Stay (Dunham series #2)

by Moriah Jovan

  The front doors were open. The French doors along the wall of the dining room and the front wall of the grand parlor were open. The large Palladian windows on the second floor were open. Cold, rainy late November night or not, it would get very, very hot.

  Vanessa roamed and chatted. Laughed and flirted. Signed autographs and granted air kisses.

  Sebastian and Eilis stood on the staircase chatting with people Vanessa had cooked for and housed more than a few times: Morgan Ashworth, economist-turned-novelist and one of Knox’s many cousins. Jack Blackwood, CEO of Blackwood Securities, one of the few investment bankers on Wall Street to have both survived the tumble and thrived in its aftermath, with his wife, Lydia. Mitch Hollander, CEO of Hollander Steelworks. Another dozen of Knox’s friends, aunts, uncles, and cousins, along with their spouses, gathered around, chatting, laughing—all there for her.

  Next week, that juggernaut of a family would crank its machinery into overdrive on Eric’s behalf.

  Sebastian and Eilis made themselves conspicuous just by having shown up in apparent support of Vanessa, but the crowd quieted when Vanessa climbed the stairs to chat with them for a moment.

  Ford-slash-King Midas.

  With his wife

  and his former lover

  together, both of whom were dressed identically, albeit Eilis in black, as usual.

  “Muse,” Vanessa said to Eilis, who smirked.

  “Muse,” Eilis replied, at which point they both burst out laughing.

  Vanessa waved her hand and the dance music suddenly thundered out of the speakers.

  “Thank you for coming,” Vanessa said to Eilis wryly.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Eilis murmured over her appletini, a mischievous smile on her face.

  “I do not like being on display like this,” Sebastian grumbled, right before he knocked back a shot of tequila. “Between my wife and my mistress. Shit.”

  Eilis nudged him with her elbow. “Quit being such a sourpuss.”

  “Can we go find a quiet corner and do something more pleasant, like have a root canal?”

  Vanessa looked between them. “So he never got over being grouchy in public?” she asked Eilis.

  “Oh, no,” she replied. “Also, when he can’t get from A to Z in a straight line.”

  Sebastian grunted. “I’m a frequent topic of conversation, I take it?”

  “You are fascinating,” Eilis said.

  Sebastian took a deep breath, and Vanessa looked at the man who’d ushered her into womanhood so well. “Vanessa,” he murmured slowly, “I was never going to tell you this, but under the circumstances—” He slid an uncertain glance at Eilis, who inclined her head slightly. He looked back at Vanessa. “You forget yourself when you’re making love. That’s good. And . . . sometimes you forget who you’re making love with. That’s not so good.”

  Vanessa blinked.

  His mouth twitched. “My name is not Eric.”

  She groaned, thoroughly mortified.

  “It’s one reason I didn’t ask you to stay with me. Man doesn’t forget it when his lover calls him by another man’s name, no. Didn’t know it was that Eric until he took a swing at me, though.”

  “Oh, Sebastian, I’m so sorry.”

  He snorted. “Eh, don’t be. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done that to different women and got slapped for it. It was time for a little karmic retribution.”

  That made her chuckle a little. “But now all three of you know I’m crazy.”

  Sebastian burst out laughing. Wrapped his arm around her. Hugged her close. “Yeah, but we still like you. As for this mess, well, it’s not over yet, so don’t give up hope.”

  She had her doubts about that, but she appreciated his attempt to make her feel better. “Thank you, Sebastian. Oh!” Vanessa pulled a key out of the sash around her waist and gave it to him. “My office. Everything’s there. Your boxes came Monday and Mitch’s got here this morning.”

  “Working Thanksgiving weekend,” he murmured grimly. “Fun. Hopefully we’ll be able to get you squared away tonight, and see if we can all get Mitch put back together by Monday or Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest. Maybe.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Let us worry about Mitch,” Eilis murmured. “You’ve got enough on your plate. So . . . back to work, partner.”

  “Okay then. I’ll make sure you have everything you need,” Vanessa said, and hugged them both before she left them to their amusements.

  The concierge sought her out to attend to a pair of A-list celebrity couples, who demanded she greet them personally. She did this with the same graciousness she did everything, treating them no more or less specially than she treated any other guest.

  Random men swept Vanessa into dance after dance. She laughed, had a good time insofar as she could forget about Eric and stop craving his presence at her side. She fetched drink and hors d’oeuvres trays herself. She helped a woman in the ladies’ lounge whose costume had ripped. She vaguely noticed people drifting upstairs in pairs or threes, then turned her attention to someone else. She popped her head into the Hilliard suite to see four toddlers and one infant asleep in their respective beds, and three tween girls giggling in the glow from the TV.

  She went back downstairs and stopped to chat and dance and laugh at good-natured jokes she didn’t find funny, most of which were directed at her current infamy.

  They’d shown up to do that very thing, so she let them and soothed her hurt feelings by totting up the extra revenue in her head.

  At midnight, she found herself standing alone in the middle of two hundred people. She looked around for her family-via-Knox and saw Giselle and Bryce dancing with the other hard partiers like they were twenty-year-olds at a rave.

  Sebastian and Eilis, Mitch and Morgan, Jack and Lydia had retreated to a quiet corner of the veranda to visit.

  Nia, Whittaker House’s architect, and Étienne, its engineer, sat on a couch in a dark corner with their heads together.

  Half the rest of Knox’s cousins and their spouses, along with a couple of his aunts and uncles, were scattered about enjoying themselves.

  Vachel, who couldn’t stand all the people invading his space during the masquerades, had left the mansion hours ago and would be laid out on a pallet in front of ol’ Curtis’s fireplace, reading while Curtis rocked in his chair, plucked his dobro, and talked about Korea in fits and starts.

  Knox and Justice played host and hostess as capably as Vanessa.

  Only one person was missing: the one who had wanted to see her in a pink saloon girl dress.

  If anybody noticed Vanessa leaving the party early to head up the hill to her cottage where Eric wouldn’t be, she didn’t know about it and didn’t care.

  * * * * *

  42: Dark as a Stack of Black Cats

  Vanessa had just finished hanging up her saloon girl dress when her phone rang.

  “Where are you?” Justice demanded. Vanessa gulped at the panic in her voice because Justice never panicked.

  “Getting ready to go to bed,” Vanessa said slowly. “Why? What happened?”

  “LaVon’s here.”

  “Shit.” But Vanessa wasn’t really surprised; the minute LaVon had begun making the talk show rounds, Vanessa had expected her to show up. “Okay, well, Cooper’s here somewhere. Probably toasted, though. Give me a minute and I’ll call the sheriff.”

  “You don’t understand. She brought the press or the press brought her, I don’t know which. She’s demanding to see you and all the cameras are rolling.”

  Vanessa dropped the phone and her stomach churned at having to settle her score with her mother so very publicly. She’d rather not have had to do it at all.

  It took her a little while to put herself together in the same dress she’d worn to the governor’s birthday party, but if she had to go to war, she’d damn well be outfitted for it. She went back down the drive and clipped up the mansion stairs, went up to her office to
check her makeup, then slipped through one of the secret passageways that would take her to the top of the grand staircase.

  Once there, she stood silent, head held high, to survey the scene twenty feet below her.

  Queen Vanessa.

  LaVon’s behavior wasn’t finishing-school perfect, but she wasn’t the Jerry Springer freak show Vanessa knew. She turned and smiled and spoke calmly to her handlers and shook hands with a modicum of grace. Her deportment had to be the thinnest of veneers; she couldn’t have internalized that much information in a month or however long she’d been prepped before she appeared on television.

  Regardless how weak LaVon’s façade was, Vanessa knew she wouldn’t be able to play her complex mind games, and it wouldn’t take long for her to back Vanessa into a corner.

  Telling jerk guests to go to hell in such a way as to make them eager to do so was a long-practiced skill. Tricking a little boy and an old man into taking care of each other had been relatively easy. Finding a way to force Eric to focus on his murder trial had been more difficult. Contrary to what he’d thought, she hadn’t been able to come up with anything much less practice it, but her rant had worked in spite of its incoherence. She still hadn’t figured out how to construct a Knox-proof trap to make him tell Justice about his diabetes without making Vanessa feel like a traitor.

  LaVon was a different game entirely. She could manipulate people on the fly, instantly turn every word to her advantage somehow, and Vanessa had never learned how to do that. Her only hope was to somehow provoke her into revealing her true nature for cameras sympathetic to her and hostile to Vanessa.

  Slapping her again was out of the question.

  What would Laura do? Help me, Laura. Please help me.

  After a moment, Vanessa felt her panic begin to recede and peace fill her.

  What’s the worst that could happen, Vanessa?

  The worst already had happened, so she had no reason to play LaVon’s game, even if she could.

  A few members of Knox’s family stood around the edges of the massive ground floor of Whittaker House, watching and waiting. Justice stood off to one side, her fists clenching at her sides while she struggled to keep her fury off her face. Knox was nowhere to be seen and Vanessa had to assume Sebastian and Bryce were keeping him out of sight. Knox hated LaVon enough to kill her; even a tiny flare of his temper would play right into LaVon’s hands and he didn’t need any more bad publicity.

  Giselle stood by the newel post at the base of the staircase watching LaVon with a predatory expression. By contrast, the look she cast up the vast staircase at Vanessa was one of mischievous humor. Vanessa released the last of her tension in a long breath when Giselle winked at her. All Vanessa had to do was keep her cool; Giselle would break out the bitch if it came to that.

  Slowly the roar of hundreds of conversations died down as Vanessa stood, waiting for everyone’s attention, just as she had at the governor’s ball.

  LaVon, in the middle of a laugh, noticed the growing stillness and turned to look up at her too. Her eyes narrowed a bit. Her mouth pursed. Vanessa couldn’t see all the little cigarette lines around LaVon’s lips, which made her wonder if she needed new contacts or if LaVon had had—

  Has to be Botox.

  One step down, then another, her hips swinging, her gait self-assured, her demeanor arrogant. Let LaVon wait.

  She saw Glenn on the periphery with the rest of the press, watching as sharply as everyone else, but without the bloodthirsty look of his colleagues. Glenn would report this, she knew, and he wasn’t on her side, but he’d be fair and that was all she needed to feel like she had one friend in the press corps.

  Masked and costumed guests on either side of the staircase watched her, moved out of her way, parting for her and leaving a clear path to her mother.

  Vanessa took the last step, still not knowing what to say.

  “Vanessa,” LaVon said, “Thank you so much for inviting me tonight.”

  “I didn’t,” Vanessa said flatly. “Don’t think I’m going to cover your lies.” LaVon’s mouth tightened infinitesimally. Vanessa took a step away from the press to cull her mother from her handlers. “I guess I don’t have to ask why you’re here,” Vanessa murmured, and took note when LaVon wrapped her hand around the sand dollar pendant on her necklace.

  “A million dollars would make me go away,” LaVon replied, equally low. “I know you could write me a check right now.”

  “Mmmm, so you’re easy and cheap.”

  LaVon’s arm twitched, and the long bony fingers of her unoccupied hand curled into her palm. Oh, how Vanessa wished she’d followed through on that aborted slap. “I don’t see Hilliard here, defendin’ your honor, or Mr. Rapist, either.”

  “No, but I’m here,” Giselle said low, squeezing herself between Vanessa and LaVon.

  LaVon started. “Who the hell’re you?”

  “I am your worst nightmare,” Giselle murmured cheerfully as she wrapped her small hand around LaVon’s upper arm and clamped down.

  “You get your hands off me, ya li’l bitch. You ain’t nobody to me.” LaVon’s diction was slipping, her anger cracking that thin veneer and oozing through, and her grip on the pendant tightened.

  “Knox would just shoot you in the head. I’ll tenderize you with my knife until you’re begging for mercy, and then I’ll slit your throat.”

  Vanessa thought that might have been a little much, but LaVon stared at Giselle for a long moment before she decided it might not be an idle threat. Giselle nudged LaVon back toward her entourage, chatting amiably at LaVon all the way, then joked with LaVon’s people while surreptitiously keeping LaVon under control.

  Vanessa looked up and around at the press. “Congratulations,” she finally said coldly. “You’ve made it for story time. Make yourselves comfortable.”

  Tangible shock rippled through the crowd, and they all gathered in a rough semicircle around Vanessa, who turned and climbed about five stairs to begin. She saw all the costumes spread out across the massive rooms, and resentment poured through her. LaVon had spent the last month dragging Vanessa and the people she loved through the mud and then had violated her space and an important Whittaker House event to rub salt in the wound.

  “That woman,” Vanessa began, pointing a finger at LaVon where she stood humbly between one of her handlers and a very peppy Giselle, “is a liar and a thief and a party to child molestation and very possibly an accessory to nineteen counts of murder.”

  All the attention whipped to LaVon along with gasps and murmurs. She shrank into herself and would have fled, except for the fact that Giselle had her tethered. The shocked press didn’t know whether to focus their cameras on Vanessa or LaVon.

  A shuffle at the front doors attracted her attention and she saw an entire platoon of sheriff’s deputies and state troopers file in quietly, gather in the entryway, and fold their arms across their chests.

  Vanessa sighed.

  This was the biggest across-the-trailer-park hollering match a woman and her mother had ever had, complete with the cops being called out to break it up.

  “So since you all,” she said, regaining everyone’s attention, “have been after me for the last month to speak, I’m going to tell you what kind of woman you’ve been celebrating and what really went down with Eric Cipriani sixteen years ago, when he was arrested and charged with the rape of my sister, Simone.”

  * * * * *

  43: When Truth Was Paramount

  “You are the luckiest son of a bitch who ever lived.”

  “Good morning to you, too, Glenn,” Eric muttered absently while he worked. “Did you have a good Thanksgiving with your cat?”

  “Have you read this morning’s post?”

  “Your blog isn’t my first priority, so no.”

  Glenn dropped a copy of the Chouteau Recorder on top of the legal pad Eric had been writing on, then dropped his person in the chair on the other side Eric’s desk.

  Eric stared at the headline as
if he were trying to remember how to read; indeed, it felt that way:

  Whittaker rescues Cipriani.

  Again.

  He picked it up and sat back in his chair to read. “Masquerade . . . ” he mumbled while he read, not wanting to think about the party he’d nearly attended despite how much it would have cost them both. “LaVon crashed the party . . . Bitch.” He looked up at Glenn. “What was Vanessa’s costume?”

  Glenn stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “That’s your most pressing question?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Some pink . . . thing. And black. I don’t know, like a saloon girl.”

  Eric hurt so badly he could barely stand it, but went back to reading, then he bolted upright. “She said that?! What the hell was she thinking? Knox could never prove LaVon helped Parley kill those women or he would’ve. Shit, now LaVon can sue her for defamation.”

  “Keep reading,” Glenn commanded. “You will note it is an uncondensed and unedited transcript.”

  He did as he was told, and lost himself in Vanessa’s words.

  “Was this extemporaneous?” Eric asked after a while, impressed by Vanessa’s clarity of thought.

  “It had to have been. LaVon caught her completely off guard.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised him. She didn’t use a script when she taped Vittles; why would she need one for an impromptu press conference?

  Most of Vanessa’s story he knew: How she had decided to go to Knox with Simone’s diary. How many men went to jail because of Simone and why Knox had protected her. What she had to live with at home, her starvation, the abuse that only stopped when Knox had stepped in between her and LaVon.

  She spoke of living in a house where a serial killer visited, spending his nights in her mother’s bed. She spoke of Simone’s sexual precocity and how LaVon had not only not protected Simone, but had encouraged her promiscuity. She spoke of Simone coming home the day seventeen-year-old Eric had snubbed her, crying, heartbroken, and LaVon laying out the plan to take vengeance on him. Most of what she said Eric had deduced, although a detail here or there did give him pause. As far as he knew, she left nothing out.