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Shorn’s behavior reminded Liz of something she’d suspected for some time. She’d let the last few years soften her up. She’d spent more time crying over Zack than she had asking the right questions. Something was going on behind the scenes, but she’d been far too caught up in her own heartache to decipher the problem.
That stopped now.
“You should leave.” A shit-eating grin stretched across Gus’s face, which only widened when the older man huffed as he complied. The moment the VP was out of the office, Gus shut the door behind him. “That was classic Liz. I’ve missed your badass side, my friend.”
“You know what? I have, too. I’m going to drop one last press release off with Vanessa, then I think I will join you this evening. I could use some girl time.”
“All right.” Gus gave her a thumbs-up. “We’re going to rock this town. Maybe we can even find you a hot stripper.”
It was funny how quickly Gus’s mood could turn when the occasion called for it. Minutes ago, she’d been preaching patience. Now she was talking strippers. “I thought you said Zack still loved me.”
“He does…but pictures of you with a hot exotic dancer is bound to get him off his ass. Besides, I’m dying to see how Lara handles some guy in a G-string with his junk in her face. She’ll either protest or try to talk him into finding a line of work that more appropriately honors his body. Personally, I can honor a guy’s hot bod just fine with cash.”
Gus was incorrigible. Perhaps a night where Gus led her posse into wild times was exactly what Liz needed. She grabbed the last of her paperwork off her desk. “Or maybe she’ll go the sex-positive route and praise them for not having sticks up their asses. I’ll be right back.”
She grabbed the press release she needed to distribute about the White House’s upcoming social events. She wasn’t going to manage those personally anymore. It was the First Lady’s duty. She’d played that role for the last time. Vanessa or Gus could do it from now on.
As she walked toward the copy machine, Liz overheard some of the interns talking.
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t think he’s supposed to be in that room. I was only up there because I was taking a couple of pictures for the website,” said one young woman.
A brown-haired senator’s son shook his head. “How did he get in that office? What do we do when the president isn’t around?”
“Doesn’t he have a nurse or something?”
Damn it. There was only one person they could be talking about. She refused to let this be her problem anymore. When Zack had shut her out, he’d also forfeited her willingness to deal with his father’s dementia-related episodes. So she felt zero guilt about walking away from Franklin Hayes. Someone else could deal with it.
Except Frank could be difficult. They’d hired four different nurses in the last couple of years, and every one of them had abruptly quit. For all she knew, the latest had decided he’d suffered enough and left without notice, so now Frank was ambling around the White House without supervision. Usually he didn’t get out of the East Wing, but the staff was thin late on a Friday afternoon, especially because the president wasn’t in residence for a few days.
Liz sighed. As much as she’d like to, she couldn’t leave the man to wander. What if he hurt himself? Or if someone saw him, stories might leak to the press that Zack didn’t take care of his father. When she thought about it that way, helping Frank really was her job.
“Vanessa, could you get this out on Monday?” she said, handing the other woman the paperwork. “And call me if you hear anything going on with the vice president. I don’t need him causing trouble. I have to go hunt Frank down.”
Vanessa groaned. “He’s out again? They need to put that old codger on a leash.”
Liz would have admonished the younger woman…but she was kind of right. Frank could be a handful. Sometimes, he thought it was still 1960, and every female in the vicinity needed to see him mooning the Harvard football team.
She shuddered. There were some things she could never, ever unsee.
After asking the interns where they’d last seen Frank, Liz rushed to find him. With a huff, she climbed the stairs to the second floor, which housed the residence. At least she could be thankful that Frank almost never wandered downstairs.
As she started toward the small, private study known as the Treaty Room, she caught sight of a middle-aged man in hospital scrubs racing from the back of the East Wing.
“I’m so sorry. He was asleep when I went to the bathroom.” The man Liz recognized as Frank’s second-shift nurse approached, looking flustered. “He’s probably playing with paperwork or something. He likes to pretend he’s working.”
Liz frowned. “That door is supposed to be locked.”
But someone somehow had managed to open it.
“He’s very good at getting into places he shouldn’t be able to,” the nurse complained, pushing through the door.
And out of places that should be secure, which was why Frank now lived in the White House.
Zack had tried putting his father in a memory care facility. But the older man had been belligerent and combative whenever the facility managed to contain him. But too often he’d escaped, walking the streets of DC in his pajamas and attracting the attention of the press while looking for his son. It was a PR nightmare.
After his latest escape had been plastered all over the news, she and Zack had sat up late one night, and he’d opened up to her about his mixed feelings where his father was concerned. Franklin Hayes had pushed Zack hard, always demanding the best from his son. It had been something of a relief to not live with the man, and he should have been getting far better care in the facility than anywhere else. But in the end, Zack agreed that his father wandering the streets was too much of both an optics problem and a security risk, so it was better to keep him close.
Zack was obviously doing the same with her now. He saw her as a liability. She recognized his behavior since she’d been the one to teach him this tactic.
“Mr. Hayes, you’re not allowed to be in here. Let’s get you back to bed.”
Dressed in blue pajamas, a thin maroon robe, and slippers that could have come out of the 1950s, Frank peered at them with a scowl. To the outside eye he appeared perfectly normal, like any other upscale man of means at an advanced age.
He turned back to the desk and shuffled through the papers now scattered across the surface. “This is my office. Where are my papers? Don’t you know I have to meet with the Kremlin in two days? Where is Constance? Don’t tell me she’s crying again. She has to get over that.”
The moment he opened his mouth, Liz was reminded that appearances were deceiving and that Frank’s mind was lost in the past. She also knew from experience that she had to take a firm stance with him. “Mr. Hayes, this is your son’s office, not yours. You do not work in the Russian embassy anymore. You’re
in the White House, and you need to go back to your rooms.”
It was obvious he’d been going through the notepads Zack often used when he was working. He’d also turned on the laptop there.
Zack preferred this office to the Oval when he wasn’t meeting with people. When he was alone, he liked the privacy of the Treaty Room. But Frank didn’t know that. He probably came here because it was close to his rooms. Poor old guy…
“My son is a child.” Frank paused and looked around. “This isn’t my office. Where am I?”
Liz grimaced. When Frank was having a really bad day, he couldn’t remember more than a few moments at a time.
The nurse took over, gently easing the man back out into the hallway. “It’s okay, Mr. Hayes. We’ll get you back to your room.”
“Where is my son? I would like to see him before his bedtime. Shouldn’t he be here?” Frank ambled out with a glower. “Tell me he’s not with those boys from the school. Bad influences. That’s what they are, especially that Crawford brat.”
Liz sighed and glanced down at the desk. It no longer looked neat and organized, the way Zack kept everything. The man was practically obsessive compulsive. She squashed the impulse to put it all back to order so the chaos didn’t bother Zack.
Her fingertips glided across the notebook, over his clean, masculine handwriting. She missed him. Even when he was an asshole, she missed him like she’d lost a piece of her own soul. The ache was that deep.
“Ms. Matthews?”
A deep voice startled her, and she turned with a yelp to find a Secret Service agent standing there, Gus at his side.
“Sorry, I came up here to see if I could help with Frank. He was up and about again,” she explained, closing the notebook. She shouldn’t be in here, either. She wasn’t welcome anymore. “What’s up?”
Gus handed her the Prada bag she’d been so excited about when she’d bought it in New York. That had been her last good trip with Zack.
“Sorry about the scare, but this one insisted we find you. Apparently our girls’ night out has been canceled. I told Mr. Serious here that he was costing us strippers.”
