by Amelia Wilde
It’s not Jameson’s fault that my brother is a full-blown tyrant now.
No, that’s not funny. He’s not a tyrant. He’s a good president. So far, at least. He’s been in office one month and already his administration is attacking their list of priorities. For some reason, today’s priority is that I should visit a coffee shop in Forest Hills and make nice for the press.
The directive from Andrew didn’t say explicitly that I’m supposed to stay out of trouble. I gathered that for myself.
A little old couple joins the edge of the crowd. I pull myself together. I’m too old to let my brother get under my skin. I give the old lady a little smile and a wave, like I’m the spare prince, and her cheeks go pink.
“Did our buddy Brian have any other...information about the plan for inside? Is there a specific way he’d like me to order my coffee?” This time, I keep my tone light, joking, though Brian’s existence is like sandpaper on delicate skin. Brian Kelting is my own personal White House Public Relations officer. It’s my understanding that he’s the one in charge of everything I do for the next four years. For reputation reasons. For security reasons. You name them, my brother has them.
And nobody dares go against my brother.
Least of all, me.
Jameson consults his phone. “He mentioned that that preliminary polling suggested a preference for black coffee.”
I fight off the urge to walk away from this place, melt into the crowd, and never return. If I did that, Jameson would be obligated to follow me. As it stands, he has a certain moral duty to throw himself in front of any bullet fired at me, and I’m not making it easier.
“I’m sorry for being a douchebag, Jameson.”
For my efforts, I’m rewarded with a twitch of his lip—his professional smile. “No problem, sir.”
“Let’s get this over with, shall we?”
This is Jameson’s big chance to remind me that this is an opportunity to make headway with the American people. He doesn’t take it. “Yes, sir.”
A camera shutter clicks from someplace close. The photographers will be courtesy of my father, or at least one of his many media empires stretching across the nation. Hand in glove, he and my brother. I ignore it like I tried to ignore the fact of my brother’s existence.
That didn’t work out for either of us.
We go in.
There are three other agents with us, but two are in plainclothes. I honestly couldn’t say which people are patrons and which are agents, because I’m not paying attention. Why would I? This is all a farce. One of them is outside, probably, milling with the people craning their necks to see through the front window. Anything for a glimpse of a guy who might be the president’s naughty playboy brother.
Inside, I inhale the scent of ground coffee. It’s a half and half mix in here—warm air and coffee beans. It’s tiny, so every time the grinder fires up, an explosion of coffee dust hits us in the face. So very, very cozy. Benches run along the side walls with cushions in bright, modern patterns. Tables and chairs made of beech and maple line up in neat rows. The counter’s a burst of bright red against the pristine white walls.
I could vomit.
Instead, I put a smile on my face—a closed-lip, impersonal, public smile—and I let all of them see it. The couple in the back corner. The two ladies who look like they came from yoga class. And the girl behind the counter.
I dismiss her immediately. There’s nobody special in these places, and even if there were, they wouldn’t be my type. This girl is wearing a red polo shirt with the Capitol Bean logo above the pocket, and her honey-colored hair is swept up into a bun that rises above the bill of her visor.
She taps at the register. What is she doing? She’s not taking an order. Not at this moment. We close in on the counter. Her hand is trembling a bit.
I open my mouth to order a black coffee, and she straightens up.
The visor lifts.
My heart stops.
My brain must have been protecting me, back five seconds ago, when all I saw was a shapeless mass in a red polo shirt, topped off with some decent hair.
She’s not decent. She’s arresting.
Big blue eyes, verging on violent. Perky little lips, heart-shaped and pink. And a fine blush of red across her cheeks. The look on her face—Christ, the look on her face is so full of expectation that I can’t breathe. What is she expecting from me? The particular contours of that face make me forget. They make me forget the stupid objectives for today. They make me forget that having more money than I know what to do with couldn’t buy me out of this bullshit.
I'm as close to godless as they come, but I swear, I’m seeing the face of an angel.
2
Bellamy
Pictures are printed lies.
I know it when he walks in the door, as surely as I’ve ever known anything. Accuracy. That’s what photography is. That’s what I thought it was, until I saw Graham Blackpool in the flesh.
His face has launched a thousand tabloids. The President’s “Playboy Brother,” they call him, and there is no shortage when it comes to pictures of that face. They are everywhere.
None of them do him justice.
Not even while he’s wearing a half-surprised expression, taken off guard like I’m someone he wasn’t expecting to see.
In fairness, the polo shirt is hideous. It could disguise even the most fabulous of forms under its boxy silhouette, and if I wasn’t studying myself to the bone to pass the bar, I’d find it in my heart to hate it.
I’d hate it now, but Graham Blackpool is standing across the counter. My job has never seemed better or more humiliating.
Why didn’t I plan what to say?
I knew this was coming. The Secret Service agents rolled in here an hour ago, like the first pitter-patter of raindrops on the roof. Shit, I always say. I don’t have an umbrella. All that time, answering their questions, and I never planned what I’d say. It’s not as if they briefed me on who was going to be walking in the door. Masters of building anticipation, those guys.
Graham Blackpool takes a breath, and oh, shit; this staring thing has gone on long enough for us to breathe.
This is my moment to shine.
This, working at the Capitol Bean.
Wearing this polo shirt.
A blast of steam from the espresso machine jolts me out of my frozen stupor, and I throw a glance that’s half-pissed, half-grateful to my manager, Jamie, who wasn’t thrilled with the agents milling around and mumbling into their earpieces for the last hour. It distracted from his performance of being the best barista in Washington, D.C., the mirror image of a bartender, everybody’s friend.
I look at Mr. Blackpool like he’s any other patron—only a thousand times sexier and the brother of the most powerful man in the country—and pray that my smile doesn’t look deranged.
“Good morning, Mr. Blackpool. Welcome to Capitol Bean. What can—”
He rolls his eyes.
He rolls his eyes at me. It’s only a flicker, the tiniest movement, but I see it, and my cheeks flame.
Listen, buddy, I want to growl through gritted teeth. I was studying for the bar until three in the morning. I took a generous three-hour nap, so I could be here to serve your filthy rich ass coffee. And now...
He wouldn’t care. I squash all of it down into the dark, empty place at the pit of my gut.
I smile.
“What can I get for you today?”
He steps closer to the counter. “Good morning, ah—” We don’t wear name tags at Capitol Bean. This is a directive from on high to make it “easier to connect with customers by offering personal information.”
“Bellamy.” I hover a finger over the register keys.
“Bellamy,” he repeats, and damn it all to hell, my name sounds wonderful in his mouth.
Over his shoulder, something black pops into view at the front window.
A camera.
That’s why Graham Blackpool is here, with his
security contingent in tow.
A bone for the press.
I clear my throat.
“Is there something you had your eye on? We have—”
“Latte. Three extra shots.” He barrels over me like I haven’t spoken, and there it is. The exhaustion creeping behind my eyes. The pressure weighing down across my shoulders. The itch to bend my head over a book, to make sure that nothing, nothing, stops me from passing the most important test of my life. This guy has no idea what that’s like. None.
It snaps something inside of me, and those barbed words sink into my skin in a way they never do while I’m standing behind this counter.
“Are you sure about that?” My tone is casual and deadly, all at once, and I’ll be shocked if he notices. I tilt my chin at the photographer with his lens pressed up to the window. “They probably want a picture of you with something All-American and traditional.”
The corner of his beautiful mouth twitches. “How are they going to know what’s inside the cup? They’re opaque, are they not?”
“The cups might be opaque, Mr. Blackpool, but the windows are as see-through as they come.” I lean in conspiratorially. “And I’m sure you already know this, but once you leave, all those journalists are going to come in here and ask what Graham Blackpool ordered at a place like Capitol Bean.” My heart pounds, leaning those few inches closer to him, as if this is a real confrontation; a real storm about to break over the store.
He leans in too, and damn, if his face doesn’t telegraph I am really enjoying this commonplace, completely legal and regular, experience.
All except his eyes.
His green eyes, shot through with sunflower yellow, flash with the reflection of my polo shirt. “You wouldn’t lie for me?”
Boom. My gut turns over.
I don’t like it.
I’m overtired and overworked, but I don’t like it, the way he thinks I’d be dishonest on his behalf. It ratchets up the adrenaline pumping in my veins to a level that’s borderline uncomfortable. I want to rip off the Capitol Bean visor and stomp on it.
“No. I don’t lie for anyone.”
Is it flirtatiousness or something else that drains from his face? The expression is gone before I can name it, his mouth settling into a hard line.
He straightens up.
All of me rocks from side to side with disappointment like a ship on rough seas.
It doesn’t make any sense, that disappointment, because all he’s done is move himself a few inches away from me. Also, he’s an asshole, so I don’t know why I should care.
I punch in his order.
“Never change.” He takes out his wallet and tosses his credit card onto the counter between us, the dead plastic husk of a bug.
I let a beat pass before I pick it up between my fingernails, cheeks smarting, the blush spreading down to my chest, smiling for the press. “I won’t. Thank you, Mr. Blackpool.”
He takes his card back as the receipt prints out, shoves both into his pocket, and moves down the line to where Jamie is waiting with his drink.
Graham Blackpool’s voice is low and smooth, the whine of the espresso grinder covering his words. Jamie’s is loud and booming. “Large coffee, black.” He hands the cup over with his most charming grin.
My pulse is about to burst out of my veins and sink into ice.
I couldn’t tell you if I did it on purpose, or not, but I can’t breathe while I wait for his reaction.
Graham Blackpool looks down into the cup.
He looks back at me.
Then he nods, like I’ve won this match, but not the game.
Disappointment and relief smash against each other at the pit of my gut. What the hell is wrong with me? Why did I want him to make a scene? To be who he always is in the gossip rags? Volatile and beautiful, all at once?
It’s awful, but I can’t take my eyes off him.
Not when he fits the lid carefully on the cup.
Not when he leaves, his broad shoulders filling the doorway.
And not when the money slips out of his pocket and onto the floor, wedged against the corner of the trim.
3
Graham
Bellamy. Bellamy. Bellamy.
Her name beats along with my heart, out of all control, a triple punch to the chest with every step I take. It’s fucking cold outside, but not even the February wind can cool the heat raging in my face.
And elsewhere.
Not that I would ever let it show. Not that I can let it show, with all the carrion fluttering over me like I’m a crime scene to be photographed. There are more of them now. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kelting called them up himself. He would. He wants last night’s party swept under the rug more than anyone. The only person who wants it more is President Blackpool.
I keep my eyes straight ahead. My wool coat isn’t worth much against the wind, and I want to tear it off and throw it to the ground. It was custom-made in Italy. It should be better than this.
Or maybe I should be better than this. Maybe it’s not the coat that’s the weak outer layer. Maybe it’s me who has skin so weak that it could be opened to the cold with a few cutting words from a barista at the kitshiest coffee shop I’ve ever seen.
She was fire in human form.
Who would dare speak to me like that? Like we were equals, sparring together for dominance? And how am I the one flayed alive, my heart lurching against my chest? It feels almost like hate, but no—that’s not what it is. It’s only that I’m the one in control. I’m always the one in control.
And Bellamy, a woman who is nobody, might as well have taken my tie in her fist and yanked me across that counter.
The air is supercharged with her audacity and I tighten my grip on the coffee cup. That was some confidence, changing my order. The nerve of that woman—
One of the photographers inserts himself between me and the unmarked SUV I’m supposed to be in, and Jameson puts out a hand. “A moment, sir.”
I want to growl with impatience. Let me in the fucking car. I want to block all this singeing, scratching energy out. I want to shut the door on it.
I keep my face studiously neutral while the photog fires off a few shots, and the second agent steps in to have a quiet word with him.
“Mr. Blackpool!”
Her voice is clear, verging on panic, and it rakes its fingers right down the back of my neck.
What the hell does she want?
“Mr. Blackpool, wait!”
I turn around at the same time Jameson does. She’ll be contrite, I’m sure. It’s not the first time a woman has chased me out of a building, apologizing for some bullshit or other. It’s just coffee, I’ll smirk. Perfectly All-American.
Bellamy is not contrite.
She rushes toward me, brows furrowed, jaw set. A frisson of adrenaline swan dives from my shoulders to my fingertips, and my heart beats a jagged rhythm.
Holy shit.
She’s coming after me.
Nobody looks like this for an innocent reason.
Her hair, up in that stylishly messy bun, bounces with every determined step. Across the sidewalk, heads swivel to follow the path of her red polo shirt blazing bright in the February sun. One of the journalists—or maybe he’s just a tourist dressed like he works at a Radio Shack—raises his phone to eye-level, his mouth gleefully open. It’s a shockwave that goes through everybody who came out to see the president’s fuck-up of a younger brother. One by one, it infects them all.
Jameson reacts.
He steps in front of me and puts a firm hand up. “Stop advancing, miss.”
Bellamy doesn’t hear him. Or if she does, she ignores him. She keeps coming.
“Mr. Blackpool—”
What is this? Is she’s someone I met at a party and forgot? No. I couldn’t have forgotten her. Not for anything. Not for drinks or drugs—not for anything. A terrorist? My brother is only the third unmarried president in the history of the nation. If the wrong person assumed that we we
re close, if they decided to act on it—
“I’m going to have to ask you to stop, miss!”
The plainclothes agents from inside the store burst out, hustling behind Bellamy.
All four of them converge on her, like a trap tightening around prey.
“Back up, miss. Back up!” Jameson shouts.
In the center of the circle, Bellamy’s gray eyes are wide. “Wait. What? I’m just trying—”
“Come this way,” demands Krista, one of the plainclothes agents, and takes Bellamy by the arm.
“Stop.” Bellamy’s voice is irritated, as if she hasn’t fully processed what’s happening right now. “I was only trying to—God, you’re hurting my arm. Is anybody going to listen to me?” I stifle the urge to laugh out loud. First, the wrong coffee order. Now she’s going to get testy with the Secret Service? I see the moment it registers. All the snarky attitude drops from her face. They’re all talking to her, barking orders, and she blinks. Oh, my God is written all over her face.
“Jameson.”
At the sound of my voice, he turns his head. “Sir?”
“It’s fine. You can let her go.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
There’s a pause when I think they might not, but then, one by one, the agents step away from Bellamy. Krista’s last.
Bellamy stands in the middle of the sidewalk, breathing hard. “Is everybody cool?” Her eyes dart from side to side, and her cheeks get pinker with every passing moment.
“Was there something you wanted to say to me?” I move closer, so she doesn’t have to shout at me any longer. Not that it’s going to matter. I can hear them all around us, the whisper-soft click of camera shutters. A warmth swells in my chest. It’ll be nice to hear someone recognize that it’s not me who’s at fault.
Bellamy glances to the side, then back at me. Her eyes are like nothing I’ve ever seen. Is that a ring of violet around her pupils, or only a darker shade of gray? She pulls a hundred-dollar bill out of her pocket. “You dropped this.”
I laugh out loud. She came all the way out here to give a billionaire a hundred-dollar bill? Surely, she knows who I am. She knows what I have. “Consider it a tip.” I push her hand back toward her.