That earned her silent consideration from around the table.
“So, no thinking for yourself?” Mick teased.
Damien had slowly learned to read Cornelia’s body language. Even partway into her second beer, she still sat like a dancer. Her sense of humor remained as it had started, smart and sharp when she was applying it and nonexistent when she was thinking on other matters. His question and the table’s follow-up stiffened her already straight spine.
“My thoughts?”
Mick nodded amiably, unaware of the juggernaut that was about to land on his head.
Damien checked and noticed that she had the general’s full attention. So he too had learned to read her. Or perhaps, because of his daughter being the National Security Advisor, he understood the true caliber implied by Cornelia being a senior-level White House staffer.
“My thought is that you Marine intel boys need to get your heads out of your asses.”
The shock of silence rippled around the table.
Damien kept his smile to himself. This was the Cornelia Day that he’d seen in his files. He’d begun to doubt her existence, having only conversed with the thoughtful, even-tempered woman prior to this moment.
“Your mandate is to gather the information needed by your forward forces. There are 182,000 active-duty personnel who depend on your information. They are in need of tactical intel. Everything I’ve heard tonight has been strategic in nature—not even that. It has been top-tier political in consideration and as I’m sure Damien can tell you, not the most accurate or well thought out because you are basing your assumptions on tactical data. If you wish to work for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the NSA, and the half dozen others who operate at the strategic level, then go there and do that. You are Marine officers. Your duty is to the men and women out there on the front lines. I hope that what you’ve been saying tonight wasn’t the speech you gave to the plebes earlier today. If you’re wondering why Damien is working at the White House and not you, it’s because he embodies these distinctions in his thoughts and in the service he provides.”
A few of the guys actually blushed as they looked to him for his response. General Arnson was keeping his thoughts to himself.
“Cornelia,” Damien spoke to get her attention, to haul her back from the sharp cliff edge she had walked out onto. “I need you”—to take a breath—“to come teach at my next class at NIU. The students at the National Intelligence University really need to hear that distinction from someone more convincing than me.”
She nodded once sharply, whether acknowledging the end of her rant, or his invitation to NIU was accepted was unclear.
“My pleasure.”
“I don’t know what came over me,” Cornelia hugged her coat more tightly around her. It was no colder outside, but she suddenly felt chilled to the bone.
“Whatever it was, it was utterly magnificent,” Damien was practically chortling as he squeezed his left hand over where hers was tucked around his right elbow.
“But I ruined the dinner,” she’d been working it so carefully. Had begun to feel that these men might actually like her for being, well, not the woman who had just told them they were full of it in front of a one-star general. God she was hopeless.
“Not for a second,” Damien practically crowed with delight.
“It’s fine for you to be happy. You didn’t just ostracize an entire department of the military.”
A light snow began falling, fluttering and glittering past the streetlights. She normally loved this moment when the city turned magical. Colorado had thickened her California blood but she had never gotten over the wonder of her first major snowfall after joining the Governor’s office. But it was hard to enjoy it when she was busy blowing up her career. And after only one week on the job!
“I now represent the President of the United States. I should never have spoken—”
“The truth?” Damien’s voice turned unexpectedly harsh. “They were all trying to impress you. That’s a male analyst’s form of flirting: Look at how smart I am. Well, you called their bluff. Gave the general some food for thought as well.”
“I couldn’t even look at him,” Cornelia wanted to hide her face against Damien’s shoulder.
“Well, you impressed the hell out of the only two people at the table that mattered.”
“Who was the other one…” she trailed off when Damien glanced at her sidelong. “I—”
She would just keep her questions to herself from now on.
The snow was staying light and calming. Apparently they were walking back to the White House. It was an hour away at a brisk clip, the only speed appropriate for this weather, and she didn’t mind even though she wasn’t properly dressed for it. She needed to burn off some of the nervous energy coursing through her.
The rest of Barracks Row was fully decked out for Christmas: frame shop photos of Santa Class, bicycles with red and green flashing lights, a kitchen store window filled with holiday cookie cutters. It was a three block long line of Christmas cheer and twinkle lights and she couldn’t wait to get out of it. She finally felt as if she could breathe when they reached the end of the Row and turned left onto Pennsylvania Avenue.
“What were you going to say?” Damien prompted her when she slowed from mad dash to merely panicked hurry.
“I was going to ask something rude.”
“Don’t stop now, Cornelia. You’re on a roll.”
“I—” but she couldn’t go any further.
“You’re going to ask why I’m the other one who mattered?” He asked it with a level of perception and a degree of frankness she was truly coming to appreciate in him.
She nodded and held onto his arm so that he wouldn’t just walk away in fury.
“It’s not the same reason as the general.”
Cornelia tried to puzzle it out. Damien could slow down her intel requests, but she expected that he had too much integrity for that. He could bad mouth her to other Sit Room staff causing the next two years to become decidedly awkward in the Situation Room…as if she wasn’t doing enough of that job herself.
He still didn’t answer as they walked past the bright Capitol Dome with its towering blue pinnacle of the Capitol Christmas Tree and began walking the length of the National Mall. Through the glassed-front of the Air and Space Museum she could see the great planes and spaceships of the last century. And some century yet to come—the original shooting model of the Starship Enterprise had been placed in the same hall as the Apollo LEM and Chuck Yeager’s X-1 that had broken the sound barrier.
Face it. Head-on. Deep breath. Doesn’t help. “Why then are you the other one who matters?”
“Explanation or demonstration?” Damien finally asked in a voice so soft she barely heard it.
“Demonstration?” What did he mean by that? She meant it as a question, he took it as her choice.
Using her left hand as guidance where it still tucked about his elbow, he turned her into his arms. One moment they were walking side by side beneath the snow-spattered sky. The next she was being kissed in front of the glass wall of the museum.
This was definitely a Marine-first-librarian-second kiss. She assumed that he’d let her loose…if she wanted an out. But from the first instant, the cold of the winter’s night was scorched from her body. Her pulse roared to life.
Had she known that she wanted to kiss him?
Maybe.
Had she seriously considered it?
That answer blurred as she sank into it. Neither of them were demonstrating much beyond their most primal, animal intelligence. She wrapped her arms around the bulk of his Navy pea coat and held him tightly so that he wouldn’t think to stop.
Wouldn’t think.
Don’t think.
She sagged against him, trusting the Marine to hold her upright because her own legs weren’t up to it.
Her arms could barely reach around his chest and shoulders to clasp behind him. Yet his strong arms overlapped as they wr
apped about her and held on.
He offered to pull back, to make this kiss as merely a moment of heat.
Cornelia wasn’t ready to let go and kept him pulled in tight against her.
Some passing motorist beeped their car horn in a cheery pattern.
Only when her heart raced so fast that she couldn’t catch her breath did she break the kiss. She leaned her head against his shoulder, not yet ready to let go.
“Holy hell, Cornelia. What was that about?”
“Stop being an analyst for a moment, please.” She could feel his chuckle better than she could hear it despite their thick coats separating them.
“Well, if that’s your standard kiss—”
It wasn’t.
“—I can’t wait to see what comes next.”
“Analyst.”
He shrugged at her accusation.
Her pulse and breathing finally slowed enough for her to be aware once more that she had legs and by some miracle they were still able to support her.
“That,” she managed to stand upright and pat a hand on Damien’s cheek, “wasn’t my standard anything.”
“Well, it certainly worked for me, ma’am, whatever it was.”
It had worked for her as well.
“You okay to keep walking?”
Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded.
“Good, because I’m not. Okay if I lean on you?”
Slowly they joined hands and headed along the sidewalk once more. Except—
“That’s the Capitol Dome,” Damien stated with some surprise.
“It is,” Cornelia sought her best disenchanted tourist voice. “And that is its Christmas tree on the front lawn.”
“We’ve already been by there.”
“We have,” she managed to keep the surprise out of her voice.
With a ceremonial nod that might have been part bow, he turned them about and once more they were headed back toward the White House.
Cornelia never thought a giggle was a seemly utterance for a woman grown. So she fought down the desire to do so and simply said, “Thank you, kind sir.”
“Kind sir, my ass. Kind sirs don’t wonder how many minutes it is until we can try that without our winter coats.”
“Many.”
“Crap!”
“I could invite you up for a nightcap, but I live another fifteen minute walk west of the White House,” Cornelia tried to parse the words as they slipped out of her mouth. If she understood them as individual words, she might be able to edit, correct, and verify prior to release. But they slipped out as a single cogent thought far beyond her control.
Damien guided them past the gauntlet of national museums and most of the way to the Washington Monument before he spoke again.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything.” However, “except that the answer to that is yes.” Cornelia didn’t try to analyze her response. For once in her life she would live in the moment. Just this one time she’d let go and do something not because it was right, but because she wanted to.
They walked past the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse, fully decorated, but still dark for tomorrow’s tree-lighting ceremony. The silence wrapped warm about them in the frosty air.
Getting to Cornelia’s condo was either the longest or the shortest walk of his life. It would have seemed impossible that she’d invited him back to her place, if not for that kiss. Damien had expected her kiss to be as smooth and perfect as she was. Instead, there’d been a mind-blanking heat that had fired up his body on a cold winter’s night. He couldn’t try that again soon enough—he had to know if it had been real.
And yet, walking down the length of The Mall through the falling snow, passing monument after monument with her hand once again on his arm—like a couple who’d been together forever—had passed far too quickly. Again the idiot-around-women part of his brain was imagining what it would be like to make this walk together each night, each month, each—
Typical! He really needed to get control of his thoughts. Not a chance with Cornelia beside him.
They walked in silence through the snow. When she turned off the sidewalk in front of a beautiful old brickwork building renovated into condos, she stopped.
He didn’t ask again if she was sure. He didn’t want to break the peace that stood between them.
Instead he simply waited.
She didn’t turn to study his face. Nor did she drag him ahead like some overeager wanton. Cornelia simply kept her hand on his arm and, after only the briefest hesitation, continued up the front walkway as if they’d done it a thousand times.
“Ms. Day. Sir,” the elderly doorman welcomed them after buzzing them through the secure door.
“Thank you, Mr. Rivers.”
He handed Cornelia her mail and they rode the elevator to the third floor.
Her condo was as neat as her office. A small, but cozy one bedroom with a kitchen that looked little used. Soft, indirect lighting. A full-wall bookcase that was filled with both political memoir and thriller. There was little art on the walls, just a few pictures of her with the President-elect before he was the President-elect. They spanned over a decade of time, but she looked little changed. Even in the high school graduation photo standing between her parents, she looked like a grown woman.
The silence echoed in his ears as she hung up her coat then his in the closet.
He waited. He didn’t want a nightcap. He didn’t want coffee and a bit of phony chit-chat on the tastefully pale-green sofa. Her apartment, like her clothing, was a palate of neutrals or pastel shades. No strong statements here—except the woman herself, placing her shoes in the bottom of the hall closet.
Her presence shouted in the neutral room as loudly as a vermillion wall hanging or blaring music.
“God, Cornelia. You’re so—” stepping close she rested a warm finger on his lips.
“I’ve never understood games or small talk,” she whispered from mere inches away. And she replaced her finger with a brush of her lips.
“And I’ve never met a woman who was so forthright.”
“You fascinated me from the first moment, Damien.”
“Fascinated? Are you sure you aren’t channeling Spock?”
“Who?” But this time her smile spoke volumes to him. And he realized that it should have the first time as well.
“Crap!” Damien growled. “And I totally fell for it that you somehow had missed a whole segment of American culture.”
She ran a hand up over his chest, looking down at her fingers as she did so. He was left to look at the top of her head as she traced a line of fire upward.
“Let me guess. You’re one of those girls, women, who had a total crush on Spock.”
“Had?” She said it so coyly that he couldn’t help laughing. “And you strike me as a Beverly Crusher type.”
“No,” he lied. “Troi for me. In the Season One cheerleader outfit.”
“Liar.” Cornelia didn’t make it a question. “You always go for the brains.” She leaned in to rub her nose on his neck. “Me too,” she whispered.
“Guilty,” he slid his hands onto her waist and up her ribcage.
It was fascinating: how she felt against the curve of his palm and fingers, how her lips tasted of no lipstick or balm, but rather just a hint of the espresso dark chocolate pie they’d shared and a slight spiciness that had nothing to do with their meals.
“Besides Crusher has a great body, just different.” He was on the verge of saying “Like yours.” But he didn’t. Not because of tact, never one of his strengths, but because there was no way that anyone could feel as good as Cornelia.
His tie had disappeared when he wasn’t paying attention. And his shirt was halfway unbuttoned.
“And if you’re trying to spoil my fantasy woman image of you, being able to knowledgably discuss Star Trek isn’t helping you out at all.”
“Do you always talk so much?”
Damien considered f
or a moment. “Usually, but I’ll make an exception in your case.” He shifted his hands to her breast and behind. Then he pulled her back into the hard kiss he wanted to try again.
They groaned in unison at how good it was.
Except for a brief foray to the bathroom for protection, they didn’t make another sound as he melted onto the white living room carpet and pulled her down on top of him. The couch was too far away.
Chapter Five
Cornelia hadn’t slept like that in a long time. For one thing, she was warm, an unusual event with only the sheet over her. Damien was delightfully warm to sleep next to. For another thing, her morning workout sessions might tone her body, but it didn’t wring her out into limp-dishrag territory the way last night’s activities had. A simpatico energy had run between them, draining her physically and energizing her…her what?
Her thoughts were as languid as her body at the moment; a very unusual state for her.
Her emotions…were as strange and distant as ever. Except they weren’t the same as ever. They were—
“You’re thinking awfully hard for seven in the morning,” Damien’s whispered greeting tickled her ear.
“I’m—Wait! Seven?” She scrabbled around for some covers, finally hauling the blanket around her as she crawled out of bed.
“Whoa!” Damien made a grab for her that she managed to dodge, but he snagged the blanket. He held one end as she held the other over her breasts and hips.
“But it’s seven,” the need to get moving coursed through her.
“It’s Saturday.”
“But it’s seven.” She always finished her stepper workout by six-thirty, shower and breakfast by seven, at the White House or the EEOB by seven-thirty.
“Cornelia. Take a breath. Today is Saturday,” as if she was a child and hadn’t heard him the first time.
“That doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t believe everything on my desk.”
“Your desk is immaculate and empty.”
She tried to give him a withering look, but Damien didn’t seem to be the kind of man to wither. Simply because her queue was electronic didn’t make it any smaller. Her inbox inherited from Daniel filled three file cabinets and what had appeared in the last week filled most of another—she was beginning to understand why Daniel had filed the way he did. Yesterday’s discussion with Damien meant that she now had a plan of attack. A quiet Saturday, if there was such a thing in the White House, would be the perfect opportunity to start implementing it.
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