Stay (Dunham series #2) (44 page)

“I know what you did,” he muttered, picking at the
label on his bottle, “screaming at me at Silver Dollar City that
day. You knew I’d call your bluff, demanding something that
outrageous. Move here so we could
date
? No phone calls, no
email? No communication at all? I thought you were out of your
fucking mind. Pissed me off so bad.”

She wanted to see the spider web tattoo wrapped
around his hip. Trace its strands with her tongue.

“Took me a while to figure it out because, as
usual
when it involves you, I get my hackles up or I get a
hard-on—or both—and lose three-quarters of my IQ. So, yeah. Thank
you for not letting me fuck up that trial, which would’ve fucked up
my career.”

“You’re welcome,” Vanessa whispered automatically.
She had nothing else to say.

He looked at her sharply. “You had that planned,
didn’t you? Practiced it? Just waiting for the perfect moment to
spring it on me.”

She shrugged and looked away.

“Shit, you save my ass every time I turn around the
wrong way,” he grumbled, which surprised a reluctant chuckle out of
her. “So,” he said after another swallow, “tomorrow. I want to see
you in my world, or at least, the world I want to be part of. I
want to see, just once, what it would be like if you came with me,
all the way or however far I make it.”

“That’ll just make it worse for both of us,” Vanessa
muttered, staring at a worn patch in her chenille robe, thinking
she needed a new one.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I want the chance to convince
you.”

“You just need a date,” she flashed, stung, “because
your sexuality’s being called into question by the left and you’re
losing credibility with your conservative base because you’re
thirty-three and still single.”

“I don’t give a shit about that, Vanessa,” he
snapped. “Being gay could only help me at this point, but I’m not
copping to something I’m not. And another thing. I could get any
date. Shit, I could get Annie on a plane down here right now if I
was that desperate, which I am not, and that’s not even counting
the fact that Tye Afton’s after me to hook up with his skank of a
daughter.”

“
Stacy Afton?!
” she squeaked.

“Oh, you know her,” Eric drawled smugly. “Why am I
not surprised? Do you know who she’s sleeping with?”

Vanessa huffed and crossed her arms over her
chest.

“Of course you do. Vanessa, I want
you
, and
somewhere down deep in my gut, I feel like you owe me this. One
night. One function. Please.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but shut it again.
Yes, she did.

“All right,” she murmured.

“Good,” he said, finishing off the bottle and
thunking it on the table. “I’m going to bed.” He hauled himself out
of the chair and trudged up the stairs without another word or a
backward glance.

Stunned by his familiarity, yet warmed
(
thrilled
), she followed him. She dropped her robe and
shivered in her tee shirt—well, Eric’s tee shirt, the one she’d
neglected to ship back to him. She crawled into bed beside him,
where he lay fully clothed but for his boots, already asleep, his
arm slung over his forehead.

She, however, lay awake beside him and, for the
first time, wondered what it would be like to leave Whittaker House
to be a politician’s wife.

* * * * *

40: Show Me

“Holy . . . ” Eric breathed the next evening when he
saw Vanessa at the top of the staircase in the Capitol rotunda, one
of her delicate hands on the railing and the other hidden somewhere
in folds of pale pink fabric overlaid in heavily
embroidered-and-beaded sheer white. She’d curled her
blonde-and-brunette hair and piled the curls on top of her head,
then woven strands of pink pearls through them. The cut of her
neckline only hinted at cleavage, but it was her elegant bare neck
that grabbed and held his undivided attention for a second or
two.

She looked over the milling politicos and their
spouses. Waited until the noise had died a bit. Waited until every
person in that room had caught sight of her and stopped speaking to
stare.

Eric watched her take the first step and every step
thereafter with the measured grace of royalty, her free hand
gathering up just enough of her dress to keep her from tripping on
its hem. She looked at him with a haughty expression that let him
know she expected him to pay her immediate obeisance.

And he would.

The last time he’d seen her, she’d been darting
around their hotel room in her lacy pink lingerie, hot rollers in
her hair and lotion all over her face. Now . . .

No wonder she’d insisted he go on to the Capitol
without her. For a woman who didn’t want to be in his world at all,
she sure knew how to make it come to a dead stop.

Yet another facet of Vanessa Whittaker he had never
suspected: Not the gracious innkeeper. Not the aggressive lover.
Not the girl he’d taken to Silver Dollar City. Not the skilled
butcher. Not the giving aunt. Not the cover-girl chef or Ford
muse.

His heart pounded in his chest so hard he thought
his ribs would crack.

“Well, well, well, Cipriani,” murmured the governor
in his ear. Eric might have been startled but couldn’t be bothered.
“You’ve come up in the world. Vanessa would be quite the feather in
any politician’s cap. Stacy Afton she is not.”

He said that in such a way . . .

Eric looked at him sharply. “You know Vanessa?”

“Hell, I eat at Whittaker House as often as
possible. We all do. I wasn’t aware you knew her.”

Eric’s breath left him in a whoosh and he turned
back to his . . . girlfriend? Lover?

No.

Neither of those terms were right.

Wife.

But not.

Now, looking at this woman coming down the stairs,
he figured Dirk may have been right about love, about being in
love, and perhaps Eric should rethink his opinion, because what
surged through him now was something deeper than intellectual and
sexual attraction.

His entire life was wrapped up in Vanessa Whittaker,
and her entire life was wrapped up in him. Not soul mates, no, and
not fate, either, because he—
they
—didn’t believe in those
concepts. The two of them existed in some state of symbiosis, bound
by and ever aware of their long and strange history, yet detached
from it.

No question that he wanted to spend his life with
this woman.

The question was: How badly?

I would’ve sacrificed anything to be with Bryce,
but I really had to think about it. I couldn’t have them both. It
was the hardest choice I’ve ever had to make and it
hurt.

Eric still didn’t know what Giselle had sacrificed
to be with Bryce, but he did know what Bryce had done to keep
Giselle and how desperate he had been to do it.

He knew what Sebastian had sacrificed to keep
Eilis.

He knew what Knox had nearly done when he thought
he’d lost Justice forever.

All of them, the most powerful men Eric knew—
Powerless against their need to keep their women—and on their
women’s terms.

The lesson wasn’t lost on him, but at the moment he
had other things to think about. Vanessa had set this little drama
in motion to present Eric as a serious contender, and he would play
his part to the hilt.

He took three steps to the base of the staircase,
and held out his hand. She placed hers in his palm and he lifted it
to his mouth. She smiled benignly and allowed him to tuck her hand
in the crook of his elbow.

“You look nice,” he murmured.
Stunning
.

“Thank you,” she murmured in return.

“I wish you’d introduced me to Queen Vanessa before
now.”

The corners of her eyes crinkled, even though she
wouldn’t look at him nor crack her wide smile.

“Vanessa.”

But she
would
smile at the governor.
“Ray.”

The governor’s mouth twitched as he looked between
them. “Does this mean I can collect on my bet?”

Vanessa curled her arm further into Eric’s. “Not
necessarily.” She looked up at Eric. “My politics are the best-kept
secret in southern Missouri,” she said wryly. “There’s a large
number of people engaged in illegal gambling over where my
loyalties lie.”

Good God, how could an entire state be that blind?
Eric smirked. “Maybe we could pass ourselves off as the next
Matalin and Carville.”

She laughed then and Eric watched her, enchanted.
“Prettier, I hope.”

“So, uh,” ventured the governor, pointing vaguely
between them, “is this permanent?”

All amusement left her face and Eric didn’t feel
much like smiling, either. “We don’t know yet,” Vanessa murmured
reluctantly. “We’re . . . trying to figure it out.”

“We’d like it to be,” Eric said, looking at her,
daring her to deny that.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Whittaker House is the fly in the ointment, I
guess.”

Vanessa nodded.

“I can see how that might present a problem,” said
Dixon soberly, then clapped Eric on the back. “Well, when you
figure it out, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll expect you in the AG’s
office in two years, young man.”

Eric nodded, but turned back to Vanessa simply to
study her, and she stared back. For long moments they did not
speak.

“I love you, Vanessa,” he finally murmured, unable
to keep it to himself any longer.

Her hand tightened on his arm. “I love you, too,”
she whispered, her turquoise eyes too moist.

“Please don’t cry.”

“We’re going separate directions.”

He swallowed his bitterness at the knowledge that
she was right—had been right all along. “You’re killin’ me here,
Vanessa.”

“And you’re making my watches melt.”

He couldn’t help his chuckle, despite his . . .
pain.

That was it. He hurt.

He would take her back to Whittaker House tomorrow
and leave her.

“Vanessa, come with me,” he said, desperate.
“Please,” he begged. “Come with me to Jeff City, all the way to
Washington if I make it that far. Please.”

“You come to Whittaker House and be my partner,” she
retorted. “It’s a lot more certain than winning an election or
seven. Spending your life and a lot of other people’s money on crap
shoot after crap shoot.”

“More than a crap shoot,” he snapped, angry she
didn’t see his goals as important enough for her to gamble on.
“Whittaker House can function on its own with a carefully chosen
management team.”

“I am the chef,” she hissed and vaguely gestured
toward the clusters of people who had resumed their conversations,
but kept eyeing them speculatively. Glasses clinked and laughter
rang out and conversation hummed. “I am its face. These people—all
of them—go to Whittaker House for
me
. If I am not there, it
dies. You have a business with your name on it.
How
do you
not get this?”

“I’ve always known I was leaving it behind,
Vanessa,” he growled back. “I’ve made plans for its survival, which
you could do with Whittaker House. I only have a narrow window of
opportunity to get where I want to go. I need a wife to get elected
and I don’t want to marry anybody but you.”

“And I want you to help me run Whittaker House and
raise Vachel.”

His nostrils flared. “So that’s the end of the
conversation.”

“I told you that in Kansas City, and when you left
me the first time, and again at Silver Dollar City, and a fourth
time last night, but you keep not believing me, thinking somehow
I’m going to change my mind and leave my life behind regardless of
what it’ll cost hundreds of people if I do so.”

“And the hundreds of thousands who already believe
in me? I’m not Almanzo Wilder, Vanessa, much as you’d like me to
be. There are a lot of people out there who’re counting on me to
fulfill their hopes, who believe in me and my leadership, and are
willing to work to get me there.”

She gulped. “I guess this is where you start
sacrificing what you want for the greater good of a cause you
believe in. You want to be a public servant? This is where you
start serving the public.”

The next hour couldn’t have seemed better. Vanessa
stayed with Eric and nursed a cocktail. She kept him close, posed
for pictures with him, smiling, always smiling, Chef Granny
Whittaker rising to the occasion with her signature graciousness.
Eric listened to her chat amiably, intelligently, on a wide range
of subjects, always flirtatiously sidestepping semi-playful
questions as to her party loyalties. It was a game for her to keep
everyone guessing, he realized, just another part of the mystique
of Vanessa Whittaker: Ford muse, cover girl, eccentric chef. They
couldn’t see past her public personae to the philosophies she had
read and internalized from the pages of every Wilder book on the
wall in her grand parlor.

Eric drifted away from her, guided by a couple of
politicos who needed to speak in privacy for a few moments, but he
kept Vanessa in sight and she him.

“Say, son, nice to see you here.”

Eric had vaguely noticed Senator Afton approaching
from his left, Stacy in tow, but had been too far gone in thoughts
of Vanessa to care. He glanced at her across the rotunda where she
stood chatting, and tried to think of a graceful way to catch her
eye.

“Senator,” Eric murmured.

“Hi, Eric,” Stacy said brightly.

“Stacy.”

“I saw you alone, thought I’d rescue you,” Afton
murmured. “It’d be to your benefit to have a date tonight, seeing
as there’s some press here. And we need to have a little chat about
that potshot you took at me last month.”

“Wasn’t a potshot, Afton,” Eric muttered. “It was a
declaration of war. You put me on the hook for the Republicans
after I’d already told you what I decided. You knew I wasn’t going
to play ball, and thought you could force my hand.”