Stay (Dunham series #2)

by Moriah Jovan

  Stay with me, Eric.

  Marry me, Eric.

  His hips nudged back against her heels a bit and she accommodated him so that he could accommodate her.

  She had never been touched, loved, with such reverence. He began to stroke in and out of her at just the right angle—and she gasped, surprised, when she came so rapidly, unexpectedly. Immediately. It hit her with the force of a shotgun blast and she felt him smile against her cheek.

  Salt stung her eyes.

  Joy.

  She had never known that.

  Until last Sunday.

  He touched her tears with his tongue, kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, the tip of her nose, all while picking up his pace, thrusting harder and faster.

  Joy.

  He came with a rough sigh that brushed her damp skin. Vanessa tightened her hold around his torso, pulled him hard up into her with her heels again.

  Kept him close, as close as possible.

  Smiled against his jaw.

  And drifted off to sleep.

  *

  “What’s on tap today? It’s seven o’clock on a Saturday morning and we’re still in bed. Phone hasn’t rung. Nobody’s shouting through the window at you.” Eric’s warm whisper in Vanessa’s ear made her smile. She didn’t want to open her eyes in case it was just a dream, that her deepest desire hadn’t actually come true in the night and she’d have to face another day alone.

  “Nothing,” she murmured, her voice hoarse. “I was going to take this morning off. Not that I’ve informed anyone of that yet, so I’m surprised no one has come knocking on my door.”

  He started. “A morning off? Why?”

  She didn’t want to admit it, not really. It would put too much of herself in his hands. “I haven’t slept all week. I’m . . . tired.”

  He said nothing for a moment, then, “I missed you, too.”

  “How long will you be here?”

  “Today,” he said slowly. “Tomorrow. A huge case got dropped in my lap late Monday afternoon.”

  So I should be in my office right now, working on it.

  He didn’t have to say it. She could feel the tension in his body, hear the conflict in his voice.

  “Did you bring your work with you?”

  She felt the bob of his Adam’s apple against her head. “Yes,” he finally said. “I want to help you, but . . . ” He paused again. “I just— I needed to see you, to be with you. At least in the same county.”

  And tomorrow evening, she would have to watch him leave again and she didn’t know if she could stand it.

  “What are we going to do, Eric?” she whispered, hating the catch in her voice. “How does this work?”

  “I don’t know,” he sighed.

  “I— I don’t want to be friends with benefits,” Vanessa said, tears stinging her eyes. “I can’t do that with you, Eric. It would hurt too much. This is— With you— I’ve never had—”

  His hold on her tightened when she didn’t continue. “I understand.”

  “Aunt Vanessa!”

  Vanessa closed her eyes at the long-expected bellow from outside her window, not as grateful as she should have been that they had been left alone this long. She gathered her breath. “Gimme a couple of hours!” she bellowed back. “You take care of things for a while!”

  “Really? Cool! Okay!”

  The faint sound of footsteps in wet grass got more faint as Vachel trotted back toward the mansion.

  “Taking my advice?”

  She shrugged. “Trying.”

  “I thought you were going to play hooky this morning?”

  “I was. Then you were here and— But now . . . ” She sighed.

  “Because I have work to do.”

  She nodded. “You can use my office. Just having you here— Getting some sleep . . . ”

  “Vanessa?” he whispered. Her breath caught, but she didn’t know exactly why. “We haven’t used condoms.”

  “I’m on the pill.” His body tensed a bit, but she went on. “I’ve always been careful and I’m going to have to assume you have.”

  “Yeah,” he said absently, then, hesitantly, after a beat or two, “Um . . . kids?”

  “No. At least not in the next couple of years. And I don’t even want to think about children until we figure out how to deal with—” She bit the rest off.

  “So the default position is that if we didn’t have those problems, you’d be willing to try a long-term relationship with me? Maybe . . . ?”

  Vanessa blinked, not surprised they’d gotten this far this fast—they couldn’t afford not to—but surprised at how comfortable she was with it.

  How much she needed it.

  “Yes. But we can’t think about it that way because we do have those problems. And they’re not little ones. This isn’t just you and me, Eric. I have a partner, a bunch of employees, dozens of vendors, and two rural towns that depend on me. You have a county government and a constituency that trusts you, tens of thousands of people who see you as their philosophical salvation, and a clientele that’s loyal enough to you, your partners might not be able to make money without you. I can’t— I can’t . . . abandon my life to follow you and you’re too deep in your own future to get stuck here.”

  He sighed. “You’re right.” He pulled her hair away from her neck. Kissed her softly. “I hope you were planning to spend the next couple of hours making love with me.”

  “Mmmm, yes, I was,” she purred as she turned over to face him, looking at that dark face and black eyes. “But I thought you didn’t like quickies?”

  He snorted. “I’ll learn to like it, trust me.”

  Vanessa smiled. “Welcome back to Whittaker House, Mr. Cipriani.”

  * * * * *

  33: Timing Drills

  “Shit,” Eric muttered, his elbow on the conference table in Vanessa’s office, his forehead in his hand, completely frustrated in his attempt to build the foundation for his case to put a woman on death row. The gore, the stench of death that had lingered in his nostrils since Monday after-

  noon— He could win this case, and fast. What he needed was a running head start.

  But—

  “Hey, Eric, Vanessa’s out in the butcher shop and there’s a guest who needs . . . ”

  “Eric, phone.”

  “Yo, Eric, there’s a dude downstairs who wants to apply for concierge and Vanessa’s getting ready to tape a show. He says—”

  “Why is she taping on Saturday?” Eric interrupted, thinking that was the most idiotic thing he’d ever heard.

  The bellhop looked at him funny. “She always tapes on Saturday. It’s the only time she can get a crew down here.”

  “Does she pay ext—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Never mind.”

  “What do you want me to do with this guy? I mean, I can tell him to wait until she’s finished if you want. He says he didn’t have an appointment.”

  Eric sighed. “No, send him up.”

  It was constant, the chatter, the people who felt free to parade through Vanessa’s office to him if they couldn’t find her—

  I don’t work here! I have a job! I’m trying to do it!

  They didn’t know that, though, and he’d done a magnificent job in training them to come to him first if it didn’t involve food.

  Worse, Dirk was this defendant’s attorney and he knew where Eric’s mind was, where his body was, and would use every chink in Eric’s armor to get her acquitted, and one of those chinks was time. Dirk wanted to push her case through to trial as fast as possible to capitalize on Eric’s distraction. What Dirk didn’t know was that Eric wanted to get it over with so he wouldn’t have to look at the pictures any longer than necessary—

  —and so he could get back to Whittaker House business, which was a whole lot more attractive at the moment.

  He interviewed the concierge candidate, hired him, assigned him a cottage and gave him a set of keys, finished his employment paperwork, emailed the payroll informati
on to Knox for setup in the system, then sent the man on his way to get settled in.

  By the time dinner rolled around, he finally got some peace because every employee at Whittaker House was occupied with Saturday dinner, but—

  “Yo, Cooper,” Eric said when he called the Wright County prosecutor. “I’m down here for the weekend, but I got that capital case I’m working on— You hear about that? Would you loan me your office for the rest of the weekend? I’m—”

  “Whittaker House got you tied up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I heard you got your eye on AG.”

  “Yep.”

  “That case’ll put you over the top if you win it.”

  “Arguing against Jelarde.”

  “You got your work cut out for you, then. So, Vanessa . . . ?”

  “Cooper . . . ”

  “Well, sure, boy. I’ll tell my desk sergeant to let you in.”

  Gratefully, Eric packed up his work and got ready to head into Mansfield proper, aching for some peace and quiet.

  “Eric, I’m done. Let’s go to be—”

  He looked up to see Vanessa in the threshold of her office, looking between him and the banker’s boxes, the laptop case. The brilliant smile that had been there, the wide one that made the corners of her eyes crinkle, melted.

  “Oh.”

  “I’m . . . going into town,” he muttered, helpless. “Use Cooper’s office. I can’t— I have to—”

  She nodded, almost too eagerly. “No, I understand,” she said in a rush. “It’s an important case?”

  He swallowed. “Um, yeah. A mother— Four kids. She was traveling and stopped, uh, in that motel where you stay when you’re in town.” She nodded again, her face clear of any expression except appropriately interested innkeeper. That was a bad sign. “She—” His mouth tightened when he looked down at the boxes, and a wave of resentment surged through him. “She slaughtered her children,” he said tightly. Vanessa’s face betrayed her shock and horror.

  “I ended up at the crime scene for . . . hours. All night, actually. It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen and I really just want to— Knox— Uh, Parley— Everybody’s expecting me to snap like he did, but uh, I have to do it the right way. And that takes time.”

  “Oh, Eric. I’m sorry. Of course. You . . . shouldn’t have come. Your job, it’s— You’re important. You— Um, go home. Don’t bother Cooper. You need to . . . Just go home and work on it where you have your tools. I know what it’s like to be stranded in a job without the right tools.”

  Going home was the right thing to do, but his unease with it made him twitch. “You won’t mind?”

  “No, no,” she said in a rush. “You need— The county needs you. Those children need you. Your job, it’s—” She swallowed. “It’s so much more important than mine. I’m a . . . luxury. You’re a necessity. You should, um, just stay there until it’s over with. You know, no distractions.”

  He stared at her for long moments, trying to read her (but he couldn’t), trying to decipher her words (but he couldn’t). “Why do you tape TV shows in the summer and on Saturdays, instead of in the winter, or on Sundays or in the middle of the week, or at midnight? Or, better yet, do a year’s worth of shows back to back in October or January?”

  The abrupt change of subject startled her, which he’d meant to do. “Oh. Well, because I can’t get a crew down here any other time.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I heard. What, they charge more for a weekday, maybe nights, than they do for Saturdays?”

  “Well, I— I don’t know. They said Saturday . . . ”

  “And it was easier to go along with that than think it all the way through to the end. Uh huh. Did you ever ask Knox to see if he could get that rearranged for you?”

  That got a reaction out of her. “Knox wouldn’t know how to do it,” she snapped. “He has no clue what goes into producing a TV show.” Eric stared at her until she fidgeted. Looked away. “You should probably get going. If you leave tonight, you won’t be in the middle of lake traffic.”

  True, that. Traffic from Springfield to Kansas City on Sundays in the summer was a nightmare and the Lake of the Ozarks season was in full swing.

  “You’re really mad at Knox, aren’t you?” Eric murmured.

  She suddenly looked completely horrified. “Um . . . No?”

  “You’re allowed, you know. He’ll admit it when he screws up, but if you want him to understand he screwed up, you can’t mince words or it’ll go over his head.”

  “I can’t be— Um, I’m not—”

  “Yes, you are. He has no idea how hard you work, does he?”

  Vanessa’s mouth tightened.

  “Do you not trust him to take over more or do you just need to have your hands in every pie?”

  “He can’t even get his quarterly reports in to Eilis on time. Why would I ask him to do more when I can’t depend on him now?”

  “Oh, bullshit. He can work on a deadline if he knows it’s important and I bet Eilis doesn’t even look at those reports. He probably knows that and doesn’t worry about it.”

  “He left me!” she flashed, then clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide.

  Eric blinked. “Left you for a wife and family,” he asked warily, “or for a different job?”

  She swallowed. Didn’t answer for a moment. “A job,” she finally whispered. “In Utah. He went—” Her nostrils flared. “Didn’t ask how that would affect me. Never talked about it at all except to tell me how excited he was. Just . . . left me with so much more work to do . . . Twelve hundred miles. No plane flies fast enough.” She drew a long, shaky breath. “I hope my staff didn’t bother you today.”

  Only every fifteen minutes like clockwork.

  “No, not at all. I’d just . . . rather be helping you.”

  “Go home, Eric. Neither of us are going to get anything accomplished and those children need justice more than I need a weekend general manager.”

  More than I need you.

  “I’m coming back, Vanessa.”

  “Okay.”

  But she was gone before he could catch her to kiss her and he didn’t bother to look for her.

  She didn’t want to be found.

  * * * * *

  34: A Good Crop of Wheat

  Friday night dinner. Vanessa had her nose down, squirting a pale yellow dandelion flower glaze over a plate in an abstract pattern in preparation for the plating of a new peach and pecan confection that was far more popular than she’d anticipated. The demand for it had completely overwhelmed the pastry apprentice and Vanessa had nearly ended up seating and serving in her whites.

  The low thrum of a souped-up engine zooming past on the highway vaguely pierced the din of the kitchen, but Vanessa paid no attention until it got closer and more familiar and—

  Vanessa’s head snapped up to look out the back door.

  —an electric blue Corvette roared right past the mansion and up the driveway toward the butchery and private garage, its red taillights glowing bright and round in the dark.

  Joy spread through her so hard and so fast she thought she’d burst.

  “Keep your head in the game, Boss,” Alain called.

  Right. She bent back to her work, but now she had something to look forward to, as did the rest of her staff, who had taken to asking her if Eric would become a permanent weekend fixture.

  He made everyone’s jobs easier, more efficient, including hers.

  Last week, when she had stood in the door of her office and understood that he was leaving her a day earlier than intended, she hadn’t expected him to come back. He was a lawyer, a prosecutor, with a very serious problem on his hands. He had an important job for which he didn’t get paid near enough.

  Her job, well— She was a luxury. Yeah, people had to eat, but that was what McDonald’s was for.

  Still, he was here. Now. Waiting for her. He’d shower. He’d get in bed to wait for her, pull out his iPhone and maybe read a
book—

  “It’s the only way I can read books anymore,” he’d explained when she asked him what had him staring at his gadget. “Put it in my pocket and go. Always available.”

  Vanessa ended her evening as early as she could, again requesting Vachel’s assistance, which he gave her with a delight that made her flinch. How had she not seen what he so obviously needed?

  Eric was indeed in bed by the time she’d run down the driveway, into her cottage, and up the stairs. But when he pulled her down to him, he rolled her over until she lay on her stomach. He straddled her, nearly sitting on her butt, and she sighed, understanding immediately. She closed her eyes to await his big, warm, oiled hands on her shoulders.

  No words were said and, except for the sound of soft, plaintive bluegrass coming from a corner, Vanessa could only hear the crickets outside and the hoot owl that lived in the orchard just behind her cottage. A sweet breeze ruffled the gauze curtains that framed her open windows. She took a deep breath through her nose to catch every nuance of scent, from fresh-mown and dew-laden grass to the blooming lilacs.

  She grimaced when the heel of Eric’s palm found a knot in one of the muscles of her shoulder. She must have shied away from it, because he lightened his touch a bit.

  “You’re tight as a drum,” he muttered.

  “Thank you,” she sighed.

  He leaned down, his mouth brushing her ear. “You need to learn how to relax.”

  She thought she was perfectly relaxed already, but she couldn’t muster the energy to open her mouth or move her vocal cords.

  “Have you ever been to Silver Dollar City?”

  Don’t make me talk.

  “In high school,” she mumbled into her pillow.

  “You’ve lived here how many years and you haven’t been again?”

  “Branson. Scout talent. ’Sall.”

  He said nothing more, but his hands continued to work their magic until he reached the lower part of her back, just above her buttocks. One press of a thumb and she nearly came off the bed with a screech, her eyes filling with tears.