Read Online Stay (Dunham series #2) by Moriah Jovan - Free Book Online

enough
himself.
    Another knock at his door and Eric looked up to see
his youngest prosecutor poke her head in his door. “Simone’s
here.”
    No shit. “Get rid of her.”
    “Eric, let me get a restraining order on her and be
done with it.”
    Eric cocked an eyebrow at her. She sighed and
disappeared, closing the door behind her. Poor Lesley, always
having to deal with Simone and LaVon Whittaker since Justice had
passed that chore onto Adam, who had passed it on as soon as he
could get away with it. It’d always been the low man’s job.
    He heard Lesley’s stern voice, then the inevitable
screeching. She had little patience for the entire business and
would have Simone dragged out by a deputy the minute Simone dropped
the first F-bomb, which usually took under ten seconds.
    Eric shook his head and wondered what it would take
to get Simone Whittaker out of his life, then decided that nothing
short of her death could solve the problem.
     
     
    * * * * *
     
     
    8: Needs Must, When the Devil Drives
     
     
    April 2009
     
    Vanessa looked at the printout of the obituary Knox
had sent to her via email with the entire message in the subject
line:
     
    GO TO THIS
     
    There were very few things in which he brooked no
argument and she knew from experience that this would be one of
them. She nearly told him where to shove it, but his head would
explode and that would not be pretty.
    Knox’s motives bothered her. He never had just one
reason for anything he did and he almost never explained himself
beforehand, so she could only assume he had put some scheme into
motion that involved more than simply attending a funeral.
    Well. If he had any bright ideas about using
Simone’s death to force Vanessa back to Chouteau County so Eric
could conveniently run into her, then she would make sure that
backfired on him.
    There were ways around Knox Hilliard.
    When she’d finished packing a duffle and garment
bag, she clattered down the stairs and out the front door of her
cottage. She had packed carefully, as she had very little trunk
room and absolutely nowhere to hang her garment bag. She briefly
considered hitching the trailer to her car, but then decided that
wouldn’t be necessary for a short stay in a town where she wouldn’t
be socializing.
    Had to be on a weekend, too.
    Dammit.
    Well, better now, in April, than June, she supposed.
Whittaker House had no guests other than her permanent residents.
Nash had holed himself up in his suite for the past week “to work,”
he said (whatever that meant), and would not tolerate disruptions
other than room service. Her only concern was for Friday and
Saturday dinner and how her absence would affect the mood of the
diners who came as much for Vanessa’s celebrity as her food.
    She went to her office to make a to-do list for
Knox, hoping he could plow through some of it.
    “Damn,” she muttered when she checked her calendar.
“He’ll have to go to that zoning meeting by himself if I’m not
back.” That wouldn’t earn her any points with the zoning board,
considering a special meeting of the county government had to be
called every time Vanessa wanted to do so much as plant a daisy.
Everyone loved Knox, true, but Vanessa was the face of and driving
force behind Whittaker House; the next thing she wanted to do would
affect a lot of people—and a lot of those people didn’t want things
to change.
    “Shit.”
    At the end of the drive, she waited for traffic to
clear off the highway. Looking in her rearview mirror, she was
struck again with the stately, elegant beauty of her home, her
life’s work, her vision come to thriving and prospering life.
    She will always be part of my life and I am grateful
to her every day for what she did for me.
    Vanessa clenched her teeth. “So help me, if this is
about what happened in January . . . ” she muttered as she pulled
off her property.
    Chouteau City, Missouri, the Chouteau County
seat.
    She’d left it at sixteen, emancipated,