He remembered those blood-boiling kisses, the caresses. His skin grew hot, as much from embarrassment as arousal. The things he'd done ... the suggestions he'd made. To the First Lady.
He was suddenly furious with her. From the very beginning, she'd lied. She'd toyed with him like Marie Antoinette amusing herself with a peasant she could enjoy and then discard. And he'd been sucked right in. She must have been laughing her ass off.
He swore and began to rise, only to feel as if he'd been hit again. He sagged back down onto the step. Drew a ragged breath.
He'd just been handed the story of a lifetime.
The First Lady was on the run, and he was the only reporter in America who knew where she was.
Through his daze, he realized he'd just been given back his professional pride.
He jumped to his feet, began to pace, tried to think, but anger kept getting in his way. She'd broken a trust— broken his trust—and he wouldn't forgive that.
The story, he told himself. Think about the story. He wouldn't tell her he was a reporter, that was for damn sure. She'd lied to him from the beginning, and he didn't owe her anything.
He forced himself to organize his jumbled thoughts. Why had she fled and how had she done it? He tried to figure out how much time had lapsed between her disappearance from the White House and the moment he'd picked her up at the truck stop. But nothing would come together. Instead he found himself thinking about the way they'd planned to make love when they got to Iowa. Another deception. She'd known it would never happen.
He remembered her silly story of a gay husband. It was laughable the way he'd actually believed her. But her lies had been so convincing, the way she'd manipulated him with those coy hesitations so that he'd drawn an entirely erroneous conclusion. He'd been used by a master.
He began to outline a plan. Sooner or later, she would have to tell him at least part of the truth—why she'd done it, how she'd managed to get away. The conspiracy nuts were already having a field day with this, but—
Every muscle in his body tightened, and for the third time that night he felt as if he'd been struck. Her gay husband ... What if she hadn't been lying? What if she'd been telling the truth?
For a moment he was actually dizzy. Dennis Case, America's squeaky-clean young President, had been the perfect antidote to years of Clinton's womanizing. What if the reason Case hadn't looked at other women was more complicated than strong moral character?
A thousand caveats blasted through his head. He needed facts, not speculation. This was too big a story to ruin with even a single mistake. Truth. Accuracy. Fairness. What he wrote would go down in the history books with his name attached to it, and he couldn't let anything screw that up.
At least an hour passed before he let himself inside the Winnebago. The door at the back was shut, even though it was too early for her to have gone to bed. She couldn't have made it clearer that she didn't want to talk.
He kicked off his shoes, pulled a root beer from the refrigerator, and began to plan. But even as he sorted and organized, he felt a bone-searing anger. There was nothing he hated more than being played for a chump.
* * *
Nealy woke at dawn. For a few seconds she simply lay there, content to the tips of her toes, and then it all came crashing in. Mat knew who she was.
She wanted to curl up next to Lucy and stay there forever, but she forced herself to get out of bed. Button was still asleep on the floor. She stepped around her and let herself in the bathroom to shower and dress. So far he'd kept the news to himself. If he hadn't, the Secret Service would already have pounded on the door this morning. She tried to feel grateful for these past four days instead of bitter because they were being snatched away, but she couldn't quite manage it.
Lucy was still asleep when she came out, and Mat was holding Button while he made baby cereal. Although the baby still wore her sleeper, he'd added her pink cap. This morning the bill was turned to the side, giving her a Little Rascals look. For a tough guy, he had a big soft spot. But not for her. That had ended last night.
Her throat tightened. They'd all grown so precious to her. How was she going to leave them behind?
“Gah!” The baby pumped her legs and regarded Nealy happily from her perch in his arms.
Nealy smiled back. “Gah yourself.” She reached for the box of baby cereal. “I'll fix it.”
“I'll take care of it.”
His formality hadn't faded. If anything, it seemed to have settled in deeper. Now, however, she heard the angry edge behind it. Mat was stiff-necked and proud. In his eyes, she'd made a fool of him.
She gazed at his messy hair and the wrinkled T-shirt he'd thrown on with a pair of shorts. His jaw was unshaven, his feet bare. He looked disheveled and gorgeous, so thoroughly at home in his oversized body that the act of making baby cereal seemed as masculine as growing a beard.
“I've made coffee if you want some.” He usually made the coffee, but this was the first time he'd felt the need to announce it. She'd become a houseguest.
“Thank you.”
“There's not much for breakfast.”
“I know. We went shopping together, remember?”
“If you need anything—”
“I'm fine.”
“There's some cereal left, a little milk, but I don't think there's any—”
“Stop it! Just stop it!”
His expression stiffened. “Excuse me?”
“I'm exactly the same person today that I was yesterday, and I don't need you tiptoeing around me.”
“I didn't mean to offend you,” he said stiffly.
She turned away and went outside.
Mat cursed himself for letting anger get in his way. The story was the only thing that counted now, and he had to put his own feelings aside so he could do his job. He grabbed a teething biscuit from a box on the counter, shoved it in Button's hand, and carried her outside with him.
The day was gloomy, humid, and overcast. Weeds, wet with morning dew, brushed his bare feet as he walked toward the orchard where she stood with her arms wrapped around herself. For a moment he felt himself weakening. She looked so damned vulnerable. But the moment passed.
“Mrs. Case.”
“I'm Nell!” Wisps of light brown hair fluttered as she whirled around. “Just Nell.”
“With all due respect, you're not. And that's a problem.”
Her hands slammed on her hips. “I'll tell you where you can put your due respect!”
“I need to know what's going on.”
“No, you don't!” And then her arms fell. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound imperious.”
“You owe me the truth,” he said stonily.
He was right, but she'd lost the habit of confiding in anyone. First Ladies couldn't afford to tell their secrets. Still, she owed him something.
“I had to get away. I just—I just wanted to be ordinary for a while.”
“Isn't this a little extreme?”
“I'm sure it seems that way to you, but—”
“Hey, where is everybody?” They both turned as Lucy stuck her head out the door. The T-shirt she'd slept in came to her knees, and her hair must have been wet when she'd fallen asleep because it stuck up in a rooster tail. Just the sight of her lifted Nealy's spirits. At least there was one person who thought of her only as Nell.
“We're out here,” she replied unnecessarily.
“Are you arguing?”
“Not exactly.”
Mat seemed as glad of the interruption as she was. “Where'd you get that T-shirt?”
Lucy scowled. “I found it somewhere.”
“Yeah, in a stack of my clothes.”
Nealy had no desire to continue her conversation with Mat, so she made her way back to the motor home. She was living on borrowed time, and she intended to use every second.
Lucy stepped aside to let her in. “So do we have anything to eat for breakfast that doesn't blow?”
Nealy restrained herself
from hugging her. “Next time let's just ask if there's anything edible, okay?”
Lucy glowered. “I'm sick of cereal.”
“Make some toast.”
“Toast blows.”
“Lucy, don't talk to ... Nell like that,” Mat said from the doorway.
Nealy rounded on him. “This is between Lucy and me.”
“Yeah, Jorik, just butt out.”
“That's enough, Lucy,” she said. “You have a ... a ... time out for being disrespectful.”
“A time out?” Lucy regarded her incredulously.
Nealy knew about time outs from her visits to nursery schools, and she pointed toward the back.
“Fifteen minutes. And shut the door. That way you'll have some privacy so you can think about how to address adults properly.”
“You've got to be shittin' me.”
“That's another fifteen minutes for inappropriate language. Do you want to try for longer?”
Lucy looked toward Mat as if she expected him to rescue her from what was clearly Nell's latest insanity, but he jerked his head to the back. “You've got it coming.”
“This sucks! I haven't even had breakfast” She stomped away, then banged the door as hard as she could.
Mat set Button down. “I'm sorry. You shouldn't have to deal with that.”
“Why not? I've been dealing with it since Wednesday.”
“Yes, but—”
“Stop treating me like a guest,” she snapped. “I'm going to fix Button's cereal. If you have something intelligent to say, then say it. Otherwise, just shut up.”
As she stalked over to the sink, she decided that Nell Kelly might not be dead after all.
* * *
Mat smoldered. He was the one who'd been wronged, but she acted as if this were his fault.
The fact that his emotions were still getting in the way of his journalistic detachment only made it worse. The biggest story of his career was unfolding right in front of him, and all he wanted to do was grab his subject by her shoulders and shake her until those aristocratic little teeth rattled.
His self-control snapped a few hours later as he was paying for some groceries at a combination service station and convenience store in rural southern Illinois and realized that Nell—Mrs. Case—had disappeared. A chill shot through him. For the first time, it hit him that this woman should be protected by a cadre of Secret Service agents, and she only had him.
He grabbed the groceries and shot outside. She hadn't gone into the motor home. It was parked right by the door, and he would have seen her. He took in a collection of dusty vehicles, a gas pump, and a mean-looking German shepherd. Where in the hell was she?
The dire predictions of all the conspiracy nuts he'd heard on the radio came rushing back to him. He hurried to the side of the building and saw a weedy field and a scrap heap of old tires, but no runaway First Lady. He raced for the other side and found her standing at the pay phone that was mounted next to an air hose.
“Damn it!”
Her head shot up as he dropped the groceries and charged toward her. She spoke quickly into the telephone, then hung up.
“Don't you ever do that to me again!” He knew he was yelling, but he couldn't help himself.
“I hope there weren't any eggs in those sacks. And what did I do?”
“Disappear like that! I thought you were— Damn it, Nell, when we're not in that motor home, I want you stuck to my side, do you hear me?”
“Won't that be a little uncomfortable for us both?”
First Lady or not, they were going to get a few things straight. He lowered his voice to a hiss. “You may think this is goddamn funny—playing the runaway princess, amusing yourself with the hoi polloi—but it isn't a game. Do you have any idea what could happen if some kind of extremists got hold of you?”
“I have a better idea than you,” she hissed back. “And you're the only person who knows where I am. Granted, your behavior can be a little extreme at times, but—”
“Don't you dare start making jokes!”
She smiled at him and whispered, “This is more like it.”
His blood hit the boiling point. “You think this is funny?”
“Not funny. It's just nice to have you back to your normal arrogant self again.” Her smile faded. “And I'm not amusing myself with the hoi polloi.”
“What else would you call it?”
“Freedom!” Her eyes flashed. “It's the basic right of every American citizen unless she happens to be First Lady. You listen to me, Mat Jorik ...“ She stunned him by jabbing his chest. ”In the past year, I buried my husband and got maneuvered into keeping a job I didn't want. I've lived in the spotlight since I was born, doing the right thing, putting everybody's interests in front of mine. If I'm being selfish now, well, that's tough! I've earned it, and I'm going to enjoy every minute.”
“Is that so?”
“You bet it is, buster!”
He was the one who should be yelling, and he couldn't figure out how he'd managed to lose the upper hand. “Who were you calling?” he snapped.
“Barbara Bush.”
“Yeah, tell me another—” He broke off as he realized it was entirely possible she had called Barbara Bush.
Her expression was annoyingly close to a smirk. “Do you know what she said just before I hung up?”
He shook his head.
“She said, 'You go, girl.'”
“Uh ... did she?”
“And Hillary Clinton said words to the same effect when I called her yesterday from that gas station.”
“You called Hillary—”
“You may not understand why I'm doing this, but they certainly do.”
“Did you—did you call them for a reason?”
“I'm not irresponsible, despite what you think. I've called someone nearly every day so the White House knows I'm still alive. Now if you think you know more about national security than I do, maybe you'd better tell me about it.”
He had a long list of questions he wanted to ask about that very topic, starting with how she'd managed to escape the White House, but they'd have to wait until he'd straightened her out. “I'm not saying that you're irresponsible. I'm just saying that I don't want you going anywhere without me. That's the deal. Take it or leave it.”
“Maybe I'll leave it. Don't forget I have money, and I can go off on my own anytime I want.”
He gritted his teeth. “You're not going any-damn-where by yourself!”
She smiled again, which nearly drove him wild. He took a couple of deep breaths and tried to reconcile this bratty lady in the khaki shorts and buttercup-yellow top with the cool, sophisticated First Lady.
He tried to regain lost ground. “Who sent you the money?”
At first he didn't think she'd answer, but she shrugged. “Terry Ackerman.”
Ackerman had been the President's chief advisor as well as Dennis Case's oldest friend. No time to examine that relationship at the moment, so he filed the information away. “How do you know he hasn't told the White House where he sent it?”
“Because I asked him not to.”
“And you trust him?”
“As much as I trust anybody.” He suspected that she meant her words to come off as flippant, but they sounded sad.
He could fight her when she was being haughty and unreasonable, but it was hard to fight sadness. His frustration boiled to the surface. “I don't even know what to call you!”
“You'd better keep calling me Nell. Or maybe you'd rather call me Mrs. Case, and tip off all those extremists lurking in that cornfield over there?”
“This isn't anything to joke about.”
“Just worry about yourself, all right? I'll take care of me.”
As she bent over to pick up the groceries, he heard the squeal of brakes, the blast of a radio, and what sounded like an explosion.
He didn't even think about it. He just threw himself at her.
They both flew through the air, away fro
m the sidewalk, into the weeds. He heard a small “Oof” as the air rushed from her body.
“Don't move!” He wanted a gun. He needed a gun!
A long silence, followed by a croaky gasp for air ... “Mat?”
His heart was pounding so hard he knew she had to feel it.
And then he got an uneasy prickling along his spine. That explosion he'd heard .. . now that he could think again he realized it hadn't sounded all that much like a gunshot.
It had sounded like a car backfiring.
First Lady
14
Rain pummeled the Winnebago as they crawled across the flat Illinois landscape toward the Iowa border. Nealy gazed out at the fields of corn and soybeans, gray and lonesome under the dreary afternoon sky, and smiled to herself. It really had been valiant of Mat to try to protect her from that vicious backfire and with the exception of a scrape on her shin, she wasn't any the worse for wear.
A passing car tossed a rooster tail of water at the windshield. Mat flicked to another radio station for an update on her disappearance. Although he barely spoke to her, when he did, the awful formality had disappeared. And he hadn't made any move to turn her in. This morning she'd believed her adventure was over, but now she wondered.
“Why don't you let me drive for a while?” she asked.
“Because I don't have anything better to do.”
“Except sulk.”
“Sulk!”
“I know it was a bitter blow to you that the car had rowdy teenagers in it instead of a band of armed militia coming to take me hostage, but I'm sure you'll get over it.” She grinned. “Thanks, Mat. I really do appreciate the gesture.”
“Yeah, right.”
Just then Lucy reappeared from the back of the motor home. She'd been restless ever since they'd left the service station, alternating between entertaining Button and sealing herself in the back. “It's so weird,” she said. “We kept talking about Cornelia Case, and now all they're saying on the radio is how she disappeared.” She was wearing one of the sundresses Nealy had bought her and only half her customary makeup. She looked darling, but she'd shrugged it off when Nealy had told her so.
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