Peter's Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

  He was clear. He’d never been threatened by Beale over a woman before. Well, there was Mitsy in tenth grade, but that was a threat to hurt him if he didn’t get rid of her.

  Geneviève… He now so enjoyed saying her name and letting it roll off his tongue that he couldn’t imagine using her nickname. Geneviève had changed the White House for him. He had loved the work, the challenges, the successes, even the failures. But living here had brought no joy. The first nine months, knowing that Katherine was sleeping just on the floor above scheming, had been something he’d done his best to ignore, but it had definitely not brightened his days. The two years since her death, he’d done little more in the Residence than sleep or attend state functions.

  In a single night, Geneviève had filled the Residence with joy and laughter. Friends and family had come together and they had all enjoyed being together. It was only the second week of December, and it was already his best Christmas in recent memory, perhaps ever. Christmas at his parents had been quiet affairs, this had been noisy, ridiculous, fun, and filled with cookies. What more could a sane man ask for?

  The dark beauty sleeping before him had won over more than the approval of his parents and friends. She had won his heart as well. It was not a familiar feeling, but it felt as if it should be. As if now for the first time, his own feelings were finally in the right place. Even though it was somewhere they had never been before.

  He rose and undressed. Before he slipped into bed beside her, he spotted a cookie resting on the middle of his pillow. He groaned. Sugar still permeated the very air he was breathing and here was yet more. She must have slipped across the hall during the cookie making without his noticing and placed it here.

  But it wasn’t a Santa or any other shape they had made that night. It was a sugar-cookie heart, half white dough and half chocolate, baked almost as golden as Geneviève’s skin. The two-colored dough had been merged not with a straight line, but in a swirl, as if they were inseparably wound together. Delicately decorated with a skilled hand that had outshone all of the rest of them as they iced their cookies. Geneviève had piped a simple outline in Christmas red.

  Inside the perimeter of the heart, she had piped a simple message in green script: GB+PM.

  Oh God.

  She felt the same way about him as he did about her.

  What were they going to do about that?

  Chapter 8

  “As you may or may not know, and again this is not some secret stalking thing, I’m going to be in Southeast Asia for several days right before Christmas.”

  Genny focused on her luncheon omelet trying to decide if she was really awake yet. She’d slept right up to midday. By the time she had done her workout, showered, and entered the kitchen, it had been cleaned by the magical elves of the White House staff. Last night everyone had pitched in to clear and wash up the worst of the mess, but now it sparkled.

  The mountainous stacks of cookie boxes were gone to the shelters, all down the tiny elevator in the corner of the kitchen that connected the kitchens on the Second and Third Floors of the Residence, with the big kitchen on the Ground Floor and the Butler’s Pantry on the First Floor used to organize and deliver state dinners. Even the boxes prepared for FedEx to go to Daniel’s, Mark’s, and Genny’s families were gone. Emily had left with a plateful for Mark and her parents consisting of broken cookies and design disasters, because she insisted none of them would care. And if they did, she didn’t. They could just come and cook next year if they didn’t like it.

  Genny so admired the woman’s strength, Emily’s absolute centeredness in who she was. Genny wished she could do the same, but all she could manage was to study her omelet and not shudder at the huge changes rippling out of control across her life.

  Peter had joined her for lunch. He’d left a note asking her to dial an extension when she was awake and ready to eat. When she called, she’d been connected, not to one of the President’s secretaries as she’d expected, but rather directly to Peter in the Oval Office. She’d wager that few had such a privilege.

  Lunching with the American President, sharing his bed, enjoying his friends. This was not a life she understood. Meetings with reluctant U.N. Ambassadors, fighting for proper patrols against poachers from understaffed park rangers who were probably on the take to look the other way, who had to be on the take to afford to feed their families. Those she understood.

  “Who are you meeting with?”

  “The Association of Southeast Asia Nations.” He picked up his BLT sandwich and took a bite.

  “Yes. Of course. I forgot all about the ASEAN meeting. The meeting is in Hanoi this year. Kicked out of Indonesia by yet another typhoon and disastrous flooding.” Genny rubbed her eyes. She really wasn’t awake yet.

  That was a total fib, even to herself. She was wide awake and trying to figure out how to deny to herself what was happening between her and this man. She knew almost nothing about him, other than she was happy almost every minute they were together. For her, the existence of love at all was in question. At “first sight” was très ridicule. A myth. It had to be. But then why did she feel this way?

  Okay, perhaps it wasn’t at first sight. For six months she had watched every speech he’d made. And a pair of biographies were on her e-reader as well, ones that she’d actually gotten around to reading, unlike the latest Annie Ernaux novel, never mind all of the reports and studies she was inundated with daily.

  She knew an immense amount about this man, even items that weren’t in his biography, his passion for Scrabble among others. And that his best friend Emily Beale had merely been identified as a neighbor of his childhood in both biographies. Portions of his life were private.

  So, even if it wasn’t love at first sight, it was still going too fast.

  “Yes. So, we’ll be in Hanoi together.” Genny ate some of the salmon omelet with English muffins that the main kitchen had sent up for her. The coffee was good, stronger than the last she’d had at the White House, even if it was served in monstrous American-sized cups. Not as good as home, but it helped.

  “I’d like to see you when I’m there.”

  “No, Mr. President, you’d like to sleep with me while we are there and I would like that very much also.”

  Peter grinned, “Okay, caught me. That too. But I’d also like to meet your family while I’m there.”

  Genny went very still. She became aware of the weight of the fork in her hand, the scent of fresh basil still rising from her luncheon, and her heart stopped absolutely still in her chest.

  “Why?”

  He didn’t even bother to answer. Instead, he left a silence as if to say, “This is so obvious we don’t need to talk about it, but it is also still too new and uncomfortable for us to actually talk about it.”

  “Why?” She knew the answer. Why was she insisting on the words?

  He set down his sandwich and sipped some ice tea as he considered his words.

  “As President, I must often make fast decisions based on too little information. And I have to be right every time or the newspapers will shred me, publically, before I have a chance to correct it. My job is interpreting a thousand different factors, okay, maybe only hundreds, definitely dozens,” his smile was easy. “As fast as I possibly can.”

  She nodded for him to continue, her head was the only part of her she was able to move. Her hand still suspended her fork halfway through slicing off the next bite of omelet.

  “By contrast, in my personal life, I have with only one exception, always moved slowly and carefully. And that one exception led me to a dreadfully unhappy marriage.”

  There was another item not in the biographies. The country had worshipped and mourned Katherine Matthews. It was a topic of many articles and television shows right now because the President was seeing a foreign-national hussy who worked for the United Nations, who could never live up to the standa
rds set by the amazing Katherine Matthews.

  “I too do not want to be moving too fast. I do not want to do what I did to poor Gérard or suffer the many petty cruelties he did to me. You will need to be explaining about your wife to me.”

  Peter didn’t look happy about that. He set down his sandwich as if it had lost all flavor for him.

  “There are issues of national security here.”

  “There are issues of personal trust if we are to be in a relationship here.” She managed to release her fork and folded her hands on the table before her.

  Peter dragged a hand through his hair. “Can we just table this for later?”

  “Mr. President,” she didn’t use the slight teasing tone that had become a part of her refusal to use his Christian name. She used the tone she might use addressing the U.N. General Secretary or any other head of state.

  “Even if your relationship with your wife was a matter of national security, though I do not see how that is possible, there is a mutual trust that will be required or we will not be moving forward from this moment. We will not be sleeping together in Hanoi and you will not be meeting my family just as a contingency plan in case you happen to decide you want to propose to me at some later date. I trusted Gérard to be who he said he was, rather than who he turned out to be. I will not be making that mistake again.”

  Genny steeled herself to state the next line, but it must be said.

  “Now,” she kept her voice rock steady though her heart wanted to shatter inside her chest. “Do I stand up and go back to New York and you can tell your press briefing room that it was fun but didn’t work out, which I will not gainsay? Or, do you explain why you are considering marriage with me when your first marriage was a public lie? Would ours be a lie as well?”

  That she feared she might die inside if his answer was for her to leave, she did her best to ignore.

  # # #

  Peter rested his elbows on the kitchen island and buried his face in his hands just so he wouldn’t have to look at Geneviève.

  How could she appear so calm, waiting as patiently as Jonah crouched inside his whale?

  His head was whirling so fast he couldn’t begin to sort out the pieces. Think, Peter. Just think! It was an instruction he often shouted at himself when everything was spinning out of control in a political crisis situation. If he just thought his way through it, he could eventually find the starting point. The center that had caused the problem and escalated until the resulting problem was almost unrecognizable.

  But he wasn’t finding the starting point here. He knew she waited patiently, but that probably wouldn’t last for long. She was an immensely practical woman and he was a damned mess. All he knew was that his world would crumble, that it would be far less happy, less bright, if she were to leave.

  He looked up and faced her across their forgotten meal. This was not how he’d pictured their quiet luncheon together. A glance at the clock on the stove behind Geneviève told him he had about ten minutes to straighten this out before he was due back in the Oval Office. Ten minutes to figure out how to keep his love life heading wherever it was heading. Like that was going to happen. At least he could start. He knew one thing for sure.

  “I don’t want you to leave.”

  She sagged, “Thank God!”

  He laughed aloud. He couldn’t help himself. “You mean that you were sitting there so calm, beautiful, and perfect and scaring me half to death, and you were only doing it to make me crazy?”

  “No, I am sitting here so worried, afraid, and such a mess, praying that you want to be with me.”

  “Christ, Geneviève. I didn’t ask to meet your parents so that I could keep having sex with you.”

  She nodded, then nodded again as if registering that somewhere deep inside, and then went quiet again. She still wanted her answers.

  Okay. So, she wasn’t running away from him, as long as he didn’t screw this up. He had a choice. While he might not trust a Vietnamese national, their relationship with the United States was still not the most comfortable, could he choose to trust this special woman? Trust that she would keep confidential that which had been so carefully kept secret.

  Not trusting Geneviève felt like not trusting himself.

  “Do you remember the video of that last flight? It was on all of the world media.”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “A mechanical failure in the First Lady’s helicopter, and the pilot was not good enough to save her life.”

  “I will offer you a different perspective. One that would not go well in the news.”

  Her look informed him he was being an idiot to doubt her discretion, which was probably true.

  “What you may not recall is that Emily Beale was the pilot and only one person besides myself knows that her husband Mark was aboard as well.”

  “Well, that certainly takes pilot failure out of the picture. Wait!” Geneviève sat bolt upright as if she’d just been electrocuted. “You had them kill your wife?”

  “No! No!” Now there was a conclusion he hadn’t expected her to jump to. “Are Americans truly perceived as so cavalier by other countries? No, don’t answer that, I don’t want to get sidetracked. And besides, can you see Emily doing such a thing?”

  “No,” Geneviève shook her head and resettled. “No. Sorry. Tell your story.”

  “There are under ten people on the planet who know this next fact. Not even Daniel knows, though he suspects. Captain, now Major Emily Beale was shot during that flight.”

  He could see her mind working swiftly. It was only moments for her to absorb those facts and restructure the story herself before she spoke. By the look of sudden compassion and understanding in her eyes, he could see that she had realized that the only other person on that flight was Katherine Matthews. And that if someone had shot Major Beale, it had to be the First Lady who had pulled the trigger.

  “Ah! I can’t be sure of the timing, Mr. President, but it seems to me that approximately a month later you had a new White House Chief of Staff in Dr. Daniel Darlington. After your own Chief of Staff retired for health reasons?” She turned that into a question at the last moment. Then, “Your Chief of Staff didn’t retire for health reasons. He was a part of it somehow.”

  Damn! He kept forgetting just how smart Geneviève was. Even Daniel couldn’t put together apparently unrelated events as quickly. Yet another reason she swept Peter’s feet out from under him.

  “That’s as long as we could delay the news. Ray Stevens did retire for ‘health reasons,’ so that he wouldn’t be tried for treason as an unwitting pawn in the First Lady’s plot. She planned to frame him for the murder of the President, and then to take over the country by marrying the bachelor Vice President, who she thought she was well on the way to controlling. Zach Taylor is a better man than that, though.”

  Peter wondered where she would go next, how many leaps would she make beyond the expected.

  “Your taste in women apparently leaves something to be desired, Mr. President.” She took up her fork and resumed eating as if the conversation were suddenly concluded.

  “Until now.”

  “You’re sweet.” Her smile said much more.

  “No, just enamored.”

  “Just enamored?”

  “Deeply enamored?”

  “You are so very male, Mr. President. But I will agree to that phrase. I too am deeply enamored. It is a good word.”

  “Only eleven points.”

  “Yes, but it uses all seven letters if played across a single letter, Mr. President. A nice bonus.”

  “A nice one indeed.”

  “So, how do we get you to my family plantation? It is not in Hanoi, but you will want to see it. And Gram, our matriarch, does not enjoy to travel often anymore. You should also get to see at least one World Heritage Site if you are to visit Southeast Asia.”
/>   Chapter 9

  “And by what method do you justify this to your American taxpayers?” Genny waved a hand to indicate herself seated aboard Air Force One, in the corner of the President’s in-flight office. There had been only a few high-level meetings where she had retired to one of the equally comfortable seats in the corridor to afford him privacy. For the most part they both had sat quietly and worked. Now they were ten hours into the seventeen-hour flight and sharing a meal.

  She was surprised to learn that dining on the President’s airplane was nothing special. They served airplane fare, high quality and tasty, but she’d eaten far fancier menus when flying first class on Air France or SAS. Corned Beef on Rye along with potato salad, a fruit bowl, and a bag of chips. She drank a very nice wine and he a beer.

  She didn’t doubt that Peter would have a perfectly valid explanation of how he was not bilking the taxpayer in the slightest. She liked hearing such explanations from him, poking holes in them where she could. Which was always difficult because he was such an ethical man. Twice this week, he had brought a tricky problem from his workday to their bed and used her as a sounding board until he found a tenable solution.

  Their bed. The President’s bed. The lines were already blurring and she honestly didn’t know how to feel about it. She decided that she wouldn’t think about it until her family had a chance to meet Peter and she could ask Gram’s advice. Genny knew she was in over her head, but her Vietnamese grandmother was wise in many ways.

  In the week between the cookie night and the flight to Hanoi, she had actually been able to work mostly from the White House, only spending two days in New York. Peter had set her up with an office in the Residence. She didn’t need much; her laptop, phone, and a fax/copier on loan from the IT department had filled most of her needs.

  Air Force One had actually afforded her some peace. By refusing to use the aircraft’s telephone system, she’d been able to get a fair amount of work done, though she did appreciate her guest access to the on-board wireless network so that she could continue the never-ending battle with her e-mail.