AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We need to talk about how best to handle this.”
“I’m glad we used paper plates for dinner. Less to wash up.”
“Nell—Mrs. Case, we have to discuss this.”
She whirled on him. “No! No, we don’t need to at all. I’m going to check on Button.”
He shot in front of her, blocking her path without touching her. His features were stony in the moonlight. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to insist.”
She gazed at the mouth she’d kissed only last night. It looked grim and forbidding. They’d planned to make love when they got to Iowa, but now they wouldn’t. Even men as confident as Mat Jorik didn’t make love to icons.
She struggled against a wrenching sense of loss. “Insist? Insist on what?”
“I need to know what’s happening. What you want.” That awful formality.
“That’s simple. I want you to forget about this.”
She slipped past him, and he didn’t try to stop her. He’d had no qualms about manhandling Nell, but he wouldn’t touch the First Lady.
Mat stared at Nell’s back as she disappeared inside the motor home. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for this. She hadn’t admitted she was Mrs. Case, and for a moment he tried to convince himself he had it all wrong. But there was no sidestepping the truth. Despite that pink rose tucked behind her ear, the woman he knew as Nell Kelly was Cornelia Case, the widow of the President of the United States and the country’s First Lady.
He felt as if he’d taken a sucker punch right to the gut as he moved blindly toward the old farmhouse and sagged down on the crumbling front step. He tried to sort it all out. For three days, they’d traveled together. They’d laughed, argued, taken care of Sandy’s kids. They’d been friends. And they’d almost been lovers.
He remembered those blood-boiling kisses, the caresses. His skin grew hot, as much from embarrassment as arousal. The things he’d done . . . the suggestions he’d made. To the First Lady.
He was suddenly furious with her. From the very beginning, she’d lied. She’d toyed with him like Marie Antoinette amusing herself with a peasant she could enjoy and then discard. And he’d been sucked right in. She must have been laughing her ass off.
He swore and began to rise, only to feel as if he’d been hit again. He sagged back down onto the step. Drew a ragged breath.
He’d just been handed the story of a lifetime.
The First Lady was on the run, and he was the only reporter in America who knew where she was.
Through his daze, he realized he’d just been given back his professional pride.
He jumped to his feet, began to pace, tried to think, but anger kept getting in his way. She’d broken a trust—broken his trust—and he wouldn’t forgive that.
The story, he told himself. Think about the story. He wouldn’t tell her he was a reporter, that was for damn sure. She’d lied to him from the beginning, and he didn’t owe her anything.
He forced himself to organize his jumbled thoughts. Why had she fled and how had she done it? He tried to figure out how much time had lapsed between her disappearance from the White House and the moment he’d picked her up at the truck stop. But nothing would come together. Instead he found himself thinking about the way they’d planned to make love when they got to Iowa. Another deception. She’d known it would never happen.
He remembered her silly story of a gay husband. It was laughable the way he’d actually believed her. But her lies had been so convincing, the way she’d manipulated him with those coy hesitations so that he’d drawn an entirely erroneous conclusion. He’d been used by a master.
He began to outline a plan. Sooner or later, she would have to tell him at least part of the truth—why she’d done it, how she’d managed to get away. The conspiracy nuts were already having a field day with this, but—
Every muscle in his body tightened, and for the third time that night he felt as if he’d been struck. Her gay husband . . . What if she hadn’t been lying? What if she’d been telling the truth?
For a moment he was actually dizzy. Dennis Case, America’s squeaky-clean young President, had been the perfect antidote to years of Clinton’s womanizing. What if the reason Case hadn’t looked at other women was more complicated than strong moral character?
A thousand caveats blasted through his head. He needed facts, not speculation. This was too big a story to ruin with even a single mistake. Truth. Accuracy. Fairness. What he wrote would go down in the history books with his name attached to it, and he couldn’t let anything screw that up.
At least an hour passed before he let himself inside the Winnebago. The door at the back was shut, even though it was too early for her to have gone to bed. She couldn’t have made it clearer that she didn’t want to talk.
He kicked off his shoes, pulled a root beer from the refrigerator, and began to plan. But even as he sorted and organized, he felt a bone-searing anger. There was nothing he hated more than being played for a chump.
Nealy woke at dawn. For a few seconds she simply lay there
, content to the tips of her toes, and then it all came crashing in. Mat knew who she was.
