

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, although it would never stick. 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 talking about?” Sebastian said.

“Knox popped off in class rather inappropriately last year and got 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’m 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 worked 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. Although 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 lip, nauseated.

“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 angrier. “Gets worse,” he snapped, leaning over the table. “Kenard’s on the guest list for the fundraiser next month.”

Knox heaved a weary 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 that fundraiser with me next month and if Kenard shows up, you will 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 stared 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—serious fuck-you money—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.

“It is imperative that you keep him away from Fen,” Sebastian continued, his tone urgent. “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 smirked at Knox. “Ask him. If he tells you the truth, I’ll give you three months’ rent free.”

Knox sat blank-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 dunked on 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 he 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 approved 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 prominent 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 assisted her into a white mink bolero jacket, also borrowed from his mother.

“This is what you need to know,” he told her in the limo on their way to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. “Kenard’s a widower, ’bout 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.”

“That was his transaction. This is yours. Two completely different obligations.”

Sebastian laughed. “I really am a bad influence on you. He and Kenard have history that involves the late wife. 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 that 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.” 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. “I’ll do my best.”

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 and glasses of champagne. 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,” 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 fucking 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 some wandering, they found him and Aunt Trudy almost where they came in, going from one cluster of chatting people to the next, shaking hands, laughing.

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 his mother had given him. It would be easy to believe Knox was Fen’s son, but if Fen thought so, he would’ve demanded a paternity test.

Aunt Trudy 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, Giselle 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. She’d done it before, but now Giselle wasn’t a chubby, awkward thirteen-year-old easily gaslit and 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 snickered cruelly when Trudy looked away.

“Ah, Sebastian, Giselle.” Fen greeted them expansively as if he hadn’t murdered Knox’s father and bride, tried to kill Giselle twice, destroyed 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. 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 in her ear, 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.”

“Aw,” she whispered. “I did hurt your wittow feewings.”

He drew away from her slowly, still in candidate mode, still smiling. When his attention caught on her shoulder, his smile faded and his mouth tightened slightly. 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 so tense, his arm felt like cast iron. He grabbed 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 percolating this all 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.”

“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.”

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

“Yes, 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? 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 the primary, 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,” 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 martyred saint. Also. 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 D.C. 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 this 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.”

“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 his absolute certainty that Fen had had Leah murdered, but curiosity won out. Bryce had spent every Saturday for the past two months on the golf course with him 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 any way 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 event had no hint of political purpose in it, but Bryce laughed when the courier delivered it. 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 for this, 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 around 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 or 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, although 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, 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 again seemed so familiar as to be eerie.

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

As if he didn’t exist.

Regret exploded in his chest. He’d 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, angry, jealous. The embrace between her and Hilliard—it tormented him, now months after it had happened, but between Hilliard 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 wore a gun like a fashion accessory, so where was this coming from?

Bryce’s nostrils flared.

Enough.

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 through 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. He cocked an eyebrow at her. She acknowledged it 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. They returned to their cliques, tails between their legs.

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

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, 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 black train 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.

“Get out of my way,” he growled, then plowed his way out of this committee of vultures.

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

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 deity sat prominently displayed against the frescoed 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 she?”

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 goddess and searched for words while feeling her steady gaze. He turned his attention back to her, 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 hip. 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 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.”

“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 lead him. 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 a goddess.

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. “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 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. “Suck in.”

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.”

“It wasn’t nearly enough for me.”

“I don’t know you,” she whispered.

“Ah, but I wasn’t the one who extended 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?”

She gasped, immediately outraged, 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, already cringing at how it would sound. She cleared her throat again and said it anyway. “I’ve never done this sort of thing before.”

His mouth twisted with amused disdain. Lilith. She flushed, deeply hurt. 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, resentful of him and 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. She yanked the door open, gasping, “Go, go. Go, please!” while she scrambled in. She slammed the door on her skirt.

The startled driver had barely started the car when Kenard burst out of the gallery. She kept her eye on Kenard as the car pulled toward him, then turned left around the horseshoe drive. He tried to catch the door handle as the car went past—

“Hurry!” she begged.

—but he missed.

Perched on her knees in the back seat, she looked out the back window to see him halfway down the drive, bent over, hands on his knees, chest heaving and breath white in the frigid December air, watching 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 have to intern somewhere this summer, but for whom, she had not 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’d 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 through the list, scanning it to calculate an approximate cost. One particular author’s name caught her attention. She swallowed heavily, blinked, looked again. No, that couldn’t be. He would have told her …

Wouldn’t he?

“ … 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 an obscure question meant to embarrass her for spacing out, 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, although 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 winter air toward the student union. 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, 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 absolutely no one to talk to. Dr. Cox flew from classes to study groups to the cafeteria and back again before she left campus around three, and she 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 law school 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. They had some good conversation in between.

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 gone 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 contacted her to request articles 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, where she’d 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 taunted 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, discussed various things amongst themselves, offering up finer points of their specialties others wouldn’t have any reason to know, 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 posts and teaching her without 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. She would study that point more in-depth until she decided which one of them was right, and either 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 it, it made her laugh.

Hayeksplosives was a demolitions expert with the military who sympathized with Justice because she worked in a male-dominated industry, and they were both women who frequented male-dominated blogs. Grace O’Malley was a feminist who sometimes 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. As far as she knew, they were the only women here who regularly participated in conversation.

LoBianco was an acerbic accountant who liked to poke at Justice as much as 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.

Discussion continued as she began to write a new article. Her sudden brush with her grandfather’s greatness not an hour ago still rattled her, but on thinking 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.”

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 gaped, unable to believe the words in front of her, but her attention caught when the diners around her stirred a bit. She looked toward the door to see Giselle Cox walk in—strut, more like—with Neal-something, her co-TA, an older law student with whom she 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 Neal passed stared at them openly, but neither noticed as they talked and laughed on their way to get food.

Justice sighed and began to pack up. 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 she’d 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 worse 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. He 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,” mused 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 @ tassos tonight @930

THE TERSE EMAIL from Bryce’s ex-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 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 spilled what had happened at the gallery and Knox wanted to stake his claim.

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

He braved the wind and ice to enter the restaurant, his collar up and his scarf around his face. He didn’t care to be seen with the Chouteau County prosecutor, but this was a good place to meet: dark and neutral. Plus, Bryce loved Greek food, which was probably why Knox had picked it in the first place. Knox would have remembered that. He 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, rare, and salad, 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 at the tabletop, 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.”

“I … didn’t want to disbelieve her and … ” Bryce admitted reluctantly.

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

“She didn’t like sex.” 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,” 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 she did want to have sex, she turned up pregnant.”

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

Bryce scowled. “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 regarded them as children I chose to adopt, so 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. 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,” Bryce said 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 her 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 glared at him expectantly. It was a familiar exchange. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Again.”

It took a moment before Knox settled 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. 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. 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.”

Knox squinted at him. “Call one of your expert geneticists. See what he says.” He 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 wanna fuck her.”

Knox gaped at him and Bryce thoroughly enjoyed his shock. Finally, Knox waved a hand and said, “Consider me never having been in your way. 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.”

Conversation didn’t resume until after their food arrived. Knox’s grumpy mood improved markedly once he got some protein 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 Giselle,” Bryce finally said, “I want to know about Leah.”

“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. “You didn’t?”

“Noooooo,” Bryce said, puzzled. “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. I don’t know anyone who thinks you killed her. Your problem is your track record and his lack of one. Optics.” 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 at finding out 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 when you’re fifteen, forty-year-olds are 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 this and why haven’t you had him investigated?”

“Oh, ’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?”

“Yep. All but dared me to prove it, so I tried. 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 a minute. 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?”

“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?”

“He never wanted me to work for him. He wanted me to get some job experience in a different corporate environment, different managers, different positions, finance, legal, work my way up. Apply like anybody else. No favors, no string pulling, no nepotism. You know. Pay my dues. I didn’t have a problem with that, and he didn’t care until he found out Claude Nocek—the Chouteau County prosecutor at the time—was courting me. Then he hit the roof.

“I thought he was straight-up lying to me, telling me shit 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 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. 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’d 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, taking bribes. People he didn’t like— He’d have them hassled and arrested for no reason, held without bail, generally made their lives miserable.

“The whole thing blew my mind. Naïve, sheltered Mormon kid straight out of law school thinking people like this are rare to nonexistent, but here I am seeing it. Everywhere. It was real, pervasive, and so cold. I was about ready to quit when Nocek told me I’d be expected to contribute to the widow’n’orphan fund. That was it. He then informed me I wouldn’t make it past the county line if I tried to leave, and backed it up by putting his lit cigar through the middle of it, then having a couple of deputies escort me back to my desk.

“So I bided my time ’til 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. Sure, Nocek was dirty, but I could do my part to make things a little more fair for people. 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.

“I’d gotten used to the way the office ran by that time and did my best to dodge Nocek, and I didn’t think anybody could be more evil than he was, but then I caught the Parley case.”

He stopped, picked at his food a little, his jaw clenched. Bryce said nothing because he’d been in the gallery for bits of Knox’s argument and had seen only a few of the horrific pictures Knox had been looking at for over a year.

Knox finally managed to gather himself. “So, after I was alleged to have murdered Parley and that circus died down, Nocek was happy I’d gilded his lily and left me alone for another couple of months. But it didn’t take long before he started dropping names of other people he thought needed a dose of lead poisoning. Getting through his to-do list would get me off the hook for the money, but what a choice, right? My time had run out and my back was to the wall. It was either kill or be killed, and I wasn’t keen on either. 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.”

“Mmmm, when a prosecutor turns vigilante—”

“Twice.”

“—you get the undying loyalty of every 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 the 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 chuckled. “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 done 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.”

“Everybody needs a hobby.”

Bryce chuckled.

“The stupid thing is, if Fen had asked me if I wanted OKH 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.”

“Then just wait until you’re forty.”

“Ha! You might be used to being alone and celibate, but I am not.”

Bryce had no idea what to say. 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.

“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.”

“There’ve been others?”

“Not since Leah, no,” Knox grumbled and went back to his meal. “But Fen believes 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 dropping through the floor into an inferno screaming Daddy!

Knox looked up then. “Oh, dude. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

Bryce shook his head to clear it. “I— It’s an agonizing way to die,” he croaked. 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. That took a while. “Go on.”

“You okay? You’re white as a sheet.”

Bryce cleared his throat. “Fine. Thanks. Giselle’s bookstore burned down and … ?”

After a long suspicious look, Knox decided to go with it. “Then Fen sent two thugs after her.”

“That explains the bullet hole.”

“Holes. They had to dig the other one out of her hip. That one didn’t hit anything vital, but her shoulder’s destroyed.” He paused. “But she’s alive and they aren’t. I will never forget that night. Two of ’em 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,” Knox said low. Bryce could hear the grief in his voice and his own grief started to seep back in. “Giselle 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’s 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. Used to. 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 clarified. “It’s business. She’s a convenient way for me to fulfill the terms of the proviso, and he’s trying to close down all avenues. And this is why I’m sleeping alone, which I loathe.”

It was so 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, I mean. 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, settling 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 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.

“I, being more than a little pissed off he killed my dad, have a huge motive to tell Fen to go fuck himself. It would be perfectly in character for us to pull the rug out from under him like that, so unless one of us married someone else, he’d never believe we wouldn’t. I wanted a quiet wedding so Fen wouldn’t find out about Rachel before we got it done, but Leah’s first wedding was as shitty as her husband was, and I couldn’t do that to her again. Then the financial press got hold of our wedding plans, went digging, found Rachel, blasted it to the world, so now the target was on her back.”

Bryce sighed. Leah had lived her life as a sacrificial lamb, and died as one.

“I hired a driver and bodyguards. Giselle went with her anywhere they couldn’t go. Wedding comes. Leah’s getting ready. Half hour to show time. Giselle’s so nervous she’s radioactive, which pisses Leah off. Big blowup between them. Leah tells me to make her go away. Heavy security. Fifteen minutes. What can possibly go wrong? Stupid shit that I am, I decide Leah should have her way on her wedding day.”

“Is that why she was so mad at the funeral?”

“That, and a shitload of guilt for not standing her ground, especially since two other bodyguards agreed with her. I should have trusted her instincts, but I didn’t want to upset Leah. If Giselle had been with her … ” He trailed off, shaking his head. When he spoke again, his voice was a bare croak. “Fifteen minutes. That was the only time in over a year she was ever alone. And it’s my fault. All my fault.”

He reached for a napkin and blew his nose.

“Well,” Bryce drawled, “who can blame a guy for taking his wife’s side over everybody else’s? That’s what good men do, isn’t it?”

Knox stiffened. “All right,” he snarled. “You made your point.” It took a while before Knox could collect himself. “So here we are, a year and a half later, and my plan to remain unattached 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 immediately confused. “What?”

Knox didn’t say anything for a while. “I met somebody,” he said low. “She’s twenty-three.”

“Uh … that’s … not you. What’s so special about her that you’d go from cougar to Lolita? Can’t find anybody your own age who’ll put up with you?”

He ignored that. “You ever heard the name Justice McKinley?”

“No.”

“Rising conservatarianish blogger. Amateur economist, still in law school. Getting a lot of heat from the conservative 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, wearing her lust on her sleeve while spilling her philosophical guts all over my feet, and fuck me if I didn’t love every second of it.”

“Have you—?”

“Oh, hell no! That’s the kind of bullshit my colleagues indulge in, and there is nothing attractive about ingenues.”

“Except this one.”

“Dammit.”

“So … ?”

“The idea is, 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.”

Bryce picked up his phone. “That’s almost three years from now.”

“I know,” he groaned. “Maybe it’ll go away by then.” His forehead dropped on the table with a thunk. “Midlife crisis,” Knox said, his voice muffled. “Has to be. How long do these last?”

The only thing Bryce could offer was noises of commiseration because he certainly wasn’t one to scoff at the concept that men of a certain age could snap.

The waitress came by again to clear their plates. He was mildly surprised to see two hours had flown by, yet they were nowhere near finished airing their grievances. “He can have baklava now. I’ll have two.”

Knox laughed and sat up slowly, as if he were an old man in a creaking body.

“All right. Next. Taight and OKH.”

“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 doesn’t bluff well if his heart’s not in it, 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.”

Sidekick. Bryce thought back to the odd way Taight and Giselle had interacted at the gallery. In that light, it made perfect sense.

“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 after Sebastian took over Senator Oth’s company and closed it down almost immediately.”

“Why?”

“Protect the employees’ 401(k)s.”

“From what?”

“Jep Industries had a huge embezzlement problem that Oth didn’t know about or understand. Sebastian knew something was fishy, got my ass on a plane and I barely caught it before the sky fell. The 401(k) funds were set to drain to an offshore account in a couple of weeks. If the admin account did anything, the transfer would start immediately, so we locked the access. He shut down the plant, laid everybody off, immediately sat ’em all down at computers, and had each employee roll their funds over to a new plan. Over a thousand individual accounts, all rolled over in one very long, hard day. The embezzlers had made no provision for that because why would they? If an employee can’t get into his account, that starts people asking questions.”

“Ingenious,” Bryce said approvingly.

Knox flashed him a cocky grin. “Thank you.” The baklava arrived and he dug in. “This was all hush-hush in case the embezzlers caught wind of it,” he said around a mouthful. “But in the middle of it, Fen petitioned the court to halt the shutdown, put J.I. in receivership and appoint him as trustee. We couldn’t make our real reason public record yet, so our argument was that since the global manufacturing sector, including OKH, heavily depends on J.I. products, it was a conflict of interest, and Fen was trying to make an end run around antitrust laws.

“We were losing because Fen had the resources to deal with it and the skill to do it right, so there was no good reason to deny the motion. We would have preferred to bring Fen into it, but that retirement fund was a good billion dollars and the clock was ticking faster than Fen makes decisions. Told my cousin Morgan to get his high-level cronies at the DoJ on it. He ran down the scheme to them and why we couldn’t bring it out in open court and why we needed immediate help. They came in, won the case, and made some new case law. Once the funds were safe, we explained to Fen and the court the whys and wheres and hows. The DoJ went off to find the perpetrators. Everybody went home and had a beer. Fucking broke our arms patting ourselves on the back.”

Bryce was confused. “So … that’s it? Everybody in the world needs Jep’s products, but the factory’s still shut down?”

“We folded it into Hollander Steelworks under a different brand through a couple of shell corps with Morgan’s name on them.”

Bryce stared at him, then laughed until he sprouted tears. Knox joined in.

It was good to laugh like this with a friend again, and it occurred to him that he didn’t have any really good friends. He’d been trudging through life alone since he awoke from his coma and preferred it that way, but the realization of exactly how alone he was nipped at the edges of his consciousness, made him uneasy. He stuffed that away where it would hopefully stay. Right now, he wanted to enjoy this camaraderie he hadn’t had in twelve years with … anybody.

Once they’d wound down a bit, Knox continued. “Fen was sweating bullets because scheduled plant-wide maintenance was coming up and he didn’t have the parts they needed. Except … they came in right on time. Same part numbers, same quality, same quantity, same everything except different company. Mind you, there wasn’t another company that could make what J.I. made with the same quality, and Fen will not use inferior products—”

“And suddenly there’s a brand-new company making the same stuff at the same quality level shipping on the same schedule, and if they already existed, why hadn’t they stepped into the breach of Jep’s closing.”

“Exactly. I will admit, I didn’t cover my tracks as well as I usually do because I didn’t have time, so he found the money trail. He took us back to court on the same antitrust grounds we used against him, but it went nowhere because on paper, the shell corps have nothing to do with the Steelworks. They belong to Morgan, but everybody knew what we’d done. The DoJ was pissed at us, but they couldn’t do anything because even though Fen could prove it to them, they wouldn’t be able to do it to a court’s satisfaction.”

“And that’s why he’s running for Senate.”

Knox waggled a finger. “Not then, either. Fen gave up, but when OKH tried to renew its contracts, Morgan sent him to Hollander, who told Fen to get steel and parts elsewhere.”

Bryce’s jaw dropped.

“I laughed my ass off because that was master-level trolling, but Sebastian was livid—”

“Because now Hollander is the one with the antitrust violations hanging over his head and it looks like Taight’s involved.”

“No. They’re Morgan’s and technically, he’s clean.”

“Why would he do that, though?”

“He and Sebastian were mission companions.”

Bryce stilled and heaved a disappointed sigh. “I don’t do loyalty anymore.”

Knox hesitated. “You seem to have learned the wrong lesson about that.”

“The price I paid for my honor,” Bryce snarled, “in remaining loyal to the people I was told deserved it was vastly disproportionate to my contribution to the circumstances.”

Knox conceded the point with a sympathetic sigh. “Anyway, as of right now, we’ve got the DoJ, the SEC, Roger Oth, and six other senators on our backs. But Oth’s the only one with a marginally 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. Fen wants our heads, and that’s the only way he can get ’em.”

“What’s the plan going forward?”

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. Furthermore, Morgan trashed his reputation, his career, and burned every relationship he’d ever made to get J.I. folded into the Steelworks He’s completely persona non grata in D.C., so now he has no power to help, either.”

“You have ninety-two cousins. Which one’s Morgan?”

“Ashworth.”

Bryce thought he’d heard wrong. “Uh … That Morgan Ashworth? Short list for Fed Chair or Treasury Secretary?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know you were related to him.”

“He’s always kept his family ties quiet. Didn’t want to be associated with OKH’s drama.”

“Did he know what he was doing when he put his name on J.I.’s rebrand?”

Knox scowled. “I would never intentionally throw my loved ones under the bus, which you should know by now.”

Bryce’s jaw ground.

“He’s an economist. He knew exactly would happen if he agreed to take on those shell corps. A thousand people were about to lose their job and life savings, which he might not have done just for that, but the waterfall effect on the global economy was massive. Somebody had to take that hit.”

“You don’t sound like you feel bad about it.”

Knox stared at him with an expression he’d never seen before, part ice-cold rage, part utter conviction of his righteousness, and snarled, “I did my part to rescue defenseless people twelve years ago.”

As soon as he realized what Knox meant, Bryce took a deep breath. “Point taken. Sorry.”

With a clenched jaw, he continued, “So here we are. From the outside, it looks like Sebastian started the OKH takeover for no reason. Nobody can figure out why Mitch refused to supply OKH, but it was a declaration of war, and everybody thinks Sebastian’s behind it. Fen’s fighting back and the financial press is carrying his water because Sebastian’s like Mary Poppins—he never explains anything and there is no way in hell he’s going to point fingers at Mitch.

“We exhausted every trick, favor, and ally we had to save that fund and keep the production lines open, but we did it. A billion dollars, a thousand jobs, the manufacturing sector is none the worse. Then Fen announced his run— Shit. We were scrambling. 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. The unions are talking Sebastian and Hollander up as the white knights because they know exactly who saved those jobs. Oth’s backing off, but Fen’s looking more and more like a victim and has gathered 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. He’s building his war chest right now and he’s about to officially announce his conversion to Team Red.”

“Okay, that gets him through a primary, but he’ll never win in a blue county.”

“He doesn’t have to. He’ll be the wall between us and Congress until after my fortieth birthday when Sebastian’s restored OKH to its former glory, he’s found someone to run it, Hollander’s supplying it again, and Morgan’s off the books. After that, Sebastian 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. Then Oakley can go back to Team Blue and try again.”

Bryce chuckled. “What do you mean, he doesn’t think politically? That’s brilliant.”

Knox looked up at him sharply. “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 bother 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!” he crowed. “Priceless!”

In a previous life, Bryce would have been embarrassed. Not today. He took another deep breath. “All right. Cross me off the list of people you need to convince to stay away from Fen.”

Knox suddenly grimaced. “Yeeeeaaaahhh. 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.”

It took half a second before rage exploded through Bryce’s head.

“Oh, simmer down,” Knox drawled. “I told you J.I. 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.”

It had never occurred to him to do that, and the idea that Knox thought he would …

“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 half an 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? And she was fidgety for months. We’ve never seen her like that. When she finally got home from the gallery 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 clarification, because he wasn’t about to assume anything else.

“Fine. 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. “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 isn’t consistent with the Bryce Kenard I know.”

Bryce grunted. “I don’t know why you have to ask. Meryl. Then it was the fire. Losing my kids.”

“That can’t be the only thing.”

He searched his memory, but came up with nothing. “I honestly don’t know. I lost some memories after the fire, but I don’t know if it was the fire or the coma. I think something significant happened early in my marriage.” He shrugged. “Then I read Atlas Shrugged.”

Knox burst out laughing. “Oh, damn,” he coughed. “That’s our family manifesto. If I’d known you’d go that nuts, I’d have shoved it in your hands in college.”

“I would’ve been horrified. Attracted, but horrified. Now … ” He shrugged. “What can I say? You were right.”

Knox, still chuckling, said, “You finally embraced your dark side and picked the right woman.”

“Yes, and she made sure to let me know she wouldn’t mind being picked. Now explain, and don’t skimp on the details.”

“We’re only a year and a half apart,” he replied amiably, “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.”

Bryce suddenly 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.”

Oh. Right. 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. Although Bryce was married by the time he went to law school, he knew how it worked.

“And Giselle? 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.”

Bryce thought he’d been hit in the head with a rock. “Virginity?!”

“Technically.”

Technically? “And she’s how old?”

“Thirty-six next month.”

Suddenly, Bryce forgot how language worked.

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 the weight of his guilt and regret.

“Are you done with the church?”

The question jolted Bryce out of his thoughts. “Um, maybe,” he muttered absently. “I think so. I don’t fit. I never did.”

Knox said nothing. He didn’t have to. Bryce knew his opinion and it wouldn’t have changed in twenty years.

“At the gallery,” Bryce began slowly, “she and I … ” He didn’t know what questions to ask. “She hasn’t been shy with me,” he said flatly. “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 said snidely 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 … I can’t say. I don’t know what she’d compromise for a relationship with a man who wants her and loves her. You got to her, yeah, but she doesn’t know what to do with you. She may use your attitude about the church as an excuse to keep you away from her.”

He wasn’t going back. Not for her, not for anybody. “So be it,” he said 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 read, 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! Why in hell would I introduce you to her when I knew she would fall for you? That would’ve been cruel, especially when I know you well enough to know you’d have fallen for 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 your taste, 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 she’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. “I hate that.”

“No, what you hate is that you didn’t tell your dad to fuck off, and do 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 push you to follow your gut.”

That found its mark and Bryce’s mouth tightened with the toxic stew of guilt, regret, and alienation that seemed to crash over him in waves …

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 anything right.

“Look,” Knox finally said. “It’s done, gone, kaput. Ding dong the bitch is dead. What are you going to do about Giselle?”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I … blew it,” he muttered wearily. “Twice.”

“Don’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 brooding. You want her. She wants you. I think you’re perfect for each other. 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. 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, Bryce Kenard’s name had haunted her all semester. Snatches of overheard conversation here. Classroom examples of clever courtroom strategy there. One professor had gone so far as to make 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, every breakdown 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 bad 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 after he’d all but called her a whore.

She swallowed the misery collecting in her throat.

The bottom of her world had dropped out and she had no idea 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 she’d put herself at the mercy of a strange man, with little more information than she’d had the first time she’d kissed him—

—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.

“She-SELL!”

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 until she was plastered to her car, although 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, she’d gone ahead with the plan to deceive him. The femme fatale she’d summoned to lure him up the stairs had been incredibly exciting, but it wasn’t her. She’d been so uncomfortable with the act, 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, mind tangled, 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.

“Wait. Please.”

He was closer now, a mere yard from her door. She wanted to look at him, but— “I can’t,” she answered as she started her car and put it in reverse, although 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 to 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 gradually stopped hiding the plea 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 humiliated and hurting more than she thought possible, she finally went on the offense 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, rage 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 less interesting than that.

Her hair: Dirty-dishwater blonde in a tight French twist.

Her eyes: Brown.

Her face: Plain, although perhaps sporting a little too much makeup.

Her body: Tall, big boned, 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 nine 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 resentment of 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, gardening, 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 and murmured, “Thank you,” in her perfectly modulated tone. Thank God, no trembles and no squeaks, although her life’s work hung in the balance.

Her heart raced. 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 and poised, as always, she stood by a chair at the defense table, but she didn’t 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 as chief financial officer. You and he never had any relationship other than work until, on September 11, 2001, you were with him in New York on a business trip. You witnessed the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, and under the stress of that—”

Under the stress of that?!

She resented the hell out of how casually he said that, as if being six blocks from a devastating terrorist attack and mass murder had been a mere inconvenience for her alone instead of a massacre she and thousands of other people witnessed, then had to navigate amidst chaos, terror, noise, fire, ash so thick it had permanently damaged her lungs, walking for miles barefoot, barely making Brooklyn by midnight with raw soles and an aching body, nowhere to sleep, nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no change of clothes, no way to get home, no supplies, coated head to toe in dust, and the memory of seeing a man jump to his death from one of the top floors of the north tower—from exactly where she should have been that morning.

She had escaped an agonizing death by fifteen minutes.

The trauma was indelible. The survivor’s guilt was almost unbearable.

“—you married him.”

The only person she’d had to lean on then was David, and while he’d been handy in the immediate crisis, he’d capitalized on it immediately.

“During your marriage, he raped and beat you, but his behavior at home was so at odds with his history and 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 and gather evidence.”

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Judge Wilson looked over his spectacles at her. “You should’ve called the police as soon as you figured it out.”

Eilis had a bitter history with law enforcement, so calling for help was far from her first instinct. She also hadn’t trusted them to understand the accounting.

“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’s the victim here. She can’t be blamed and 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 upon 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’m not out to punish or destroy you.” That was reassuring. “I know what you’ve been through and I regret I wasn’t allowed to present your trauma on 9/11 to the jury.”

“Counselor!” the judge barked.

That was a direct hit at the judge for disallowing it, and Eilis deeply appreciated Knox’s vehement advocacy for bringing it out—

“You really do want a couple of nights in jail, don’t you?”

—and his willingness to risk a contempt citation for referencing it.

But he ignored the judge and continued. “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 genuinely cared about her enough to give her the best man for the job in spite of his personal feelings? That would be consistent with what she knew of him.

Or did it 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, because her only friend in the world had turned on her.

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 needed someone to lean on for a while, someone stronger than she was.

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 into her building 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, achingly, heart-stoppingly handsome he was. Because she’d only heard the horror stories, she 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 still didn’t know what to think.

She didn’t want to hate King Midas in the abstract or otherwise. She’d observed the OKH debacle silently from afar ever since the man had begun his hostile takeover. The news of Knox’s engagement meant nothing because the woman was significantly older than Knox and had no children.

But then it came out that she 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 abduction and 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 returned to being the wild card, collateral damage unless he could scrounge up some woman brave, desperate, or stupid enough to take those odds, especially with a child in the mix.

Taight’s war on Fen had become important to Eilis. She needed him to take OKH away from Fen. Now … 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 continued up the main aisle alone, unnoticed, although how such a man could go unnoticed was beyond her. If he looked up, he would see her, but he didn’t. His initial inspection over, 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 beneath 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 said, 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 an impeccably constructed fraudulent identity and references. Anybody could have made that mistake. Senator Oth did.”

“Roger Oth,” he returned, “is an idiot and Jep Industries wasn’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. She could see no reason for this receivership, so she found herself angrier 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 the inside of her skull, demanding 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 anticipated. The intimidation and discomfort men felt when they expected a termagant but got a quiet society matron who forced them to pay homage to her as a lady never went away. It made her completely unpredictable and kept them permanently off balance.

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 an excellent 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 a complete 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, although 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, vertical scar running from her right eyebrow to the middle of her 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 be here any more than you want me to be. I 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, her pitch and cadence perfectly crafted. “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 folders. 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, and he’d already gone through this with Jep Industries.

Unlike J.I., though, 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.

He 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, which was uncharacteristically thoughtful.

He sent a text: FOUND THE ART THX

“Mr. Taight—”

“Sebastian, please.”

“Mr. Taight,” she went on in that passionless, ladylike quasi-monotone 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 an eyeful. Unlike all the women Sebastian had found attractive enough to approach at society or business functions, Miss 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’d 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 plummeted, 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 and an excellent memory,” 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 his kindergarten teacher and he needed simple words, “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 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.”

The split-second flash of heartbreak 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 deep, 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’m otherwise occupied.”

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 out of fear of him. Unnerved by him. Unable to distinguish threatening 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 in Theis Park 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 because 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 risk her job by showing up at work.

She hadn’t returned her mother’s phone calls or emails in two weeks, and barely texted 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 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 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 but she pulled away. “No more. I’m done with this.”

“Done with what?”

“Done with you and the Shakespearean tragedy that is your life. Done being on your last-resort list, and I’m still pissed about what you said last fall—” I’d rather end up with you than no one. “—and then the first thing you want to do is kiss just to make yourself feel better.”

He groaned. “Look, I’m really sorry about that.”

“Done with OKH. I’m tired. 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 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. “Sebastian sicced you on me?”

“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, hoping 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 passion—my life’s work—stolen from me, something mine, that I built. 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 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 that’ll cover me for a retail establishment. I’m also going to give Sebastian an invoice for consulting fees, and one of you better 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 most immediate 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 enraged her. “I don’t give a shit about my capabilities! You don’t care about anyone else’s capabilities! Pulling a Fen, thinking that making me work harder than anyone else is doing me a favor. I wouldn’t be there at all if it weren’t for you. My life revolves around you. I can’t go to class without someone teasing me about you, then you kiss me in front of my classmates, so now I’m going to get grilled about that. I can’t even go on campus without it being about you, and then you turn around and punish me for it!”

“Is that what you think?” he demanded. “I’m punishing you?”

“What else can I think? 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 KC School District, or becoming a plumber! I want my fucking bookstore back!”

His jaw tightened and his nostrils flared. “You won’t 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, I’ll sue the university. Not you. The university. My complaint will stick and I’ll make you so toxic you’ll never be allowed to teach anywhere ever again.”

His mouth tightened. “Fine,” he gritted. “Is that all?”

“For now. Don’t expect me to thank you.” She pulled her tank top up to mop her tear-drenched face 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 mumbled. “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 said nothing.

“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 took a deep breath. “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’d 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 pretty quick. But then she died.”

“Was murdered.”

“Was murdered. Once I grieved and everything got back to normal, I kept going back to that moment and wondering if taking the chance I would never have taken the first time is … ”

She waited for him to finish the thought, but after a while, she said slowly, “I think … you need 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 seeing Remington Steele that night at his house, when she was a fat, stinky mess. “Does that make me bad, still carrying a married man around when I can’t stop thinking about someone else?”

Again he was silent. Then, “Huh. That’s … interesting. Why didn’t you ever tell me about that?”

“Same reason it took you two years to talk 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 in general don’t do well without a woman in their lives, and you certainly never have, demanding my attention 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.

They were silent for a while, listening to the hum of people’s conversations, the buzz of traffic, the flow of water over the Volker waterfall into 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 grumbled and threw some more corn. “And that adds to your guilt.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “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 not old enough to know what she wants or what love is.”

That got Giselle’s back up, considering her own situation. “That’s not 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. Or not.”

“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 laughed. “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.” Indeed. She had a dead dream, two gunshot wounds, and a bum shoulder to remind her. “I just need to keep her attention for the next two 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.

“She’s got a lot of growing up to do. She didn’t get it in college. She won’t 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.”

“That’s your fault.”

Giselle shrugged. “She’s all brains and wit, no spine, but she thinks she wants to be an activist 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 bad-ass 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’ll find out if she’s suited to criminal law, if she can tolerate how justice really works. But even if she doesn’t like it, 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. Win-win.”

“No,” he mumbled. “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.

He hopped back up on the table with a laugh. 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?”

“It doesn’t matter who. 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.”

“You know why I’m so good at what I do?”

“Not really. I don’t think of you that way.”

“Huh. Okay, 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. “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 for effect, and drove straight to OKH. She ignored the front lobby receptionist who demanded she sign in. She ignored security that, caught completely off guard, scrambled 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 Uncle Oliver, Knox’s father, 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 didn’t want that. This was what gave her the upper hand with Fen. It enabled her to see his motives and still enjoy sitting on the sidelines of life with him, gossiping, 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 midcentury bank lobby. They watched her warily, this sacrilegious woman appearing in the CEO’s office wearing a loose, nearly transparent linen shirt, tight leathers and boots, 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.”

“You don’t have the balls to do it anywhere.”

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 or fast 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’ve been sulking about that ever since, 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?”

“Don’t be disingenuous. You pulled a Cinderella and he rearranged Sebastian’s face. It was obvious to everyone.”

That caught her up short. “Wait, what?”

Fen blinked. “Ah, you made your distinguished exit, he came back, Sebastian deliberately provoked him, and he didn’t appreciate the humor.”

Giselle suddenly felt a bit cherished, and she liked it. “Didn’t know.”

“Mmm, but now 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, because you don’t seem terribly invested in a temple marriage anymore and he’s 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 muttered as he concentrated on tending his nose. “Deceit’s not your style.”

“He doesn’t know me, so that’s not the way he’s going to see it.”

Suddenly, Fen laughed. “He’ll forgive you. 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. “I do not 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 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 in case you are elected 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.”

“The problem is, I don’t trust you.”

“Really,” she said flatly. “You went there. Murderer. Adulterer. Liar. Thief. Did I miss anything?”

“I prefer ‘scalawag’ if you must get nasty about it. Let me rephrase: I won’t trust you until you’ve got a marriage certificate on your wall. You’ll do a whole lot of things to get under my skin, but one thing you won’t do is cheat on your man, and Kenard is not a man who’ll 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, but she’s thinking about doing it herself since no one else can.”

Giselle snorted. “She knows where I live.” She paused, then decided to go for broke. “I’m just curious,” she began, gesturing to indicate her good faith. “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. When the war was over, 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 execution. And if you think I don’t know who cleaned up after his foray into vigilantism, you’re not as smart as your PhD looks.”

Giselle pursed her lips.

“Uh huh. The fact is, Trudy was terrified.”

“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.

“Hm,” she finally hummed because she had to make some kind of conversational noise.

“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 seemed to really believe that. How willing he’d been to believe it back then, Giselle didn’t know. “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.”

But that was an excuse too far, and she huffed. “Fen, you know that’s bullshit. She’s always thought of Knox as a useful nuisance.”

He shrugged. “Okay, point taken. But,” he added tightly, “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 gone so far as to discuss 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 went 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.”

“Fine. 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,” he said, offering his hand for her to shake, which 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 Kenard’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. Oakley saw her, tried to catch her attention, but she ignored him. Although 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 banged open and although Giselle took no real notice, a flash of dull, frizzy, indeterminate red did catch in her periphery. 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,” she 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. Never 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 neverending 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 it 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 an arrogant, careless doctor and died as a direct result.” His client had bowed her head and her tears fell, darkening her clothes. That wasn’t an act, 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 it 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 asking for money for my client. No amount of money can make up for the death of your child.” How well he knew that. “I’m not asking you to pass judgment on the medical community. I’m not 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 butcher at a time so maybe Melissa Thixton’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, his heart suddenly thundering, unable to believe what he was seeing, then turned to sit. It seemed like an eternity before court adjourned for the weekend, but then it was, and he arose to clutch 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 close, feeling his client’s grief and his own wrapped up in it, but now …

“Stalker,” he muttered, still feeling the sting of Lilith’s parting shot at the library. He’d be damned if he appeared too eager to talk to her after that.

She waited patiently as he dawdled. Then, when they were the only two people left in the courtroom, he ambled 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 the frame, facing west, 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 flamboyant black hair scarf with a demure 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’d decided to get back at her for calling him a stalker by standing her up. She didn’t blame him. “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’d 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 her car shifted as if someone had leaned against it, 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 as if startled. He said nothing for a long time. “You said you gave me the wrong idea about you. Is that what you mean?” His voice was grainy and hoarse.

She hesitated. “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 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, although 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 the car frame, 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 … Maybe? 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, although her heart was pounding.

“Eight months after that,” he said right over her, “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,” 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. Her 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. “Ehhh,” he began doubtfully, “Not … really. 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? 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’s eyes widened. “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.”

“Geeeee, 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 drop it 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, although 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 jealous, mad you weren’t mine and I’ve been mad about it for two years. I really didn’t think about it too much.” He looked 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, including men I find attractive.”

He tensed. “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 and she suddenly saw the humor in what she’d said. His expression turned wry. “Do you kiss every strange man who hurts your feelings?”

That pulled a puff of 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.”

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. “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. By the time she found a parking spot, she was a complete wreck.

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 to find his vivid green eyes studying her. “I’m hungry,” he repeated softly, although this time the words held so much, much more. “Come eat with me. Talk with me. Laugh with me.”

★