Stay (Dunham series #2)

by Moriah Jovan

  “What’s wrong with him?” Vanessa finally asked. The corner of Vachel’s mouth twitched into a smirk. “I love him, Ma, which is more than you ever did.”

  LaVon’s eyes narrowed on Vanessa and she drew close enough for the smell of rancid tobacco smoke to choke her. “I been tryin’ to get in touch with you for a year,” LaVon hissed at her. “Why’n’t you return my calls? Long distance is expensive, you know.”

  Vanessa raised an eyebrow. “I have nothing to say to you and I already know that the only thing you have to say to me is ‘Gimme gimme gimme.’”

  “You owe me,” she snarled, “an’ one o’ these days, I’m just gonna show up at your pretty little door.”

  “First, I don’t owe you a damned thing. Second, you have to have a car that’ll get you that far, which you don’t and probably never will. Third, my staff and the Wright and Davis County prosecutors are primed for your arrival, so it won’t be fifteen minutes before you’re in jail for trespassing. Then a nice state trooper will escort you clear out of the Ozarks and warn you not to come back.”

  “Which one of those prosecutors’re you bangin’?”

  Vanessa’s well-timed arm across Vachel’s chest kept him from launching himself at his grandmother, but he snarled at LaVon and she retreated in shock.

  “And if you think,” Vanessa continued calmly, “that you’ll ever be able to squeeze a dime out of me, you better think again. Now. We’re only here for Pop’s funeral, so just give me the details and we’ll be about our business.”

  LaVon’s friends drew closer, so she crumpled her face and broke her voice when she finally realized she’d let her façade drop. The waterworks began anew. “Vanessa, what am I goin’ to do without your father?”

  “Same thing you did with him, I imagine. Smoke and gossip with your friends. Find a new boyfriend, since I heard your last one just died, too. Sorry about the loss of your social security check.”

  Her friends gasped at that. The hateful murmurs began and Vanessa rolled her eyes. “Never mind, Ma. I’ll Google for Pop’s wake.”

  The two of them climbed back into the car and prowled away.

  * * * * *

  18: All Eyes on Me

  He caught himself going to his office window every hour or so to look for a purple Prowler. He was at his desk when he heard its distinctive roar, and he was not disappointed when he saw her again—even if it was from far away.

  Beautiful, well educated, successful, famous.

  Pissed off.

  She was entitled. At this point, the only thing he wanted to do was apologize and say thank you so he could close that bitter chapter in his history.

  He sighed and went back to his desk to gather what little he needed to take back into court after lunch. It didn’t even make a dent in his mood that he was kicking Dirk’s ass. Out in the office, it was a hive of activity. Almost fully staffed, he had nine attorneys and three secretaries.

  Giselle taught six classes now, the two evening ones and a women-only session in the late afternoon. Nursery provided. That had been Dirk’s idea when he’d first seen how the women responded to her. It had boosted their profits by twenty percent; thus, when asked, Giselle had agreed to become an official partner, since the women came for her. Now Dirk taught one weeknight and Saturday’s classes, which left Eric teaching one night a week. He had time to concentrate on his job, his campaign, and his social life.

  If he had one. Irony. At the point he finally had time to indulge his singlehood, he wasn’t interested.

  That wasn’t to say he lacked for invitations. Unattached women had either approached him or signed up for the classes he taught—and he was very careful to keep his interaction with the opposite sex cordial but aloof.

  Girls he’d slept with in high school, when he could and would fuck any legal-aged girl, were now at an age when they’d begun getting divorced. They came sniffing around the dojo and the courthouse with great frequency to see if they could unearth badass Eric Cipriani to pick up where they’d left off.

  He had his staff to run interference and he was never in his office alone with a woman with the door closed, employee or not. The Chouteau County prosecutor’s office could afford no scandal, especially with its prosecutor’s history and future. Eric’s weekly golf games with Kansas City’s movers and shakers had helped to fix Chouteau County’s reputation, but he didn’t want to do anything that might damage it. If his time at BYU had taught him nothing else, it was how to successfully avoid the appearance of impropriety, sexual or otherwise. By and large, Mormons did propriety and discretion very, very well.

  Then there was Stacy Afton, daughter of well-heeled Tye Afton, a bombastic jerk whom Eric would rather not have to talk to at all. Afton, powerful enough to weather one major and several minor scandals, was a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and ignoring him was not an option. Eric still hadn’t been able to determine if he could get elected to attorney general on a third-party ticket, either Independent or Libertarian, but he sure as hell didn’t want to hop in bed with the scandal-ridden Republican senator from Missouri.

  Say, son, I heard you were interested in something more than that mess Hilliard left you to clean up.

  Maybe.

  And you graduated from that Mormon college out in Utah, what is it? Brigham Young?

  Yeah.

  You Mormon?

  No.

  Damn. But they made an honest man out of you, right? Gave you some of that Mitt Romney polish?

  Enough to keep me out of trouble. Why?

  I can help you out with the next few steps up the ladder.

  Oh yeah? What’s my part of the deal?

  Squire my daughter to a couple of the high-profile state functions in Jeff City.

  In other words, she needs a bit of respectability and you think being seen with me would do it.

  More or less, yes.

  Uh, I’m Knox’s lawyer and I write for his wife’s blog as well as my own. I don’t know how you think I can lend your daughter any respectability when I’m associated with him and everybody in the state hates his guts.

  No they don’t. It’s just not kosher to associate with him. But you— You’re different. Yeah, Knox got things done, but you work clean, and don’t think no one’s noticed. You’re an honest businessman and you have a way about you. Kenard and Taight are backing you, and Kenard’s wife is your business partner. You have the ear of Justice’s audience and a grassroots base of your own.

  So you’re hooking for my access to money and the conservative masses in addition to my apparent respectability.

  I like you, boy. You’re a straight shooter.

  And I get what out of this deal?

  Unlimited help all the way to the White House, which is where we want you. I mean, yeah, you have good connections, no doubt, but they don’t have the political oomph to get you all the way there, right?

  Afton, what the hell are you talking about? They got a senator elected almost all by themselves.

  Yeah, you know, Oakley’s a good guy and all, but he’s a freshman senator and not—

  And they stared down that posse of a Senate panel until it kissed their asses, which you know, because you were there. What can you do for me that they can’t?

  They’re only six people, Cipriani.

  Nine. You forgot Mitch Hollander and Jack Blackwood and Morgan Ashworth.

  I’m so glad you brought that up.

  Yeah, that’s what I thought. You want Morgan, too, and he told you all to fuck off.

  Well, you know, if you were running the show, Ashworth wouldn’t likely turn down an appointment as Treasury Secretary or Fed Chairman, would he? And wouldn’t that be a breath of fresh air? Think about it, Cipriani, how far you could go with the RNC behind you, and especially with your ethnicity? First Native American president.

  You don’t even know what tribe I’m from.

  Does it matter? With your philosophy, your rhetoric about balancing hope and justic
e, you’d be God’s gift to conservative politics. You’re young, good-looking, charismatic, smart, and respectable. Play the race card, and you’re a shoo-in.

  I’ve never played that card in my life and I’m not about to start. What you want is your daughter to have a shot at being the First Lady so you can have open access to the Oval Office.

  Okay, look, you do have one problem. You’re single. Nobody’s going to elect a single man in his mid-thirties. So you can either come out of the closet and be conservatism’s token queer, or get married and that problem’s solved.

  If I were gay, I wouldn’t play that card, either, and I’m certainly not interested in a politically motivated marriage with a woman I don’t know.

  Doesn’t mean you wouldn’t like her anyway. One date. What could it hurt?

  I’ll think about it.

  Eric had heeded Davidson and Connelly’s warnings about the man and done some digging, then gone so far as to seek Glenn out for his opinion, which had made Glenn instantly suspicious. Forcibly overriding years of habit, Eric had reluctantly told Glenn his reason for asking, which had resulted in an uneasy truce between them and a nice, detailed history with, of course, the final puzzle pieces missing. Eric finally decided Glenn was right. If the FBI and the state investigators hadn’t figured it out, Glenn couldn’t be blamed for not doing so.

  Eric had finally gone to Knox. “What do I do?”

  “You keep your friends close and your enemies closer and Connelly’s right. Afton’s the enemy and I don’t care what side of the aisle he sits on. He hates us, and I’m convinced he was one of the players in that witch hunt that got us all called to Washington.”

  Eric had never felt so politically naïve in his life.

  It had taken only one date to a state dinner in Jefferson City with Stacy Afton to have him looking for a way out of any promises Afton may have inferred. Apparently, not all women who grew up in money had class. She’d embarrassed Eric so badly he’d wanted to slide under the table, especially after the governor had stared him down with an expression that said everything: Control her, Cipriani.

  First Lady? Fuck that. He wouldn’t take Stacy Afton bowling.

  Look, Afton, she was plastered before the first course was served and then she got loud and mouthy. After dinner, she came out of the restroom with coke all over her nose— I’m a prosecutor, for fuck’s sake. I should’ve arrested her. Then she felt me up right in front of every grande dame in Missouri. She has no home training whatsoever and what she needs is a finishing school, not Mr. Etiquette. Not only that, but I went googling. She’s got amateur porn plastered all over RedTube. It’s not even good porn.

  Oh. You saw that.

  Get her dried out and cleaned up, buy her some manners and some modest clothes, and then maybe we can try this again. I am not going to be seen with some Paris Hilton wannabe, much less marry one—especially when the governor made a point to make sure I knew he was pissed.

  Well, now, son, you don’t have any room to get prissy. Your history’s not spotless.

  Yet I know which fork to use for which course, what liquor to drink when and where and how much, what to say and not to say at a cocktail party, and how to waltz. That’s more than I can say for your trust-fund brat.

  Aw, son, okay. I don’t blame you, really, but the offer’s always open. I’ll work on her. Keep in touch.

  Eric figured he’d only succeeded in making himself appear more respectable—prissy—by laying it out straight, but he refused to spend any more time in Stacy Afton’s company.

  There was really only one woman he was interested in anyway and he’d blown that to smithereens. He simply didn’t know what to do now. Thinking about Vanessa, wanting to make things right with her, obsessing over her—it was getting him nowhere, yet he couldn’t leave it alone.

  He went to Vanessa’s website twice a week when it was updated, and scoured the Food Network listings to catch episodes of her show. He’d bought Vanessa’s issues of Maxim and Esquire on eBay, but then trashed them without opening the envelopes, loath to make her a masturbatory fantasy when the real thing was relatively close. He just didn’t know how to approach her.

  Eric had hoped that by sending her the email about her father’s death, he could open some door or even crack open a window, but she hadn’t replied.

  “You’re a fool,” Dirk muttered when he saw Eric dressed in Armani as he dropped by the dojo at six, on his way to the wake.

  “Yes,” Eric returned absently while he perused the mail. “Yes, I am. I need to get this over with and put behind me.”

  Dirk’s eyebrow rose. “Little late for ‘thank you’ now, don’t you think?”

  Eric’s brow wrinkled and he looked up at the wall painted with the Kenpo crest. “Is it ever too late?”

  Dirk grunted. “If it’ll open more wounds than it’ll heal, yes.” He pursed his lips as if to decide whether to say what was on his mind, but Dirk had never been shy about voicing his opinions and Eric had already seen how protective he was with regard to Vanessa. “You know where she lives. You know her website and her email and her phone number. You’ve had a year to call her or email her. You have a full staff of attorneys and assistants and karate teachers, so you could’ve gone to see her, but you didn’t. Now it’s just one of those things where you should let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “Now wait a minute. You weren’t there. You didn’t see how it all went down. She wants nothing to do with me, and it’s taken me a year to figure out how to get close enough to get it done. This is about as good a chance as I’m going to get. She can’t run. She won’t make a scene. I can thank her, apologize, leave. Go on with my life.”

  “No. Find another way.”

  “Run interference for me, since you’re all chummy.”

  “Oh, no. I don’t want to be in between you two any more than Knox does.”

  “Then give me a better idea or quit lecturing me.”

  “You know how LaVon and Company will react to you showing up.”

  “I’ll slip in, speak my piece, and get out before anybody sees me.”

  “I don’t think that’s gonna work . . . ” Dirk intoned as went to start class.

  It didn’t.

  Eric’s appearance at Vanessa’s father’s wake caused a bit of a stir as he wound his way through the crowd, but he ignored the whispers as he always had, and looked for her.

  There.

  Standing at the side of the room—not with the family—speaking graciously with a mourner who seemed to need more comfort than Vanessa herself. She looked like she’d rather be any place but in the midst of these people.

  The blond kid at Vanessa’s left drew his attention and Eric’s eyebrow rose. Crisp white linen shirt, loose yet tidy. Leather 19th century commander’s jacket with pewter buttons. Knee-high black-and-green argyle socks and black shoes. A black-and-green tartan kilt.

  A kilt.

  He blinked and blinked again. The boy had grown. Eric knew he was only thirteen, but he topped Vanessa by a good inch or two and his bearing—feet wide, arms crossed over his chest, with a somber, patient expression on his face—was that of a man’s: confident, courageous, and clever. This was not a kid who’d been dressed by the mother figure in his life. Well. Vanessa Whittaker certainly must know how to raise children.

  And Vanessa! The oddity of Junior’s dress had overshadowed her, but now he studied her. Her dark pink—not traditional black—wraparound skirt clung to her every generous curve, and her knee peeped out between the layers every time she moved. The deep V neckline of her textured white silk blouse showed a hint of cleavage. He looked closer and saw the faint outline of a corset under that expensive silk.

  Her chestnut-and-blonde-streaked hair was arranged in a mass of large curls pinned to the top of her head. She wore a dark pink choker with woven beads of some sort hanging from its edge. High-heeled sandals that matched her skirt made her legs look the same as they had last year—deliciously right for wrapping around his
hips.

  Oh, how he’d love to slowly take off every stitch of those clothes and bury his nose in her throat, then between her breasts, then slowly kiss and lick his way down, spread her legs, taste her . . .

  Eric screwed up his courage and started toward her, the gathered mourners watching him warily, whispering, clearing a path for him. At that moment, Junior caught his approach and elbowed Vanessa, who turned to watch him as he took step after step toward his doom.

  He knew that look in her eyes: contempt, anger, and wariness mixed with the remnants of a little girl’s crush; she couldn’t hide that no matter how hard she tried, but . . .

  No trace of desire.

  Had he imagined it?

  “Vanessa,” he said quietly.

  “Eric.” Her voice was cool.

  He looked at Junior. “I’m impressed,” he said. “You’ve turned into a man.”

  Surprise and shock flitted across the kid’s face and he felt, rather than saw, the surprise emanating from Vanessa.

  The kid extended his hand then. “Vachel Whittaker,” he said clearly, deeply. Eric took his hand with alacrity and the boy’s grip was firm. A man’s grip. A man’s voice.

  “Privileged to meet you, Vachel,” Eric said, resisting the temptation to ask where the hell he’d come up with a name like that.

  The boy blinked. “Um, yeah. Uh . . . You, too.”

  Eric turned to Vanessa then and tried not to look down her blouse or get high on her perfume. “Thank you,” he said with all the sincerity in his soul, making sure to look straight into her fascinating turquoise eyes. “I never said thank you, and I’ve always regretted that. And—” He gulped. “I’m sorry for walking away from you that day. I was ashamed and embarrassed, and I didn’t know what to do, what to say to you. I also— Ah, I also didn’t want to risk talking to an underage girl, but I could have sent a note, flowers, something. And I didn’t. I’ve let years go by without talking to you, telling you how much I appreciate what you did for me because I was embarrassed, and then I thought it was too late, and I’m— I’m still embarrassed. I wasn’t honorable last year when I . . . was mean to you. And then asked you out. I haven’t been honorable about it at all since, and I’m very sorry. Please forgive me, Vanessa.”