“I mean…can you imagine life without Chunky Monkey or Cookie Dough or Phish Food?” Elizabeth eyed the pints, planning her next assault. “It wouldn’t be worth living.” She scooped some Brownie Batter into her bowl and took a big bite, swooning against Jane’s shoulder. “You are my favorite sister, did you know that?” She took another bite of ice cream. “You’re kind and you listen to me whine, and you’d give me a kidney if I needed one.”
Jane grinned. “I totally would.”
“But most of all…you bring me Ben and Jerry’s. That gets you the best sister prize right there.” Elizabeth swallowed another spoonful, savoring it as it went down.
“Are you drunk?”
“Yeah, drunk on Ben and Jerry’s.”
“So now is the time for some sage sisterly advice.”
“Okay,” Elizabeth sighed, setting her bowl on the table. “Lay it on me.”
Jane stared at her for a moment, and then her eyes fell to the floor. “I got nothing, actually. Pretty sure they don’t make I-called-the-president-a-jerk-and-now-I-regret-it cards.” Elizabeth stuck out her tongue at her older sister. “And I’m not even sure that’s what you’re so unhappy about.”
“Yeah. Sorta. My judgment was so skewed. I thought George Wickham was a good guy and the president was a jerk.” Elizabeth hugged a throw cushion to her chest. “I said some terrible things to him, Jane. Hurled all kinds of accusations.”
“If that’s the biggest problem, then you should apologize to him—and move on.”
She squeezed the cushion harder as her body tensed. “It’s not that easy. How do I get in touch with him? A letter or email would almost certainly be read by someone else. I don’t have his cell phone number, and the White House operator isn’t likely to patch me through.”
“Yeah, that’s true…” Jane said thoughtfully.
Elizabeth’s eyes lit up. “But you have Bing’s number! Maybe I could get Bing to relay a message somehow.”
Jane shook her head. “I deleted it. I didn’t want to call him in a fit of weakness.” Elizabeth hated the shadow of sorrow in her sister’s eyes. “It’s a shame you can’t call the president; who knows what might happen?” Jane grinned lasciviously.
Elizabeth chuckled as she scooped more ice cream. “I guess few women have the chance for sex in the White House China Room.”
“You do seem to be attracted to him.”
“Attracted? To President McDreamy? With his stormy blue eyes and soft dark hair and his sensual lips? I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Both sisters giggled.
“You’ve given this more than a passing thought,” Jane said.
“Maybe,” Elizabeth said primly, popping a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth. Jane snorted. Elizabeth slowly lowered the bowl to her lap. She sighed. “Not really. He’s still proud and difficult…it wouldn’t have worked anyway.”
“You don’t know that,” Jane, ever the optimist, said.
Elizabeth slumped against the back of the sofa. “I’ll probably never see him again. So it doesn’t matter if he’s madly in love with me or just thought I’d make a good booty call.”
Jane bit a fingernail. “There’s got to be some way you can apologize to him.”
“If you think of one let me know. In the meantime, I plan to brood and mope about my apartment.”
“Yeah, most therapists consider that the best way to get over the blues.” Jane’s sarcasm was thick enough to cut with a knife. “Maybe I’ll buy some stock in Ben and Jerry’s.”
Elizabeth threw the cushion at her sister.
“At least I have a vacation coming up,” she pointed out. “Aunt Madeline and Uncle Thomas rented that place in the Hamptons again.”
“Awesome. You can mope in style.”
Elizabeth ignored this. “Why aren’t you coming this year?”
“I wish, but work is crazy.” Jane’s expression brightened. “We got a new contract.”
At last some good news. It should ease some of the financial pressures that had her family so stressed lately. “From where?” Elizabeth asked.
“That USDA contract. We’ll be supplying school lunches for hundreds of schools! We just found out yesterday. Dad cracked a smile for the first time in months.”
At the sound of a knock on the door, Elizabeth frowned. “I’m not expecting anyone.” She padded over to the door and peered through the peephole. “It’s Lydia,” she groaned to Jane. No doubt there was some “crisis” that involved a lot of complaining and very little common sense.
Elizabeth turned the knob. “Lyds, what are you doing here?”
Lydia flounced into the apartment. “My life is crazy! I needed someone to talk to!” she moaned dramatically.
Elizabeth sighed. “Sure.”
“Oh, hi, Jane,” Lydia said in a colorless voice. Then her eyes fell on the coffee table. “Ben and Jerry’s!” She practically tripped over her own feet racing to the table, where she surveyed the containers. “You ate all the Chunky Monkey! Why didn’t you save any for me?”
“We didn’t know you were coming,” Jane said reasonably.
“But you do know that it’s my favorite,” Lydia pouted. “God, nobody ever takes my needs into consideration.” Sulking didn’t prevent Lydia from filling her bowl with several scoops and flopping onto the sofa. She tasted a spoonful. “This is good, but it’s a little soft. You should have put it back in the freezer before I got here.”
Elizabeth and Jane exchanged eye rolls over Lydia’s head.
The sooner they discussed the “crisis,” the sooner they would be done. “So why are you so upset?” Elizabeth asked.
“Oh, there’s all this shit going down with Miso and Olga. I told Olga she was my BFF, and that was like, you know, months ago. Then on Tuesday, I told Miso that she was my BFF, because I’ve been hanging around with her more than Olga lately. So, of course, Olga hears about it and comes to me and she’s all like, ‘I thought I was your BFF.’ And I’m like, ‘You were, but now you’re not.’ And Olga says, ‘Best friends forever. That’s what it means. So you can’t just up and decide we’re not best friends because you promised forever.’ And I said…”
Elizabeth tuned out Lydia’s monologue, peppered with sentiments that were far better suited to middle school than college. She despaired that her sister would ever grow up. As it often did, her mind turned to thoughts of Will’s letter and George Wickham.
Wickham!
“Lydia!” she said. Lydia huffed at the interruption, but Elizabeth continued. “You haven’t been seeing George Wickham, have you?”
Lydia’s eyes slid sideways. “You mean dating him? No, of course not.”
“Good. That’s good.” Elizabeth said, relieved. “He’s not trustworthy. A lot of what he told us about the president isn’t true.”
Lydia’s eyes narrowed. “Who said so?”
Elizabeth immediately saw the problem with her assertion. “Well, er, the president did. In confidence. I can’t explain it all. But believe me when I say George didn’t tell us everything.”
“How do you know the president is telling the truth?”
“He’s the president!” Elizabeth exclaimed.
“The last one lied like a rug.” Lydia crossed her arms over her chest.
Elizabeth exhaled deeply. “Will is known for his honesty—for bringing integrity back to the White House.”
“Will? Will?” Lydia screeched. Elizabeth winced at her stupid mistake. “Who calls the president ‘Will’?” Elizabeth stared at her sister blankly; surely there was a plausible excuse for calling the president by his first name—but inspiration did not strike.
“I knew it!” Lydia crowed. “Something did happen on Air Force One! You looked so strange when we picked you up. What base did you get to? Second? Third? All the way home?”
“It’s not like that!” Elizabeth lowered her voice as if members of the press lurked in her curtains. “I don’t even like him.”
Lydia gave her a disbelieving l
ook. “Right. Sure. Admit it: you think he’s hot.”
“I don’t think he’s hot.” I should be crossing my fingers behind my back.
“C’mon! You totally flirted with him and made a play for him.” Lydia pointed the spoon accusingly at Elizabeth. “Did he shoot you down?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Lydia.” The Twitter queen of Washington D.C. would be the worst person to know the truth. “He’s proud and difficult. He called me stupid and ugly. I don’t want to have anything to do with him.”
Lydia put her hands on her hips. “You. Think. He’s. Hot. Case closed.”
“He’s the one who thinks Elizabeth’s hot!” Jane blurted out and then slapped a hand over her mouth with a horrified expression on her face.
Lydia whirled toward Elizabeth. “He likes you? Oh my God! The president likes you?” She clapped her hands as if she’d received the best birthday present in the world.
“No, he doesn’t,” Elizabeth replied briskly. “Jane is just joking, right, Jane?”
Lydia glanced over her shoulder at Jane, who was still frozen with her hand over her mouth. “Then why does she look like she just betrayed a state secret?”
She had to throw Lydia off the scent. “Um…she realized the joke was in bad taste,” Elizabeth said. “It hurt my feelings.”
Lydia’s eyes lit up. “OMG! He hit on you when you were on Air Force One!”
Why did Lydia’s primary talent have to be sniffing out secrets? She continued with a gleeful air, “And you don’t like him, so you were upset—when every other woman in the world would be thrilled. What happened? Did the Secret Service have to intervene to save your virtue?”
“No, no, no!” Elizabeth cried. “You are way, way off base! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lydia folded her arms and gave Elizabeth a piercing look. “I hope you don’t plan a career as a professional poker player.”
Elizabeth gave Jane a despairing look. “I hope someday Lydia will use her powers for good,” Jane murmured as her shoulders slumped.
“Okay, something happened,” Elizabeth conceded. “But I can’t tell you about it, and it’s not going to happen again.”
Lydia grinned triumphantly. “I knew it!”
“You can’t say anything about what you know,” Elizabeth implored her. “Or what you think you know. There’s nothing going on, and I don’t want any rumors to start.”
Lydia was all wounded innocence. “Of course not. I am a vault. I am a Fort Knox of information.”
Somehow Elizabeth was not reassured.
***
“Rise and shine! Rise and shine!” Fitz put on his best Southern belle voice as he burst into Darcy’s bedroom. Darcy groaned.
Fitz prodded him with a hand on his arm, shaking Darcy’s entire body. “C’mon, sleepyhead. Time to get up.”
“Who let you in here?” Darcy groaned without opening his eyes. He usually wasn’t plagued by visitors until breakfast.
“I did.” That voice undoubtedly belonged to Bing.
Darcy rolled onto his back, keeping his arm over his eyes. “Who let you in?”
“I stayed overnight at the Residence. We both did.”
“Whyzat?” Darcy cleared his throat. “Why is that?” The night before was a complete blank, and apparently a small rodent had died in his mouth.
“You asked us to,” Fitz said, far too happily for this early in the morning. “To get you up in time for the flight to Pemberley.”
Pemberley. They were going to Pemberley. That was the first good news Darcy had heard since waking. Maybe that was a reason to open his eyes. They tentatively peeled open just a crack.
Damn! Someone had obviously installed klieg lights in his bedroom while he was asleep. Darcy blinked furiously. “Why is it so bright?”
With a grin, Fitz pulled a pair of aviator sunglasses from his shirt pocket and handed them to Darcy, who was not too proud to put them on. Bing regarded him more soberly as he provided a water bottle and two Advils.
The night before was returning to Darcy in bits and pieces. “How many bourbons did I have?”
Fitz shrugged. “Four? Before you switched to beer.”
“No wonder I feel like a tank ran me over.” Darcy sat up and rested his back against the headboard of the impressive canopy bed. It was noticeable how having a hangover in the lap of presidential luxury was no better than having a hangover anywhere else. “Why did you let me do it?”
Fitz laughed. “You are such a kidder! I tried to stop you before the third bourbon, but you said, and I quote, ‘I’m the leader of the free world, you can’t tell me what to do.’”
“And then later on, you said ‘the world can manage without me for one night,’” Bing added.
Those words did sound vaguely familiar. “Damn,” Darcy winced. He and Bing had occasionally gotten smashed at college, but it wasn’t something he did very often. “I don’t remember it ever feeling quite this awful.”
“It’s a good thing there wasn’t an international crisis, or I would have had to call the vice president,” Bing said with a smirk.
Darcy waved nonchalantly. “She’d be able to handle it.” She’s happily married. He finished off the bottle of water, which Bing took as he handed him another one. Darcy frowned at it mulishly. “Drink up,” Bing ordered. “You need to be presentable before we pour you into the limo.”
“Hilliard would kill me if the press got a picture of you in your current state,” Fitz added.
Darcy let his head fall back and bump against the headboard, wincing when the movement caused his brain to slosh around in his skull. “If I look half as bad as I feel, you’re probably right.”
Fitz gestured to the water bottle. “Finish that up, and your reward is a cup of coffee.”
The magic words. “I’d kill for some coffee.”
“I’ll get some started.” Fitz hurried from the room.
While Darcy drank, Bing settled into a chair by the bed with a sheaf of papers in his lap: the usual summary of world events that had transpired during the night. But instead of diving into them, Bing sat still, watching Darcy intently.
“What?” Self-consciously, Darcy tried to flatten down some of his unruly hair.
“Darce, it’s not like you to…” He trailed off as he tried to find a way to put it delicately.
“Get smashed?” Darcy chuckled. “You can say that to the president, you know.”
“I was going to say ‘shit-faced.’” Bing grinned.
Of course, his chief of staff was concerned. “It won’t happen again.”
“Good, but that’s not my biggest concern. What triggered it? I haven’t seen you that lit since college.”
When Darcy hesitated, Bing glanced across the room at Fitz, who had just returned with a cup of coffee. His cousin shrugged. “Don’t look at me. One minute he was fine, watching some talking heads on ZNN. The next he was diving into the bottle of bourbon.”
Darcy shoved both hands through his unruly hair, not caring about the pain when his fingers caught on snags. “I’ll be fine.”
“What was he watching?” Bing asked Fitz.
“Give it a rest,” Darcy snarled at them.
Fitz ignored him. “Wiley Montrose and crew were discussing ‘what is wrong with the president?’”
“They’ve done that a thousand times.” Bing waved this away. “Why was this different?”
Fitz crossed his arms over his chest. “Greg Parese suggested that the president just needed to get laid. That’s when the bourbon came out.”
“Well…shit,” Bing said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Darcy snapped. “Where’s the coffee?”
“Why does that bother you so much?” Bing watched him with narrowed eyes.
“You are not my shrink,” Darcy ground out, staring at the opposite wall.
“I think the isolation is getting to him,” Fitz said to Bing.
Bing nodded as he rubbed his chin. “I’
m surprised it took this long.”
“Do you think we should hire someone for him?” Fitz asked.
Darcy flew out of bed, sending covers flying. “What the fuck?” he asked Fitz.
Fitz smirked at Bing. “Well, that got a reaction.”
Shooting a glare at Fitz, Darcy went to collect the coffee on his dresser. His cousin knew him too damn well. The coffee was still hot, and the first sip was ambrosia.
“Does this have something to do with Elizabeth?” Fitz asked him.
“Elizabeth?” Bing’s eyebrows drew together.
“Bennet,” Darcy added.
“Jane’s sister? What does she have to do with Wiley Montrose?”
“She has more to do with the getting laid part,” Fitz drawled.
“What!”
I should explain everything to Bing, Darcy told himself, but just the thought exhausted him. “It’s complicated,” he said, closing his eyes as he massaged tight neck muscles.
“Darcy tried to kiss her on Air Force One, and she didn’t like it,” Fitz said.
“Well, maybe it’s not that complicated,” Darcy conceded.
“You tried to kiss Jane’s sister? When was she on Air Force One?” Bing’s voice rose higher and higher.
“We gave her a ride back from the Paris summit,” Fitz explained. “Apparently, Mr. Suave here had been nursing a crush for a while.”
“Not a crush,” Darcy mumbled. “I’m not a fifteen-year-old girl.”
“I stand corrected.” Fitz’s voice was tinged with amusement. “Darcy had been nursing a grand passion for Ms. Bennet. He kissed her and said he wanted to date her.”
“And she turned you down?” Bing said incredulously.
“Ran screaming from the room,” Fitz chuckled.
“No screaming,” Darcy corrected.
“But there was running?” Bing asked.
“There was running,” Fitz confirmed.
“It was more of a fast walk,” Darcy said.
“Oh God.” Bing massaged his forehead. “Does Hilliard know?”
“Yeah,” Fitz said. “Elizabeth promised she wouldn’t go to the press. And it’s been around a month since it happened. We’re probably in the clear.”
Darcy shook his head but stopped when the brain sloshing resumed. “I really liked her and wanted to take her on a proper date.”
President Darcy Page 18
