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Jamie laughed and kissed him again, hands sliding up his chest to his neck, then his face. “Come on,” he mumbled, breaking away again. “If I’m gone more than three minutes, somebody is going to start getting suspicious.”
Chris sighed and stepped away, giving Jamie a quick onceover to make sure that nothing was out of place before unlocking the bathroom door and looking out into the corridor. It was still empty, and he ushered Jamie ahead of him and into the function room. Jamie had barely taken two steps into the crowd before Chris felt an iron grip on his wrist and was dragged back into the hallway to be roughly shoved against the wall.
Natalie Richmond glared at him. “What the actual fuck, Roberts?” she growled.
“What?” Chris replied, shocked at being so easily manhandled by a woman half his size. He kept forgetting that the CIA had trained Natalie.
“You know, I have been racking my brain all day to try and figure out what’s wrong with this picture. And now I wonder why I didn’t figure it out sooner. You’re fucking him, aren’t you?”
“What?” Chris’s stomach dropped like a stone.
Natalie’s face showed some small spark of triumph. “Jamie has been a hot mess for months. You’re around for four weeks and suddenly he’s a recluse and not even going crazy at his own birthday party. Then you disappear with him into the bathroom when there is absolutely no need to do so. You’re forgetting to call in your status reports, you’re asking questions aboutmypast relationship with him—it all makes perfect fucking sense, Chris.”
His chest felt tight. He should have known better than to try to bullshit Natalie Richmond. The woman was a human lie detector and Chris had never been able to tell a convincing lie in his life.
“Nat…”
“It stops,” she cut him off. “I don’t care how cute and charming he is. It stops, right now.”
Chris was suddenly very annoyed. “Oh, so it’s fine foryouto fuck him, but not me?”
Natalie went still. “That was before the incident,” she replied quietly.
“Are you referring to Reiss?” Chris asked. “Because people keep bringing that up but always fail to explain to me how it’s at all relevant to any situation I find myself in when it comes to James Barratt. What the hell did that man do to make everybody punishmeforhismistakes?”
Natalie took a step back and folded her arms across her chest, her eyes dropping to the floor. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t!” Natalie sighed. “I’m trying to do you a favor, Roberts. This is not what he needs right now.”
“And you’d know, right? Because you’ve seen him every day since he left the hospital, you’ve talked to him, you’ve held him in the night when he woke up screaming from a nightmare, you’ve talked him down when Pierce got him so agitated that he had a full-blown panic attack at the Met…”
Natalie was looking at him entirely differently now. “Shit,” she said under her breath. “Chris…you were not supposed to fall in love with him. He’s the president’s son. He’s your protectee.”
He bit his lip and ran his hands over his face, his breathing shaky. “I know. “I’m not even sure how it happened.”
Natalie chewed on the inside of her cheek, her foot tapping on the carpet, her arms still crossed over her chest. “We’ll talk about this later. I need some time to think.”
Natalie pushed past him and into the function room. Chris took a deep breath, his heart pounding. This was not supposed to happen. Shakily, he took his phone out of his pocket and sent a text.
* * * *
“Jamie!” Aunt Helen called, spotting him and waving him over. She had moved away from his mother some time ago and had spent a good hour flirting shamelessly with one of the guys from Jamie’s old squad. She was alone now, though, a martini in hand as he reached her and pulled her into a warm hug.
“Hey, Aunt Helen,” he replied.
“Happy Birthday, sweetheart,” she said, rubbing his back with her free hand before pulling away and holding him at arm’s length.
“Thank you!” He grinned at her and accepted a drink from a passing tray before turning to survey the room.
He couldn’t see Chris. Jamie could have sworn Chris had been just behind him.
“Oh, honey,” Aunt Helen said quietly, running her hand up his arm. “You’re not very subtle.”
“What?”
Helen made the face—the one that basically saiddon’t treat me like I’m fucking stupid, and Jamie guiltily bit his lip.
