Rogue Affair

by Tamsen Parker

  Unemployment was low, economic growth was high, and the late-night comedians had to pick on celebrities because the government was…governing. Competently.

  It felt good.

  And then Hurricane Alpha hit.

  The season had already been erratic, and while not catastrophic, far more than the usual number of Atlantic storm systems had done damage. Still, despite all that, we were beginning to think the worst was over.

  It wasn’t.

  Practically everyone in America spent a week glued to their televisions. The meteorologists had managed predictions that astounded with their accuracy, and evacuations, where necessary, had been successful, but the property damage was immense.

  We flew down to the worst sites as soon as we judged the arrival of the president wouldn’t do more harm than good to the local infrastructure. No one wants a motorcade shutting down the roads when gas lines are blocks long and grocery stores are waiting for deliveries of bottled water.

  The trip was necessarily brief, but we had a single overnight at a hotel where they did their best to rise to the occasion despite persistent food shortages and sporadic fluctuations of the power grid. In an attempt to be helpful, they even ran two extra cables to my room for additional televisions—but we had stopped gathering in my rooms after the first election.

  We gathered, as we usually did, in Jules’ room. At Jules’ insistence. “All due respect, Madam President, the president doesn’t host all night staff meetings.”

  I’d come back with something I thought was clever (which probably wasn’t, or I’d remember it), but Jules won.

  You’d be shocked how frequently I lose arguments.

  There we were, at the end of a horrific day talking to survivors of the storm. There was a fair amount of storytelling—funny or tragic or occasionally very, very wrong, in the way that stories get after so many hours of talking to people on one of the worst days of their lives.

  By midnight the crowd had thinned to only the old timers and the Secret Service. Ram and a newish guy named Scott or Sam or Steve, who disappeared from the detail not long after.

  I say this because I later replayed that evening over and over again in my head. Not because I was aware at the time. At the time I was focused on The Weather Channel on mute and the conversations of my friends. All friends this late, even though they were my employees. None of them slipped with the honorifics, but even “ma’am” can have an attitude if you say it the right way.

  My eyes were just beginning to glaze over when the electricity went out. Then everything happened fast.

  Someone was on top of me almost instantaneously, shoving me into the ground, hard and heavy and completely immovable.

  Voices crackling over radios, Ram’s in my ear: “I have Strider. Repeat, Strider is unharmed. Strider is unharmed.”

  Muffled cries.

  The door slamming open and more bodies not quite dog piling over mine, but close, restrained.

  “—the fucking generator—”

  “—damn hotel—”

  “—line out—”

  Phone flashlights going on all over the room like dominoes; one person thinking clearly, everyone else following suit.

  Not me, of course. Because I was underneath the solid mass of Ram Ruiz, who smelled good this close. I always had a thing for body smells—oil, sweat, hair. Not soap, but the real person. And Ram smelled right, safe.

  Which was a good thing since no amount of me assuring them I was fine, everything was fine, it was just a freaking power outage would budge him.

  The Secret Service were having a tiff about the secondary hotel location (which they couldn’t get on the phone to demand whether it had power), when Jules loudly pointed out that considering the view from the window was entirely dark, it would be boneheaded to consider this an attack on the president.

  Sam/Steve/Whoever hustled her away from the window with what she later referred to as unnecessary roughness. Don’t cross my chief of staff, or she’ll have you transferred to a local office somewhere far, far away.

  There was, of course, supposed to be a generator.

  I was just readying another argument when the lights came back on, though not at full power. The phone next door, in my suite, began ringing. A few people uttered tired, relieved laughs.

  “Embarrassing to have generator fail during the president’s stay,” one of the speechwriters murmured.

  Someone else added, “You think I should tweet this?”

  “No tweeting,” Ram cut over everyone. He spoke into his radio for a minute, verifying the total lack of suspicious activity anywhere, then finally let me get up.

  Relatively speaking. I was now allowed to sit in an interior corner below the level of the windows and behind the bed. The presidency is all glamor.

  “Ram, for goodness—”

  “Ma’am, when we make contact with Air Force One, it’s likely that we’ll want you out of the area.”

  “Well, it’s unlikely that I’ll be leaving the area. We have plans for tomorrow.”

  Even in the half-light I could see his jaw set. “The probability that this was an accidental failure of the backup generator is high, ma’am, but not nearly as high as the probability that you’re going to be safe on board Cowpuncher before dawn.”

  His radio started crackling, which robbed me of the opportunity to make what would have been, I’m sure, an excellent comeback.

  Okay, there are no such things as comebacks with the Secret Service. It’s not that the individual agents have no sense of humor. But in a charged situation like a momentary blackout in the wake of a powerful storm, they stop being individuals and become THE SECRET SERVICE. And THE SECRET SERVICE has no sense of humor.

  I decided slumping in defeat wouldn’t be becoming for a US president, so instead I straightened my spine and called, “Jules, wake some people up and get them to cover our schedule tomorrow.”

  “VP?”

  “God help those poor people. The VP, or find some Democrats with recognizable faces who need higher polling numbers.”

  My staff started throwing out names, Jules started scribbling, and Ram looked down at me with the slightest hint of a smile on his admittedly handsome face.

  It was the first time since Hank died that I’d looked at a man and felt that indescribable sense of connection, all unhoped-for. After that gaffe while running, things had been almost clinical between us. I was glad they’d grown more comfortable again, but this…was something else.

  “I’m not letting you win,” I said. “I’m making an informed decision to delegate my public appearances.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” His lips stopped just shy of a smirk, but I could have sworn his eyes held me in place. “Your decision is noted and appreciated.”

  I lowered my voice, more a symbolic thing than to have a private moment, since there were at least ten people in the room. “You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”

  “No, ma’am. I am very, very good at my job. It’s best for the country if the president returns to Washington right now.”

  “If the Secret Service had its way I’d never leave the White House grounds.”

  “At least they’re very nice grounds, ma’am. Excuse me.” He nodded once, then turned away to speak into his radio.

  I watched. Weak, almost jaundiced light, but I could see the firm curves of his shoulders, the strong line of his back beneath the suit jacket. The spot of exposed skin between his collar and neatly trimmed hair. He wasn’t tall, but he moved with power and control like a panther. I’d certainly never for a moment felt unsafe with him at my back.

  “Any chance I could get up? I’ll need to pack, you know.”

  “Someone will need to pack for the president,” Ram said. He was the kind of man who didn’t have to raise his voice; he merely had to inject it with a small amount of authority and everyone in the room heard it.

  I sighed.

  We were on the plane well before dawn.

  6
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br />   Late the following evening, I got a call from the kitchen. Which wasn’t entirely uncommon—it had taken some time after Hank’s death for the staff to feel comfortable reaching out to me, but I believed they had—but the chefs should have gone home by that hour.

  Marisol, the head chef, was clearly fending off someone in the background. “Madam President, sorry to bother you so late.”

  “You aren’t. What’s up?”

  “We’re”—scuffling sounds—“sending a cake down to the Secret Service. I just wanted to make sure that was all right with you.”

  I paused. “Sending a cake to the Secret Service?”

  “Just to whoever’s working. Most of the detail from the trip is still around being debriefed.”

  It clicked. “That’s perfect. I didn’t even think about it. Hank would have.”

  “He gave us the idea. After that incident at the security booth, we sent cookies.”

  My husband had sent cookies to the Secret Service during a guest list fiasco, after one agent didn’t take But don’t you recognize me, I’m in movies as an appropriate response to I’m sorry, sir, you’re not on the list. It had been our first big function, and it had been flawless, mostly due to Hank.

  God, some days I missed him terribly.

  “He did all this so much better than I ever could,” I murmured. Which isn’t really the kind of thing a president should say to her staff. “But yes, please by all means do that. Then you should all go home and get some sleep.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  “In fact, why don’t I come down and walk it over with you?”

  “Oh—um—you don’t have to—”

  “Of course I don’t. But I’d like to.” They hadn’t exactly saved my life from an unfortunate blackout, but they acted fast, and if I’d needed any lifesaving, I had no doubt they would have done it.

  Showing up in the kitchen at nine p.m. wasn’t the kind of thing I could do often, but every once in a while it was fun. For the most part I liked to get myself meals in the family kitchen (though especially after Hank’s death the staff was displeased by this; it was one thing for the First Gentleman to make the president a grilled cheese sandwich, but the idea of the president making her own was apparently going too far).

  It had been an extraordinarily long few days, but the expressions on my agents’ faces when they saw the cake made everything worthwhile.

  Ram looked exhausted, but he thanked everyone and took a piece of cake. I was quick to point out that I had nothing whatsoever to do with the idea of cake, but they all thanked me anyway.

  Just before we left, his gaze locked with mine, for a second, as he took another bite.

  And so help me, I watched his lips and felt long-dormant stirrings of desire.

  I was blushing as I walked back up to the second floor, and thinking, obscurely, in the direction of my late husband: If this is your doing, it’s really not funny, Harold.

  But the spirit of Hank, if it existed, had nothing to say to me.

  7

  Jules’s assistant was a severe, devastating man called Rubin. And Rubin had a niece he doted on as if the sun rose and set with her. The only time I’d ever seen him smile was about his niece. The rest of the time I was damn glad he was on our side; the man would have stood in between my chief of staff and an army with nothing more than a file folder and a raised eyebrow.

  I noticed, because I’d started noticing things connected to Ram, that there was something of a letter exchange going on, or at least an exchange of brief notes, between he and Rubin.

  I carefully counseled my brain to be happy for both of them, though I hadn’t thought Rubin was gay. I hadn’t speculated much about Rubin at all; he seemed to be one of those brilliant administrative creatures whose genius was ill suited to frivolous things like lives and families.

  But part of me, were I to be embarrassingly honest, was a little…not disappointed. That makes it sound as if I imagined I could pursue a vague sense of attraction to an agent on my protection detail, which I could not (and certainly would not) do. Yet the idea that he might be dating someone I knew, someone close at hand, occupied my mind more than it should have.

  We were in the midst of a complicated maneuver overseas—back room deals leading to tentative negotiations, leaders saving face, armies changing course (and not always quietly)—which I monitored at all hours. One late night Jules and I were sharing the last of a truly inspired plate of nachos the chefs had cooked up at my request when I brought up the affair between Rubin and Ram.

  She blinked.

  “It’s no big deal.” That was me, very relaxed about dating between departments. “I’m just glad I don’t have to worry that all those notes they’re sending each other are proof of a coup.”

  “Where’d you hear that? Rubin has a girlfriend. I say girlfriend, but they’ve been together the entire time he’s worked for us. She’s a professor in Boston.”

  My turn to blink. “Rubin has a girlfriend?”

  “Partner, maybe? But he’s definitely not dating Ram.” She gestured with a chip, precariously loaded up with beans and peppers and cheese. “Amara’s birthday’s coming up and he was asking Ram’s advice about video games. I guess things got intense. You know, console versus PC versus app. And if you’re going console, which one? To say nothing of—” She broke off. “I forgot, you skipped fun and went straight to work.”

  “Excuse me?” I made a sweeping motion down my body with the hand not currently picking olives out of sour cream. “President of the United States. Guess I did okay for myself.”

  Jules, bless her, merely shrugged. “Well, Ram knows a lot about video games. And console games. And basically everything. So he’s been helping Rubin narrow down his choices.”

  “That’s very sweet of him.” My tone was casual. My words weren’t over any lines.

  She watched me as she chewed and didn’t pick up another chip after she’d swallowed. “Sweet of him.”

  “Yes. Helping Rubin out.” Mayday, mayday. My chief of staff is giving me The Look. Quick, I need a mild diplomatic crisis!

  “Oh boy. You just called Agent Ruiz”—slight emphasis on the title—“‘sweet.’ I’ll just pretend there’s nothing weird about that, right?”

  I focused on choosing my next bite with care. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I bet. I bet you don’t know. Huh.”

  Which was insulting. I knew. Not that there was something to know. Except that after six years of working together, I suddenly noticed when Ram was in a good mood. I’d also thought of the way he’d licked his lips eating that cake more than was strictly necessary. To say nothing of what he smelled like when he was lying—protectively—on top of me.

  Point being—I knew I was being a little silly. I didn’t need Jules to act like I’d forgotten what it was like to…feel this. Attraction. Interest. Whatever it was.

  I cleared my throat. “It’s of extreme importance that we downplay Saudi Arabia’s role, or else we’ll face more than the usual amount of resistance from the other side.”

  “And that’s just domestic problems. Have you considered…”

  We continued batting ideas around, making lists, eating nachos. And I might have been paranoid, but I was almost certain she watched me a little more closely the next time she saw Ram and I together.

  But at least he wasn’t dating Rubin.

  8

  The annual Thanksgiving party was assumed to be an old family tradition. In fact, it was a cynical invention of Hank’s to the tune of Sure, this holiday celebrates invasion and genocide, but the American people seem to love it, so let’s have a party!

  Over the years, we’d actually grown to love it ourselves. Not the Thanksgiving part so much as the gathering everyone we could think of together part. Hank never lived to see the gatherings after I became president, but he’d already been making notes before he died. Since then, we—mostly the social secretary, really—had held it e
ach year at the Maryland house, as Hank had pictured it.

  One of my favorite things about it was inviting the staff to relax. If anyone can actually relax at the home of the sitting president. It was a rare opportunity to joke with the ushers and butlers and maids who made my daily life run smoothly.

  Ram wasn’t on duty that night, so I’d assumed I wouldn’t see him, but somehow Elena had convinced him to attend.

  And, oh. Ram. In a non-Secret Service suit. In fact, in a gorgeous fitted jacket that inspired parts of my imagination that really shouldn’t have been active at the annual Thanksgiving party.

  The two of them walked in arm-in-arm, wearing matching suits that made them look like twins. By the time they got to the front of the receiving line (we called it “the welcoming parade,” but it was a damn receiving line, complete with pictures being taken and sore smile muscles), I was dearly in need of a little bit of fun.

  “So good to see you, Ram,” I said to Elena.

  She laughed. “Oh, ma’am. And anyway, he thought this might not be appropriate.”

  “It’s the president’s Thanksgiving party,” Ram mumbled.

  I squeezed his arm lightly. “Hush, you. I’m so glad you both could come tonight.”

  “Wouldn’t say no to the president!” Elena leaned in. “Ma’am, I heard a rumor bell hooks was invited.”

  “She was invited and RSVP’d, but she hasn’t arrived yet. I’ll grab you for an introduction when she does.”

  Elena nearly swooned. “Ma’am, I couldn’t ask you to…do that…”

  “You aren’t, I’m offering. And it will be my pleasure.”

  Ram cleared his throat. “We’re holding up the line.”

  “It’s technically a parade,” I teased. “Didn’t you guys have some input into this?”