Stay (Dunham series #2) (18 page)

Absolutely not. She had too much religious training,
both Catholic and Mormon, to stomach adultery. Besides, she knew
what Laura would think, and Vanessa would never be able to bear
Knox’s disappointment.

Once she and Vachel had gotten a room at the motel
by the courthouse, and unpacked toiletries and such, they went to
her mother’s mobile home.

Vanessa and her streaked hair.

The Prowler.

The strange kid with her.

LaVon’s whole fan club, gathered around her on the
deck of the mobile home, fell silent as they watched Vanessa and
Vachel get out of the car. Now, nothing but the relatively quiet
ambient noise of the trailer park could be heard.

Suddenly, LaVon wailed and fell to sobbing as if her
heart had broken and, well, it had. She’d miss that social security
check, all right.

“Eric?” called LaVon through her sobs, calculated to
swing everyone’s attention back to her. “Is that you?”

“My name is Vachel Whittaker,” he said, his voice
clear and confident, his diction precise. Suddenly, Vanessa didn’t
mind his wardrobe quite so much if this was what he was getting out
of playing highland warrior with every grown man in Wright and
Davis County every third weekend of the month.

“Vanessa!” she snapped, shooting out of her chair,
forgetting to stay in character. “You changed his name? Simone—God
rest her soul—named him that for a reason!”

“Which is exactly the reason it got changed.”

“What the hell kinda name is Vachel? Vachel the
satchel?”

It took every ounce of control Vanessa had to remain
cool, but Vachel said, with an admirable calm, “A friend suggested
it.”

LaVon gestured to his clothes and screeched, “Did he
tell you to wear a skirt, too? Good Lawd A’mighty! The boy’s turned
homo!”

Vanessa rolled her eyes and Vachel snorted. “It’s
not a skirt.”

“Why’re you wearing it? You go in the house and put
some pants on right now!”

Vachel curled his lip. He and Vanessa both leaned
back against the car, crossed their arms and ankles, and stared at
LaVon benignly until she started to sputter and cough. The fog of
cigarette smoke overhanging the deck was visible and neither of
them would brave it. It forced LaVon to descend from her redwood
throne to come to Vanessa, which pleased her mightily.

She stopped a couple of feet away and wagged a long,
gaudily manicured finger at Vachel’s attire. “This, this, this—
What’re you
doin’
to the boy, Vanessa?”

Vanessa looked down at Vachel, inspecting him as if
for the first time: white tee shirt, black knee-high Doc Martens,
tiny blue reflective sunglasses, and a white-red-and-blue tartan
kilt. He had a tightly folded red bandana wrapped around his
forehead. His short blond hair had been bleached white by the sun
and his skin tanned fairly dark by same; it was an amazing
contrast. Try as she might, could find nothing but petty glee in
the way he looked as long as it sent her mother over the moon.

“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 justice, 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.