Stay (Dunham series #2) (49 page)

Eric closed his eyes to think about that one act,
prompted by the subconscious understanding Glenn wouldn’t be
unscrupulous with whatever Eric told him.

“You know I’ve been after Afton for years,” he
continued, “and never printed a thing until Knox . . . He isn’t so
much a white-collar prosecutor as a forensic accountant.”

“How do you think he pulled off that scam so
long?”

“Right. Anyway, I couldn’t have followed Afton’s
real estate deals myself or proven it without Knox to show me
exactly how it was done.”

“But you’d still bust out Knox if you could.”

“You better believe it. He didn’t come to me out of
the kindness of his heart. He did it because he knew I’d print it.
It was an equitable trade-off. Afton gets exposed and out of your
way. I get my Pulitzer nomination and now my blog’s getting enough
traffic to make some money.” Glenn laughed suddenly. “Enlightened
self-interest at work.”

Eric smiled wryly and shook his head.

“Look,” Glenn grunted as he hauled his squat frame
out of the chair and headed to the door. “I’m the last guy to give
advice about— Because, since, as you so astutely pointed out, I
spent Thanksgiving with my cat.” Eric found it sad he was so
matter-of-fact about it. “But in the big scheme of things, politics
aren’t . . . Some things are more important.”

* * * * *

44: God Hates a Coward

April 2011

Vanessa sat in her office chair and watched out the
window as her April-green southwest field got systematically
scraped and run over and turned by earth movers that, from this
distance, were about the size of cars and all the men with shovels
looked about as tall as ants.

This was it, the final brick in her vision of
Whittaker House.

“I don’t even golf,” she muttered, wondering if Eric
would like what he’d designed.

She wondered that a lot.

Sunlight glinted in starbursts off the lake when the
breeze rippled the surface of the water. The pear trees were in
full blossom, all puffy white and without a care in the world. She
could hear a tractor’s drone; by the end of the day, five acres of
lawn would have the precise wide crosshatch pattern of a
professional baseball outfield. The faintest echo of gunshots from
the northwest field let Vanessa know Vachel and the conservation
rangers had finally nailed the damned bear that had spent the last
month wreaking havoc all over her property.

For ol’ Curtis’s sake, her employees’, and her
guests, she’d asked the Conservation Department to deal with the
animal. They’d tagged the bear, relocated him, tracked him
back—twice—and had been preparing to capture and relocate him a
third time.

When the bear did indeed take out Curtis’s front
door and nearly killed a couple of teenagers out for a nice
afternoon hike, Vanessa had panicked.
No more tracking. No more
relocation. You kill that bastard—
today
—or I’ll get every
gun in this county out for his hide.
It was a worthless threat,
but the rangers were already on it.

She’d never butchered a bear before, but then, the
state might not let her keep it, even though it had lived and died
on her land.

Well, not all her land.

Yet.

OKH still owned half, but Eilis didn’t want it and
had encouraged Vanessa to start buying it out.

“For me, it’s a hassle,” Eilis said. “It’s yours.
Your dream, your vision. You’re in a good place now and you’ve
earned it.”

Indeed. Vanessa could afford to start buying out
OKH’s share now, but every time Knox asked her if she wanted him to
make a payment toward that, she said no.

“Why not?” he’d ask, completely puzzled.

She’d shrug and go find something else to do.

Her email pinged.

*

Subject: [no subject]

Reply-to: [email protected]

trixies got an attitude. i didnt know they got that
way til they hit puberty. i must of been really bad in a past life
to have to deal with this but her and mel dont get along and she
dont like i take mels side. she thought her daddy’d come back one
day and save her from big bad mommy-had to get that idea out of her
head fast.

the blowback from ur little maskerade shit storm
last winter ain’t stopped here yet.

u might of put all those bastards in their place
plus that bitch mother of yours, but this goddam blogger and his
buddies still wont leave mel alone. im about to fix that fucker and
the bastards that want mels land cuz shes got water rights. your
old man hilliards coming in mighty handy right about now, all bored
and itching for a fight.

nil carborundum illegitimi. didnt know i knew latin
huh? my daddy used to say that to me. had to look it up to spell it
right tho. u do what u need to do about whether u cop to our affair
or not, things cant get much worse here if u speak up.

i know u didnt ask for my advise but whatever u got
left with ur boy, u maybe should think about why ur throwing that
away for a building.

stand in *2

*

Vanessa read it. Re-read it. She hadn’t spoken with
Nash since she’d called him and told him not to come back to
Mansfield at all, and she didn’t know him well enough to be able to
read between the lines as to what was happening between him and his
ex. At the very least, he was still in Bozeman and had apparently
taken a solid place in his daughter’s life in the last six
months.

Why had he felt a need to stick his nose in her
business? Except, well, the press had made Vanessa’s business “Doc
Mel’s” business, who was innocent of the whole thing. Collateral
damage. Like Vachel. And Nash’s little girl, attitude and all.

The only thing she could be grateful for was that
her life was back to Whittaker House normal, the press had backed
off and apparently forgotten about her, and LaVon had completely
disappeared.

For the time being.

Vanessa sighed and went to beg the rangers to let
her keep that bear.

On the way, she stopped in the kitchen to take a
good look at it and how well it functioned. Vanessa had known what
she wanted in her kitchen and had pushed Nia and Étienne until they
caught her vision, to have as much faith in her design as she did.
The Whittaker House kitchen was a machine unto itself, now copied
in several new restaurants around the world.

Vanessa had built this.

She walked out the back door, across the veranda,
down the stairs, and started up the pansy-flanked cobblestone drive
toward the garage. A sweet spring breeze ruffled the little wisps
of hair around her face and she could smell the cherry blossoms. It
had been a day like this when she’d lain in the grass nude while
Maxim
photography assistants sprinkled cherry and pear and
lilac blossoms over her body. Seemed so long ago now.

She heard the screeches and squeals of children on
the playground: The first Saturday morning of every month, all the
children from church arrived at Whittaker House to play for a
couple of hours while their mothers sat on the veranda resting,
talking, laughing, drinking an innocuous punch, and eating
cookies.

Vanessa’s steps slowed and she turned to walk
backward, to look at Whittaker House in all its solar-powered,
energy-efficient, nineteenth-century glory. No matter how long
she’d lived here, she’d find herself stricken by its devastating
magnificence at odd moments. Most days she didn’t dare stand and
gawk because the knowledge that
she
had built that—the
little girl from Chouteau Acres Mobile Home Park—was almost a
crushing weight, as if she couldn’t possibly have accomplished
that, as if she had perpetrated a great fraud upon the world.

Her pet missionaries drove past her with a wave, a
cheery “Bye, Sister Whittaker!” floating back to her. They were
funny: nineteen-year-old boys who sacrificed two years of their
lives and upwards of five hundred dollars a month to preach their
faith because they thought God wanted them to, thus, important.

I’ve been thinking about what you said about
politicians like you and you’re right. You’re important.
Governor
Cipriani.
President
Cipriani. It’s just— Here,
it’s— This isn’t where you need to be. You have so much to give to
the world, things it needs. Leadership. Philosophy. Sacrifice.
Protection for people like me, while I . . . cook for rich
people.

Vanessa had no need for power and she was
comfortable with her meager fame. Politics annoyed her, and
whenever she heard the word “fundraising,” she sneered. That money
could be spent in so many better ways than getting one man a
job.

It’s because of politicians like me that you got
your golf course. We work to keep the politicians you don’t like
out of your way.

She sighed and went to get her ATV out of the
garage. As she hooked a trailer to it, she heard the faint rumble
of the bulldozers that were building the golf course politicians
like Eric had helped her get, the golf course Eric had helped
design.

“Oh, Eric,” Vanessa whispered as she threw her leg
over the seat. She sat there for a moment, her nose stinging and
her vision blurring, then realized that the idea of butchering a
bear held no thrill for her at all.

She got off the bike and headed back to her office
to make a phone call.

*

Eric sat on his couch, his feet up on the coffee
table and bracing his laptop, tap- tap-tapping away at his latest
article and getting more and more frustrated with it. He yawned and
looked at the clock. One-thirty in the morning.

“Shit,” he murmured to no one.

Which was the problem.

Now he understood Knox’s years-long tussle with
insomnia that had only gotten worse once he’d met Justice.

He picked up his dog-eared Thanksgiving edition of
the
Chouteau Recorder
.

I have an idea.

Justice’s voice echoed in his head while he read and
re-read Vanessa’s love letter to him.

About what?

Well, you and Vanessa, how you can—

Does this involve me giving up my career or her
giving up hers?

Well, kind of. Maybe. I’m not sure yet.

Okay, well, the RNC is scheduled to call me in five
minutes to grovel at my feet. Let me know when you have it all
worked out.

Eric started when his apartment door burst open and
Annie came struggling in, cursing at her dripping umbrella and
rolling suitcase piled with her laptop case.

“I’m back,” she huffed in his general direction
while she tugged and tugged to get her suitcase over the
threshold.

“I see that,” Eric muttered mostly to himself, as he
watched her. “Does your mother know about this?”

“Fuck no,” Annie snapped. “And don’t tell her,
either.”

“What happened in Omaha?”

“Just . . . None of your business.”

“A man or a woman?”

“Man!” she spat. “I hate you all.” With one tug, she
got the case over the threshold, but she fell on her ass, which
made her hit her head against a wall—“
Ow!
”—which knocked her
glasses clear across the tile floor of the kitchen. “
Shit!
”
She crawled on the floor to find her glasses, patting tiles as she
went. He’d forgotten how blind she was. “Go find Judge Wilson,” she
said once she’d found them and put them back on her face. “You and
I are getting married.”

“Uh . . . why?”

“I’m going to solve your problem and you’re going to
solve mine.”

“I know what my problem is. What’s your problem? Or
did you already tell me that?”

“My
problem
,” she said as she got to her feet
and brushed off the butt of her jeans, “is that you suck.
He
sucks. You
all
suck. And you know what? Women suck, too.
People suck. I hate people.”

“You’re in sales. You’re not allowed to hate
people.”

“I can hate who I want, fuck you very much.”

“I don’t feel like taking you up on that right
now.”

“No, and you won’t. Because you’re in love with
someone else and you have no way to be with her without completely
screwing you both up.”

“Hmm, beginning to think the same thing about
you.”

She dropped onto the couch beside him. “You are good
in bed, though.”

“I know.”

“It could work.”

“Think about that for a minute, Annie. You’ve got
the same background check problem Vanessa does, with you and your
bisexuality.”

“Bi
curious
ality. Totally different. Besides
which, I told you I gave that up for real penis.”

“So what is Real Penis’s name?”

“Rafferty,” she mumbled, crossing her arms over her
chest and looking away. Eric leaned forward to look at her face
because he thought he saw . . .

“Are you
crying
?” he asked, shocked and
awed.

“Shut up.”

“So . . . ”

“He’s got mommy issues, okay? His mother, my mother.
Could be evil twins separated at birth. He knows she’s wrecking his
life. Makes him miserable. He won’t dump her. Said he made a
deathbed promise to his dad to take care of her. Well, I sure as
hell am not getting wrapped up in someone else’s mama drama when I
moved away from my own.” She swiped at her cheeks. “I hate
honorable men.”

“No, you hate that honor is inconvenient.”

“That too.”

“I don’t want to marry you, Annie.”

“I don’t want to marry you, either, but it’s
efficient.
You
aren’t going to brea—”

He waited for her to finish, but she didn’t. “Break
your heart. You
can
say it, you know. It doesn’t make you
less of a hard-ass.” He paused when she braced for the cheap shots
he would normally take. “Is this the guy you brought down here on
election night?”