Stay (Dunham series #2) Read online

  STAY

  Book 2 in the Tales of Dunham

  by

  Moriah Jovan

  Smashwords Edition

  * * * * *

  At 12, Vanessa defied her family to save 17-year-old bad boy Eric from wrongful imprisonment and, possibly, death. She’d hoped for a “thank you” from him, a kiss on the cheek, but before she could grow up and grow curves, he left town.

  Fourteen years later, Vanessa is a celebrity chef at the 5-star Ozarks resort she built. Eric is the new Chouteau County prosecutor on his way to the White House.

  Four hours apart and each tied to their own careers, their worlds have no reason to intersect until a funeral brings Vanessa back to Chouteau County, back to face the man for whom she’d risked so much, the only man she ever wanted—the only man she can’t have.

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  B10 Mediaworx on Smashwords

  9754 N Ash Avenue, *204

  Kansas City, MO 64157

  b10mediaworx.com * theproviso.com/stay * moriahjovan.com

  Stay

  Copyright © 2009 by Moriah Jovan

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9817696-2-2

  ISBN-10: 0-9817696-2-4

  Editor: Eric W Jepson

  Proofreader: M. Elizabeth Palmer

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting Moriah Jovan's work.

  This title is available in dead-tree-ink-and-glue at b10mediaworx.com.

  * * * * *

  To my mom, who, in 1995, asked me,

  Why are you basing your goals

  on decisions someone else has to make?

  (She and I get along very well.)

  * * * * *

  Acknowledgments

  Dude

  Eva Gale and RJ Keller for their all-too-welcome encouragement

  Sabrina Darby for her incredible patience and insights

  Eric W Jepson for his edit and Elizabeth Palmer for her proof

  and

  the Romance Divas chat divas

  * * * * *

  December 14, 1994

  “People versus Eric Niccolò Cipriani. Charges of statutory rape, sexual assault in the first degree, and forcible rape in the first degree.”

  “Ms. Leventen, how does the defendant plead?”

  “Not guilty.”

  “Hilliard?”

  “Remand, your honor. The victim is thirteen.”

  “So ordered.”

  * * * * *

  The Poor Get Their Ice in the Winter

  * * * * *

  1: Smells Like Teen Spirit

  He laughed at the college girl as she scrambled for her clothes, half drunk and pissed. He tipped his head back and swallowed a mouthful of warm, flat beer from the bottle he’d left on the bedside table.

  “You’re a prick, Eric,” the girl—he didn’t remember her name—

  snarl-slurred as she misbuttoned her blouse.

  “Yeah, you didn’t mind so much when I was fucking you with it, did you? What, did you think I was going to tell you I loved you?”

  “No, but I didn’t expect to get insulted, either.”

  “Whatever. You’re twenty. I’m seventeen. You came to a frat house looking for good college-boy sex and you got better than you expected. What’s the problem?” She curled her lip at him. He shifted to sit more comfortably in the bed, his back against the wall, and gestured at her midsection with the hand that held his bottle. “Didn’t you learn how to dress yourself when you were five?”

  She screeched and threw her shoe at his head. She was too drunk to hit him, though, and he watched it land three feet away. He laughed harder. She opened her mouth to say something else equally scathing when the door burst open, startling them both—badly.

  “What the fuck—”

  “Shut up,” snarled a Chouteau County deputy, who hauled all six feet three inches of naked Eric out of the bed by his hair and shoved him up against the wall, his arms yanked behind his back.

  He was too shocked, too suddenly terrified to make a sound when he heard more than felt his rotator cuff pop out, just drunk enough not to feel the pain of having his dick and face slammed against plaster and woodwork, and not drunk enough to be able to laugh it all off.

  “You’re under arrest for statutory rape and sexual assault . . .”

  His mind shut down immediately, completely unable to process the combined assaults on his body, his senses, or the college girl’s sudden hoots of delighted laughter, her taunts.

  Statutory rape and sexual assault? Of whom?

  His mind then spun to life, turbocharged in spite of the numbness he sought. How would he get out of this? He already had a juvie record with nothing to offset it but a 4.5 average in his Advanced Placement classes, and a job as a manager at a feed store.

  He had no money and he’d never had good luck with the public defenders.

  Statutory rape and sexual assault?! He couldn’t possibly have fucked a girl that young . . . could he? Whowhowho?

  Still naked except for a ratty blanket, he got stuffed in the back of a squad car. Cold. So cold. The deep freeze of a Missouri December at two A.M. was just another insult. He saw the frat house from which he’d been dragged, alight but still and quiet, all its occupants clustered together on the sidewalk at the foot of the concrete stairs that led up to the house. Sober, clustered together, shivering in various states of undress, they tried to keep warm while they watched Eric hauled away so spectacularly. He blinked. Glanced away, unable to look back at the people he had blithely called “friends” for the night.

  None of them would bail him out. They barely knew him, much less cared. He was just known to be a hard partier and a good fuck.

  He gulped.

  No one to call. His mother, out of the question. She would believe that he had fucked an underage girl and let him rot, not that he could blame her. She’d bailed him out enough.

  Couldn’t call old Jenkins. He’d told Eric that one slip-up would get him the boot straight out of the feed store.

  Statutory rape and sexual assault.

  I didn’t do it!

  Wouldn’t matter. No one would believe him innocent.

  They had no reason to.

  The squad car finally began to move toward the courthouse. He knew the routine; he’d been through it enough times, but not for a year and a half now. He’d tangled with almost every one of the prosecutors in that office, Hicks more than most. He closed his eyes and collapsed in on himself. Please, no. Not Hicks.

  The man was vicious and, unlike most of the attorneys in that
office, was not on the take. Eric could only hope to get the new prosecutor, that fucker straight out of law school who’d offed the serial killer and skated. That was a man who’d appreciate a bundle of cash to overlook whatever bullshit Eric was said to have done.

  Only . . . Eric had no money, so it didn’t matter who ended up prosecuting him.

  No money, no payoff.

  And for this, he’d be tried as an adult.

  *

  He regretted his wish for the newest, youngest prosecutor immediately upon staring into Knox Hilliard’s cold, hard face—the face of a killer with nothing to lose and a raging thirst for justice.

  “Simone Whittaker?!”

  Eric shot to his feet, jolted out of his shocked numbness into a rage of his own when Hilliard told him his alleged victim.

  “Siddown,” Hilliard snarled, so Eric sat.

  “It can’t be,” Eric said, desperate for him to understand. “She came on to me and I told her to get lost. I don’t do little girls at all ever. Never. Second, even if I did—which I don’t—I wouldn’t have touched her with a ten-foot pole. She’s a disgusting, lying little bitch and who the hell knows what diseases she’s got.”

  That was the wrong thing to say. He knew it by the chill in Hilliard’s ice blue eyes, knew it even before his court-appointed attorney hissed, “Shut up, Eric.”

  “I’m done with this asshole,” Hilliard murmured, calm and cold, staring Eric down until Eric had to look away. Cold. That was the only word Eric could apply to the man who’d murdered another man in cold—well, not so cold—blood, who sat there on the right side of the law like he had a right to be there.

  Eric’s attorney did manage to get him seen for his torn rotator cuff, but no one much cared beyond giving him a sling to wear in jail while he waited for his trial. His life was over, over before it had begun.

  Simone Whittaker, thirteen going on twenty-three.

  He knew at least two dudes in his class who’d fucked her, but Eric? No way. He’d been creeped out enough to look at a girl that young dressing, talking, acting like an oversexed college girl.

  He resigned himself to his fate, although his attorney, a lady Hilliard’s age, also straight out of law school, was actually doing a pretty decent job of defending him. He wouldn’t get off, though, because he could clearly see Hilliard was better—and motivated.

  Thirteen-year-old girls.

  Even ones who looked and acted ten years older, who spread her legs for any male who’d have her. No matter Eric was smarter than his cohorts: valid picture ID and condoms. Always, every time, without fail.

  Shit, yeah, Hilliard had made his opinion known loud and clear what he thought of that particular crime. The man had a roar that could be heard all the way to St. Joe. A lion, his attorney had called him; then, after Eric had caught her checking out Hilliard’s ass, he wondered if she was fucking him on the sly.

  “Lord, no,” she breathed, aghast when he asked her point-blank. “Knox doesn’t like blondes and he doesn’t like women my age.”

  “Are you telling me he’s a closet pedophile?” Eric asked slowly.

  “No, Eric,” she said dryly. “He’s not letting loose any self-loathing on you. He likes women older than he is. And no, I wouldn’t sleep with him while I’m defending you anyway. That’s just a little too kinky for my taste. In any case, I doubt any prosecutor anywhere would go any lighter on you. These crimes are—”

  Yes, he knew. Universally despised. “I didn’t do it,” he protested. Weak. It was weak. Nobody ever believed a defendant who said “I didn’t do it” because they all said that.

  She patted his hand. “I know you didn’t. I’ll do the best I can.”

  Apathy: The only emotion Eric could muster.

  Except when . . . put in general population, at which point, he didn’t hesitate to make his opinion known about some other inmate’s assessment of him. For the first time, Eric cursed his looks. The term “hottie,” applied by a male, didn’t seem like such a compliment. It was a relief when he was thrown into solitary confinement for damn near killing the fucker with his bare hands.

  “At this point, all I care about is managing to get myself in solitary for the rest of my life,” he said to his attorney the next time he saw her.

  She pursed her lips in commiseration.

  She knew she was losing. Eric wouldn’t live to see his nineteenth birthday.

  * * * * *

  2: Lazy, Lousy, Liza Jane

  April 1995

  Vanessa squeezed tight into herself, watching from across the street, waiting for him. She sat on the sidewalk, her back against the stone wall of the café and furniture store, a small book hidden between her upraised knees and her chest.

  There he was, striding purposefully into the courthouse like he owned it: tall, blond, hard, and very cruel. She could see it in his face. She knew what he’d done—the whole county knew. And trembled. She didn’t know which was scarier: approaching the man who’d gotten away with the murder of her mother’s boyfriend or going home to her mother after having done so.

  She could just forget the whole thing and go back to school, but Laura would be disappointed in her if she left now, so Vanessa tried to screw up her courage and go see the man every person in the county feared.

  “He could snap again,” went the whispers. “Who knows what’ll set that crazy bastard off now.”

  He had more than one reputation in town, for sure. Whenever Vanessa and the rest of the sixth graders ate lunch in the narrow quad between the elementary school and high school, she would overhear the older girls talking about him as if he were a rock star. Even a couple of teachers would whisper his name and giggle. She supposed he was kinda sorta good looking, but he was way old—like, twenty-five or something—and terrifying.

  Her heart in her throat, she still couldn’t make herself move.

  What would Laura do?

  Laura would march herself on in there and do the right thing no matter what. “Vanessa, that boy didn’t rape Simone,” she’d say, or so Vanessa imagined she might say. “You’re the only person who knows that besides your mother and sister, so it’s your responsibility.”

  Vanessa knew what would happen to her when LaVon and Simone found out she’d blown up their scheme—and they would find out.

  Dirk, the only protector she had ever had, was gone all the way around the world to New Zealand, to talk to people about his church. She’d had no one to protect her for a year and this would seal her fate. Perhaps it was time she packed her bags and set out on her own.

  The crowd of people going to work had thinned out quite a while ago and then only the intermittent flow of deputies coming and going kept her from entering. She supposed it was now or never if she was going to do this, because eventually someone would approach her to find out why she wasn’t at school.

  Reluctantly she stood and shoved the book up her shirt, then hugged it to her tight. With leaden feet she crossed the street and headed up the long walk to the courthouse doors. Once inside, she didn’t know what to do. Everybody looked at her strangely but no one asked her her business.

  She looked up at the building directory and looked for his name. There. Second floor. She stared up the very high, wide staircase and took a deep breath. One step at a time, one step at a time, one step at a time, and then she was in front of the door she sought:

  PROSECUTOR’S

  OFFICE

  Her hand reached out for the doorknob as if it were on a string and she was a puppet—wait, no, a . . . She searched for the right word. Marionette. That’s right. A marionette. And while she’d been thinking of the right word, her feet had gone ahead and taken her through the door and into the office.

  Ancient wood and metal desks were crammed into an open area any which way. Men stormed around the obstacles, cursing, yelling, and generally filling the air with much anger and lots of bad words. She swallowed. In front of her was another door:

  CLAUDE NOCEK

  PR
OSECUTOR

  A young black man stopped short and looked down at her. She stepped back, her eyes wide, because now she would actually have to talk to one of those men who were cursing and yelling and being angry.

  She bit her lip.

  Tightened her arms over her body, over the book, its vinyl cover stuck to her skin.

  “Well, uh, hi,” he said after a long few seconds. “My name’s Richard. What can I do for you?”

  She gulped. “I came to see Mr. Hilliard,” she whispered. “I have something for him.”

  A bemused smile swept across his face and she knew then that he was nice and he’d help her. “Really? What would that be?”

  “A book,” she breathed. “I really need to talk to him, please.”

  He turned a bit and gestured that she should step ahead of him. She shrank from the curious glances of the other men as their conversation first lowered and then stilled in her presence. She felt Richard’s hand lightly on her back but didn’t pull away; she didn’t like strangers to touch her, but she had come here by herself for a reason. She tucked her head down and let her brown hair fall to cover her face. Finally, she took one step and then another, Richard’s hand guiding her across the floor to a dark corner in the back. Mr. Hilliard sat hunched over his desk, engrossed in his work. She blinked when he jotted a note. He was left-handed, like her. Somehow that made her think that maybe she didn’t have to be so afraid.