Stay (Dunham series #2) (42 page)

Vanessa looked over her shoulder to check on
Curtis’s reaction to her new dessert. “Cur—”

“Missouri prosecutor Eric Cipriani is garnering
national attention . . . ”

She whipped around and looked up at the TV.

Again.

But all she saw was an artist’s rendering of Eric in
a Chouteau County courtroom speaking to the jury, an expression of
rage on his face.

It transformed him from a suave Italian gentleman
into an Osage warrior, his battlefield a courtroom, Hugo Boss his
war dress. She caught her breath at his magnificence.

“ . . . defense counsel Dirk Jelarde had entered a
plea of not guilty, but today the jury convicted Tanya Williamson
of four counts of first-degree murder for the June fourteenth
slaying of her four children in a Chouteau City, Missouri motel.
Williamson’s sentencing hearing is set for December tenth, and
Cipriani has requested the death penalty. Senator Tye Afton,
Republican Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was
quoted as saying, ‘Cipriani is a fine prosecutor, a fine
representative of Missouri’s commitment to law enforcement. He’s
got a good head on his shoulders, innovative ideas, and a growing
grassroots movement behind him.’

“Missouri’s governor also praised Cipriani after
today’s verdict.”

The screen changed. The governor stood in the marble
rotunda of the capitol building, his words echoing. “A year and a
half ago, Eric Cipriani took the reins of the Chouteau County
prosecutor’s office after Knox Hilliard made a mockery of it for
the preceding fourteen years. He has turned that county around and
today, I can say with great confidence and gratitude that Chouteau
County has one of the finest prosecutors in the state at the helm
of its jurisprudence system.”

“Governor Dixon! What do you think of Mr. Cipriani’s
future in politics? Senator Afton seems to think he could be the
savior of the Republican party.”

“Well, let me put it this way. I don’t care what he
calls himself or what party he’s representing, I want to work with
him.”

Okay, you’ve adequately demonstrated your
willingness to have fun. Find me a place to fuck you silly where we
won’t get arrested.

Vanessa watched stonily when the screen changed,
showing reporters with microphones, cameras, and booms chasing Eric
up the Chouteau County courthouse stairs to the prosecutor’s
office. He turned on the landing halfway up and held his hands up
for silence, which he got.

He looked around, his face hard, arrogant, so unlike
the face she had stared into when he had eaten kangaroo jerky,
ridden the rides with her, teased her about a pink saloon girl
dress, and posed for a tintype with her.

. . . that was before I found out my girlfriend was
about to come in the middle of an amusement park while twenty
people watched me finger-fuck her.

Today, he stood tall, proud, and broad in his navy
designer suit. His Donegal beard was trimmed to its usual sharp
edges, his shirt collar and cuffs still crisp, his tie
immaculate.

“I want everybody to understand something,” he
boomed, his voice deep and powerful. Angry. “You pull [bleep] like
this in my county, I
will
hunt you down and bring you in and
make
damn
sure the victims get their justice and the people
of Missouri get their revenge.”

I’m taking you to Silver Dollar City today . . . and
we’re going to hold hands and ride rides and see the shows and eat
cotton candy and funnel cakes and ice cream and hot dogs.

Vanessa hurt so badly she could barely catch her
breath, but she couldn’t turn away.

“What if you had lost?”

Eric’s head snapped to the reporter who’d asked
that, and his eyes narrowed. “I wasn’t going to lose.”

“If you
had
,” she persisted, “would you have
turned vigilante like your boss did in 1994?”

“I wasn’t going to lose,” he repeated slowly, his
jaw grinding. “And that’s enough of
that
.”

I’m going to teach you how to have some good, clean
fun.

“Mr. Cipriani! You were in the Chouteau County
prosecutor’s office for six years as the executive assistant
prosecutor and interim, and the last year and a half as the elected
prosecutor. You’ve already begun to raise funds for a run at the
Missouri attorney general’s office, and the governor has openly
endorsed you for that position. Do you think you can work with a
Democrat?”

He nodded abruptly. “Governor Dixon’s an honorable
man and I look forward to working with him. Until I beat him in the
election after that.”

“What party will you be representing?”

“Independent.”

The press corps buzzed. “But Senator Afton has been
quietly championing you as an up-and-coming leader in the
Republican party.”

“Then he’s been doing it without my knowledge or
consent.”

“You ran and won as a Libertarian in Chouteau
County.”

“I ran and won as Eric Cipriani, somebody the county
knows and trusts as a prosecutor and a local businessman. I’m not
completely on board with the Libertarian platform, and the
difference is significant.”

“You haven’t made any secret of your aspirations to
the presidency. Do you really think you can get all the way to the
White House as a third-party candidate?”

“The people of this country want real change, and
I’m it. When they go vote, they won’t see ‘Democrat’ or
‘Republican’ or ‘Independent’ on their ballots. They’ll see ‘Eric
Cipriani’ and check the box. Okay, press conference is over, folks.
I want to go home and put my feet up and pop a cold one.” With
that, he turned and climbed the rest of the stairs.

If I didn’t mean something more to you, you’d have
tucked me away somehow, minimized me to some secret little tryst .
. .

The studio announcer faded in. “Eric Cipriani,” he
said, “has the financial backing of some of the most powerful
conservatives in the state of Missouri and the full support of
conservative pundit Justice McKinley, who just happens to be on his
staff. Justice McKinley’s marriage to scandal-ridden Knox Hilliard
could be a sticking point in his campaign for attorney general, so
it’ll be interesting to see how this all works out. See you after
the break.”

Vanessa turned, numb, her head bowed. She walked
over to the staff table and sat next to Curtis. She vaguely noted
that he had cleaned his plate, and she tried to keep her agony to
herself when he laid a gentle hand on her back.

“I guess you liked the apples’n’onions.”

“Yeup.” Good. Precisely the reaction she needed.
“Cranberries ain’t native, though.”

“Color. A little zing. I can substitute something
else that’s native when it’s in season, maybe sugared
elderberries.”

He nodded. Got up. Shuffled, all hunched over,
toward the back door, then paused with his hand on it. Turned to
look back at her.

“That boy loves you, missy,” he croaked, his voice
nearly broken with age and cigarettes, whiskey and song.

Her mouth trembled and she gave him a tight smile.
“No he doesn’t. I never gave him a reason to.”

The next day, the phone signaled in Vanessa’s ear
and she answered it by rote. “Whittaker House. How can I help you
drop out of society?”

“Yeah, you got a vacancy for a hobo with a little
extra cash?”

It was all Vanessa could do not to burst out in
tears at the sound of that hoarse voice, packed with heartbreak,
knowing that not only had she lost everything, so had Nash.

“Yeah,” she said, sniffling.

“I promise not to call you Melanie if you promise
not to call me Eric.”

Vanessa managed an entirely fake chuckle. “I don’t
think that’s going to be a problem. When are you planning to show
up?”

“Two, three days,” he murmured. Cleared his throat.
Began again, with forced matter-of-factness. “Drivin’ a hot rod
now. ’Cause I can.”

“Beats walking. Okay, I’ll clear out your
suite.”

“Nah. Just clear out half your closet. Might as well
make it official.”

Don’t
ever
mistake sex for love because
that’s when girls start getting stupid.

She sighed, feeling very stupid.

It was too late for them, but she said, “Okay,”
because she could think of nothing else to say at the moment. She’d
call him back tomorrow and tell him not to return; now that she’d
had the real thing, a substitute was no longer an option.

Sitting on the side of her bed that night, she
carefully slid that precious,
precious
reproduction tintype
out of its sleeve to look at it for the first time.

It was the only evidence she had of that flash in
time when Eric Cipriani had been hers.

When he had looked at her the way she had always
wanted him to.

When he had touched her with reverence and joy.

When he had taken her to Silver Dollar City to ride
rides and hold hands and eat cotton candy, to kiss and stroll and
talk . . .

She expected to see a leer in the tintype, some
expression of lust because he’d had his hand under her skirt, but
no.

She stared at it, eyes wide, her hand shaking so
badly the paper trembled.

Tears splashed onto it, onto his face, blurring the
one expression she hadn’t expected to see.

I want the chance to fall in love with you.

He had.

* * * * *

38: Limousines and Sycophants

“Oh, you look so
pretty
,” Giselle remarked
when Eric limped into the dojo two weeks after he’d won that damned
trial. He stopped, looked in a mirror, and grimaced. Saw half of
Giselle’s class—the female half—stop to stare at him. “Did Mill
send you to the hospital?”

“Twice,” Eric admitted, touching one of the many
bruises his sensei had given him. He turned away from the scrutiny.
He didn’t mind the gawking outside dojo walls, but he didn’t want
it in his own house. “Sixteen stitches from a knife, two busted
ribs.”

“Sixteen? That’s what he gave me. He must have his
teaching slices down to a science.”

“He’d better. Another quarter inch to my femoral
artery and then I could’ve found out if Joseph Smith was right.
Mill says he expects you to be working on advancement and to
present yourself for your third black-belt test within the
year.”

Giselle stared at him. “I’m only a first.”

“I told him about your little tiff with those two
assholes on the Plaza and he told me to promote you to second
immediately.”

“Oh, so what he really wants is a detailed
accounting and a choreographed re-creation in front of a ballroom
full of black belts.”

“With handouts, including the police report. He’s
got a date, a full roster, and a waiting list.”

Giselle turned back to her class with a laugh, but
then snapped at them to focus on their techniques and not on Mr.
Cipriani.

Eric sighed and limped toward his office.

Convicting a child-murderer hadn’t satisfied Eric’s
howling need for Vanessa nor had the interviews, the photo shoots,
the sudden thrust into the political and pop culture
stratosphere—free publicity he needed to start on his campaign in
earnest. He’d figured a week of intensive training in Salt Lake
with his sensei would get his heartache cut and pummeled out of
him.

No such luck.

“Fifth black, my ass. I need to be busted down to
first. Maybe yellow,” he groused as he dropped into his battered
desk chair and turned on the computer. He blinked when he pulled up
his accounting program, stared. Sat forward. Stared some more.

He laboriously pulled himself back out of his chair
and shuffled out of his office into the workout area. He stood to
the side of Giselle’s class while she taught, but as soon as she
understood he wanted to talk to her she set the class to doing
timing drills, admonished them to keep their minds on their
assignment, and bowed herself out.

“Did our enrollment really double this last week or
is that some math error?”

“Nope, it really doubled. I mean, between the
governor putting you on the AG short list and you making the cover
of
People
magazine, you’re in demand. ‘Prosecutor Eric
Cipriani sexes up conservative politics.’”

He sighed. “Oh, well, did you explain that I’m not
teaching anymore?”

He missed that.

“Yes, Eric,” she said dryly. “Your magic fairy dust
has settled over the dojo. Six degrees of separation and all that.
All they need is your name on the storefront. And oh, by the way,
KC Magazine
called for an interview and photo shoot, and
about a dozen bloggers have had their naughty photoshopping way
with your pictures. Too bad the public won’t get to see all those
beautiful purple and green and puke-yellow blotches all over your
face. Mardi Gras gone wrong.”

He scowled at her overt amusement.

“I just did my job,” he grumbled. “No need for
everybody to go all nuts over it.”

Giselle’s smile faded and she stared up at him. “You
don’t seem very happy.”

He took a deep breath. “I—” He waved a hand, taking
in his dojo and the courthouse across the street, the magazines
with covers of his face that he just now saw piled on top of one
student’s gear bag. “This is fun,” he said bluntly. “I like it. I’m
getting where I want to go and I don’t even care that I’m getting
there on my looks. Just so long as I get there and I don’t have to
beg for money to do it.”

She said nothing. Waited patiently.

“I want that. I’ve wanted it since I was a freshman.
Maybe even before that when I had old Jenkins in my ear constantly
harping on capitalism and the American way. I don’t know. But I’ve
worked for it. Kept my nose clean, did Knox’s job—conspicuously.
Bided my time, paid my dues, did everything right. I spun my web
and waited and let it come to me so I could pounce. It’s here and
it’s time to go to war. I
deserve
this.”