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“Oh.” Chris grinned at her. She had one of those expressions on her face. “So, you and Barratt…?”
Natalie shot him a hard look, but almost immediately it softened, and she grinned also. “Yeah, well. It was campaign year; everything was a bit wild. It was only ever physical, though. We broke it off when his mother was elected, and he was shipped out to Afghanistan.”
The door opened behind them, and they both sprang up, switching to professional mode in a split second as the president and her son exited the Oval Office. Jamie Barratt looked like a scolded child. The man could pout.
“Natalie, my son is leaving for the airport now. Would you kindly call ahead and make sure the helicopter is ready for when he gets there?”
“Of course, Madam President.”
Chris and Natalie gave each other a nod of acknowledgement before parting, Nat walking back into the Oval Office and Chris hurrying to catch up with Jamie, who was practically storming out of the White House.
* * * *
It wasn’t that Jamie hated the Hamptons. He had grown up in New York, had spent weekends and holidays at the house in East Hampton, and he had loved it. But now, it really felt as though he were being exiled. He’d just done six weeks in a military hospital, recovering from a serious burn-out, not allowed to leave the premises, military escorts to the bathroom. His life had been dictated and regimented worse than when he had been deployed. Jamie finally had freedom to go out, breathe the fresh air, but instead, he was being carted off to the Hamptons with a new Secret Serviceperson that he knew nothing about.
Not that he missed Reiss. That guy could rot in hell for all Jamie cared, but he knew that Roberts had been employed because he was decent, dependable, and honest. It was written all over his face. He was going to watch Jamie like a hawk and make sure that he didn’t slip back into self-destruct mode.
He got it. He really did. He was the only person his mother had left after Jamie’s dad had been killed in the Gulf War in 1990. Jamie didn’t even remember his dad.
And it wasn’t even that Jamie didn’t want to live, because he did. Three months of torture and never knowing if his next breath was going to be his last had only made him more determined to make the most of his life when he got it back. His only problem was that he had tried too hard at it.
Jamie knew that his mother was trying to gently let him back into the real world. He just wished he’d been allowed more of a discussion about it. But here he was, sitting on the presidential chopper with an agent who already looked like he hated Jamie’s guts, and heading to Long Island.
“You don’t like me very much, do you?” Jamie asked, leaning forward to look at Roberts, who was sitting opposite, leafing through a paper file. He looked up and blinked slowly. Jamie could tell that the man was searching for the answer least likely to offend and he grinned wryly. “It’s okay, I don’t mind. You don’t have to like me to be able to do your job.”
Jamie sat back and turned to look out the window, and Roberts closed the file and placed it on the table in front of him.
“You don’t remember me at all, do you, sir?”
Jamie raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Should I?”
Roberts cleared his throat. “Two years ago, sir. Helmand Province, 85th Infantry. We overlapped command for three days—you rotated in just as I was going out. We went on one patrol together when we were ambushed. You pushed me out of the line of fire and behind cover. We took out—”
“Six insurgents,” Jamie finished. He remembered it very well, the blinding sunshine, the heat, the dust that kicked up in the spray of bullets and the stomping of combat boots as they scrambled for cover. And he remembered the man that had slipped on the loose ground and fallen, who he had grabbed by the straps of his back and hauled behind a rock. “You’re Christopher Roberts. I remember you.”
* * * *
Jamie’s entire face changed. He went from being bored and sullen one second, to sitting up straight in his seat, eyes bright with recognition as he grasped Chris’s hand, his smile genuine and warm. Chris suddenly knew what Natalie had been talking about earlier.
“You know what? I am so sorry. You must have thought I was a total asshole,” Jamie said.
“Well…” Chris trailed off, unsure of what to say.
Hehadthought Jamie to be a total asshole, but he really didn’t want to say so. In the army, they had both been of equal rank, but here, Chris was in Jamie’s service. He didn’t have the right to speak to him like an equal.
“No, seriously.” Jamie grinned, finally letting go of Chris’s hand and relaxing into his seat. “I was an asshole. I apologize. I didn’t realize that you were military, too.”
Chris absently rubbed the back of his neck, still taken aback at the warmth radiating from this man, how sudden and unexpected it had been. He honestly hadn’t believed that Jamie would remember that day in Helmand. They had met the night Barratt had arrived, had a drink in the mess, gone out on patrol the next day, and then Chris had rotated back to the States the day after, leaving Jamie Barratt in charge of his old unit. Chris had then applied for the Secret Service and been discharged from the army, spending the next few years on the payroll of the president.
Jamie sighed and smiled. “I’m afraid I’m a little distrustful of the Secret Service right now—after the last guy. It all went to hell, and I was nervous about having another shadow, but now I know who you are and that you’re one of my own…I trust you. IknowI can trust you.”
Chris felt himself smile at that and he nodded—this was more like the man he remembered. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Jamie repeated. “Eighty-fifth, huh?”
“Eighty-fifth,” Chris said and chuckled.
“Well, fuck me. Small world.” Jamie drew a deep breath, then slapped his thigh with the palm of his hand. “This calls for a drink.”
