Peter's Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

  “It’s working, is it? Cool!”

  “Ugh. You are such a man. Now kiss me like you have been imagining since I arrived.”

  “You mean since the moment you left?”

  Genny dragged his face to hers and kissed him before he could say more. He was going to kill her yet. Or slay her heart which, for the first time, she thought might be even worse.

  # # #

  “So, what is this cookie night?” Genny and the President waited in the Dining Hall of the Second Floor of the Residence. It was so formal, like everything else here. White wainscoting, elegantly tasteful wallpaper the color of a soft sunrise, and an elaborate crystal chandelier dangling over a circular table of dark mahogany that could seat ten. And the seam down the middle suggested that it could be expanded for even more. A spread of hors d’oeuvres had been spread upon the table. She took a few on a small plate. Peter, refusing to cave to the formality of his surroundings, grazed, taking an olive here, a deviled egg there, and eating them with little regard if they were to scatter crumbs.

  Per instruction, she had changed into casual clothes, at least the most casual she had with her, black slacks and turtleneck. Peter wore jeans and a flannel shirt open at the collar with the sleeves rolled up. He looked comfortable, at home in this crazy house of the American President.

  “You’ll just have to wait and see. Besides, it’s Daniel’s thing, so we have to wait for him and a couple of others to join us. Oh, I should mention— Oh, here’s Em.”

  Emily Beale stepped into the room. “Mark bagged out on us,” she said by way of introduction. Not even a hello, as if Genny were simply a member of the family, expected rather than merely welcome. It was a nice gesture. She hoped that’s all it was because otherwise she’d start to overthink how it felt to be here.

  “Mark does that whenever I mention anything about a kitchen other than eating in one. I swear, the only place he’ll cook is if we have a campfire and he just caught the trout. He made some lousy excuse just because we are shipping out on a training exercise tomorrow, as if that were something new.”

  “What you should do,” Genny glanced sidelong at Peter to make sure he was listening. She decided to see just how much she could tease him, “is exactly what I plan to do with this Mr. President. Our first house,” the President suddenly had a strangled look on his face as if he were choking on his own breath. Perfect. That would teach him to have secrets from her.

  “It will have no kitchen. I will install an enormous American barbeque and make him always do the cooking for me.”

  Emily idly thudded Peter on the back with one hand to restart his breathing, hard enough to nearly drive him onto the table, while considering Genny.

  “You’re smart. I should have known you would be, since Peter picked you out of the crowd. I just might do that.” Her smile lit her eyes more brightly than laughter ever could.

  Before Peter had fully recovered, Daniel and his wife Alice arrived from the floor above. He carried a small sheaf of papers and index cards. These looked worn and tattered, oddly out of place in the White House. Something so simple brought to the eye the museum-like perfection of every adornment here, making the whole of it suddenly appear false.

  Another couple arrived close behind them, an older couple that she didn’t recognize. The attractive woman wore a short bob of graying hair that might have once been blond, a cashmere sweater and perfectly tailored jeans. The man was balding, dressed casually, and looked like an older version of—

  “There they are. Hey Mom! Dad!”

  Peter traded quick hugs with them as Genny felt all of the blood drain out of her body. It was a setup and she was the pretty woman suddenly on display.

  “Please allow me to introduce you. Geneviève, this is Randolph, former Senate Majority leader, retired, so thank God I don’t have to deal with him. And Gloria. She’s still a U.S. Court of Appeals Circuit Judge. Mom, Dad, this is—”

  “We know who she is, you idiot.”

  Gloria held onto Genny’s hand which was good, for it was about the only thing that kept her from flattening Peter onto the hardwood floor. And she was going to make sure it hurt on the way down, because the Secret Service was probably going to shoot her before she’d have a chance to finish him off.

  “I can’t believe he didn’t tell you we were invited,” Gloria rested her other hand over Genny’s, as if she knew she were enhancing the longevity of her son’s existence by doing so. “There are some things about which he is remarkably stupid. I, for one, am pleased to meet you. After I saw the pictures in the news, because of course he doesn’t even think to call his mother, I googled you. You are a very impressive young woman, perhaps you can keep him in line.”

  “Perhaps I can practice my martial arts sparring techniques upon him. Hard.” Genny finally managed to shift her gaze over to Peter. He looked as if he understood that this was not a good surprise.

  Randolph cuffed his son smartly on the back of the head, which made Genny feel a little better.

  # # #

  “It’s an old family tradition,” Daniel was spreading out his precious recipes on the table.

  Peter had tried to get to Geneviève a couple of times, but she was clearly avoiding him. Every time he turned, she was on the opposite side of his mother or father. Even Alice and Em were putting up subtle barricades around her. He couldn’t seem to get to her.

  “We’ve always made cookie boxes for any family who couldn’t be home for Christmas. I first thought, for this year, we could make some for our own families.”

  Peter tried to catch Geneviève’s attention so that he could signal her to retire with him for a moment to the hallway to explain, but she wouldn’t even look at him.

  “But that would only be for me and Mark. Plus some extras for Emily to take to her parents here in town. Genny, I don’t know if you have family.”

  “I do. In Vietnam.”

  “Good,” Daniel continued as if there were no problem at all. Usually his Chief of Staff helped him muddle through situations, just as he’d helped some with Daniel’s courtship of Alice. Right at the moment he was being completely useless.

  “So that would make three boxes of cookies, not very ambitious. But I thought we should spread it wider. I think we should make as many boxes as we can, and send them out to the kids in shelters in D.C. Cookies not made by the White House chefs, but us personally.”

  “What a wonderful idea,” everyone was agreeing and turning to inspect the recipes.

  Peter tried to move in beside Geneviève and received a sharp elbow to the gut that hurt and forced him to back off.

  “Okay! I screwed up! I’m sorry!” At his outburst, everybody turned to stare at him. Everybody except Geneviève.

  He took her elbow and turned her gently until she faced him.

  Her glare and the hurt was not a pretty expression on her face and he was sorry he’d put it there.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know if Mom and Dad could make it when I invited you.”

  “When you found out, you could have called me.” Her voice was neither hot nor tear-choked as he’d expected. It sounded cold, and dangerous.

  “I could have, if you’d given me your goddamned phone number.” He knew he should be the one keeping his temper. He always did, in every situation. But his need for her, to be with her, was driving him near to madness.

  Geneviève remained perfectly steady, not even needing to cross her arms in front of her to fend him off. “And your Secret Service doesn’t have my number?”

  “Of course they do, at least I assume so. But I didn’t want to ask them. I have already made it so that your life is smeared across the front pages of the news, I wanted to leave you some privacy.”

  Was her look softening? He couldn’t tell.

  “And why didn’t you tell me when I arrived?” Her demand sounded no softer. “I
have been here over thirty minutes. Long enough for you to kiss me in the Oval Office. Long enough to try to drag me into your bed when we changed clothes though you said we would be late if you did.”

  Okay, now he was the one who didn’t want to meet her eyes. Even less though, did he want to see the eyes of anyone else in the room. No one, not even his own parents, had the decency to make even the least gesture toward leaving, they all were too fascinated by the goings-on here.

  So, this too would be public.

  He took her hands in his. They didn’t grasp, but neither did she pull them away.

  “Kim-Ly Geneviève Beauchamp, you consume me. You make me think of nothing but you, every moment you are with me. I forgot that I hadn’t told you my parents would be here, because I was too busy being happy.” Then he waited. Waited while the woman with the greenest eyes he’d ever seen inspected him and decided her verdict.

  Then, when he thought he might pass out from holding his breath, she stepped forward and kissed him on each cheek. He half feared that she was saying goodbye, until she kissed him lightly on the mouth, as lightly as that first kiss. Pulling him close against her by the strong grasp of their hands, she laid her cheek on his and whispered in his ear.

  “I was right, you are making my heart in such danger.”

  Peter freed his hands, wrapped his arms around her, and simply tried to hold on.

  His mother and Alice were crying, not even attempting to mop their cheeks. Even Em was looking pretty sniffly which was hard to imagine. His Dad thumped him on the back, though not hard enough to disturb the woman nestled in his arms.

  Daniel just gave him a sharp nod of approval, as if he’d known all along it would be okay. Then he spoke loudly.

  “So, about these cookies.”

  Everyone laughed and turned back to the task at hand.

  He stayed close by Geneviève. If he was putting her heart “in such danger,” what in the world was she doing to his? Making it pound until he couldn’t hear a single thing anyone said. It pounded so hard that it set up echoes that would never stop, not until they were buried deep in his soul.

  # # #

  “There are no French-style cookies here,” Genny inspected Daniel’s recipe collection. “No dessert from Vietnam. I cannot send a Christmas box to my family without these ingredients.”

  “I have this,” Daniel offered her a recipe for Sienese Pan Forte.

  “That is Italian.”

  “I know how to make a decent custard,” Emily offered.

  “Oh, and that will ship well in a cookie box.”

  Emily looked chagrined, “Oh, right.”

  “I will need some ingredients.” She did her best to maintain the appearance of calm. The pressure had eased in the room. And it had eased in her heart, in one way.

  “We can dial down to the main White House kitchen for almost anything we need. They’ll send it up on the elevator.” Daniel pointed to a tall, but narrow steel door in the corner that Genny hadn’t noticed.

  She began making a list.

  “Hey, I thought you said you didn’t know how to cook?”

  “This is not cooking, Mr. President. This is baking. Even more important, this is Christmas baking. That I know how to do.” She focused on finishing her list so that she appeared busy.

  For the pressure on her heart had not eased. In less than a week, she had fallen in love with a man, and she had only come to understand that in the last minute or two. It was not something she did easily. Or at all, in her memory. She had thought she loved Gérard, or she wouldn’t have married him. But it had felt nothing like this. Nothing like when Peter had faced her and told her that she consumed his thoughts.

  From another man, that would be lust. But this was not a normal man. This was one of the most powerful thinkers on the planet. And she knew by what he’d achieved already in his Presidency, a very smart and determined man. That her mere presence could distract him into indiscretions and poor communication spoke of far more than it would have in any other man. He had just laid his heart out on the table in front of his friends and parents for all to see. And he had offered it to her.

  Whether or not he understood what he had done, she did. And how could she not be swept away by such a revelation?

  “There,” she finished her list. Her throat was tight and she was glad to find Emily close beside her. The woman leaned in to look at the list, and ever so casually draped an arm across Genny’s shoulders. With no one the wiser, the woman hugged her. Clearly she too had seen what Peter, her childhood friend, did not yet realize.

  “Interesting looking ingredients, what do they make?”

  “This,” Genny indicated the first column. “Will make a Nougat Noir au Miel. It is a dark, what would you call, caramel of lavender honey with almonds. It goes between wafer paper if they have it, or dusted confectioners sugar if they do not. And this a Nougat Blanc, a white sugar and pistachio nut candy. Both very traditional French. They are the black and the white, the bad boy and the good girl of Santa’s Christmas list, or so my mother always called them.”

  “That definitely works for me,” Emily looked up at the President. “Bad Boy, Peter. Bad Boy! Coal in your stocking.”

  “Could I get that dark caramel thing instead? Sounds good.”

  “Only,” Genny looked up at him, the first time she had dared to face him since his confession. “If you promise me one thing.”

  “Anything.” His statement was so emphatic that it set her back for a moment more. He might truly mean that in more ways than he knew. She needed something light and funny. Something to stop the fluttering he was causing in her chest.

  “You must promise me, Mr. President. That the next time you have personal news, you will call your parents.”

  Everyone laughed. Gloria actually applauded and Randolph slapped his son on the back.

  But Peter looked at her as if she’d said something else entirely. His gaze spoke of just what reason he might have for calling his parents in the near future.

  It was not possible that she had just spoken of becoming engaged to the President.

  # # #

  They had baked and laughed and drunk wine and eaten cookies and relaxed more that evening than Peter had done in a long time. The kitchen was comfortably sized, but with seven cooks, there had been a constant friendly jostling for prime counter space.

  Sheets and sheets of cookies had gone through the oven, overspilling the kitchen counters and even the big Dining Room table. More coffee tables had been recruited from the Central Hall, dragged in and covered with paper boxes. They’d lined each box, the size to hold a ream of paper, with red tissue paper, then filled them with a wide variety of cookies, and tied them closed with red and green ribbons.

  Some monster chocolate chip that Daniel called a Paul Bunyan Molasses cookie. Narrow slices of Em’s decadent Pan Forte and her chocolate-dipped macaroons. His mom’s Cinnamon-Raisin Biscotti. As a group they tackled several of Daniel’s recipes. They’d made Ginger-Squared Squares, which included both fresh-grated and candied ginger in square oatmeal bars. Alice had contributed a Cream Cheese Cranberry Curl that she called C-to-the-fourth. In addition to the nougats, Geneviève had made something she called Ginger Jam. Starting with three kilos of ginger root, she had peeled and sliced and boiled and mixed like a madwoman, ultimately creating a Vietnamese ginger candy similar to flattened jellybeans that no one could stop eating. And everyone had worked on the mounds of cut-out sugar cookies in the shapes of Santas, reindeers, and Christmas trees all decorated with colored royal icing.

  They trashed the kitchen. Their hands were stained with food dye. Their clothes powdered with flour and sugar despite the aprons his mother had handed out. The entire residence had smelled heavenly.

  And each time Peter found himself working shoulder-to-shoulder with Geneviève it was as if his world went quiet.
It was simply where they belonged—close, comfortable, easy together. He knew he was being stupid, but there was no doubt what they had said to each other across the Dining Room without a word spoken. He knew as well as she did that they had each said the impossible.

  They could both imagine being married some day.

  The logistics of how they could even live together was beyond imagining; their lives, their worlds were different. But for this woman, he could easily imagine spending the rest of his years finding ways of making her happy.

  It was well past midnight when they stumbled into his bedroom. She mumbled something about her body being on Paris time and he suddenly felt guilty. It was seven or eight a.m. her time. By the time he’d brushed his teeth, she was crashed down atop the covers.

  She barely woke as he undressed her and tucked her beneath the covers, smoothing back the hair off her face. He sat on the edge of the bed and simply watched her sleep for the longest time.

  Geneviève had not only won the sincere friendship of his parents, but she had also drawn Em’s clear stamp of approval. Of all the people in Peter’s life, no one knew him better. Though she’d been six years younger, they had still been best friends growing up, the impossibly precocious little girl next door. Their lives had gone separate directions, more his fault than hers, until two years ago when she’d stepped back into the President’s world as a Captain of the U.S. Army Special Operations Forces. Now she was the very grown up, utterly daunting first female pilot of the secretive Special Operations Aviation Regiment (airborne), flying the 160th’s most lethal helicopter and earning some of the country’s highest medals.

  Em had stepped in and saved his life. He could think of no person he respected more. Nor any person who was a better judge of character, not even himself or Daniel. He had also never seen Em, who so rarely laughed, so light and easy as she was around Geneviève. They had chatted, teased, and joked like long-lost sisters, the shining blond and the dark French-Vietnamese beauty.

  At the end of the evening, Em had pulled him aside. “We took a vote, oh pal of mine. She’s great. So if you mess this up, we’re all going to drop you and hang out with her. Don’t blow it or you’ll be answering to me. We clear?”