Chapter Twelve
Camp David, Maryland
“You don’t need to fuss over me so much, Grandma,” I said as the person in question fluttered around me like an over-caffeinated butterfly.
It had been almost a week since the accident and almost a week since Carter had been checked into rehab yet again.
Once he’d come down from the drugs he’d been upset and confused, but our grandfather made sure that he understood what had happened and what he needed to do.
I wasn’t allowed to see him yet, and truthfully, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to either.
It wasn’t easy to see Carter that way and witnessing him like that first hand had shaken me to my core.
“Need I remind you that you were in a car accident again, young lady?” my grandmother, Bunny, said sternly as she pushed a steaming mug of tea into my hands despite the fact that it was still over a hundred degrees outside. “I swear we may have to start bubble wrapping you soon. Now, drink.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, you know,” I grumbled before dutifully taking a sip of the chamomile tea.
After a week of investigation Maverick told me that there was no reason to believe that the drunk driver in the F-150 had any motive for plowing into our car. It was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Not that it hadn’t kept the press from speculating of course.
Somehow more information about my first kidnapping attempt had leaked the day after the accident and people were coming up with all kinds of theories about what was happening to me.
From government conspiracy all the way to domestic terrorism, everyone had an opinion about why I was the one being targeted and each theory was less fun than the last one.
The only silver lining in all of this mess was that, because everyone’s attention was securely focused on me, almost no one was wondering where Carter was and why he had so suddenly disappeared off the face of the planet.
Small mercies, I guess, though if another one of my friends from university sent me another insane TikTok I would be losing my mind.
“So, tell me about those handsome agents of yours,” my grandmother said as she slid into the chair across from me with a wicked grin.
She was one of my favorite people in the entire world and probably one of the people who I was closest with. But with that came her unfortunate need to pry with a skill that was almost psychic.
“There’s nothing to tell,” I replied, not meeting her blue-eyed gaze that always saw far too much. “They’re a pain in the ass and I don’t get to do half of what I used to be able to do.”
That, at least, wasn’t a lie. Post-accident Maverick was more prickly than ever about my protection.
The only reason one of them wasn’t currently breathing down my neck right now was because we were literally at one of the safest places on the planet outside of the White House—especially with my mother also being here for the weekend.
My grandmother’s silvery brows rose, telling me that she knew I was full of shit.
“Whatever you say, my darling, but even I have eyes. I may be as old as dirt, but I know handsome men when I see them and those are some of the most handsome men I have ever seen,” my grandmother said, fanning herself dramatically. “And I can also see when men think someone is beautiful too.”
I laughed at that. “You are not as old as dirt, Grandma.”
My grandmother was seventy-two and despite that she looked good for her age. She had long silver hair that always seemed to be perfectly coiffed no matter how long she spent in her garden or doing her Pilates.
She had taken care of herself over the years—a given because she was my grandfather’s pride and joy.
They’d met when my grandfather, a young senator and the only son of the governor of Massachusetts, was visiting an omega center and there she had been.
Beatrice “Bunny” Clyde. She had no family of her own, but my grandfather had taken one look at her and decided that she was his omega and he would be that family despite his own father’s objections.
They’d gotten married and here they were, fifty-two years later, just as happy as they had been the day of their wedding.
Their love story was famous in D.C. and I’d grown up listening to it, hoping that one day I’d have something like it for myself.
“And you, my dear, are ignoring the point,” my grandmother said, cutting through my bullshit easily as she reached across the table and cupped my face in her warm hands. “I want so much more for you than all of this, sweetheart. This life, all of this craziness, it’s eating away at you.”
“I’m fine,” I told her, gently pulling my face away from her, my mood immediately dipping.
“You are not fine, Lennon,” she said more firmly this time, frowning. “Look at you. You’ve lost weight, you’ve got stitches in your forehead, and you look miserable. That is so far from fine.”
I said nothing, knowing she was right.
She sighed.
“Maybe we’ve put too much on your shoulders. You’ve always been so strong, but with everything that’s happened with you and Carter these past few years…”
“I wanted to do it,” I told her with a vehemence that seemed to surprise both of us. “I wanted to be helpful to you and Grandpa, and Mom and Carter too. I can’t do much, but I can do things like give speeches and go to events.”
My grandmother’s smile was weak as she nodded once before giving my hand a pat. “Drink your tea then. I plan to fatten you up before this weekend is over and give you some flirting tips for those cute alphas.”
I groaned. “Grandma, it’s against the rules to flirt with my security team.”
“What? Like you aren’t the first person to do it?” she said pertly, one brow rising. “Why your mother, when she was a teenager, she was obsessed with one of her agents and you should have seen the scrapbook page she put together—”
“Mom.” My mother’s dry voice came from the entrance of the kitchen making the both of us jump. “Are you seriously airing out my business right now?”
She was dressed in what she considered ‘business comfortable’, which was a pair of linen pants and a crisp white blouse that was so bright that it almost hurt to look at.
“Me?” my grandmother said innocently, placing a dramatic hand on her chest. “Never, Thenie, I’m a vault of secrecy.”
My mother rolled her gray eyes. “You and the word secret should never be in the same sentence, Mom.”
Then she turned to me. “Your dog is arriving from the White House. What do you say we pick her up from the car and then go for a walk with Grandpa?”
I jumped up, excited to see Ginny again after so long.
“No election talk!” my grandmother called after us. “This is supposed to be a vacation. A vacation I tell you!”
“Arizona seems like a shoe-in based on polling numbers,” my grandfather said as we strolled along the property line of Camp David together.
It had taken them all of three minutes to break my grandmother’s rule about talking about the election, but I didn’t mind because of the wriggling puppy dancing around my feet.
In the nearly two months since I’d seen her, Ginny seemed to have almost doubled in size, growing into her ears and paws as she looked more and more like a dog than a puppy now.
“Heel,” I told her, watching with satisfaction as she dutifully plopped down next to my feet and looked at me for my next directive.
“Those puppy training lessons really paid off, didn’t they, mamas?” I told her and watched her wiggle happily.
“I don’t like putting all of my eggs in one basket, Dad, you know that. Plus I’m still worried about Michigan and Nevada,” my mother replied, oblivious to me as the rest of our entourage followed behind.
When we were inside of the lodge at Camp David, we could wander around unencumbered by security, but when the president, former vice-president, and the president’s daughter go for a walk then the cavalry comes right along too.
Which included my own personal cavalry.
All four of my security team were trailing behind me with matching blank expressions—the same ones they’d worn from the moment we’d rolled through the wrought iron gates and onto Camp David’s property.
Gone were the slightly silly, very sarcastic alphas who I was able to get under the skin of and in their place was a set of G.I. Joes.
I kept telling myself it was because we were so close to my mother and they had to be professional…
but even I had to admit that I missed the closeness that I’d felt that night before the car accident.
The same car accident where Maverick had wrapped me in his arms and I’d come to an unsettling conclusion that I wasn’t ready to verbalize yet—not even in my own thoughts.
“Are you listening, Lennie?” my mother asked, cutting through my trailing thoughts like a knife.
“No,” I told her honestly. “And didn’t Grandma say you aren’t supposed to be working?”
My grandfather just snorted at that. “Bunny’s been trying to get me to stop working for fifty years. At some point she’s going to realize that I’ll be working until they bury me in the ground.”
“Not the flex you think it is, Grandpa,” I told him airily as I hurried past them, Ginny dancing around my feet.
“What I was saying as you ignored me, fruit of my loins,” my mother said dryly as she hurried to catch up with me, “is that I need you to do me a favor.”
“Uh-oh,” I sighed, dreading what she was about to say next. Favors usually came with sleepless nights and a whole heck of a lot of work on my plate.
“There’s supposed to be a dinner for the delegates from the United Kingdom next week,” my mother began.
“Yeah, I’m aware. I planned the menu, the music, and just about everything else around it,” I told her, my voice flat. “What about that dinner?”
Without a formal first lady, or in my mother’s case, a first gentleman, a lot of the party-planning had fallen on my shoulders over the past few years. My grandmother helped whenever she could, but she rarely left the family farm these days, so I had, effectively, become my mother’s first lady.