Stay (Dunham series #2) (45 page)

“Then you’re more naïve than I took you for, boy.
You’re never going to win on a third-party ticket. Any third-party
ticket, Libertarian, Independent, Green. Doesn’t matter. You’ll be
the next Ross Perot, splitting the right-wing voters down the
middle and giving it up for another Democrat. Lose it for you
and
the Republican candidate.”

“Maybe so, but either way, it’ll be bad for you and
your cronies if I don’t come along for your ride and I’m here to
tell you: I’m not coming along for your ride. What the Republican
party needs is a clean shot through the heart. Or a big dose of
Viagra. You and your good ol’ boys are just too old and feeble to
get it up without help.”

Afton’s nostrils flared. “You don’t want to make an
enemy of me, Cipriani.”

“Politics is all about enemies, Afton.”

“You—”

“Senator,” Vanessa purred from beside Eric. He felt
her hand on his back and her breasts press against him even as she
held her hand out for Afton to shake. Eric wrapped his arm around
Vanessa’s waist and pulled her closer. Stacy’s slightly red-rimmed
eyes narrowed a bit as she looked between them.

“Vanessa,” Afton said smoothly, taking her hand
gently but letting it loose quickly. “I didn’t know you and Eric
were . . . an item. In fact, I wouldn’t have guessed you two knew
each other at all.”

“It’s not so strange. We have Knox in common, after
all,” Vanessa murmured. “Hello, Stacy.”

Stacy sneered and walked off. Eric watched her
slightly wobbly gait for a second or two before looking back at
Afton. “I don’t know why you’re surprised,” Eric said low. “I told
you I wasn’t going to be her nanny. I also told you to get her
cleaned up. She may be dressed a little better, but she’s high as a
kite right now.”

Afton’s glance slid to Vanessa, who stiffened at his
sudden look of contempt, before addressing Eric again. “You have
some nerve,” he said tightly. “Calling my daughter a whore when
this one—” He jerked his chin toward Vanessa. “—made her fame on
her back, spreading her legs for King Midas.”

Eric’s left fist glanced off Afton’s chin.

Just a touch, really.

So fast no one had seen it.

Eric had no trouble keeping his cool in the face of
Missouri’s Who’s Who turning to stare at the commotion Afton
created by having fallen for no reason anyone could see.

“Are you okay, Senator?” Eric said loudly, faking
great concern. “Here, let’s get the
hors d’oeuvres
tray
around here. You’re probably starving.”

Afton struggled to get to his feet, glaring at Eric
when he offered his hand and refusing every offer of help.

“You little motherfucker,” Afton hissed after he’d
straightened himself and waved a hand to indicate that he was fine.
He wasn’t. He’d have a nasty bruise on his jaw in an hour. “You’re
going to regret that.”

“Remember who you’re dealing with, Afton,” Eric
murmured.

“A punk kid who raped a thirteen-year-old girl, is
who.”

“You keep singing that song and I’ll put you down
for good.”

Afton’s nostrils flared. “Are you threatening to sic
Hilliard on me?”

Eric affected an amused chuckle, just for the
passersby. “The thing about pissing off a prosecutor is he can get
to files and records journalists and other bloggers can’t,
especially if he’s in bed with the FBI. Hello, scandal of the
century if anybody finds out where all those real estate funds went
and who you’re fucking—’cause you’d never survive
that
.”

“Nobody’d believe any lie you tell,” he sneered.

“Lie? I think not. Knox—you know, one of the best
white-collar prosecutors in the country? He’s been through all
those old real estate deals. And there’s a weasel of a reporter up
in my county who got a mysterious package of pictures of you
visiting your mistress.”

Afton turned a little green around the gills.

“Think about who I have behind me, Afton. They
all
know what I know, and they have a score to settle with
you anyway.”

The man stood in front of Eric trembling in
frustrated rage.

“I’ll fight dirt with dirtier,” Eric said. “And I’m
not afraid to do it publicly if you push me too far. Now apologize
to my lady.”

His nostrils flared and he flashed a glare at
Vanessa, then stalked off. Eric looked down to see Vanessa’s
flushed face and the vacant stare she directed at Eric’s shirt
studs.

“He’s right, Eric,” she whispered.

“Vanessa, don’t,” he begged, his frustration
mounting.

“No. I would just bring you down.
Maxim
.
Esquire
. Those are bad enough. But
Wild, Wild West
—
That Sebastian’s backing you, even though he and I— And everybody
knows it— No, I can’t subject you to that, with you wanting to
defend me at every turn and worse, using me to get to you about
Simone . . . I can’t hack that, watching you fight off accusations
you wouldn’t have to deal with if I weren’t in the picture.”

“Vanessa, you don’t understand. Afton can’t touch
us—you—now.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “I’m not worried about
him. I’m worried about your constituency, you know, the moral
majority types. The religious right. Any way you cut me open, I
won’t be acceptable to them, and that’s who matters.”

“All they’ll see is a charming woman with a collar
as blue as theirs who worked hard and made it on her own. They’ll
see the woman who built Whittaker House, which is a survivalist’s
wet dream wrapped up in a five-star experience. They’ll see an
entrepreneur who takes care of her land as well as she takes care
of her people. The religious right will get over it the minute you
open your mouth and
talk
about what you believe, and then
they’ll fall head over heels in love with you.”

“But—”

“And in case this hasn’t occurred to you yet, the
religious right isn’t exactly singing my praises. They’re willing
to compromise on a couple of things, but none of those are deal
breakers. If they can deal with
me
, they won’t blink an eye
about
you
.”

“But—”

“You are an
asset
to me, Vanessa,” he
whispered furiously, now aware that their argument was beginning to
attract attention. “Don’t you get it? You had a famous lover when
you were twenty. You posed
semi
-nude for an artist and two
magazine covers. Big deal. There is no other dirt that can be dug
up on you. On the other hand,
I
am going to be hearing about
the thirteen-year-old girl I raped for the rest of my life, and
every one of my opponents will be pointing at Vachel as proof. If
you’re outed as the one who proved my innocence, I’m going to be
accused of having raped you, too.”

“Oh,” she breathed, and he knew he’d just pushed her
back into the trailer park.

“Don’t,” he growled, taking her face in his hands
and kissing her. She melted into him, that pretty lady he’d met at
Chouteau Elementary.

Flash after flash went off around them, but he kept
hold of her when she attempted to tug away from him. “Good press,”
he muttered against her mouth, then felt her smile and relax once
again.

Another long moment of kissing.

He had been too long without her.

“Eric,” she sighed.

“Please, Vanessa.”

“No.”

“Vanessa—”

“Don’t push me.”

Eric knew to outsiders they seemed to be exchanging
the most tender of words, only reinforced by the fact that he
wouldn’t let her out of arm’s reach. She seemed no more eager to
let go of him, but they were seated with different people at
dinner, so far apart they were unable to make eye contact, much
less touch.

Dancing followed dinner.

Eric sought her out as soon as politely possible,
and she met him, turning into his arms without a word.

“I bet Knox taught you how to dance.”

She smiled, but it was sad.

Hours later, Eric helped Vanessa into her
full-length hooded skunk fur cape, touching her soft skin. She
turned her head and kissed his fingertips where they lay over her
shoulder. More camera flashes, but neither of them cared.

Her eyes glittered when she looked up at him.

Eric had never hurt so badly in his life as he did
late into the night, holding her while she cried into his chest,
after they’d made love for the first time in months.

He drove her home the next day, and they kissed for
long moments, each touch a memory to be stored away.

“Goodbye, Eric,” she whispered when he climbed back
into his car.

“Goodbye, Vanessa,” he whispered, as her reflection
in the rearview mirror got smaller and smaller.

* * * * *

It All Evens Out in the End

* * * * *

41: Raining Fish Hooks

and Hammer Handles

November 2010

“VANESSA!”

Vanessa sighed, stomped to her bedroom window, and
threw it open. “I’M COMING! God, Knox, could you use the
phone?”

“Your phone is
off
, Vanessa. I’m not out here
in the cold and rain because I
like
it. Get a move on. The
natives are restless.”

And Vanessa was listless.

She stared at herself in the mirror, and where stood
a hot saloon girl all done up in magenta satin, black lace
petticoats, black stockings held up with pink garters, and black
leather granny boots, she saw only an embattled and heartbroken
thirteen-year-old girl.

The elaborately framed reproduction tintype hung on
the wall above her bed, and she glanced at it, wishing her piano
player were here to see her, but of course, that was
impossible.

Never had she dreamed that she would
not care
how well a masquerade did, no matter that this one had pulled in as
much revenue as her previous four masquerades combined. In fact,
she resented this Thanksgiving’s turnout for one simple reason:

Eric Cipriani, the cover boy savior of conservative
politics, who’d shaken up the political landscape by blowing all
definitions of “conservative” out of the water, whose love affair
with Vanessa Whittaker, the cover girl chef and former Ford muse,
had exploded all over politics and entertainment news the last two
weeks.

Neither of them had fared well.

He was getting hammered for not having a “proper”
girlfriend—one without obvious conservative philosophies, who had
also
posed semi-nude for a famous artist and two men’s
magazines—or, worse, for hiding his homosexuality behind a woman,
thinking the old trick of having a beard would actually fool
today’s savvy and diverse electorate. He’d delighted the left with
his apparent self-loathing, deeply offended libertarian types by
not trusting them with the truth, and outraged the religious right
for not embodying and promoting its definition of
“conservative.”

Once the media decided to rehash Eric’s “rape” of
Simone, it took two weeks before Vanessa was outed as Eric’s
savior, and their relationship had taken on a whole new dimension.
As Eric had predicted, the whispers began as to whether he had also
raped Vanessa—

There is no other dirt that can be dug up on
you.

—and who was Vachel’s
real
mother?

Who had
really
killed Simone Whittaker in
that bar brawl in Raytown, Missouri? Had the Jackson County
prosecutor covered for his colleague, the prosecutor of a
neighboring county, by intentionally putting the wrong person on
trial? Was it entirely unreasonable to think that the protégé of a
man who’d turned vigilante would follow in his footsteps?

Craig Wells, the Jackson County prosecutor—a man who
bore a deep hatred of both Knox and Giselle, and hated Eric simply
for his close association with them—found himself defending Eric in
order to save his own reputation.

Was Vanessa a victim? Was Eric forcing her to front
him somehow, using his mentor’s tricks? Was she a willing
accomplice, out to further her own interests, whoring for Eric
Cipriani the way she’d whored for King Midas-slash-Ford?

Vanessa’s apparent affair with Sebastian had been
thoroughly dissected, although both Vanessa and Sebastian refused
to comment.

Knox hadn’t escaped unscathed, either, though the
charges leveled at him came as a devastating shock. Had
Knox
had a sexual interest in twelve-year-old Vanessa beyond the
information she’d provided to prove Eric’s innocence? Had Knox
delivered a naïve twenty-year-old Vanessa up for
thirty-six-year-old Sebastian Taight’s usage when he was done with
her? Was Knox’s interest in Whittaker House solely a business
relationship or was there something else going on? Did Knox’s wife,
conservative pundit Justice McKinley—younger than Vanessa by two
days—have anything to do with it? But Justice had a mouth and an
audience, and a brass-balls-to-the-wall approach she’d learned from
her husband. It didn’t take long for detractors to wish they hadn’t
attracted her attention.

Then Eric’s bigamist father, a broken old man
begging for a scrap of attention from anybody, sat down with a
reporter and poured out his whole sad history into a recorder.
Clearly he was simply proud of his son, but the story had been
sensationalized until it was unrecognizably filthy.

Eric’s mother refused to speak to the press at all,
delivering her disdain for what they were doing to her son,
Vanessa, and Knox in a well-articulated statement read by the chief
of the Osage nation.

One Bozeman blogger, whose day job was delivering
overnight packages, took one look at Nash Piper’s ex-wife and
pointedly,
publicly
, wondered why Nash received so many
shipments of food from Whittaker House.
Where were you all those
years, Nash? Shacking up with Doc Mel’s doppelgänger?
Unfortunately, that story sprouted legs and walked on water.