Stay (Dunham series #2) (47 page)

“Are you sure about that costume?” Justice asked
her. “The tintype’s still fresh in everyone’s mind.”

Vanessa knew that. She knew what it would cost her
to wear it, to flaunt her sexuality, her affairs with Sebastian and
Nash and Eric, to invite ridicule now when it seemed the whole
world expected her to crawl into a hole and hide.

I can be a bit of an exhibitionist.

No, it wasn’t the media she’d dressed for tonight,
but she’d take whatever it dished out.

“Here,” Justice said, reaching up to straighten the
feather in Vanessa’s hair, but her kindness made tears sting her
eyes. “Oh, my friend,” Justice whispered. Vanessa held herself
together by the barest thread, and only when she called up Chef
Granny. “We can find a way.”

“There is no way. I’m in too deep. Whittaker House
is in too deep.”

“Um,” Justice said hesitantly, “I have an idea. Kind
of. I haven’t thought it through all the way yet.”

Vanessa looked at her suspiciously.

“We can talk about it later. You better go before
Knox comes back in here and drags you out by the hair.”

Vanessa walked to the doors between the kitchen and
dining room. Took a deep breath and steeled her spine. Plastered a
delighted smile on her face.

She didn’t flinch when she opened the doors and
strutted out, hands on her swinging hips. Cameras flashed. Women
gasped. Men whistled.

She stopped for the cameras.

Posed for them.

Smiled at them.

Blew kisses their way.

Once the cameras had had their fill, she continued
deeper into the mêlée, peppy, laughing, smiling, gracious. She
greeted her masqueraders like the saloon girl that she was. Most of
her guests were masked, though she could tell at least half the
time who was who. Most of the revelers would pair up tonight—and
not with their own significant others. That was the nature of a
masquerade, if not its purpose—and she capitalized on it
shamelessly.

The dining room and grand parlor were so packed the
waiters could barely squeeze through. People had stationed
themselves all the way up the staircase, around the second-floor
sitting area, and outside on the veranda to chat and dance. Vanessa
could expect a visit from Cooper later tonight to request she clear
some of these people out, but that was a formality. She wouldn’t
even try and he wouldn’t force the issue.

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—