Stay (Dunham series #2)

by Moriah Jovan

  She smiled as he put it on the table. “Thank you, James. Go ahead and clock out.”

  “Thanks, Vanessa.”

  The lights in the dining room dimmed and Vanessa leaned toward Eric to kiss him lightly on the lips. He would have deepened it, but she drew away slowly. “I want to share something with you,” she whispered.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Absinthe.”

  “Isn’t that poisonous?”

  Vanessa laughed then and placed the spoon on top of the glass, then a couple of sugar cubes in the spoon. She picked up the carafe and carefully dripped water over the sugar, drop by drop.

  “Poisonous, no,” she murmured. “Illegal to import, yes, if it has wormwood in it. But I won’t serve the fake stuff.”

  “How do you get it?” he asked, now more curious than shocked. It was taking a very long time for the sugar to dissolve.

  She glanced up at him. “Be patient. This can’t be rushed.” They sat silent for a moment, and Eric tried to be patient. “My . . . supplier . . . gets it on overseas trips. Here,” she murmured after all the water had dripped through, giving the glass of now-cloudy white liquid to Eric. “Taste it.”

  “Oh, wow,” he said reverently after he’d taken a sip. “That’s delicious.”

  She put it down again and slowly poured water in until it had filled the glass, then waited until all traces of green were gone. Then she stirred it slowly with the spoon.

  “This,” she whispered, her lips almost to his, “is the green fairy.”

  They drank from it slowly, taking turns sipping from the same spot on the glass, kissing in between, sharing the slightly bitter licorice taste.

  “How did you find this?” Eric murmured against her lips once they’d finished the glass.

  Vanessa paused, said nothing for a moment, then murmured, “Do you really want to know?”

  He stared at her, hints of jealousy seeping back into him because he knew one of them had introduced her to it and he had a pretty good idea which one.

  “Sebastian.”

  She shrugged, just a bit.

  “I’m still jealous,” he admitted quietly.

  “Please don’t be,” she whispered, leaning toward him, those fabulous turquoise eyes earnest, as if to make him understand. “This is about me and you. No history. No other lovers.”

  Eric watched her warily. “Vanessa, I know I have no right to feel that way, but I do and I can’t help it. Can you bear with me?”

  Vanessa smiled and rose slowly; Eric would have risen too, but she put a hand on his shoulder. His eyes widened when she began to pull her pink skirt up until the tops of her stockings, then her garters, could be seen.

  “What about guests walking through the lobby?”

  “I can be a bit of an exhibitionist,” she whispered. “Do you mind?”

  “And Vachel won’t come back unexpectedly?”

  “No. When he sets out for deer, he tries not to come back without one. Or he may come back with a couple of coyote.”

  Eric grinned slyly when she straddled his thighs and rested her arms on his shoulders. She caught his mouth in a kiss that seared him to his soul. He didn’t know how it could be possible to have a deeper, more meaningful kiss than this one they shared—each shift of their mouths, each slide of tongue on tongue, each pull and nip of teeth and lips.

  Tasting of absinthe.

  Her breasts pressed into him and his cock strained at his fly. “Vanessa,” he whispered, “take me to bed.”

  She did—but Eric’s slow lovemaking was a little too slow. He took so long to get Vanessa thoroughly relaxed that she fell asleep. Eric sucked a nipple into his mouth to awaken her, but she giggled and sighed, then turned over.

  “Shit,” Eric muttered, then stripped and climbed in bed with her. He figured there were worse things than being naked in bed with a naked Vanessa Whittaker, holding her while she slept.

  * * * * *

  26: Success Gets to Be a Habit

  Vanessa was exhausted by the time seating began Saturday evening, which was normal. She’d awakened Eric at 5:30 after her phone rang with an emergency and put him to work immediately extinguishing the everyday fires of Whittaker House with Knox’s guidance.

  She ended up quibbling over a dish with Alain, searching through the humidor for a rare Cuban cigar the waiter couldn’t find, and having an impromptu meeting with the mayor of Mansfield out in the orchard about the next county zoning meeting. She also baked the night’s requirement of her famous chocolate chip cookies, only available after Saturday’s dinner.

  When at one o’clock Vachel came in with an entire evening’s worth of trout, she said, “Go find Eric and teach him how to clean and fillet them.” That annoyed both of them for different reasons, but the chore would put Vachel in a power position over Eric, which the boy desperately needed right about then. Eric understood, although he curled his lip at the thought of gutting fish.

  Eric had been in the shower when she came in to dress for dinner and, as they had the day before, they washed each other. It was the only physical contact they’d had all day. Eric, unused to dawn-to-midnight physical labor, looked ready to fall asleep against the shower wall. She told him he could go to bed, but he’d have none of it unless she meant for them to go there together and make love all night long.

  She chuckled. “Unfortunately, no, that’s not what I meant.”

  He dressed her the way he had the day before, soft, slow, languid and she thought she would die. She didn’t know how much she had hoped he would do so until the moment he set her on the edge of the bed to put her shoes on.

  He spread her legs wide to drink from her again. She arched her back, her fingers threaded through his hair to keep his mouth right there, his lips and his tongue doing marvelous things to her. His big hands grasped her hips, his fingers splayed out over the skin of her buttocks, and brought her forward, a little bit over the edge of the bed.

  Then Vanessa went over the edge, coming with a gasp, whispering, “Eric. Oh, Eric.” She couldn’t think, could barely speak. Her legs were weak.

  “I could do that all night, Vanessa,” he murmured as he released her and rose tall on his knees so that he was nearly eye to eye with her sitting on the edge of the bed.

  And, like the day before, he kissed her deeply, lazily, sweeping her mouth with his tongue so that she tasted herself. And she sighed.

  “Much as I love that,” she whispered, “I want to feel you inside me again. That I could do all night. I’ll close the windows and lock the doors this time so Knox can’t pull any more pranks.”

  She caught a glance of her clock and sighed. “Time to go to work.” Eric still knelt between her legs, as dark and naked as he had been the day before, his arousal between them. He stared at her with an expression she couldn’t decipher and she watched him back, his black eyes glimmering like onyx and his short, short hair almost dry.

  “Bad boy Eric Cipriani turned GQ,” she murmured, and he grinned. He stood and pulled her up to him, then finished dressing her without further ado.

  Vanessa was knee deep in guests, greeting and seating, when she realized that Eric had begun to greet and seat guests too. Suddenly, she panicked. Why was he doing that? When she tried to catch him to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing, he ignored her.

  The guests were as confused as she, and she wondered what he told them that made their faces clear, then look at her pityingly and nod with great concern.

  Deeply troubled, she went into the kitchen to get an order. She didn’t like what he was doing at all, and it took several deep breaths to calm herself. Then she marched herself right back out to the dining room, served the couple whose order she’d brought out to them, and went about schmoozing and seating guests when she needed to. She served a few more dinners herself and stopped to talk to the regulars and ask them about their week.

  Eric, following her lead, serving food, talking to people, getting to know them. Vanessa wished he�
��d stop doing that, as it upset her routine greatly and finally she figured out why she didn’t like it.

  It made her want things . . . Things that had nothing to do with Eric making love to her.

  Almanzo and Laura, working together to build a more grand Whittaker House, building a life and maybe a family together. It could never happen. Her wants had nothing in common with Eric’s.

  Attorney general. Then governor. Then the White House.

  Then something else occurred to her. Was he campaigning? Here? On her turf?

  Knox and Justice cast Vanessa questioning glances occasionally as they ate, but she could only shrug helplessly. Vachel slumped down in his chair, glared at his plate, picked at his food.

  One elderly couple, faithful diners every Friday and Saturday night since she had opened the dining room to the public, caught her attention. Eric stood talking to them, and they waved her over, Eric watching her with a smirk and a cocked eyebrow. Did he have no clue how distressed she was?

  “Vanessa!” Mrs. Parks gushed. “This young man is simply amazing. Did you know he teaches karate for a living?”

  Hi. My name’s Eric Cipriani. I teach karate.

  Not campaigning.

  “Ah, no, I didn’t. He was an itinerant I found under a bridge. I brought him in, cleaned him up, and put him to work.”

  Eric barked a laugh and Mr. and Mrs. Parks snickered madly. Mr. Parks put his hand to his mouth and Vanessa bent to listen to him.

  “I think he’s sweet on you, Vanessa.”

  Unfortunately, he was nearly deaf, so his whisper sounded more like a trumpet in her ear and was loud enough so that several surrounding tables heard and chuckled. She didn’t dare look at Eric.

  Now embarrassed beyond belief, yet warmed—sad—because it was so wonderful to hear a third party say that Eric was “sweet” on her, she smiled and patted Mr. Parks on the shoulder.

  “That’s good, because I think I might be sweet on him, too, maybe.”

  For the rest of the evening, she and Eric went around together and spoke to people. It wasn’t as if she had a choice since Eric decided to attach himself to her. She was about to jump out of her skin.

  She started when another regular said, “So, Vanessa, are you planning on going somewhere again?”

  “No, why?”

  “Eric here says he’s your trainee in case you need to take a break from Whittaker House. I had no idea you haven’t had a vacation or a day off in years.”

  The concern in his voice was echoed by several other diners and she teared up a little bit. Eric offered his handkerchief and she smiled.

  “Just to go to my family’s funerals.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Ah, well, I s’pose we can stand to have a fill-in now and again so you can get away.”

  All evening, Whittaker House guests received Eric with an exceptional enthusiasm. He knew how to talk to people, to make them feel at ease. He could charm at a glance with his quiet charisma and warm smile—

  —which was what had gotten him in so much trouble when he was a teenager.

  Eric would win every election he ran.

  With the grief of impending loss, Vanessa watched him work the room. Like precious water running through the fingers of a person dying of thirst before she could drink her fill, Eric would be gone, off to fulfill his potential for greatness.

  The only other way to keep Eric Cipriani was to give up Whittaker House and go with him if he asked, which Vanessa wouldn’t even consider. She would never leave what she’d built. Not for anything, even love.

  Even Eric.

  By the time the dining room closed and everyone had cleared out, she had wound herself up into a tizzy, about to cry because she wanted something that was just not possible. How could she allow herself to get any deeper with him when it wouldn’t lead anywhere but a dead end?

  “Go ahead and eat with the kitchen staff, Eric. I need to go out to one of the cottages to check on something.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, that’s all right. It’s an easy check.”

  She brushed past him and he caught her arm unexpectedly, pulling her around to him. She looked away.

  “Vanessa,” he whispered, looking around at her face, the pads of his thumbs working to clear her cheeks of tears. “Why are you crying?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she muttered and broke away from him to go out into the cool Ozark mountain air. She clicked down the stairs and walked as fast as she could into the night. She stopped and hopped to take off her heels, then ran as fast as she could toward the playground. He wouldn’t find her there.

  Vanessa collapsed onto a swing, dropped her head and she sobbed.

  It had been a mistake not to leave him in Chouteau City, to let him come here, to put him to work and see him in her world. To see him fit in as if he belonged, as if he had always been here, with her, and know that it couldn’t be.

  He owned a karate studio that depended on his knowledge, just like Whittaker House depended on hers. He would have to give that up anyway to move to Jefferson City if he were elected attorney general, but that wasn’t for another two years.

  Then governor. Then the White House.

  He was now one of the most powerful men in Chouteau County. He’d turned the county’s bad reputation into a good one, and the people he served believed in him the way they’d believed in Knox.

  With every success, small and large, he would take another step eastward away from Missouri, away from Vanessa.

  “You’re a hot mess.”

  She took the handkerchief Knox waved in front of her face and he sat down on the swing beside her. Neither spoke for a long time and Vanessa mopped up her tears, blew her nose.

  “I got mascara on your handkerchief,” she finally said.

  “I don’t care about the mascara. It’s the snot I’d rather not stick back in my pocket.” She laughed reluctantly. After another long while, he murmured, “A man will move heaven and earth for the woman he loves.”

  “He doesn’t love me.”

  “Yeah, about that. You don’t see how he looks at you.”

  While that might have been comforting . . . “It’s gratitude, pure and simple. Or lust, I don’t know. It’s not . . . me. It can’t be. He doesn’t know me well enough. The minute he figures out his feelings aren’t real, he’ll start resenting me—” Her voice broke. “—for taking him away from his life.”

  Another long pause. “You underestimate him.”

  “He’s a county prosecutor. I’ll bet he can barely leave his karate studio the way I can’t leave Whittaker House because too many people scream too loudly. He wants—” She waved a hand. “—He wants to be the governor of Missouri. The president of the United States. I don’t see him not getting where he wants to go and I can’t take that away from him.”

  “Why are you assuming what he would or wouldn’t think or do?”

  She bit her lip. “Because I know what I would do. I wouldn’t leave Whittaker House and follow a man to Washington—or even Jeff City. What would I do? Stand there and be pretty? I don’t want to get mixed up in all that bullshit for no monetary gain. I can kiss ass here and make a mint. And I certainly wouldn’t go back to Chouteau City. Not for anything. Not ever. I don’t really understand why he went back.”

  Knox laughed. “Honey, I don’t understand that, either.” He sighed. “Vanessa, I love you two like my own, but I’m at a loss here. I may have done you both a disservice by helping you be just successful enough that you got trapped.”

  “Didn’t you feel trapped when you were the prosecutor?”

  “Naw. I didn’t have to go anywhere for the woman I loved. I did, however, drop a quarter of a million dollars I didn’t have to get her out from under her father’s farm. And then she left me.”

  “Wha—?” Vanessa looked at him then. She could see his profile in the moonlight, and he didn’t look at her. “Did yo
u get your money back?”

  “No. That wasn’t part of the deal and I couldn’t renege on the deal without getting my ass thrown in jail.”

  “What happened?”

  He slid her a look then. “She came back to me. She yelled at me for buying her.” He chuckled. “Then she went to her father and got almost every penny of it back at gunpoint.”

  “Lawdy,” she breathed, and gripped the chains of the swing tighter.

  “Vanessa, I would have done anything to have her, but I let her go because that’s what she wanted and I couldn’t refuse her.”

  “If that was what she wanted, why did she come back to you?”

  “Because she wanted to try. Wanted to see where our relationship could go if she were with me of her own free will, on equal ground. It almost ruined me financially. I would’ve lost everything I owned.” He gestured vaguely back toward the mansion. “Whittaker House was the only thing keeping me afloat for months. You knew that, but you didn’t know why. If she hadn’t come back to me, it would have been for nothing. If she hadn’t gone to her father to get it back, I still would’ve lost everything, but it would have been worth it to have her in my life, to have her love, freely. And she doesn’t know any of that, so if you breathe a word of it I’ll turn you over my knee.”

  He would, too.

  “I don’t want to hope.”

  He sighed. “I can appreciate that.”

  Vanessa swallowed and bowed her head again, watching her mascara-tinged tears fall on her pink skirt, staining it.

  She didn’t care.

  “You need to get waterproof mascara. You’re scary.”

  She laughed through her tears.

  “Just tell him, Vanessa. Tell him what you told me. Let him decide.”

  “That would be too easy.”

  “You’ve had a crush on Eric since you were twelve years old.” Vanessa gulped. “Yet here you’re ready to let go of a chance at something you wanted? Makes no sense. Most people don’t get that second chance, Vanessa, and if they do, it only takes a little while to figure out it won’t work. I’ve been watching you two. I see the way you look at each other, the way you interact. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to get you together, because I can’t think of anybody better suited to you than Eric, and vice versa. Kinda like it didn’t occur to me to ask if you’d think about becoming Vachel’s legal guardian.”