Stay (Dunham series #2) (35 page)

“Stay,” she whispered against his mouth. “Don’t
move. Listen.”

Yes, listen.

The grass whispering. The coo of the mourning doves.
The notes of the breeze that flowed over and around them.

Eric looked up into the canopy of green, the late
sunrise just touching the leaves, limning them in gold and sky.

Vanessa moved against him, the sweat between their
bodies easing the friction a bit so that he felt the slope of her
generous breasts against his chest, her hard nipples scraping
against him, his nipples sensitive to her softness.

With Eric held tight inside Vanessa’s body, no latex
between them, every shift in, out, another word of their prayer,
Eric couldn’t imagine separating himself from Vanessa again. And
with any luck—

She kissed him again, hard, and began to move in
earnest, whimpering with each thrust, Eric’s hips meeting hers with
exquisite precision.

They were not making love, he abruptly realized.
They were meditating together, praying to a God more ancient than
religion, more ancient than Eric’s people, more ancient than
anything man had ever built, as the sun rose over them.

“
Eric!
”

Her cry echoed around the forest, bounced off the
rough shale walls that rose up behind the copse.

He rolled her over once again so she cradled
him.

“You fit me so right,” he breathed, filling her time
and again, hoping for more . . .

Eric felt himself growl, animal, possessive, when he
came, burying himself in her one last time.

“Stay,” she whispered again while holding him to
her, as he kissed and licked the skin in the crook of her neck,
tasting the salt of sweat, of sex and . . . tears. He didn’t know
if she asked him to stay inside her or stay with her in the Ozarks,
but he couldn’t do either.

He could only promise to return.

* * * * *

31: Begging Hands

He kissed her well before he left. In the garage.
Before he climbed in his car. She held her fingers tight to her
lips and blinked tears away.

Eric watched her in his rearview mirror, her
beautiful turquoise eyes filled with the same devastation he’d seen
when she was thirteen and he had walked away from her.

He had to go, but he would come back.

Management’s management.

How many times had he said, thought, heard that
sentiment these past ten days, the phrase respectfully targeted at
him as he went about Whittaker House business as if he had an
actual investment in it.

It had taken one afternoon of cleaning fish under
Vachel’s tutelage for the boy’s residual resentment to begin to
fade. This boy—not the one who had borne Eric’s name for the first
twelve years of his life and made himself a pain in the ass just to
get some attention—this boy Eric liked. And respected. As a
man.

As the week progressed and Vachel swaggered in and
out of the mansion dressed in either buckskins or a leather kilt,
tending to his self-appointed Whittaker House tasks, Eric had
realized that Vanessa wanted to spoil the kid, to give him whatever
he wanted, asking only for obedience in the very few things that
were important to her. Yet what Vachel wanted most was to feel
valued—and it was important enough to him that he’d reluctantly
approached Eric and hinted around about his distress until Eric
figured it out.

Eric had found her in the butchery.

“Vanessa, you have to ask him to carry his weight.
He wants that from you more than anything else.”

“He’s thirteen,” she snapped as she wielded her
knife with great precision. “He doesn’t need to. He needs to be a
child and play video games and surf the ’net and have friends come
over and have pool parties. He bags all the wild game for my
dishes, from chipmunk to deer. He catches all the fish and crawfish
we serve. Do you know how much that’s worth? How much he’s added to
Whittaker House’s profits? That’s more than enough, Eric. Too much.
I don’t even like that he feels obligated to do that much and I had
to fight him so he would take payment.”

“He doesn’t want to be paid! He doesn’t understand
what you’re trying to teach him. His goal is to earn your approval
and he doesn’t get that cash is your way of showing approval. His
goal is fighting with your goal and neither one of you are getting
anywhere.”

“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.”