Stay (Dunham series #2)

by Moriah Jovan

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

  “Why should I have?”

  “Because I’m your lawyer.”

  “Being my lawyer doesn’t entitle you to know every single detail about my life,” Knox retorted. “I have a whole ’nother life at Whittaker House, which I like a whole lot, and I wasn’t about to mix that one with this one, which sucked a big fat cock about ninety-five percent of the time. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to expose her to my taint and all the financial scrutiny I’ve had to deal with for the last fifteen years.”

  “Wait a minute. Why didn’t Whittaker House show up in any of the financial records we turned over to the FBI?”

  “Funneled it through my cousin Morgan.”

  “Your family is the fucking Mormon Mafia,” Eric grumbled.

  “So what’s with the sudden interest?”

  “We ran into Vanessa last night,” Annie offered, “and he had an instant hard-on, so I dumped his ass. He went to ask her to breakfast this morning and since he’s back in record time, I’ll assume she shot him down cold.”

  Eric slouched and glared at Annie, but Knox began to chuckle, which turned into a rolling guffaw. “Shit. That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

  “She’s on the cover of Esquire,” Annie said.

  “Yeah, and Maxim.”

  Annie immediately turned back to the computer.

  “And Sebastian painted her.”

  “He sure did.”

  “Which means he fucked her.”

  “Yes. She was his last lover before he met Eilis. By the way, both of them think I’m too stupid and/or oblivious to have figured that out, so I allow them to continue to think that.”

  Annie sat back and began to laugh in earnest and Eric thought this must be the next-to-worst day of his life.

  “You’re taking this awfully well, Annie,” Knox said politely.

  “Little bump in my road, is all. Does Vanessa switch hit possibly? Say yes.”

  “I’d really rather not think about those things, but I don’t believe so, no.”

  “Damn.”

  “So, uh, Eric, do you have anything to contribute to this conversation or am I stuck with trying to fix Annie and Vanessa up?”

  “Fuck you,” Eric muttered. “She wouldn’t even talk to me this morning.”

  “Well, no wonder,” Annie said, “after what you said to her last night. Damn near made her cry.”

  “What did you say to her, Eric?” Knox asked calmly, although that sudden edge to his voice meant he’d gone into protective mode.

  Eric reluctantly began to relay the conversation—

  “She’s taking Junior home with her?” Knox asked incredulously. “Why didn’t I think of that? It’s the perfect solution for everybody.”

  “And then he insulted her when she asked if Junior really was his kid.”

  Knox groaned intermittently throughout Annie’s recitation. Eric had never felt like such a bastard in his life, but it had all been so sudden—

  “You know, Hilliard,” he burst out, angry and frustrated beyond bearing, “this bites. The girl saves my life and you just . . . never tell me any of this?”

  “Look,” Knox said, “I don’t know why you’re mad at me. You never said a word about her, so I assumed you didn’t want to dig up old history. I was respecting your privacy. If you’d told me you had something you wanted to get squared away with her and would I grease the wheels a little bit, I’d’ve helped you. But you didn’t. You’ve got deputies and troopers and the FBI available as your personal Google and you know how to work a computer. And it’s not like she’s a nobody. She’s fucking famous and if you’d googled just once, you’d have found all this out on your own, so I thought you were deliberately avoiding her. But then you got an eyeful. Don’t call me up on a Sunday morning to yell at me for not reading your mind and anticipating your needs.”

  “Yeah, that’s on you,” Annie agreed, now staring at the cover of Maxim that Vanessa graced, lying on wet grass, her eyes closed, her hair—again in those braids and dreadlocks—all her most interesting parts covered by pink and white blossoms . . .

  . . . her pouty mouth around a hot pink popsicle.

  Sucking it.

  “Why wasn’t she at the wedding?” Eric demanded.

  There was a slight pause. “We, uh, put on a masquerade on New Year’s Eve,” Knox said almost reluctantly. “It brings in a third of our yearly revenue. Celebrities go, the überwealthy. They go for her, so she has to be there. Part of what makes Whittaker House so popular is that a famous chef—who also happens to be a Ford model—meets and greets, serves personally, parties with everyone else. Her fame was about half our collateral when we started out. The painting itself was the other half.”

  “Yeah, okay, I’ll buy that, but there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Deep breath. “Justice wanted her to be her third bridesmaid and I wanted you to be my groomsman,” he said quietly.

  Annie gasped. “That would’ve put her and Eric together.”

  “Yes. And she declined.”

  Eric felt pain slice through him and he closed his eyes. Now, the only version of Vanessa he saw in his mind was the little girl who’d saved his life, who’d only wanted a little attention from the bad boy of Chouteau High.

  The look of devastation on her little face.

  The hurt in her turquoise eyes last night.

  The anger this morning.

  “Well, could you—”

  “No, I couldn’t. I’m not going to. You’re going to have to figure out what you want to do about it and how. If anything. And good luck with that if you try. She’s not the most accessible woman who ever lived. If she has a love life at all, nobody knows about it.”

  “But—”

  “Shut it, Eric. You’re pissed ’cause you got caught with your pants down and your dick in your hand.”

  Click.

  “Eric,” Annie said with a chuckle, arising to continue packing. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing with women all these years besides putting it in and pulling it out, but you better get a clue before you can’t even do that anymore.”

  * * * * *

  14: Last Call

  Monday morning saw two of Bryce’s attorneys on Eric’s doorstep, salivating for the chance to get back into a courtroom. He divvied up the caseload as he always had and saw the top of his desk for the first time in almost four months, which

  enabled him to start the paperwork for Vanessa’s guardianship of Junior.

  Eric had spent the night on YouTube watching episodes of Vittles: Gourmet Weeds and Roadkill, featuring Vanessa “Granny” Whittaker in her own studio kitchen in the Ozarks, preparing all sorts of wild vegetation and exotic animals. On her premiere episode, she’d made a third of the outrageously disgusting dishes mentioned in The Beverly Hillbillies.

  Utterly telegenic, her smoky voice cheerful, her hair clipped haphazardly on top of her head, clad in jeans and a pink tee shirt, she walked around her kitchen barefoot while she chopped, mixed, baked, and did what television chefs did—only with weeds.

  And raccoon.

  And skunk.

  And ’possum.

  And coyote.

  “’Possums are mean things,” she tossed out conversationally as she cubed the meat in front of the camera for a stew. “So don’t shed any tears. And coyotes eat cats, but they tend to be rangy. We have a whole coyote episode coming up, and we’ll make a couple of terrific marinades you can use for cheap cuts of domestic meat, too.”

  Eric dressed for work with a combination of dread and anticipation.

  “Oh, hey, Eric,” Annie had called to him on his way out the door. “Give her my phone number, ’kay?” She’d laughed when he flipped her off over his shoulder.

  At nine, Vanessa strutted into the courthouse dressed in an ankle-length pale pink linen skirt that emphasized the generous curve of her hips. The long slit up the back showed off the be
autiful curve of her legs, made more so by the pink suede sandals on her feet. She wore a nicely tailored white linen button-down blouse with fine white embroidery and French cuffs.

  Her streaked hair was in a prim twist at the back of her head and studded with pearls— businesslike enough to be taken seriously; flashy enough to let everyone know they were dealing with wealth and class and that yes, she would get her way.

  In his mind, all her personae began to blend and morph into a repeating loop: The hurt little girl. The angry woman. The cover girl chef. The television personality. The regal businesswoman.

  The nice, pretty lady he’d met at Chouteau Elementary.

  LaVon had been subpoenaed to present Junior immediately with a deputy escort in case she felt like thumbing her nose at Eric. Dirk volunteered to be appointed the boy’s guardian ad litem. Considering Dirk had grown up in the same trailer park with Vanessa, occasionally serving as her bodyguard when things got a little rough with LaVon or various neighborhood thugs, he was eager to argue Vanessa’s case once again.

  That was something else Eric hadn’t known until Dirk gave him a rundown of his own history with the Whittakers.

  “Why didn’t you motherfuckers ever tell me any of this?”

  “By ‘em-effers,’ plural,” Dirk drawled, “I’m taking that to mean Knox, as well?”

  Vanessa didn’t deign to speak to or look at Eric, preferring instead to communicate through Dirk, but Eric surreptitiously watched her as much as he could and got caught by Dirk’s sharp eye more than once. He would make sure to wipe that smug grin off his face the next time they sparred.

  Vanessa was exquisitely gracious with everyone to whom she spoke, though it seemed few people in the courthouse knew what she’d done with her life. Every one of the few who did worked in the county clerk’s office, where Vanessa signed autographs with a smile, and happily wrote down a couple of her recipes. She answered questions about everything from cooking to television to New York to the Ozarks, and never once lost that charm. Judge Wilson would damn near trip over his warm-and-fuzzy old heart to give her anything she wanted.

  Glenn Shinkle had, of course, caught wind of this turn of events. When Eric saw him approach Vanessa, he expected to see her send the little weasel on his way, but instead . . .

  “Hi, Glenn,” she said, her voice warm and her expression patient, pleasant.

  “You’re taking Eric home with you then?”

  “The small one,” she said, her mouth twitching. “Yes.”

  Glenn, seeming a bit troubled, hesitated. He opened his mouth, shut it. Opened it again. “It’s been nice meeting you, Vanessa,” he murmured, as if bemused by his own hesitance. He turned to leave her where he’d found her, but she touched his arm. Surprised, Glenn looked at her warily.

  “If you really want to talk to me,” Vanessa said gently, “you’re free to come to Whittaker House, stay awhile. See what I do, how I work.”

  The man stared at Vanessa for a full half minute, probably trying to figure out why she was being nice to him. Eric wouldn’t mind knowing that, either.

  “Okay,” he said slowly, and suddenly Eric realized that Glenn didn’t know how to respond to someone—anyone—who had taken time to speak to him kindly. “Thank you, Vanessa.”

  She smiled at him and said, “You’re welcome.” Then she glanced up and caught Eric watching her, listening to the exchange, and her smile faded. She turned away with a final, absentminded pat on Glenn’s arm.

  Eric had had the wind knocked out of him before, but this . . .

  All those years, carrying his gratitude around like a punishment, his humiliation keeping him from finding her and doing what he should’ve done immediately—and he was the only person in the county she wouldn’t speak to.

  . . . you should know that better than anybody.

  “What was that about?” Glenn asked snidely, snapping Eric out of his agony.

  “What?”

  “That look. You two have some bad blood between you?”

  Not on Eric’s part. Glenn might not be able to put the last piece of any given puzzle in place, but he could get uncomfortably close. Every response that flooded Eric’s mind would indict him, so he simply stared Glenn down until the man left. “Karma’s a bitch,” Eric growled at no one.

  . . . you better get a clue before you can’t even do that anymore.

  Eric decided to stay in his office and close the door.

  He was in a foul mood that night when he sat down by Dirk to watch their new karate teacher in action, so he was mad at Giselle by default. Knox wasn’t there to take the blame for keeping the facts of Vanessa’s existence from him, so someone in that mafia family had to.

  Once he got immersed in Giselle’s teaching, though, a don’t-fuck-with-me wall around her not mitigated in the least bit by her easy humor, it occurred to Eric that perhaps he’d just rather tussle with Knox than her. Knox barked a lot but rarely bit. Eric could clearly see Giselle wouldn’t bother to bark before she took a chunk out of somebody’s ass.

  She converted to the gospel of Glock some time ago.

  Yeah. That. Exactly.

  Eric and Dirk knew what she’d done, gotten arrested and investigated for. Cleared of. Eric suspected her of having much darker secrets, but didn’t dare ask.

  And he could see why she’d converted to the gospel of Glock: She was a small woman. The realization had been slow in coming because her personality was far too large to be contained in that petite body.

  Dressed as she was, being in charge, an intimidating edge to her fragile and humor-packed voice, she had the instant respect of every person in that room. She would not coddle students as Eric and Dirk were wont to do.

  Giselle called on two of the more timid women in the class to demonstrate a technique. They arose nervously, but both showed a competency and confidence they’d not shown before.

  Those women didn’t want to disappoint her. They wanted to be like her—check that. They wanted to be her. Eric looked back at Giselle and he saw that she knew exactly what she was doing.

  Women responded to her edge.

  He and Dirk exchanged looks, then bumped fists. “Bryce Kenard is definitely the only man in town who could roll her,” Dirk muttered out of the side of his mouth, and Eric couldn’t find fault with that statement. Eric glanced over at Bryce, the soon-to-be golf partner, where he sat on the floor with his son asleep on his shoulder.

  Even with an infant in his arms, Kenard’s power was unmistakable. He intimidated everyone. Not only was he huge, taller and much broader than Eric, he had deep burn scars that matted one half of his face. His voice was as damaged as his face from the house fire that had killed his first family and nearly killed him. Eric didn’t think the man could get any more intimidating than he already was—especially in a courtroom—but the wide Celt knot tattoo around his massive right arm probably made him downright terrifying to anyone who didn’t know him.

  Yet he’d rather watch his wife teach karate classes while feeding and burping his baby than be home alone at night.

  That was really sad.

  On the other hand, Bryce would be going home with and getting laid by a woman who obviously adored him, and Eric . . .

  . . . would not be.

  Which jolted his mind fully back to Vanessa Whittaker.

  Not the cover girl. Not the TV chef. Not the Ford muse.

  The sweet woman he’d met at Chouteau Elementary.

  How could he apologize to her, thank her, and make her believe it enough so he could have a chance to find out if—

  Eric looked down at the floor, his mouth tight.

  Who was the sad one again?

  He wanted to talk to the woman who’d fought for the guardianship of a troubled kid, the one who’d been kind to an old crank reporter nobody liked, the one who’d borne Eric’s unwarranted rudeness with grace.

  His gratitude remained, along with deepening embarrassment, regret, and guilt, all badly tarnished by the fact that he
wanted to sink himself into that gorgeous body. He wasn’t sure how much was his emotional connection to her or sheer attraction.

  Gratitude. Hero worship. Whatever you want to call it, but you’ve got some other neuroses mixed up in there besides a hard-on and being . . . ‘in love.’

  He sighed. The rest of the class passed in a blur until all the students had left and the Kenards had said their goodnights.

  “Must I say it or are you going to pop out with it like you know you should?”

  Eric glowered at Dirk’s smirking face. “Dammit, news gets around this town fast.”

  “Yes, it does, especially when you telegraph it for the entire courthouse to mock. And you thought Justice’s crush on Knox was pathetic. At least Knox managed to hide his feelings for her until they started sleeping together.”

  “I’m just grateful nobody knows the rest of the history.”

  “Why would that make any difference?”

  “I,” said Eric heavily, “was the only person in Annie’s life who didn’t have any connection to Vanessa Whittaker at all. And then I wasn’t.” At Dirk’s blank stare, Eric explained what had changed between Saturday and Monday.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Dirk sighed. “I can see why Annie wouldn’t want to stay.”

  So could Eric.

  Tuesday, Dirk argued for Vanessa’s permanent guardianship of Junior. It wasn’t hard.

  Vanessa Whittaker had everything a kid could ever need: a mansion to live in on hundreds of acres of developed and wooded land, a gourmet restaurant, a small fortune in the bank.

  LaVon Whittaker had . . . less than nothing: A toxic dump of a home, an empty refrigerator, no money, and a bad reputation.

  In the courtroom, Eric had to face LaVon’s screeched accusations once again, but that was nothing new. Judge Wilson finally threatened her with contempt of court if she didn’t shut up. When court was adjourned, the room emptied, and LaVon continued her rant. Dirk interrupted her spiel, at which point she’d hurled racial epithets at him Eric had never heard outside a redneck locker room.

  “LaVon, shut your mouth before I slap it shut,” Vanessa snapped as she approached them. She grabbed LaVon’s arm and forcibly dragged her away. “Sorry, Dirk,” Vanessa tossed over her shoulder with a wince of embarrassment.