Chapter 17
seventeen
Alex
I’m used to waking at the slightest touch, both due to my past as a Marine as well as my current job, so my eyes open to Ted before he says anything.
Holding up a hand, I check over my bare shoulder to find Cindy still asleep behind me, her hand on the bed between us. I throw a sheet over her naked chest and slide out of bed.
Dan is waiting in the outer room when I follow Ted out into the rest of the suite. I don’t want Dan to get the right idea about what’s going on in the bedroom, but I don’t want to wake Cindy either, so I speak in a lowered voice but don’t whisper. “Emergency?”
“No, sir, I’m sorry for waking you. The secretary of State is seven hours ahead of us in Jordan and wants a meeting.”
I nod. “Sure.” I pause and scan the room. “Let me change and meet you in one of the conference rooms.”
“Yes, sir.”
I glance at Ted as Dan leaves and nod, thanking him for cleaning up the clothes strewn all over the room last night before letting Dan in.
Ted quirks his mouth and nods back. I go back into the bedroom to grab my clothes and watch Cindy’s outline for a moment, in the dim light from the other room. I wish it were not the case, but suppose immediately is as good a time as any to find out if she can handle my schedule.
Cindy
“Ma’am.”
Slowly, I surface from a dream about saving kittens from a flood.
“Please wake up, ma’am.”
My eyes open. A strange man is standing at the end of my bed and my hand goes to the covers, because I’m naked beneath them.
The next second, I recognize him as one of the vice president’s Secret Service agents. I gaze around in confusion. The drapes are closed but it’s obviously still dark outside. One lamp is on, on the table on Alex’s empty side of the bed. We’re alone in the hotel bedroom.
“I’m sorry to wake you like this, congresswoman,” the agent says. “But we need to get you back to your room now if you don’t want to risk someone noticing you’re here in the morning.”
“Right. Thank you,” I say automatically, while I try to force my brain back online. “Where is…”
Then it hits me. Alex sent the Secret Service to deal with me. Is this what he does? Am I the latest addition to the vice president’s list of secret sleepovers? How is this belatedly crossing my mind as a possibility ?
I sit up, holding the blankets to my chest.
“The vice president had to step out,” he says, not comforting me at all.
“OK,” I say, pushing the word out forcefully. Trying to keep all emotion out of my voice. “Give me a minute.”
“I’ll be right outside,” he says, and leaves. I wait for the outdoor door to close before I scramble up, looking for my clothes until I remember leaving them in the other room. How humiliating.
I tiptoe naked out to the other room, but my clothes aren’t there, either. I scan for them frantically.
OK, don’t panic yet. I start systematically searching while internally chanting: Calm, calm, I am calm. I find my clothes in a rumpled pile on a chair in the bedroom, like they were gathered up and thrown there quickly. Like a metaphor for how I’m being treated right now.
I pull them on angrily, but the person I’m most angry at right now is myself. I should have left last night. I got my legislative update, I got the first good—great—sex I’ve had in years; I should have checked those off my day and put myself to bed in my own room instead of greedily trying for...what? Someone to cuddle with? A boyfriend ?
A vice president is not a boyfriend.
That is very obvious this morning.
I’m an idiot. I’m dressed by the time I hear the hotel room door open again, and I stomp out into the other room holding my shoes, irritated that I’m being hurried on top of everything else.
It’s Alex. He’s wearing a button-down shirt over sweatpants, which I quickly identify as a last-minute video conference outfit. He smiles at me. I pause. It’s the second time in the last 10 minutes that the certainty has fallen out of my world.
“I’m so sorry you had to wake up like that,” he says. “I had to talk about the Strait of Hormuz with the secretary of State and approve a statement because people are still saying my dog represents the size of my dick, or something like that. Are you OK?”
No, I’m not OK. I’m cold on the outside and a fiery inferno on the inside. “I’m told I need to leave now, before someone realizes I’m here,” I say. My voice seems to sound normal, but from inside my buzzing head it’s hard to tell.
“Well, that’s only if you care who finds out,” he says, walking toward me and putting his hands on my arms. I’m paralyzed, caught between shaking him off and leaning in. “I assumed you didn’t want the press to find out like this. With a so-called walk of shame.”
He’s standing right in front of me, but he might as well be a million miles away. “I don’t want the press to find out at all,” I say. That was my plan. I’ve got to stick to my plan. Otherwise, I’ll keep waking up stumbling over pointless dreams.
His eyes flicker, like he’s cataloging that statement in a new file. “Right,” he says. “I understand.”
I eye the door. I should go. But I don’t want to go while I’m this confused. “I thought you were trying to get rid of me,” I say, having to force the words out past my fear of admitting the fear itself. Straightforward worked for us last night and I have to find out if it still works in the morning.
Standing over me, his expression is serious but not exactly surprised. “I’m sorry I made you feel that way,” he says. It’s not reassuring. The anger rises again.
“So you were trying to get rid of me. Got it,” I say, steering around him toward the door.
“Wait,” he says, grabbing my arms again. “Look…” he pauses, gazing into the distance behind me for a moment before turning his eyes back to mine. “We don’t know each other that well, so I un derstand why you don’t trust me. You woke up alone and that sucks. But it’s part of the package.”
“What package ?” I demand, my head starting to clear. He might be the vice president, but this level of assholery is common. “The one-night-stand package?”
He appears surprised. “No, the... me package. This is what my life is like. Getting woken up and pulled into meetings in the middle of the night. Not always being available. You need to understand that.”
My confusion is wound around me like a ball of string at this point and I don’t know how to reconcile the facts with my feelings, so I plow ahead with the anger: “Oh really, why’s that.”
He tilts his head, studying me. “If we’re going to do this.”
“Do what ?” I shake him off and balance on one foot as I put my shoes on. He stands back, hand slightly extended as if I’d accept his help.
“Keep dating?”
With my shoes on, I’m a little more in control. I can look him in the eyes instead of craning my neck. It helps the anger clear enough to hear him. “We’re dating?” I say.
“I thought so,” he says. He might be re-evaluating that as he says it. A small, traitorous bubble of excitement catches in my throat at the idea he wants that.
A vice president is not a boyfriend.
“Alex,” I say, and pause after hearing myself call him by his first name. I don’t know what I want to say next.
“Did you think…” He frowns and turns his gaze away from me, then back. I see him swallow. “Did you just want sex?”
That sounds like an accusation. “I thought that’s what you wanted!” I protest.
He’s still frowning. He steeples his hands and puts them to his lips. “It’s OK if that’s what you wanted, I just wish we’d had that conversation before now. ”
I stare at him. My stomach is running away from me and I’m starting to develop a headache. “What did you want?” I hear myself speak in past tense and it’s like losing something important.
He stares at me, like it should be obvious.
“You wanted to date,” I say. I can’t decide if I’m cold or hot. Two seconds ago, I wanted nothing more than to flee this room and now I’m frozen, like I couldn’t leave unless I was carried out.
“I wanted to date,” he confirms. “Privately. Without the press knowing about us.”
The vice president wants to date me. Wanted.
“What made you think I didn’t?” he asks.
Waking up alone . But it wasn’t really fair to blame him for that. He’s helping run a country. Maybe I overreacted. “You could have left a note,” I say weakly. “Or woke me up.”
He nods. His eyes are understanding. “Yes. I could have. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. I jumped to a conclusion and blamed you for feeling…” I trail off, but he waits for me to finish the sentence. “Used,” I finish. Now that my temper is cooling, I realize how differently I could have handled this. It didn’t have to become a fight. Now my impulsive defensiveness has up and ruined the happy glow of our evening together.
“It’s not a good feeling,” he says, validating my emotions in a way that, clear-eyed now, I can appreciate. “I enjoyed last night very much. I’m sorry this morning turned out so different.”
I walk over to my purse and pick it up. I should probably leave before this gets worse. I turn to him, resigned. “Did I screw us up?”
He runs his hand through his hair. His nervous tell. “There’s an ‘us’?” he asks. “If there’s an ‘us,’ nothing’s screwed up.”
Biting my lip, faced with someone who may be one of the best guys I’ve met in years, I hesitate. He’s the vice president, yes, but right now he’s also a man that I want in my life. A man I disagree with frequently on matters of policy, but so far never on personal topics. This is not going to be easy, but right now he seems worth it.
“There’s an ‘us,’” I confirm.
He smiles, a smile I’ve only ever seen up close and in person, never on TV or in front of a crowd. My smile. “Good.”
This is going to be excessively complicated. But right now, I’ve never agreed more fervently with a member of the establishment.