Chapter Five
My vision was hazy again as I tried to sip and hold the water down as wave after wave of nausea rolled through me.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Dallas said as he dug through the bins that were lined up against the wall, his glasses slipping down his sweating nose only to aggressively be shoved back up again. “All this shit back here and there’s no first aid kit?”
Against my will, my lips curled up into a weak but disbelieving grin.
I’d rarely ever heard any of my Secret Service detail curse around me, so it was a bit like spotting a unicorn or finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow and Dallas seemed content to let the expletives fly as he tried in vain to find a first aid kit.
I was still kicking myself on the inside for not drinking enough water or getting enough sleep last night. I always made sure to hydrate and sleep the night before a big speech, but I’d never felt such a huge push to do well at one tour stop after another.
The last time my mother ran for election I had been twenty-two and had given up my final year at Georgetown and my parents had hovered around me like worried mother hens whether out of guilt for making me give up my senior year or because they still saw me as a child, I wasn’t sure.
This time, however, I had been given my own tour stops and I was largely on my own.
I didn’t want to mess any of this up… which meant I wasn’t taking as good of care of myself as I should have.
Usually I had Livvy constantly buzzing in my ear, pushing water bottles into my hand and taking away my laptop if I was up too late before an event.
But Livvy was back in D.C. and my temporary assistant, Alan, seemed afraid I was going to bite his head off at any moment.
Livvy was trying to keep in the loop of things, but was also technically out on short-term disability which meant that she was going through Alan for everything and he still looked like he wanted to cry every time he had to ask me to do, well, anything let alone remind me to hydrate myself.
I reminded myself harshlySomething you should be able to do for your damned self, as another wave of nausea rolled through me and I leaned forward trying to ward it off.
Fingers slid my hair away from my neck and it was quickly replaced by something ice cold and wet.
“What is that?” I asked with a ragged gasp, forcing myself to remain bent over instead of flinging the cold thing off of my neck and away from me.
“Ice from the ice chest wrapped in a paper towel,” Dallas told me with a wry voice as he stood in front of me and continued to press the icy mass to the back of my sweaty neck. “We need to get your temp down or else you will need to make a trip to the hospital.”
“It’s going to get my outfit wet,” I complained as I felt droplets of water rolling underneath the collar of the purple blazer I was wearing and down my back.
“It’ll dry,” Dallas said simply as he shifted the paper towel from side to side and into the base of my scalp where all of the heat seemed to accumulate.
“Give it two seconds under this hot ass sun and everyone will be none the wiser. Hells, I could probably dunk you in the ice chest and you’d be dry by the time we made it to the bus. ”
I was only half-listening to him as I worked to hold in the moan of relief that was bubbling up in my chest. The ice now felt heavenly against my fevered skin and my vision had finally stopped spinning.
My knees still felt wobbly, so getting up definitely wasn’t in my cards yet, but at least I was sure I wouldn’t yak all over Dallas’s too shiny leather shoes.
“Drink some more water,” Dallas urged softly as he reached down with his free hand to tip my forgotten water bottle back toward my lips.
After I’d taken another swig, I glanced up only to find his expression softer than I’d ever seen it.
For the past two weeks the alpha had walked around with a constant RSCF—resting storm cloud face—it was like he hated every single minute of every single day that he had to follow me around and protect me.
But now he seemed almost… gentle?
“Are you the older twin or the younger twin?” I asked, suddenly curious and looking for a distraction from my current predicament.
Dallas’s auburn brows drew together with confusion before he answered. “The younger, why?”
That surprised me. Everything about the alpha oozed older sibling energy.
“You…” I trailed off trying to find the right words. “You just seem like you’d be the older brother.”
Dallas’s face smoothed into a soft grin as he pushed his wire framed glasses up his nose. “We get that a lot. Brooks is… well, Brooks. He’s too nice for his own good, which is where I usually come in. I have to take care of him.”
Dallas looked like a completely different person when he spoke about his brother and it tugged at something in my chest because I felt the same way about mine.
Carter may have been the older sibling, but the dynamic had always felt very flip-flopped. He needed me to take care of him and help him—especially now that our dad was gone.
“He’s very sweet,” I agreed, thinking of the gentle giant who had been friendly to me from the moment I’d met him.
Compared to the other three, Brooks Wilson was an open book—right down to the ghost of sweet honey mead that seemed to cling to his skin and clothes despite the suppressant pills we all took.
Dallas eyed me, his smile dropping as he seemed to draw back into himself again. “And very off-limits to you.”
I blinked, shocked at the sudden shift in his tone. “I didn’t mean—”
The half-melted ice was removed from my neck and Dallas straightened his spine. “Are you ready to head to the bus?”
I opened my mouth to—well—I wasn’t quite sure. I didn’t really feel like anything I had said warranted an apology. In fact I was complimenting Dallas’s brother, someone he seemed to love and respect.
For a moment there I had thought that we’d gotten somewhere, but the alpha who had seemed kindly flustered as he tried to help me feel better had all but disappeared and in his place was the cold, almost soldier-like man again.
“Yes,” I said with a sigh as I stood experimentally, hoping my knees would hold my weight, and thankfully, they did.
I couldn’t wait to get back onto the bus into the blessed air conditioning and change out of my outfit, promising myself that next time I would fight to leave the blazer behind so I didn’t cook at any of the future tour stops.
Staring at Dallas’s back as he descended the metal steps in front of me, I wondered why he had such a prickly personality in the first place. Despite being twin siblings, Brooks couldn’t be more different.
The older twin had been nothing but friendly over the last two weeks, coming out and sitting with me while I worked on my computer, asking me questions about my speeches and Ginny and how working on my mother’s campaign worked.
He kept it professional but easy.
So why couldn’t Dallas do the same?
I was so deep in my thoughts that I didn’t realize Dallas had stopped in his tracks until I ran into his back with a thud, nearly falling back until he reached back to steady me, his hand on my wrist.
The movement caused his sleeve to ride up and my eyes caught the edges of a tattoo of some kind of a plant on his arm as the scent of apple whiskey filled my nose.
I tried to reorient myself and figure out just why the hell Dallas had stopped like that when he knew I was right behind him.
“Lennon,” the familiar Louisiana drawl of Frank Delano filled my ears and when I peeked around Dallas’s shoulder, I found the vice president grinning at me with his usual wide smile that I’m sure was meant to be charming.
“I’m surprised you’re still backstage. Your speech ended almost fifteen minutes ago, right? ”
The man said it like he was concerned, but something deep inside of me wiggled uncomfortably underneath the man’s blue-eyed gaze. He’d always acted like an older brother for Carter and me—which made some sense seeing as he was only seven years older than me.
At twenty-nine, Delano had been the youngest vice president ever elected and now at thirty-four he was gearing up to be re-elected alongside my mother.
He’d always hovered on the outskirts of our family—my grandfather taking him under his wing when he was a young congressman and grooming him into the man standing in front of me today…
Which meant he was rarely ever genuine.
I loved my grandfather, but Farrow Holloway was a commensurate politician, which meant he was full of flowery words and a wide, agreeable (read: electable) smile and his protege was much of the same.
Most of what Delano said was overly complimentary and the two other men in his pack were much the same.
“Hello, Vice President Delano,” I said quietly as I straightened my spine and tried to look like I hadn’t been two seconds away from fainting just moments ago. “I was taking a quick breather before heading back, you know how that is.”
Delano’s smile tightened in the corners at the formal way I’d addressed him. He’d been trying to get me to call him by his first name for years, but I’d resoundingly refused once I realized what he’d wanted from me.
Most people thought of the alpha as endlessly captivating—especially seeing as he and his pack were still single in their mid-to-late thirties. The most eligible bachelors in the United States is what most news outlets called them.
I just couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness I felt whenever the man spoke to me and I wasn’t sure whether it was because I knew he wanted to use me for his political benefit or if it was because my omega instincts were telling me that he and his pack were not right for me.
“We should eat dinner together tonight in order to discuss the next few stops of the tour,” Delano continued, seemingly moving on from his displeasure with me. “We’re going to be together for the next few months after all.”
Somehow, the vice president’s electioneering stops had aligned almost entirely with my own.
I wasn’t sure if that had been a coincidence or if there were deeper machinations at work. It reeked of my grandfather’s meddling, but I couldn’t be sure until I saw them at Camp David for Labor Day.
It would be the exact kind of thing he would do. My grandfather doted on me, but I also wouldn’t put it past him or my grandmother to try and play matchmaker to spice up their boring retirement in the name of ‘setting me up with a good life.’
Too bad I didn’t want to have anything to do with Frank Delano or his pack.
“Ms. Holloway has a prior commitment,” Dallas cut in suddenly, blocking my view of the vice president again.
“Really? And I’m sure Lennon has a mouth and can speak for herself.”
There was a beat of silence between the two alphas and it took me a minute to realize they were engaging in what amounted to an alpha dick-measuring contest.
Which was completely stupid considering the current situation.
Rolling my eyes, I ducked around Dallas’s shoulder, offered Delano my fakest smile and shrugged. “He’s right, I can’t tonight—we’ll have to set something up once everyone is back in D.C. I’m sure my mother will be thrilled to have you.”
Delano grimaced knowing that a dinner at the White House amounted to pulling an extra shift at his job.
I hoped that made it clear enough to him that I wasn’t and would never be interested in becoming a trophy wife for him and his pack, nor would I give him the connection to the Holloway family that he so clearly desired.
It wasn’t so much the fact that he was seven years older than I was—I didn’t mind an age-gap—it was more the fact that I had never once, in the decade that I’d known the man, seen him be genuine.
There was too much polish and practice with every twitch of the alpha’s body and I wanted nothing to do with it.
“Mr. Vice President,” the attendant from earlier hurried up to us, his brow drenched in sweat as he held his hand over the microphone of the headset he was wearing. “You’re on in two.”
Delano looked as if he swallowed a lemon before turning to head up the stairs without another word.
“What an asshole,” I heard Dallas mutter under his breath.
“You shouldn’t say that,” I told him as we stepped back underneath the baking sun and started to head for the bus.
“Why?” Dallas asked, frowning at me as people bustled past us working to keep the event going.
I shrugged, glancing over at him and trying to gauge what he was thinking and feeling but coming up short when his expression seemed to smooth out into neutral in the blink of an eye. “You could get in trouble.”
Dallas snorted. “You think I care if I get in trouble? Please. If a guy is an asshole, I’m going to call him an asshole, vice president or not.”
Again I found myself surprised by the alpha next to me. It felt like a breath of fresh air for someone to voice what I’d been secretly whispering in my mind for years—not that I would ever admit to it out loud.
I wanted to say something, anything else to get to know the man next to me, but the rest of his team came into view and he took a wide step away from me, creating not only a physical separation, but also a mental one too.
Upon seeing my face, they began fussing over me as I was passed over to Alan and taken inside of the blessedly air conditioned bus.
I didn’t see Dallas for the rest of that day as, by the time I showered and changed into more comfortable clothes, he had disappeared behind one of the curtained bunks lining the interior of the bus.
But when I saw the water bottle and bag of skittles sitting on my laptop, I somehow just knew that he was the one who had left it.