Stay (Dunham series #2) (11 page)

Neither of them had ever pretended their
relationship was anything but an efficient way to pool resources
and strengths until they’d each achieved their goals, at which
point they’d part company. They were the epitome of the sexy power
couple; the voting public loved nothing better, and they intended
to exploit it without mercy.

Eric had never had a reason to question his view of
marriage.

Until now.

Watching a husband and wife share . . . something .
. . he didn’t understand or know how to get.

Giselle’s voice shook him out of his reverie. “I can
commit to two nights a week, your kids and adults. I’m staying home
with Dunc now and it’d be nice to get out and back into something I
love.” She grabbed the little boy and blew raspberries in his
belly, making him giggle. After a moment or two of play, she
cuddled the baby and said, “I want to raise this kid up properly—in
a gi. How you handle marketing is up to you.”

Eric nodded and Dirk looked pleased. “Now, about
pay—”

“Don’t,” she said. “You’ll be teaching me as much as
I teach the students. You’ve each got five stripes on your belts
and I’ve only got one. I’ve been out of it for years and I’m still
recovering from getting Dunc here in one piece, so . . . I’ll teach
in exchange for being taught. How ’bout that?”

“It’s a sixty-mile round trip for you. At least let
us pay for your gas and mileage.”

She shrugged. “We can talk about it later.”

Eric could feel his burdens lightening even as he
sat there chatting with the Kenards and he couldn’t believe his
good fortune. Two good attorneys (maybe) who knew him and Chouteau
County inside out because he’d hired them and Knox had trained
them,
and
a new karate teacher who could take over four
classes a week. Of course, Dirk-plus-Giselle still wasn’t
Eric
, but campaigning had to become his next priority; he
couldn’t do that and teach six classes a week, too. With Giselle on
board, he could begin to phase himself out without upsetting
everyone at once, while conditioning everyone in the county that
he’d be gone to Jefferson City in three years. Hopefully, he could
do it so subtly the citizenry would take his absence for
granted.

Dirk took care of outfitting Giselle with a gi,
belt, patches, front door keys, and scheduling her for Mondays and
Tuesdays, while Eric thanked Bryce over and over again for the
possible loan of attorneys he didn’t have to train until Bryce
finally laughed and held up his hands. “It’s okay, Eric. I get it,
I get it. You golf?”

“Absolutely.”

Bryce grinned. “The Deuce at National next Saturday
morning, then. Six-thirty tee time. It’ll give you a chance to
plead your case to a couple of my buddies, get the word out about
what kind of labor you need. Let the city know you’re not Knox and
you’re serious about what you want to do up here. Get a start on
collecting cash for your next few elections.”

Golf. With Bryce Kenard and two of his rich friends
who could help Eric do what he needed to do: flip Chouteau County’s
reputation upright, find experienced attorneys, and make
connections that mattered to an up-and-coming politician.

Eric figured his luck had finally turned around . .
.

. . . until he saw the Kenards walking to their car
hand-in-hand, their baby lying quietly against Bryce’s shoulder,
murmuring together as they rounded the opposite side of the vehicle
to put Dunc in his carrier. He didn’t realize how much he’d missed
seeing such sweet, innocent relationships like that since leaving
BYU.

Being in one.

He didn’t have that with Annie, but he had exactly
what he wanted with Annie, so why had he turned melancholy all of a
sudden?

“You won’t get that with Annie,” Dirk muttered as he
walked up to Eric after handing a set of keys to his oldest child
and instructing him to take his sister around the corner to the
office.

“Oh, fuck you.” Eric’s jaw ground, then it dropped
as, through the windows and over the top of the Kenards’ SUV, he
saw the Kenards’ gentility vanish: The man lifted his wife and
slammed her against the truck, kissing her brutally—and she
responded in kind, wrapping her legs around him so tight she
would’ve broken a smaller man in half.

“
Well
,” Dirk breathed, “that goes a long way
toward explaining the bruises around his wrists.”

Eric blinked. Shuddered. “Too kinky for me.”

Dirk grunted and turned to catch up with his kids at
his office. Eric dropped into step beside him but he wasn’t sure
why, since he knew that what had been brewing for a while was
coming. “I wasn’t going to say anything,” Dirk began, “but I saw
the way you looked at Bryce and Giselle. It’s like you’ve never
seen people in love before.”

He had, but he didn’t remember it looking so . . .
genuine.

“Now, you know Annie and I are friends, so I’m not
slamming her. But you’re both deluding yourselves by thinking you
can have a marriage like a business arrangement that’ll last long
enough for you to do what you need it for.”

“Jelarde, you have no room to talk. You and your
wife function like a well-oiled machine, just like me and Annie.
Shit, you’re a fucking bishop and you can still do your job and
teach class. You couldn’t do that without her. You work well
together, you’re committed, none of that sappy shit I can’t
stand.”

“Then you aren’t paying attention. Ten years Steffie
and I have been married, okay? Four kids and one on the way, okay?
I love her. I’m
in
love with her. But all you see is the
‘well-oiled machine,’ and you admire that so much you miss the rest
of it. You don’t see what there is underpinning it. You don’t see
the spontaneity and fun and laughter. You don’t see the sex. You
don’t see the fights. You don’t see the crying. You don’t see us
wrangling our kids constantly until we’re too tired to have sex at
all. You don’t see how much time we spend apart because I’m always
at church when I’m not here. You don’t see how much we miss each
other, and I’m here to tell you—being
in
love is the sugar
that makes
that
medicine go down. We couldn’t do it if we
weren’t
in
love. You aren’t seeing how it all works
together.”

“We don’t want all that drama,” Eric insisted. “No
fights, no crying. That’s why we’re together. That’s why it
works.”

“You know what?” Dirk said, exasperated. “You’ve
never been in love so you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

“Apparently, I paid more attention at BYU than you
did. It’s
your
church leaders saying there’s more than one
person you can be compatible with and make a life with. I didn’t
come up with that, but it makes a whole lot of sense to me.”

“More than one person who is compatible with you
that you can also
fall in love with
,” Dirk corrected.
“There’s a big difference. I bet some time before or after you
marry Annie, you’ll meet a woman who’ll knock your socks off. Then
you’ll understand, but it might be too late.”

“Not possible. If it didn’t happen at BYU, it’s not
going to happen.”

“Yeah, you know, there’s a reason it didn’t happen
for you at BYU, and it wasn’t because you aren’t a member of the
church.”

“Oh, it is, too. Heather told me that outright.”

“Heather had your number from the get-go. Why do you
think you couldn’t get her out of the library, much less on a date?
The girls you bought rings for didn’t dump you because you weren’t
a member of the church. They dumped you because you weren’t
in
love with them the way they were with you.”

“That’s the biggest crock of shit I ever heard.”

“Do you know how many times
your
girlfriends
came crying their hearts out to
me
?”

“And you got plenty of dates out of it. You’re
welcome.” With that, Eric turned and jogged home to get ready for
his date.

“Annie,” he said when he opened the door to their
apartment. “Did you get the flowers?”

Annie, in her favorite set of navy lingerie, her
blonde hair clipped up on top of her head haphazardly, sat on the
couch, her feet propped on the coffee table, a romance novel in one
hand and a glass of Scotch in the other. Jill Scott purred from the
sound system.

She turned to look up at him over the rim of her
glasses. “What flowers?”

He looked around. The rolling suitcase she used to
cart her drug samples around to doctors’ offices was nowhere in
sight. She had the bottle of Scotch and a stack of novels on the
table between her feet. Obviously, she’d settled in for a weekend
of well-deserved relaxation.

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.