Damien's Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

  And for some reason, that wasn’t worrying her nearly as much as she thought it should.

  Chapter Ten

  A week of time hadn’t shed a single bit of light on President Javad Madani’s cryptic warning.

  Damien had listened to scores of theories proposed and shot down during multiple Sit Room meetings. He’d done his best to migrate back to his watch desk, and had succeeded for the most part. But he was still drawn into a much higher percentage of meetings than was usual for a man in his position. He tried not to read too much into it. He liked his role as Sit Room librarian, the one person most deeply steeped in the knowledge of not only the room’s operation, but also the history of the decisions which had been made here. He pre-dated the current administration despite their double term of office, and he had some hope of post-dating the next one even if they won a double term.

  But their “Christian holiday season” was now a week shorter than it had been when Madani delivered his warning. The sense of impending disaster lurked in the corners of the room while meetings were held on other topics as well. Then, the lurking shadow would crawl back into the open and knock the cheer out of any task, no matter how successfully done.

  One thing had changed though. He’d now known Cornelia Day for two weeks rather than one. He gathered his coat and headed up the stairs and along the hall to her office.

  Friday night. A week ago he’d invited her to Molly Malone’s Pub for dinner. A week ago they’d slept together for the first time…though it felt as if they always had.

  A lot had changed between them. He was even crazier about her than he had been. Her poise ran soul deep. She was the one who always lent the calmest voice to any meeting. When the unflappable President was ready to pound his fist through the face of some conniving South American ambassador, it was Cornelia who calmed the situation. Her chill poise was often enough to convince her “opponent” that their lives would be far less challenging if they were to cooperate…fully…and right now!

  Gods but she tickled him no end.

  Janet waved as he entered her office, and pointed to a chair while she continued on the phone. Usually this late in the day, Janet was gone and he could just stick his head in to see if Cornelia was ready to go or if he should order in dinner. Something must be up beyond Cornelia’s cracked open door.

  Janet, who looked like everybody’s favorite grandmother, finished handing out a set of instructions on the phone. “I do care, dear. I care that the Chief of Staff has your report on her desk by six a.m. Monday morning….Yes, I understand that it is Friday night. However, the request was issued to your office on Tuesday and you know and I know that was plenty of warning. Now you must get it done or you will have to face me and then Ms. Day, and you know which will be the worse… Good!” And she hung up with more force than he expected from such a mild-mannered woman.

  “Remind me never to make you mad, Janet.” The threat of unleashing Cornelia’s ire would be a great motivator for any man.

  “That Secretary of the Interior. He is always doing everything at the last minute. Would never miss a golf game, god forbid, even in the winter, but a report on Ms. Day’s desk…” She slowly reined in her righteous indignation.

  “As I said,” and he aimed his most winning smile at her. He liked Janet. He’d had little to do with her among the fifteen hundred people who worked in the White House, at least until these last two weeks. He’d come to appreciate her skills.

  She typed a rapid note into her computer—perhaps a log entry on “that Secretary of the Interior.” He knew the man, a pretentious jerk—which Damien felt described a good quarter of the cabinet and at least half of politicians.

  “There’s a wider world to be appreciated now that I’ve crawled out of my basement.” He’d thought he could see everything, or at least everything important from his watch-duty desk. But up here he’d learned much more about the people who worked to keep the country running than he ever would in his Sit Room.

  “Yes, there is,” and suddenly Janet’s full attention was focused on him.

  He had a flash of insight that there just might be someone in this office more dangerous than Cornelia. Her eyes narrowed as she inspected him from head to toe. He was never very comfortable in his dress blues, but at the moment it felt as if he should be wearing them.

  “If you are courting Ms. Day, you are doing a poor job of it.”

  “Courting? What century are you from, Janet?” Personally he thought he was doing a pretty good job of it. They were almost up to their two-week anniversary and she hadn’t lost one bit of her shine—Cornelia was still the most fascinating and sexy woman he’d ever been with.

  “My Harry courted me from the day we met at the march on Washington to end the Vietnam War in November, 1969. Just because we slept together that first night among the trees by the Reflecting Pool, doesn’t mean he didn’t still have to win my heart. So don’t think you can be all modern and dismiss me, young man. A woman likes to be courted, and not just in bed. And if you don’t get your act together, you’re going to lose her. If that happens, I am going to be very disappointed in you.” Then she offered one of her matronly smiles. “You can go in any time you’d like,” Janet nodded toward Cornelia’s office door before standing to gather her coat and purse.

  Damien struggled to his feet and held her coat for her.

  After she was gone, Damien sat back down for a moment.

  Lose Cornelia? That was not an acceptable scenario.

  Did he need to step up his game? That had never been an issue before. He’d also never been so smitten by a woman. No one before Cornelia had engendered thoughts of a permanent nature. Oh, he always had his fantasies of what it might be like to settle down with each woman he met, but it had never felt important before. His idle daydreams had been easy to recognize as little more than that.

  He studied Janet’s vacant desk.

  Apparently he wasn’t the only one who could imagine a long term scenario between Cornelia and himself. He smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. He really had to stop thinking like a Marine.

  “Are you beating yourself up for any particular reason?”

  Cornelia leaned on the door jamb of her office. She actually leaned. Why did such a slight change make her appear so vulnerable? Again his protective, grab-and-hold instincts kicked in.

  Long, elegant in a dark blue outfit that screamed power. Her blouse was a sharp white with a matching mid-waist sash that equally loudly declared feminine. The clothes flowed neatly over her, only appearing to mask the woman within. He knew what lay past the clothes and his first instinct was how much he wanted her body. But he also knew the woman who lived in that incredible body.

  “Janet was right,” was all he could think to say.

  “She usually is,” Cornelia agreed. “What about this time?”

  “Are you done for the day?” Damien decided that discretion was his best option at the moment. Then he spotted her security badge. His was West Wing-only without an escort—and he’d only rarely had reason to begrudge that, he just didn’t need more. Hers covered the entire White House. That gave him a great idea.

  “Never,” her weary smile spoke to the heavy demands of her new job. “But for today, I think so.”

  “Good! Come along.”

  “Let me just get my coat.”

  “You don’t need it.”

  “I’m not going to have sex with you in some White House closet.”

  “While I like that image a great deal,” Janet would kick his ass, and she’d be right. “I had something else in mind.” He rose and held out his elbow, inviting her to take hold, just as he had on the walk to Moly Malone’s.

  After she studied it for a long moment, she stepped forward and did so. The sensation was no different—an essential rightness washed over him as they came in contact. Any man would be proud to escort such a woman anywhere; which didn’t do his ego any harm. And maybe it was time to do a little courting.

 
“I’m not particularly hungry…” her protest died as he turned away from the stairs which led down to the Navy Mess.

  Something was different about Damien, and Cornelia was too tired to make sense of it. A part of her would be glad to simply go home, let him exhaust her body with his, and hope for some sleep before Saturday morning arrived and the work resumed.

  She needed to do something.

  Even a quick round of sex in a White House closet didn’t sound completely unreasonable at the moment. Something had to happen, because she didn’t know how much longer she could hold everything in, and it was only her second week on the job.

  Four years loomed impossibly large.

  He led her down the hall toward the Oval Office. No, not something more. But he turned aside past the Roosevelt and Cabinet Rooms and along the short hallway to the Western Colonnade.

  “I should have taken my coat,” she clutched at her unbuttoned jacket as they stepped outside. The bitter December wind sliced around the tall columns and right through her poplin blouse.

  “Sorry. I didn’t want to risk the inside passage through the Press Room to the Residence. Who knows what evil lurks there.”

  “Reporters,” she let a shudder of cold become a mock shudder of horror. “Not tonight. Please.”

  A Marine in a long pea coat saluted Damien sharply. Damien returned it as neatly and then the Marine, after a glance at her badge, held the Palm Room door for them and she hurried inside—stepping into wonderland.

  “It’s Christmas,” she managed to gasp out. The entry to the Residence was aswirl with decorations. There were trees and such in the West Wing, but nothing like this.

  “It is,” Damien sounded very smug as he came up beside her.

  “As if you are personally responsible.”

  “Hey! I brought you to Christmas.”

  “It looks to me as if it was already here.”

  “As if you were going to find time to make it over here on your own. See, personally responsible for taking Ms. Cornelia Day to where Christmas is. That definitely counts.”

  Cornelia was almost surprised he didn’t leap up on a chair and beat his chest to make his point. She could feel herself relaxing. Damien’s odd humor always did that to her.

  Christmas in Palo Alto, California had never been white, and not even particularly cold. Her family had often traveled up to the city, and San Francisco’s damp winters had a penetrating bite to them, but still not snow.

  Last week’s snowfall had melted away, but the lack of snow outside the window did nothing to diminish the wonder of Christmas inside the White House as Damien led her into the Central Hall. The decorators had gone mad this year. The low ceiling of the vaulted hallway hadn’t made them hesitate for a second. Snowflakes the size of the Capitol Dome were held up by Washington Monument-sized candy canes—or so it seemed. It was overwhelmingly cheerful. She couldn’t wait to see what was upstairs.

  But Damien had other ideas and led her deeper into the bowels of the basement. At the midpoint of the long hall, he looked about uncertainly, then led her down a narrow corridor that was crowded to either side with rolled-up rugs and stacked chairs. There was barely room for them to walk side by side.

  She glanced at Damien, but he was carefully not meeting her gaze.

  “Let’s test the power of the White House Chief of Staff,” he offered cryptically. The size of his smile was impressive, and very like a little boy’s about to be naughty and not caring if he got caught.

  They entered another, equally cluttered hall and passed the bowling alley, several storeroom doors, and turned in at the last door down the hall. To the left was a sign for the carpentry shop—she hadn’t known that the White House had one of its own. Several offices straight ahead.

  To her right a small sign declared: Chocolate Shop.

  Damien knocked and they were let in by a rotund man with a brown-smeared white apron and a tall white hat which had one perfect set of chocolate fingerprints near its base.

  “What do ye want?” His brogue was distinctly Scottish.

  The chocolatier didn’t give them time to answer.

  “Never mind, as if I wasn’t already knowing. I’m wise to the likes of you.” He somehow simultaneously scowled at Damien but winked at her.

  He swung the door wider to reveal a fifteen-foot-square stainless steel kitchen packed with refrigerators, supplies, a big stove, and a prep table from which sprouted a four-foot-tall chocolate Christmas tree. The layers of branches were darkest chocolate with milk and white chocolate decorations. Lights were represented by brilliant dots of red, green, and gold fondant.

  “You so much as think of touching that and I’ll kill you. And if your blood smears a single bit of it, I’ll kill myself right here so god help me.”

  It was a masterpiece and Cornelia wasn’t going anywhere near it.

  The chef slipped a tray out of a cooler and set it on the counter before them. “Well, don’t just look, have at it, won’t ye? It’s why ye’ve come nosing about, after all.”

  Damien grinned at her as he leaned in to inspect the tray.

  It was filled with tiny chocolate reindeer. Not flat, like cut out of a sheet of chocolate, but fully three-dimensional figurines, each less than two inches high, including antlers.

  “They don’t have their harnesses yet, but that’s what you get for being the first ones by.”

  They looked charming and delicious.

  “Go on, lass. You don’t take one and tell me how amazing it is, me heart will be broken fair in two I can promise you.”

  Cornelia did take one, being very careful not to bump any others. She wasn’t quite sure how to eat it.

  “Just open up and pop it in.”

  “I feel like I’m eating Rudolph.”

  “Nah, I left him and his red nose in the cooler. You’re safe with this lot.”

  Unable to deny his encouraging smile, she did just pop it in. And when she bit down it took all her willpower not to spray the Christmas tree with it. The reindeer’s body broke apart in her mouth with an unexpected flood of cherry liqueur.

  “Oh my god,” she managed to mumble as the flavors combined and stormed her senses. “That’s incredible.”

  The chef positively beamed.

  By the time they escaped, they’d each had a cherry reindeer, a peanut butter inside-dark chocolate outside gnome, and a peppermint snowflake. They’d also shared a tiny glass of schnapps with Chef Andrews—just enough that Damien could feel it warming his blood. As if Cornelia wasn’t already doing that.

  “Okay, Damien. Top that one,” she held onto his arm with both hands and leaned into him as he guided them back into the center of the Residence.

  He had no idea how that might be possible. The chocolate shop had been a rumor he’d only heard about in the past.

  Up the stairs to the ground floor, Damien led her through the Entrance Hall, which was more akin to a North Pole snowstorm than a hall, and into the Blue Room. This year’s Christmas tree dominated the space, the topmost star nearly brushing the setting that normally held the massive gilt-and-crystal French chandelier.

  By Cornelia’s pleased gasp he knew he’d done well. It might not be gourmet chocolate, but it was a very pretty tree.

  She was completely enamored of it. He’d thought to show it to her and move on to continue their explorations, though he wasn’t sure where, but she inspected nearly every ornament.

  He read the explanatory placard aloud.

  “Immigrant children who came from all over the world to America were invited to paint an ornament like their country’s flag. The 195 countries recognized by the United States are represented here. These include all 193 UN countries as well as the Holy See and Kosovo.”

  “How many of these have you been to?” Cornelia asked from somewhere farther around the tree.

  “Do you see one with a red-and-white maple leaf?”

  There was a long pause. “Got it. Canada. Where else?”

  “Wel
l, I’ve been there.”

  Cornelia looked at him between two branches and an ornament of Trinidad and Tobago’s red flag with one black and two white stripes.

  “Honest. A Marine cannot tell a lie.” He held up his right hand with three fingers raised.

  “That’s the Girl Scout sign,” she ducked out of sight as she continued her inspection of the tree.

  He looked at his hand. “Actually, I’m fairly sure that’s Boy Scouts.”

  “Girl Scout. Were you ever a Boy Scout?”

  “Naw,” he lowered his hand, “too busy chasing girls.”

  “How did that work for you?”

  “Sucked. The girls all went for the guys in the cool uniforms.”

  “That’s why you became a Marine?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “I…don’t think that I’ll ask the next question,” she said from somewhere opposite the blue-and-red ornament with a circled red star of North Korea. Must have been a real challenge tracking down a refugee to paint that one. He wondered if the decorators had to make some themselves.

  “Well,” he couldn’t resist the opening, “I’ll have to try on my uniform and see what you think.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” she wandered into sight just past the gold, black, and white that must be Brunei. “Only Canada? Really?”

  “Really. I can probably name every flag here because of my time in the Sit Room, but I went from college to officer training, then straight into intel. How about you?”

  “I memorized all the flags of the world as a kid. I’ve been to a lot of countries since Zachary Thomas became Vice President. But I’ve never seen much of any of them except a monument here and a meeting room there.”

  How could he not fall for a woman who thought that memorizing flags was something fun to do.

  “I try to keep up with the new ones, like Myanmar’s change in 2010, but Africa still makes my head hurt. Nothing is stable there for very long.”

  “Don’t feel bad. They make everyone’s head hurt.”