by Moriah Jovan
Oh, shit.
He’d obviously forgotten to tell her. He carefully explained about the school program— “You know, kind of an end-of-the-year exhibition to justify the arts budget.” —and that he had wanted to take flowers for the girls.
She stared at him stonily for a long time after he’d stopped speaking. Finally, she said, “You’d rather go spend two hours watching a bunch of little kids singing and playing instruments off key, looking at their bad art, than spend a quiet evening at home?”
When she put it that way . . .
“No, I wouldn’t rather, but it’s good politics and every opportunity counts. We can be quiet at home after.”
“Ah, I see. This is your way of poking at me about having kids.”
He sighed. “No, it’s not. I promised them I’d come.”
Her mouth pursed. “All right, Eric.” Then her eyebrow cocked. “Fuck me first.”
Eric’s mouth stretched in a slow grin. “Yes, ma’am.”
After a brief stop at the store for a bouquet of pink daisies, Eric and Annie strode into Chouteau Elementary that evening like the power couple they were. Seeing as how half these kids’ parents kept his dojo in the black, and three quarters of them might actually vote for him come his first election next year, he felt it was wise to schmooze whenever he got the chance.
The program was an agonizing affair, that was for sure, but the auditorium was dark and cool, so he dozed through most of it (time well spent, all things considered). The girls liked the flowers he handed out amongst them and the boys preened with Eric’s effusive praise. He spoke with parents either as their kids’ karate teacher and/or the Chouteau County prosecutor, as he and Annie strolled around looking at all the bad art.
Constant schmoozing kept him in the citizenry’s good graces. Most of those who knew his history liked the romance of his reformation, and those who didn’t know the story got it from Eric’s mouth.
It didn’t hurt that he’d been handpicked and trained for the job by the same man who’d tried him for Simone Whittaker’s rape.
* * * * *
12: Long-Legged Snipe
If Vanessa had known he would be at Nephew’s exhibition—and why?—she would have flat refused. She saw him in the lobby between the auditorium and the gym, and her heart thudded in her chest and ears. She couldn’t catch her breath. She hadn’t seen him so clearly since the televised press conference in January and not at all in the thirteen years before that, give or take. He was more beautiful in person than on TV.
Tall. Six foot three on a short day.
Lean. A body hardened by karate and whatever other sports he was into.
Dark. Equal parts Italian and Osage. Black eyes. Silky black hair that lost nothing for being excruciatingly short instead of halfway down his back. Thin, close-cropped, elegant Donegal beard that emphasized the sharp angles of his chin and jaw.
Very expensively dressed. If she had to guess, she’d peg that as Ralph Lauren; not too flashy for a school event. Just flashy enough to call attention to his status in this county. He certainly had come up in the world, especially with the gorgeous blonde on his arm, dressed just as expensively.
Vanessa turned away when she saw him flash a smile at whatever Annie had said. Vanessa could barely look at him at all, much less see him snuggling with a woman she’d semi-idolized, the cheer captain, four years older than Vanessa and unfailingly kind to her. Eric and Annie very graciously chatted up his constituency.
Smart man, that one.
And Annie, well, she’d always been practical about her education and her future, wanting to make her own way in the world without depending on a man. Annie’s relentless and very vocal ambition had molded Vanessa’s outlook on her own future as much as Knox’s benevolent tyranny had, as much as Giselle’s pragmatic philosophies had, as much as Sister Jelarde’s kindness had.
Vanessa needed to get out of here. Fast. Before she puked.
Out of Chouteau Elementary, out of Chouteau County, back to the Ozarks where she belonged—and in bed with Nash immediately.
. . . small-time prosecutor . . . country star . . .
“Shit,” she muttered.
“Aunt Vanessa?”
Nephew’s mutter startled her. She looked over her shoulder to see him hunched over, his head down and his hands shoved in his pockets.
“Hi, Nephew,” she said, because she still didn’t know his name.
When she’d picked him up at her parents’ house, only her father had been home, naturally. Pops had been asleep in his decrepit wheelchair in front of the TV and she hadn’t had the heart to wake him. It was probably the only moment of peace he got.
She’d nosed her way into Nephew’s room, which was surreally filthy. Cat shit. Mouse shit. Clothes everywhere, none clean. And he’d stunk.
“Go take a shower. Now.”
The boy had taken one look at her face and obeyed without a word. She rummaged around his room holding her nose, looking for something fairly clean and found it on the floor, protected by the mounds of relatively clean items on top of it.
She’d opened the bathroom door and tossed the clothes in, not particularly caring that he squeaked with outraged modesty.
And while he did as instructed, she’d picked her way back into the living room to that ridiculous shrine, the largest uninterrupted wall in the house covered in glossies and magazine shots and newspaper clippings, over which a large hand-lettered banner proclaimed:
R.I.P. NASH PIPER 3/15/72 – 1/1/07
Under the banner hung a spiral-bound deck of three-by-five cards that served as a primitive counter for how many months, weeks, and days it had been since Nash Piper had disappeared. With a wicked chuckle, she’d whipped out her BlackBerry, taken a picture, and sent it to the enshrined.
Once Nephew had finished showering and was dressed presentably with minimal odor (she’d made him use the deodorant), they’d left.
Now, in the middle of a school hall teeming with vivacious children chattering at their parents, Vanessa looked at this twelve-year-old boy who was Simone’s legacy to the world. Turquoise eyes, olive complexion. Except for the blond hair—and who knew where that had come from—he was a mini-Simone, complete with shattered ego.
Suddenly she wondered if she would go to hell for leaving him here with her mother.
“Did you— Uh, how’d you like it?”
“You did really well,” Vanessa lied, and was rewarded with a cautiously hopeful expression. She didn’t really know how well he’d done; he’d been buried somewhere in the middle of the sixth-grade “tenor” section. Such as it was. “I’m very proud of you.”
His shoulders came up a bit. “Do you— Uh, you wanna go into the gym and see what I did in art class?”
Oh, hell no.
“Sure, after you tell me your name,” Vanessa said. “’Cause I sure don’t know.”
“Oh. Um, it’s Eric,” he muttered and looked down at the floor.
Vanessa’s throat stopped up. “Simone named you Eric?”
“Cipriani,” he added, low enough that she thought she’d misheard, then he sighed and she knew she hadn’t misheard.
Vanessa closed her eyes and took a deep breath, feeling as if she’d just stepped back into the trailer park. She would definitely go to hell if she left this child here with her mother. She couldn’t repay Dirk or Knox for their protection, but she could—and should—pay it down the line.
“You want to come home with me and live?”
His head popped up and his eyes sparkled like Fourth of July fireworks. “For real?”
“You understand I’m not your mother or your grandmother, and I’ll ride your ass if you screw up, right?”
She could see the sudden doubt in his expression.
“Uh huh. That’s the way it is with me. You won’t be able to get away with anything, much less whatever it is you do here. But. I also won’t slap you upside the head for no reason and you won’t live in filth and you won’t go hu
ngry.”
Nephew stared at her for a moment, as if wondering how much worse his life could get with Vanessa demanding decent behavior. “I guess I could try it out for a while,” he finally said.
Vanessa shook her head. “Nope. No tryouts. You stay or you come with me, but whichever you choose, it’s a done deal.”
He was silent for a moment, then, decisively, “Okay, yeah. Why not?”
“Because she’s not your guardian, that’s why not.”
Nephew groaned at that stern male voice, and Vanessa stiffened. She hadn’t heard it since January. Real, not out of a speaker system, it was deeper, richer.
She slowly turned to face the Chouteau County prosecutor and Annie.
His eyes widened and he gulped. “Vanessa.” It was a whisper, a caress, and she felt it all the way to the depths of her soul.
She looked at an equally stunned Annie and nodded slightly in polite acknowledgment of her presence before turning back to him. “Eric.” She would remain calm and collected—no joy, no bitterness. Pride. Keep the chin up. Don’t think about the trailer park. “What would I have to do to become his guardian?”
Eric hesitated for a moment, his expression of astonishment changing slowly to one of assessment, as if her motives might not be pure, then he looked down at his namesake. She wished she could tell what he was thinking. She was sure he knew how she’d felt about him way back when; after all, she’d been just thirteen. He’d been eighteen and laid half the girls in town by that time. He’d have known all the signs.
Now she could only hope to hide her emotions as an adult woman who was looking at an incredibly handsome, successful man who had a knockout fiancée on his arm, a woman Vanessa had always respected.
“Junior,” he said. “Do you want Vanessa to be your guardian?”
“Anything to get away from you,” the boy grumbled. “And grandma.”
Eric Original Recipe pursed his lips, then looked back at Vanessa. She could feel the familiar heat gather within her, as it had done from the first moment she had ever seen him—but now she knew what it was: desire.
She couldn’t afford that and she flashed a politely apologetic smile at Annie to ground herself. Unlike Eric, who seemed oblivious to Vanessa’s distress, Annie appeared to know exactly what was going on and simply watched, waiting patiently to see how it would all shake out.
Annie was probably used to watching women drool over her fiancé, anyway, and Vanessa couldn’t hope to compete with her classic Scandinavian beauty.
Even if she wanted to.
Which she didn’t.
“I can’t see your mother letting him leave,” Eric said finally. “She uses him like a knife against me and he suffers more for it than I do.”
Yes, Vanessa knew very well how her mother reveled in such nastiness. “She smacks him around. His room is disgusting and he hasn’t had laundry done for him in— Well, I couldn’t say. Months, maybe. He’s probably malnourished. I was at that age.”
She felt, rather than saw, Annie’s start of surprise. No, Annie wouldn’t have known how miserable Vanessa’s home life had been. Four years older than Vanessa and immersed in her ruthless pursuit of her goals, Annie would’ve had no reason to know or care how her youngest cheerleader fared at home.
“You know how Simone was,” Vanessa continued calmly, refusing to allow the toxic stew of emotion inside her to bubble up. “My mother’ll turn him into Simone, Boy Version. Probably sooner than later.”
Eric nodded. “You’re right about that. When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning. I would have left this morning, but he asked me to come tonight, so I stayed.”
She felt Nephew move closer to her when she said that, and, surprised, she looked at him, then wrapped her arm around his shoulders to pull him into her.
Eric had not missed the gesture and said, “Listen, can you stick around a few days? I may be able to whip something up for you. Get it fast-tracked through family court.”
Wow. Not only were they actually having an adult conversation, he was offering to help a boy who had to be a thorn in his side. It was remarkable they were having any kind of conversation at all. She wondered what difference it might make if Annie weren’t there listening, observing.
But she had to know. “Um— Is he—?” Vanessa could feel herself blush. “Eric Two, is he—?”
“No,” Eric snapped, his face suddenly hard, his nostrils flaring. “He’s not, and you should know that better than anybody.”
Vanessa gasped, feeling as if her chest had caved in.
Annie stared at Eric in shock. “Oh. My. God.”
His mouth tightened and he looked at the floor, shoved his hand in his pocket. He took a deep breath. Held it. Let it go. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “You have a right to know if the court grants your request.”
It was all Vanessa could do to keep her composure, though her nose stung and she wanted to curl up into a ball in some dark corner somewhere. But she couldn’t.
Hi. I’m Chef Granny Whittaker and it’s time to whip up some Vittles.
Her alter ego wouldn’t let her.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “It’s nothing he and I both haven’t heard ad nauseam since I started working in the prosecutor’s office and it’s just gotten worse in the last four months or so. I’m sick of hearing it.”
Especially from you.
Vanessa started when her phone buzzed. “Excuse me,” she murmured, and pulled out her BlackBerry to check the text message:
I GOTCHA SHRINE RIGHT HERE DOLL—CUM SUCK IT.
Still fighting tears, it took her a long moment of staring to process it, but once she had, she began to laugh, feeling a strange combination of relief and irony and affection wash over her.
Trust Nash to make her laugh right when she needed it. She quickly thumbed a smart-ass reply, then put her gadget back in her pocket, but her smile faded when she looked up at Eric again.
“I have a meeting Wednesday afternoon I must go to,” Vanessa said, trying to stay on some sort of emotional level. “Can we get this done by end of business Tuesday or so? Or will I need to come back to get him?”
“I hope so, yeah,” he replied, clearly chagrined. He swallowed, then said with forced decisiveness, “So, uh, yeah. All right. Yeah. Uh, come on up to my office Monday morning. I’ll send a deputy out for your mother and Eric, Ju—uh, Two.”
“Thank you.”
Eric cast Vanessa a short nod without actually looking at her and turned, his hand splayed out over Annie’s back.
But Nephew reached out hesitantly to touch Original Recipe, halting him. “Thanks, Eric,” he said quietly.
Eric One finally smiled as he looked at the boy—that genuine, wonderful smile that had always made Vanessa catch her breath and want to smile, too. “You’re welcome, kid. Now you won’t have to get yourself arrested to get a hot meal.”
Vanessa saw Nephew’s face redden, and she bit her lip. Looked down. Blinked away the tears.
“Nice to see you again, Vanessa,” Annie said with the exactly appropriate tone of voice to extricate all of them as gracefully as possible from this tangled moment in time.
“You, too, Annie.” Again polite nods between Vanessa and Annie. Again Vanessa feeling like she’d just crawled back into the Darwinian goo of the trailer park.
. . . you should know that better than anybody.
She hadn’t felt that low, that inferior—that classless—since she’d left this godforsaken town.
* * * * *
13: Not a Moment Too Soon
Damn Simone.
Eric escorted Annie toward the exit, which was where they’d been headed when he’d stumbled into that conversation. Eric hadn’t recognized the woman from behind, and had only meant to head off a possible abduction. Damn Simone to hell.
And damn Vanessa for having turned into the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Eric slid a look at Annie, whose demeanor confused him. He didn’t
think he’d ever seen Annie so positively livid—and never at him.
“All right, Annie, which part pissed you off the most?” he sighed.
She grabbed a handful of his lapel and dragged him off the school’s sidewalk and across the lawn toward the parking lot. Once they were alone in a copse of trees, she stopped, planted her hands on her hips and started to pace, her head down. Eric waited, because whatever she had to say, he deserved. Finally she stopped, held up a hand, and said, “I want to make something very clear right up front. I like Vanessa. I’ve always liked her. I have no quarrel with her. Per se.”
“Okay,” Eric said warily.
“You and me,” she said pointing between them. “We don’t love each other.”
“Right.”
“We get along and live together without fighting. We have good sex. We think alike and we’re both very well educated. We have history.”
“Right.”
“You need a trophy wife to get elected, and I need to be First Lady so I can get a head start on my early globetrotting retirement.” She stopped. Thought. He braced himself for whatever she meant to throw at him. “All this time,” she said, “you never said a word. I knew you had issues about whoever it was that proved you were innocent, mostly because of that fucking guilt trip Knox put you on to make sure you did something with your life. But I never thought— And you never told me— What, did you think I was going to go to Glenn and give him her name?”
“So that’s what you’re pissed about?” he demanded, immediately incensed. “That I kept it to myself? Because I was obligated to? Legally?”
“No, I’m upset that you kept from me that it was Vanessa.”
Eric stared at her, suddenly confused. “Okay . . . ?”
Her nostrils flared and her voice was tight with anger when she spoke. “I want,” she ground out, “something of my own without having to take the crumbs off Vanessa Whittaker’s table.”