Stay (Dunham series #2) (5 page)

Eric turned and opened the door to the office that
Knox had occupied for fourteen years after he’d deposed
his
predecessor at gunpoint. Now it belonged to Eric. It seemed so . .
. lifeless . . . without Knox’s overpowering personality, but it
was his now. He would turn it upside down and pull it inside out,
starting today at ten o’clock.

He had a nasty past that had caught up to him and a
brilliant future within his grasp.

He meant to meet them both head-on.

* * * * *

6: Too Big to Cry

The only television Vanessa “Granny” Whittaker had
ever bought for her inn hung in the kitchen for the staff. She had
no time for pleasure viewing and she got her news from the
internet, but her chief financial officer had had a TV installed in
his suite the day before. He’d already read everything in the
Whittaker House library, and his own library had gone up in flames
last month.

His doctors had restricted him from most of the
inn’s chores, his love-struck nurses all made sure he complied, his
unsympathetic physical therapist controlled nearly every move he
made, and he’d sent his wife home because she ran roughshod over
his medical team. Since he couldn’t carry anything as heavy as a
baby, the wife had taken their daughter with her; since he wasn’t
allowed to drive, he couldn’t go anywhere because no one at
Whittaker House had the time or inclination to take him.

In the five days since he’d moved into Whittaker
House, he’d caught up on all the accounting, sent all the quarterly
reports to their corporate partner, compiled the financial data
they needed to embark on Whittaker House’s next expansion, sent the
paperwork to the county for zoning permissions, and filed and paid
their taxes. Daily bookkeeping only took an hour if he was caught
up, so he had to wait until tomorrow to do anything further.

One possibility for his entertainment, the Mormon
missionaries who lived in one of Whittaker House’s cottages, were
always busy. At the moment, they were doing their laundry and
wouldn’t have time to talk to him until after lunch, if even then.
The rest of their week was booked solid, which left them no time to
indulge him in the deep theological discourse he enjoyed.

Ol’ Curtis Lowe wanted no truck with him; in
Curtis’s opinion, any man who refused to fish and hunt was
completely immoral.

Two of Whittaker House’s permanent residents had
their own routines, which did not include him, and the third one,
his chess partner, was in a meeting.

The production crew for Vanessa’s cooking show,
Vittles:
Gourmet Weeds and Roadkill
, wouldn’t arrive
until Saturday, which meant he had to wait almost a week for
something different to occupy his mind and time.

So he was bored.

Vanessa didn’t think there existed anything more
dangerous to her peace of mind than a wounded and bored, spouseless
and childless, inn-bound Knox Hilliard roaming around Whittaker
House with nothing to do and no one to talk to.

She’d warned him against fiddling with the food;
normally, he wouldn’t dare, but today . . . Alain, Whittaker
House’s executive chef, had already blown up at him once for being
in the way and a second time for daring to suggest that a delicate
gooseberry curd needed pepper.

And it was only ten o’clock in the morning.

“Sister Whittaker?”

She looked up from a half-butchered animal to see
the pair of elders clad only in jeans and sweatshirts shivering in
the doorway of her butcher shop. Knox thought it funny to request
that the missionaries address her in that manner and, being
simpatico with Knox, they obliged.

Obnoxious bastard.

“What’s he done this time?”

“Alain said to tell you to get him out of the
kitchen before he goes on strike.”

“Oh, shit,” she breathed. She dropped her knife,
ripped off her paper coverall and surgical gloves, and ran to the
mansion to keep her normally even-tempered chef from leaving for
the day or, worse, quitting altogether. She burst through the back
door into the kitchen, but stopped when she noticed the stillness
amongst the skeleton kitchen staff, who had all stopped to watch
television. Knox leaned against a stainless steel table, his
attention as riveted as everyone else’s.

She looked up at the screen, then stiffened when she
saw a face she hadn’t seen in thirteen years, and could have gone
the rest of her life without seeing—the face of the man she’d spent
the last several months thinking about.

Couldn’t stop thinking about.

Wrapped up in a fine black wool coat, he stood on
the top step of the Chouteau County courthouse while snow fell
around him, onto his broad shoulders and into his short black hair.
Mr. Connelly and Mr. Davidson, looking much older and grayer than
she remembered, flanked him, and two very young attorneys stood off
to the side. None of the prosecutors held any papers or hid behind
a pedestal of any sort.

He had a narrow, closely trimmed line of black
facial hair along the sharp edges of his jaw and chin from sideburn
to sideburn. His dark expression was tinged with the slight
arrogance of success and power. Her breath caught in her throat at
the changes time had wrought in his features, the changes that made
him more beautiful than she remembered, than she could have
imagined.

*

“
Yes, Mr. Shinkle?”

“
Mr. Cipriani, since you started your political
blogging alongside Justice McKinley Hilliard, you’ve gathered quite
a following of self-proclaimed libertarians. Do you see yourself as
the man capable of making the Libertarian party a threat to the
Republican party?”

“
Capable of it? Yes. Do I want to? I don’t know
yet. I’m meeting with Republican leaders at their invitation so I
can find out if they can change enough to rebuild its base—the
conservative right and libertarians—or even if they want to. But
I’m not sure that the conservative right will abandon Republicans
for the Libertarian party once they understand the sheer diversity
of libertarian thought. A lot of people who live their lives by
libertarian philosophy don’t like parts or all of the Libertarian
party platform.”

“
So you would be open to an alliance with the
Republican party?”

“
I’m open to it, but don’t count your
chickens.”

“
Would you classify your viewpoints as socially
liberal and fiscally conservative then?”

“
I classify them as common sense.”

“
Then—”

“
Glenn, give somebody else a chance to ask a
question. You can read my blog or walk into my office and talk to
me any time you want, which you do anyway. Yes?”

“
Mr. Cipriani, two questions. You came to blog
popularity on Ms. McKinley’s coattails. First, did you hire her
specifically to help further your own political ambitions and
second, does she influence your viewpoints?”

“
First, I wasn’t going to hire her at all. Knox
did. Even if I had hired her, it wouldn’t have been for her
influence, but it sure as hell doesn’t hurt to have her on my side.
Second, my opinions were formed well before I began reading her
work, before I ever met her, before she began working for me. When
she figured out what my opinions were, then she started nagging me
to blog.”

“
You’ve opened your criminal record to the public
with almost nothing redacted. Why?”

“
At this point in my career and with where I want
to go, I can’t afford not to. I’m ushering in a new era in this
office, which begins with total transparency. I’m able and willing
to put my cards on the table for you and the voters to see that my
juvenile criminal record isn’t indicative of my career in this
office, nor is it harmful to the office. My conviction rate is
eighty-two percent. For the last six and a half years, I’ve managed
the office itself as well as having a half-time trial schedule. For
the last month, I’ve been acting prosecutor while Knox recovered
from his gunshot wounds. If people believe in me and want to vote
for me, the least I can do is respect them by telling them
everything there is to know about me.

“
The press kit we’ve prepared contains my CV,
full disclosure of my personal and business finances along with tax
returns, and my connection to everybody of import in the metro.
Dirk Jelarde, one of the county’s public defenders, is my business
partner; his CV and financial records are also included. You’re
free to compare and contrast my criminal history with my academic
performance, and my service to Chouteau County and the state of
Missouri to date. Copies of the transcript of my trial up to and
including the dismissal are available for purchase in the clerk’s
office.”

“
So you’re not willing to be that
transparent.”

“
I’m not using taxpayer money to do it, no. If
you want it, you pay for copying.”

“
And Simone Whittaker is still part of your
life?”

“
She will always be part of my life and I am
grateful to her every day for what she did for me.”

*

Vanessa clapped both her hands over her mouth, her
eyes wide, feeling as if her chest had been kicked in, unable to
breathe. She sprinted across the kitchen and up the stairs to her
office. She knew Knox watched her go, but he wouldn’t follow. She
dropped in her plush office chair and whirled to stare blankly out
the fourteen-foot floor-to-ceiling diamond-mullioned Palladian
windows, a knot so deep in her soul she didn’t know how to untangle
it.

“What about what
I
did for you, Eric?” she
whispered. “Simone took your life away from you, but
I
gave
it back.”

But really, Vanessa knew she should have no need for
Eric Cipriani to be grateful to her for what she had done; she
lived in her reward:

Acres and acres of rolling hills currently covered
in brownish lawn and stripped trees that would grow emerald and
lush come spring,

A large lake with a manicured island and lacy white
gazebo in the middle of it connected to the shore by an arched
concrete gothic revival bridge,

A collection of little gothic revival brick cottages
arranged in an artfully scattered pattern and connected by
cobblestone walking paths interspersed with random flower beds,

A carefully camouflaged playground and swimming pool
toward the southwest edge of the property, and

Decorative placement of peach, apple, and cherry
trees, and more strategically arranged flower beds.

Though she couldn’t see it from the office, across
the highway lay the construction site for another collection of
gothic revival buildings: shops for the selling of local
handcrafted goods and food, hunting and fishing gear, and other
high-end goods and services, including a spa.

In Vanessa’s office hung a bona fide Dalí. On
another wall hung Whittaker House itself in oils-on-canvas, painted
by the architect who’d built it and had risen to prominence in her
field by doing so. Downstairs in the grand parlor hung another
valuable painting done by superstar artist Ford, whose day gig
consisted of raiding corporations. Owning those paintings gave her
a great deal of cachet and somewhat of a nest egg should she need
to sell.

I am grateful to her every day for what she did for
me.

So Vanessa should also be grateful for what her
sister had done, but she couldn’t muster it at the moment.

“Vanessa?”

She sighed at the soft female voice from the
threshold behind her. “I should’ve locked the door,” Vanessa
muttered.

“I’m sorry. Um, Knox said . . . ”

Oh, how Vanessa hoped Knox didn’t know or suspect.
She’d taken his inability to read body language for granted so long
that it surprised her when she caught flashes of insight in his
expression. “I didn’t know you were coming back.”

Vanessa heard the footsteps, the snick of the door
closing, the poof of the leather sofa as Justice settled in, and
the snuffs of an infant warm and safe in her mother’s arms.

“He never thanked me,” Vanessa whispered, hoping
Justice couldn’t hear her, but she couldn’t not say it aloud. Her
eyes blurred with moisture and her nose stung. “He’ll publicly
thank Simone, but what about me?”

“He can’t,” Justice said carefully. “You were a
minor and you testified in a closed courtroom for a reason. Your
name and all identifying information were redacted from the
transcripts to keep you safe.”

Indeed. Simone’s diary had destroyed many men’s
lives that day—except for the only life Simone and LaVon had
intended to destroy. With only one simple goal in Vanessa’s
twelve-year-old mind, it had never occurred to her what could
happen to her, and without Knox to protect her both legally and
physically, she may not have lived this long.

But that didn’t make her feel any better. Eric could
have referred to her anonymously.

“Is there something you haven’t told me?” Justice
asked after a moment. “About Eric and you, I mean?”

Only the one pertinent detail she didn’t want
anyone
to know, which Knox would probably be able to deduce
from her shocked reaction and melodramatic exit.

Vanessa drew a deep breath. “Does he remember
me?”

Another pause. “I don’t see how he couldn’t. He has
to deal with your mother and your sister nearly every day.”

Vanessa thought about that a minute, unable to
discern what that might mean. “You know,” she said after clearing
her throat, forcing herself to sound halfway normal. “Until you
started planning your wedding last year, I hadn’t thought about him
in years.”

That was the absolute truth; she only wished it
could have remained so.