Commander in Chief

  “Excellent!” Clarissa says.

  14

  FBI

  Matt

  The director of the FBI hands the files over.

  “Here you go, Mr. President. I was a fan of your father. I, like the rest of the country, suffered a great loss when he was taken from us too soon. I knew you’d want to have this.”

  “Everything is here?”

  “Every single thing, sir.”

  “I’ll read up on it tonight. Expect to hear from me soon.”

  “Yes, sir, President Hamilton.”

  15

  WORK

  Charlotte

  The rest of the week goes by in a frenzy of visits, interviews, and planning the upcoming state dinner. Matt is even more swamped with work than I am, but I can see him make some effort to carve out some time to see me, and it not only touches me, it makes me truly wish for him to know that I support him and what he’s doing for our country. That just being close to him and knowing that he wants to be with me as much as I want to be with him is enough.

  The bills he’s trying to pass are not easy ones—they will mark permanent changes in our education, healthcare, and energy programs. He’s got solid backing from the House, but the Senate will be voting soon—and you really never know how it’s going to go.

  After dinner one day, we took Jack for a walk along the White House gardens.

  It was freezing outside, but I was wrapped in a coat and wore a cap, loving to watch Matt’s breath mist in the air as we talked about our day. And how he wouldn’t stop poking my reddened nose playfully, wearing the most gorgeous smile.

  On our way back into the White House, it was eerily quiet. “I’ll never stop feeling awed as I walk around this house,” I said.

  “It’s a privilege not to be taken lightly.”

  “You know how they say if these walls could speak? These walls actually do. Every piece of art on the walls. Every relic.”

  We continued in silence.

  The usual bustle of the day had calmed down, but it was still in the very air. The electric unfolding of history within these walls. There were births and deaths, celebrations and mourning.

  We passed the portrait of JFK, glancing downward, humble and charismatic, and the portrait of Matt’s dad, in a long red-carpeted hall.

  Matt eyed the hall, his gaze warm as he took in my excitement. “Building took seventeen years to complete. Washington conceived the idea of it, but he never had a chance to move in.”

  I watched him as we walked, wanting more.

  “It nearly burned in the War of 1812, when the British invaded the capital. Middle of the night, enemy troops threw javelins on fire through the windows, set the attic on fire, and the flames started burning through the floor, then the main floor crashed into the basement. Look at it now.” He winked. “Yeah, that’s America. You fall, you rise back up stronger than ever.” He chucked my chin.

  And I laughed, and blushed all over, and nodded.

  “The portrait of Washington in the Oval? The soldiers looted the house, but the first lady at the time, Dolly Madison, cracked the frame and saved it.”

  “If the house is set on fire, I’m taking your portrait.”

  “I want one made of you.”

  “Matthew!”

  “I mean it,” he said, then he took my hand and led me upstairs to his bedroom, Jack padding at our feet and dropping to fall asleep by the time we were naked beneath the covers. Matt was drawing me with his fingertips, slowly telling me what part of me he wanted to immortalize in paint.

  Matt has been buried under bills and negotiations for the last couple of days. I, too, have stayed busy, but then I wait for night, wondering if Matt will wrap up the day early or not—he’s been working so hard that the White House press office is always abuzz with information. Headlines are always pertaining to the White House. Matt is taking the alphabet campaign and absolutely crossing out every . . . single . . . word. As promised.

  There are presidents and there are presidents—but we haven’t had one like this one in a long, long while. And exactly like this one? Not ever.

  I’ve never been so busy in my life either, but as I wait with my muscles sore from the day I ache for him and our time alone. I wonder what he’s doing and whether I’ll fall asleep before he reaches me, like I have for the past three nights, or if I’ll be awake when he walks into my room and takes every single inch of me that craves to be taken again.

  Tomorrow we have our first evening out, a fundraiser for Clean Water Across the Nation—with several celebrities in attendance. Though it’s been three days since we made love, I’ve already realized that Matt meant it when he said he’d be paying me a nightly visit. Every morning I’ve woken up to the feeling of having been spooned at night and the scent of him on my pillow.

  Last night, I was taking a walk outside to clear my head when his best friend from Harvard, Beckett, arrived.

  “Is the president still in the West Wing at this hour?”

  I nodded.

  “Wow.” He frowned. “He hasn’t answered my calls. Any reason he’s so hell-bent on getting everything done now?”

  “He said he would. He wants to make his first one hundred days groundbreaking and set the tone for the rest of them.”

  “He’s inspired by you,” Beckett said, winking and heading over. “I’m going to drag him out of the office, take him out for a run.”

  “Good. Take Jack with you—he’s been restless with the rain and cooped up inside. I don’t think he gets a kick out of politics the way Matt does.”

  His words linger with me.

  Do I inspire Matthew, really?

  I know that he’s driven to succeed, that he inherited a broken kingdom that he must mend, burnt bridges between parties that he has to rebuild, all while navigating the complicated politics of D.C. involving a myriad of players, quite like pieces in a chess game—the lobbyists, the House, the Senate—all while keeping in mind the goals, the will, and the welfare of the people.

  When I met his father, President Lawrence Hamilton, I felt so inspired. But nothing in my life has ever inspired me the way watching Matt work does. So I decide that tonight, rather than wait in my room, I’ll visit him at the Oval Office when he’s back from his run and the halls are quiet.

  “What is it?” I ask, alarmed and confused over Matt’s expression.

  I came to visit him at the Oval. I was barefoot, finding him behind his desk, working behind the light of a lamp. I thought I was being sassy when I headed over to his desk and tried to prop myself up to the desk top. When I did, something loosened from underneath, and Matt caught it in his hand as it started fluttering downward.

  It was a scarf. A pink scarf, that seemed to be tucked into some sort of compartment in his dad’s desk.

  Now I have a sick feeling in my stomach as we both stare at the pink scarf in Matt’s hand.

  My lips tremble as a bone-chilling shiver travels down my spine.

  “This doesn’t belong to my mother,” Matt says.

  I can’t even think about it. I’m too shocked about seeing such a flimsy thing in the Oval, and feel sort of like a voyeur, as if Matt and I just caught his father doing something forbidden.

  Matt’s expression is a mix of rage and disbelief.

  “I’m sorry.” I reach out and take his hand. “Do you want to …”

  “I need some air.”

  Matt stands and steps out of the room, and after a moment, I hear the agents rushing after him—and I’m alone in this house, with my dreary thoughts and my mind buzzing with worry.

  Matt comes back shortly after.

  He seems to have cleared his head outside, for he dives straight for the phone.

  Matt calls my father over. He was a friend of his father for many years, and I suppose he trusts that whatever he discussed with my dad will never leave the room.

  We sit with him in the sitting room adjacent the Oval as Matt asks him questions about his father.

&n
bsp; “But you never knew of his interests outside of policy and the White House?”

  “I knew—suspected—something changed the year before he was killed. He smiled more, he traveled more. He seemed to get new life injected.”

  “Could this have anything to do with a woman?”

  “Possibly. I don’t know for sure. I always assumed it was him realizing that he was close to done serving as president, and he’d be able to make it up to his family now.”

  “Thank you, Robert.”

  Matt seems calm, but only someone who knows him—truly knows him—could detect the tension pulsing in his shoulders.

  “Charlotte, I’d like to talk to your father alone for a moment.”

  I smile when I look into his reassuring eyes, nodding quietly as I go and hug my father. “Thank you, Dad.” I kiss his cheek and he pats my hand when I rest it on his shoulder, watching me with pride as I leave.

  Something about the way Matt asks makes me tingly. I wonder if he’s going to tell my dad about us. It seems in character that he’d want to let him know there’s something between us before we eventually move forward and tell the word.

  Two minutes later, I’m pretty sure that he did tell him something about us—for when my dad leaves, he’s got a spark of mischief in his eye as he waves goodbye.

  Matt contacts the FBI next. I’m still rattled by things. As Sigmund Cox arrives to the Oval, Matt asks me to stay. As he hands over the scarf, his roiling bronze eyes meet mine, and they look crisp and metallic, cold as I feel.

  I know what this finding means. How disappointing it could be—to imagine that his father possibly had an affair what he was president. Especially considering he neglected his mother and son. For the country, it was one thing, but for another woman?

  After explaining to Cox what we found, Matt slides the FBI files across his desk.

  “I want the case reopened and I want a special task investigator working twenty-four seven on this. I want real information on this. I want specifics. Details. I also want this to be top secret. Nobody but you, those of us in this room, and the special investigator will know.”

  16

  GALA

  Charlotte

  I slept that night in his arms in the Queens’ Bedroom, thinking of his father, knowing he was in Matt’s thoughts too. “What did you tell my dad when you asked to talk to him alone?” I whispered.

  “That I’m in love with you,” he said simply.

  Now it’s past 6 p.m. the next afternoon when I’m told by one of the members of the residence staff that the president sent the gown that hangs in my dressing room.

  Jack hurries excitedly into my bedroom as if he plans to report to Matthew what I thought of his gift.

  It is breathtaking.

  From an up-and-coming American designer who’s going to take the world by storm, it is a heavily detailed lace-and-sequin dress with just the right amount of sheerness to give a glimpse of skin on my back and shoulders.

  I dress carefully and glance at myself in the mirror to make sure I look about as good as the first lady representing our country should. The gold dress falls to my ankles, sparkling like a jewel, and I let my red hair tumble down my shoulders. I grab a little shawl that matches the dress and step out into the hall.

  Matt is standing at the end of the hall, his hands in the pockets of his pants, his jacket raised at his back because of his position as he gazes out the window at the gardens. When faced with the perfection of that tall, black-clad figure, his stance emphasizing the force of his thighs and the slimness of his hips, his pants pressing into his ass because of his hands being jammed into his pockets—

  Breathe, Charlotte!

  I force my lungs to work in a breath; and as if he senses me, he turns.

  A look of surprise flicks across his features, followed by a slow trailing of his eyes down my dress. Jack pads toward him and Matt pets the top of his head as he comes to a perfect sit beside him, and yet his whole undivided attention seems to be on me. His eyes study my face as if memorizing it. As if he’d forgotten it.

  I eye him covetously too. Standing there with his dog, he would already kill me. But in a tux? I’m completely gone over this guy. He wears the tux like he wears the presidency. With grace, confidence, and so much ease he seems to have been born destined for both that presidency and that damn onyx-black tuxedo.

  He looks devilishly handsome.

  His hair is combed back and oh, how I love every chiseled inch of his face. He’s the first to move, prying his hands from his pockets, eyes flaring, inhaling visibly—his inhale stretching the fabric of that black tux.

  Disbelief and a punch of longing to have all of this man, his love and his name and his babies, hits me as he approaches. I’m gazing at him walk to me down the hall of the White House residence, both of us ready to attend a social dinner. My first public event with him.

  I need a moment, or a thousand moments, to adjust to this new role.

  Matt continues advancing—with every step his eyes drinking me in, his lips curling in a seductive, appreciative smile.

  “You ready?” He stretches out his hand.

  I nod and look at that hand—the hand I’ve held so many times, and that held me. I slide my fingers down the length of his, and he grips them and leads me down the staircase with him.

  I grab my dress and lift it to avoid tripping on the hem as we descend, watching as Jack bounds down and announces with a happy bark to the rest of the Secret Service that we’ve arrived downstairs.

  Matt glances ahead at our waiting detail as we head toward the exit of the North Portico doors.

  “It’s not my first time with the media. I should know better than to feel exposed.”

  “Don’t be nervous. You’ll blow every single person in the room away.”

  I stop in my tracks, looking at Matt.

  Matt, recently showered, absolutely poised and drool-worthy in the tux.

  He looks every bit the president. Cool and completely confident.

  “You don’t look that blown away,” I say.

  “I’m schooled in the art of controlling my emotions. Trust me. I’m blown away.” The heat in his eyes sizzles as he looks at me, and his voice thickens, making my knees wobbly under my dress.

  His gaze smolders as he reaches out to tuck my arm into the crook of his and lead me down the White House steps and to the waiting car.

  “Behave, Jack,” Matt warns with a raising of his brows as Jack sits at the door and watches us leave.

  We climb into the presidential state car and head on our way with a line of black cars flanking us front and back.

  It feels surreal to be riding in a motorcade with him. The size of the team required to protect him is in the hundreds. Twenty-six cars travel with us, including medical assistance, motorcycles, and press. I know snipers are planted on the route, mailboxes removed to avoid explosives. It’s a perfectly orchestrated master symphony of hundreds of players, all circling around the president and his safety.

  I’m so aware of the people glancing toward our cars as we pass that it takes me a moment to become aware of Matt watching me.

  He looks stunning in that tux and he smells so good, his cologne making me dizzy.

  His presence, his nearness, his gaze. I clench my thighs together under my gorgeous, glittering Cinderella dress, wanting him. Wanting him so much, not just physically, but emotionally. I crave our nights alone, talking . . .

  In the White House, there are so many people—butlers, maids, doormen, ushers, plus the West Wing staff—I wonder if I’ll ever be able to have the courage to do more than steal in secret into his room. Or let him steal into mine.

  I meet his gaze. “It feels completely surreal.”

  His lips curl, and he looks at me a moment more. “Let’s come out as a couple tonight.”

  The low but firm words trigger a tremor down my spine.

  I remember hundreds of nights during the campaign, sleepless, wanting him.

&nb
sp; I remember that he won. That I went to Europe. That I’m living in the White House with him, more in love than ever. And that we’re taking it slow.

  Slow.

  And utterly, exquisitely slowly, Matt slips his hand under the fall of my hair and places a kiss on my forehead, then my mouth. It’s a soft kiss, fleeting, but it leaves a burning sensation behind when he eases back.

  He looks at my kissed lips with a male pride and not one bit of apology. “I’m tired of keeping you in the shadows. I want everyone to know that you’re mine. But I know what I’m asking is for you to become even more public, and possibly under scrutiny. I will wait for as long as we need to, but I’m ready to move this forward, Charlotte.”

  I swallow.

  “I want that more than anything,” I breathe.

  He slips his hand over the curve of my shoulder, touching my bare skin as we ride to the event.

  “I just had this hope that . . . I’d prove myself as a first lady first, before we announced our relationship to the world. I’m not so sure what I want to do anymore.” I meet his gaze.

  There’s something predatory about the way he’s looking at me.

  “But I’ve always wanted to just be with you. Without the concerns and the hiding,” I admit.

  “So. Be with me.”

  The smoldering flame in his eyes warms me to my core, and I hear myself say, “It seems to me that if we took it slow, there’s a better chance for the citizens to adjust to the idea of you having a girlfriend in the White House.”

  “The speculations are running amok already. Half the country will be worried you distract me—the other half will be thrilled. It doesn’t matter. I want you. I want you indefinitely—and eventually, baby”—he takes my chin—“you’re going to need to own up to the fact that the man you’re in love with is the president, and you helped put me here.”

  I laugh, and he smiles too.

  His hot gaze caresses me and heats me down to the marrow of my bones. “When we can’t be together, I miss the way you smell. The way you look. The way you feel.” His lips curl, and he cups my face in his warm hands and leans to whisper in my ear, “I’m blown away by you. And so will every person who looks at you tonight. Not that I’m too happy about that.”