Stay (Dunham series #2)

by Moriah Jovan

  “Well, he’s just going to have to get over it. He can’t go through life giving his work away to everybody who shows him a kindness.”

  “You don’t understand. He wants to know that he’s not a burden to you.”

  She’d looked up from the carcass, her mouth hanging open and her eyes wide. “A burden? Is that what he thinks? I’m his guardian. His parent. I swore to take care of him in a court of law and that’s what I’m trying to do the best way I know how.”

  “Vanessa—”

  She held up her hand and he stopped. She stared at the ground and chewed on the inside of her mouth—just like Knox did. Then she sighed. “Okay, look. Give him a job, put him on the schedule somewhere. I don’t care what it is. I’ll . . . go along with it as long as he’s willing to do it.”

  “I’m not going to put him on the payroll. It’ll balance out what you pay him for game.”

  She shook her head, her mouth tight. “Oh, all right,” she huffed. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, her knife flashing in the air. “But set up a trust for him and arrange for his wages to go in that. And don’t tell him.”

  Eric almost smiled. “Being sneaky again?”

  “Well, it’s not like I use my powers for evil,” she mumbled.

  That made him laugh. “Okay. That’s a decent compromise. Vanessa,” he went on, figuring he might as well hit her with it all at once, “you need to let go of some of this stuff. You don’t have to oversee everything yourself and design dishes and butcher and do a TV show and seat guests on Fridays and Saturdays, too. Whittaker House is way too big for that bullshit and it’s only going to get worse once you build that golf course. Your procedures are half-assed and your employees aren’t sure when they can and can’t step in. You need a general manager, a chief operations officer.”

  She’d looked up at him the minute he said it, held his gaze for long seconds as if searching for some ulterior motive on his part. Opened her mouth. Snapped it shut again. Braced her hands on the table and slowly looked down at the half-butchered carcass.

  Ask me to come stay with you, Vanessa. Ask me to be your COO. I need to know you want me here. I want to be where you are, to help you do what you do, to have a hand in Whittaker House’s growth and success.

  “I’ll think about it,” she’d whispered without looking at him.

  He didn’t know where that stray—instantaneous—thought had come from, but it bugged the hell out of him. He had a plan, financial and political backing, and a rabid national grassroots constituency that wanted him to represent them.

  Vanessa—Whittaker House—didn’t figure into his plans, but . . .

  Halfway home, he began to wonder if he really had fallen in love. He had never felt this urgency with any of the girls he’d dated seriously at BYU nor with Annie; he didn’t understand this need to be so totally in sync with a woman. Annie had had her career; Eric had his. It never mattered that they kept their professional lives separate, because they had made a deliberate decision to live their lives together.

  Vanessa had her own life, one she had shared with Eric—one he liked—but it was two hundred and fifty miles away from his. He couldn’t give up his investment of time and other people’s money to pursue a woman who lived so far away, one he may or may not grow to love—if that kind of love even existed. Perhaps this was simply a manifestation of his connection to her because everything he had was because of her, and everything she had was because of him.

  He’d worked hard his entire life and those years were beginning to bear good fruit. He didn’t want to put that in jeopardy on bad odds: too many risks, both personal and financial, with too little information and not enough opportunity to gather more information.

  Still, he called her when he got home, but she was too busy to talk much; indeed, she sounded a little too distant for his comfort. He emailed a little note and hoped she could spare a moment to reply.

  Eric strode through the prosecutor’s office Monday morning without a glance at or word to anybody, into his private office, and slammed the door closed. He’d awakened this morning at seven—an hour and a half later than he had at Whittaker House. He was able to take his time showering and dressing for the first time in a week and a half. He’d thought about what he had to do today and his list was frighteningly barren; of course, it could be he’d have issues all over the office once he got there.

  So here he was at eight o’clock with nothing to do, looking at an empty desk and a clean office. Where were the new case files that should’ve been here? He checked his email. No reply from Vanessa.

  He stormed back out to the common area.

  “Davidson, where’s Hilliard?”

  Davidson looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Is it eight-thirty yet?”

  Eric growled. Davidson did have a point and damn Justice’s propensity for tardiness that Knox had never been able to break. “Okay, look, what’s come in this past week?”

  It was Connelly’s turn to look at him funny. “Justice divvied them up the way you do. There’s nothing unassigned.”

  What? “What about the case she came back for last week?”

  “She won that in two days and she took over the rest of whats-his-bucket’s caseload; pled half of them out, tried another one but lost, and has the rest under control.”

  Eric thought his head would blow off. “Do I even need to be here?”

  Connelly and Davidson looked at each other. Eric could sense the rustlings of the attorneys around him. One glance around was all it took for Eric to get the feeling that everyone thought he’d completely run off the rails.

  “Fuck it,” he muttered as he walked out of the office. “I’ll be across the street if you need me.”

  Upon opening his dojo’s door, he stopped short as he looked around. It was clean. Organized. Dammit! The walls had a couple of coats of fresh paint, and the carpet had been steam cleaned.

  He walked cautiously back to the office and saw that it, too, had been organized, cleaned, and painted. There were stickies here and there, explaining what had been done—all written in an elaborate copperplate. In fountain pen. Each signed with a delicate scrollwork “G.”

  Another sticky, in Dirk’s hand, let him know the bookkeeping had been done, the checking account reconciled, the reports sent to Sebastian, and all the bills paid, including the cleaning and painting crews.

  The bell on the door startled him and he leaned way to the left to see who was invading his misery this early in the morning.

  “What are you doing here?” he grumbled and sat back as she came in the office door, a sleeping carrot-topped tyke in her arms.

  “Well,” she said. “I have a meeting with the principals of the elementary school and high school at nine to talk about an after-school program for the more, ah, intractable children. Dirk had court and couldn’t make it. If I’d known you were going to be here instead of across the street, I could’ve saved myself the trouble.”

  “I’m sorry, Giselle.”

  She dropped into a chair across from his desk and it was only then he realized she was in her gi. She caught his look and said, “I’m representing the dojo. Martial artists in dresses don’t impress, much less command any respect.”

  That was probably true and he nodded, although he was pretty sure that Giselle could scare anybody no matter what she wore. “The baby might blow your image, though.”

  She chuckled a bit, but then sobered. “What’s the problem?”

  He lounged back and raised a hand, helplessly dropping it on the desk. “I don’t even know where to begin. A year ago I was pulling my hair out because I couldn’t do everything and still get a couple hours of sleep at night. Today, I come back from busting my ass dawn to midnight for a week and I have nothing to do. I’m . . . irrelevant.”

  She said nothing for a moment as she shifted the baby around so he and she were more comfortable. “It’s Monday,” she finally said. “In an hour, your desk will be sky high.”

/>   “You know, I don’t even care. Same shit, different day. Same criminals. Same crimes. Even the nasty dirty ones aren’t fun anymore.”

  “I suggest,” she murmured slowly, taking her time and thinking, “that you give your life another month or so to shake back out. Whatever you did in Mansfield last week? People pay money to have vacations where they go do work that’s different from what they usually do. You might not like it on a sustained basis, over months and years. What you’ve got right now are the post-vacation blues.”

  “She does it on a sustained basis,” he muttered, feeling about three years old.

  “That’s her life’s work, Eric. She’s living her dreams, her goals. Every day she adds a layer of polish on those dreams and goals, and she’s rewarded every time she ends a day falling into bed bone tired.” She paused, then proceeded very, very carefully. “You said you worked, and you’re a little too upset about not having anything to do right now. Did . . . you . . . ?”

  “Once,” he admitted huskily. “Not enough time for more. That place is a twenty-four-seven operation, so— Too tired to do anything when we had a minute and a half.”

  Giselle pursed her lips. “Do you resent that?”

  His brow wrinkled. “No. Why would I?”

  She smiled suddenly and for a second—only a second—he found her profoundly beautiful and envied Bryce all that much more for what he had that Eric didn’t. “I see,” she said with a pleased smile. “So you found joy in the work itself and joy in working alongside her.”

  Eric gulped. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I did, but she hasn’t asked me to come back. She didn’t really want to talk to me last night and she hasn’t returned my email. By now she’s probably knee deep in fresh collard greens.”

  Giselle’s mouth tightened a bit. “So your feeling of irrelevance is because you felt necessary at Whittaker House and you came back here to find out you’re not as indispensable as you thought.”

  “Yes. Like I’m just marking time until the election.”

  “Hmm.” She pursed her lips. Looked at the floor. “Are you in love with her?”

  “Aw, hell, Giselle, I don’t know. I want to get to know her better, be with her. The way she acted all week, it was like she couldn’t decide if she wanted me there or not, and then— I want the chance, but . . . ” He waved a hand in the air. “I want— Shit. I don’t know what I want. Just not— Not— This. This limbo.”

  “What about your career?”

  “What about it?”

  She looked at him funny, but shook it off with a sigh and said, “Well, Eric, for right now, either stay here and meet these people with me or go back to your office. Pick a job, do it, let things settle for a while. If, in a month or so, you’re still restless, you can revisit how best to approach the problem. I would advise you not to make any major decisions for a while and do not pressure her. She may need some time and distance to think. Your choice, naturally.”

  He sat for a long moment and let that settle. Then he sighed and rose. “I’m on county time, so I should go there, I guess.” He walked around the desk toward the door, then stopped and looked down at her when she caught his wrist in a light grasp.

  “You know very good and well why you don’t resent not getting laid last week. Think about that. Once you’ve been back in your life for a while, when you have some distance, you can afford the luxury of figuring out if it’s something you want to give up without a fight and how much you’re willing to sacrifice to have it.”

  * * * * *

  32: The Brewster School

  It was all Vanessa could do Friday night to keep from crying while she seated and served guests, who all remembered “that charming young man” from the past two weekends and wondered at his absence. “He lives in Kansas City,” she explained repeatedly, graciously, though each repeat

  came harder than the last. Two hours before the kitchen closed, she gave up and caught Vachel.

  “I need you to seat and serve for me the rest of the night, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Vachel’s eyes lit up at the opportunity, and Vanessa hurt even more. It was selfish, but she was so exhausted and heartbroken that she was willing to use Vachel’s need to prove himself to her to escape the constant reminders that Eric wasn’t there.

  With her.

  Running Whittaker House.

  Building a life together.

  Don’t ever mistake sex for love because that’s when girls start getting stupid.

  Ten days. It had taken her no time at all to fall in love with a man she had only met a couple of times under less than favorable circumstances.

  And one Sunday morning in the grass, her secret place. Her church.

  “Stupid stupid stupid.”

  They had no history together. Between her crush on a much older bad boy and Laura’s influence, she had been motivated enough to approach the prosecutor everyone in the county feared, terrified, knowing she’d be in a lot of trouble with her mother if he believed her.

  She had never seen that boy again.

  She didn’t know what had become of him.

  The man who bore his name, though—

  The man who had arrived thinking he’d have a fun week with a woman he wanted to get to know, possibly getting laid—

  The man who had ended up not only not having fun and not getting laid but once, who had worked alongside her all week without complaint—

  The man who had asserted his authority amongst her staff as if he had some—

  The man who had looked around to see what needed done and done it—

  She had not known that man.

  That man, that Eric Cipriani, was a man of strength and kindness, humor and patience.

  You need a general manager, a chief operations officer.

  And she’d had one. For ten days.

  She hadn’t known quite what part of Whittaker House would occupy Eric’s attention all week while she went about doing what a chef and owner of an inn did, but never would she have expected him to work like he had.

  So exhausted he had no energy for making love, yet not resenting her for it; getting up at five every morning to start over again, knowing he probably wouldn’t get laid that day, either; promising her he’d come back even after a week of backbreaking labor with no reward.

  He would never be back.

  This life, while it richly rewarded Vanessa, would never reward him the same way his career rewarded him, the way reaching every next goal rewarded him.

  And his rewards were two hundred and fifty miles away from hers.

  She dashed tears away with her fingertips.

  Once Vachel swaggered into the dining room in his best kilt and semiformal jacket, Vanessa left. She slogged through the kitchen and out the back door and across the veranda and down the steps and up the driveway to the path that would take her to her secluded cottage.

  Vanessa didn’t remember ever being this tired on a Friday night. She didn’t remember ever having thought about a way to take the next morning off without having an ulterior business motive: going shopping in Springfield for clothes or décor or food or flowers or local wines, or going to shows in Branson to look for new talent.

  On the other hand, she was the boss and answered to no one.

  The always-urgent to-do lists wouldn’t get any more urgent for waiting a morning and besides, Eric had made such a significant dent in them that she could afford a morning alone.

  She had a teenage kid begging her to let him work harder, do more for her, learn and grow, feel needed and wanted, his contributions valued, his intellect challenged. Until Eric had forced her to see it, Vanessa had never thought Vachel might need more than a stable home, a warm atmosphere, and a guardian willing to give him anything he wanted.

  She had a clientele who had been gracefully conditioned—by Eric—to expect that sometimes, just sometimes, Vanessa would not be available as usual because she, too, needed a break.

  She wondered what it would be like to l
ie in bed on a Saturday morning and read, perhaps re-read, Little Town on the Prairie. Or sleep. Or pretend Eric would return any moment.

  Cry.

  She slogged up the steps to her porch and opened the door and walked across the floor and climbed the stairs in the dark.

  She unbuttoned, unzipped, and undid.

  Vanessa.

  Her chest collapsed at the whisper that caressed her skin like a lover’s touch, and then again when the faintest whiff of a rich cologne drifted across her nose.

  She closed her eyes.

  Choked in fear that she was hallucinating.

  He wrapped his hand gently around her wrist and pulled her down to him on the bed, pressed a soft kiss against her upper arm while his other hand slid under her blouse and caressed her back.

  Neither said a word as she finished undressing with his help.

  Neither said a word when, once she was bare to his hands, he pulled her down and rolled her over onto her back and slid his body into hers, now wet simply because he was there.

  She sighed and wrapped her arms around his ribs, her legs around his hips, kept him as close to her as possible with her heels dug into his buttocks. In the pitch dark, she found his mouth with hers and they kissed for moments upon moments.

  Oh, how right he felt, lying in her bed, being inside her, stepping into her life.

  He buried his face in the crook of her neck, and drew in a long breath against her skin. Vanessa’s back arched as if she had no control over her body whatsoever, her only connection with reality the feel of his hands caressing her body, the weight of his body on top of hers, the feel of his body so deep inside he touched her soul.

  Slow butterfly kisses, so light, over her jaw, down her throat, up her neck. She furrowed her fingers through his silky hair, ran her hands down his nape and over his strong, smooth back. He sighed at her touch and his body shivered, just a tad.

  I love you, Eric.

  Be my lover always, Eric.