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“Walking Boomer with your mother,” Nat replied. “Which is good, because it gives me the opportunity to ask what the fuck you think you’re doing with that poor sweet boy.”
James groaned, covering his face with his free hand. It was all coming back now.
Natalie knew. Aunt Helen knew. This was the reason he had the hangover from hell.
“You’re not going to tell my mother, are you?”
“What are you, twelve?” Nat said with a raised eyebrow. “No, I’m not going to tell your mother, but it’s more for Chris’s sake than yours. You should know better!”
“I know!” Jamie groaned into his hand. “I tried, Nat. I really tried.”
“Obviously not hard enough. Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time?”
Jamie took his hand away from his face and looked at Natalie with narrowed eyes. “It’s nothing like that Natalie,” he replied. “This is…very different.”
Nat was quiet and Jamie sighed, taking another nibble of his cracker and thoughtfully chewing it.
“You know when you go through life and you have good relationships and bad relationships, and great sex and terrible sex, and you do well and you mess up, and you think this is it, this is how life is? And then somebody comes into your life and turns your whole world upside down. Everything you thought you knew about your life, everything you thought you knew about loving somebody is just thrown out the window, because you’ve never felt this way before. And it’s terrifying, but at the same time, it’s the only time of your life where you’renotafraid anymore. You finally have something real, something worth fighting for, something worth protecting, worth doing right. Because this one person…you feel that this one person is the only one you were ever meant to be with.” He breathed deep, staring at the ceiling.
Natalie propped herself up on her elbow. “Damn it, Barratt. You seriously are in love with him, aren’t you?”
Jamie gave Nat a rueful smile. “One hundred percent.”
“Wow,” she mused. “This is something. James Thomas Barratt is finally ready to settle down with somebody. No more party orgies?”
“Oh come on, Nat! I was never that bad!” He laughed.
His head didn’t hurt quite as much anymore. In fact, nothing hurt quite as much anymore. James had been harboring these feelings for Chris and hadn’t had anyone to confess to before now. But he had history with Natalie—they had lain together like this before; they had talked and shared secrets. They were friends and it felt amazing to talk to her about this.
Natalie kissed his temple and left him to finish his crackers and the glass of water she’d brought.
He stripped off his suit and carefully draped it over the chair in the corner of the room before thoroughly soaking himself under a hot shower, allowing the water to run over his face and into his mouth before spitting it out, like a measured drowning.
It was only when he’d dried off, put on fresh underwear and slipped back into bed that he realized his entire conversation with Natalie had actually been held in Russian.
Chapter 18
Nobody expected Jamie to get out of bed that day, which meant that Chris kind of had the day off on the orders of President Freddie Barratt. He had gone with the president while she walked Boomer on the beach, staying a few paces behind until she had stopped and asked Chris to walk with her.
“I hope the party wasn’t too bad for you, Agent Roberts,” she said to him as he fell into step with her.
“No ma’am,” Chris replied. “It was his birthday—if you can’t let your hair down on your birthday, then when can you?”
President Barratt laughed. “Quite. We haven’t had much of a chance to get to know each other, have we, Agent Roberts?”
Chris glanced at her. She was looking at him with a smile and slightly raised eyebrows, a look so reminiscent of Jamie that it almost made Chris stop in his tracks.
“I guess not, ma’am,” he replied.
Chris had met the president once, the week before he had started his job as Jamie’s personal security. The meeting hadn’t really lasted more than five minutes, as he’d already been interviewed, and background checked and lie detected and wrung out by Nick Foster. Meeting the president was just Chris’s final test to pass, to see if she thought him pleasant enough. .
“I feel like you got thrown into the deep end with my son,” President Barratt said, wresting the tennis ball from Boomer’s teeth so she could throw it again. “I hope he hasn’t been too much of a handful.”
“Actually, ma’am, he’s been a pleasure to work for,” Chris replied truthfully.
“He has?” She sounded surprised.
Chris turned to smile at her. “Yes, ma’am. It’s been an eye-opening experience. But your son is a good person, ma’am, and an absolute credit to you.”
