State of Affairs

by Marie Force

“I see that. Welcome, ladies. This is the first time we’ve ever had a first lady visit us,” Avery said with a devilish twinkle in his eye. “We’re honored.”

  “Shut it.” She’d last been there for Shelby and Avery’s surprise wedding on Shelby’s forty-fourth birthday. “Sorry to drop in on you guys this way, but I need a word with my favorite personal assistant.”

  “She’s in the family room with Noah.” He pointed the way. “Make yourselves at home, and if possible, Sam, I could use a minute with you before you go.”

  “Sure.” Sam wondered if he had new information about Nick’s mother. She’d asked him if the FBI could take a below-the-radar look at the woman who’d brought nothing but hell and heartache to Nick since the day he was born. Nicoletta had been worse than ever since Nick became vice president, using his standing to boost her own like the grifter she was. Sam shuddered to think about the damage her mother-in-law could do now that Nick was president.

  She followed her sisters into Shelby’s family room. “Don’t get up,” she said when Shelby made a move to stand.

  “I want to hug my friend the first lady.”

  “Your friend will come to you.” Sam dropped to her knees and bent to hug Shelby and kiss Noah. As usual, Shelby was dressed from head to toe in pink, including sweats and a plaid flannel shirt that was tight against her blossoming pregnancy belly.

  “Sorry about the mess.”

  “I don’t see any mess. I see a little boy having fun with his mommy and his toys.”

  “He loves his toys. How are my other favorite kids today? Still living off the sugar high?”

  “They’re taking it easy, but enjoying playing with all their new stuff. Thank you again for the most magnificent party ever.”

  “It was fun, until one of the jackass parents posted a picture. Next time, we’re banning their phones and hiring a photographer.”

  “We can rely on the White House photographer next year.”

  “I told Avery I want him to find and arrest whoever posted that picture.”

  “I want that too, but it might not be the best thing for the kids at school.”

  “Makes me so bloody mad that people would betray your privacy that way.”

  “It just proves that as popular as Nick is, he still has his detractors.”

  “It’s disgusting, especially after you welcomed them into your home. We’ll figure out who it was and make sure they’re never invited again.”

  “I’m a little turned on by this vindictive side of my Tinker Bell,” Sam said with a teasing grin.

  “She’s fierce when anyone messes with her loved ones,” Avery said.

  “That’s right. Don’t mess with my people.”

  “We’re honored to be among your loved ones, and we’re hoping you’ll still love us when you hear what I’ve come to ask you.”

  Shelby cast a wary glance at her and then expanded it to include Avery, Tracy and Angela. “I’m almost afraid to ask…”

  “I, well, I guess it’s we need a social secretary at the White House, and we want you.” Sam hadn’t gotten a chance to ask Nick first, but she had no doubt he’d fully support her choice of Shelby for the pivotal role. They needed someone who understood protocol and official Washington, and Shelby was a true insider.

  She stared at Sam with what appeared to be shock.

  “Hello? Earth to Shelby?”

  “Did she really just ask me that?” Shelby said to Tracy and Angela.

  “She did,” Ang said, “and we all agree you’d be the best at it.”

  “Uh, I have no idea what to say.”

  “Please, Shelby? You know how much I need you for this and to keep me straight as first lady. As social secretary, you’d be an official adviser to the president. You’ve been preparing for this role all your life.”

  To Sam’s great dismay, Shelby began to cry. She looked to Avery for insight.

  “Don’t fret,” he said in his sweet South Carolinian accent. “She cries over everything these days. Last night, it was an ice-cream commercial, and don’t even get me started on what happens when those ASPCA commercials come on with the sad, shivering dogs. She’s given them half our net worth since she got pregnant.”

  That made Sam feel a little better, but she wouldn’t be happy until Shelby stopped crying.

  “I’m sorry.” Shelby wiped away tears. “You took me by surprise. For a minute there, I thought you were asking me to be the social secretary at the White House.”

  Sam nudged her shoulder. “You heard me right.”

  “Oh, Sam. How could I ever take on something like that with two little ones underfoot?”

  “I’ve given that some thought since the idea first occurred to me, and what if we were able to make it so you worked mostly from home, coming in only when needed?”

  Shelby rolled her lip between her teeth as she gave that some thought. “That might work, but what about your kids? I’m hopelessly devoted to them, and I couldn’t imagine not seeing them every day.”

  “They’re equally devoted to you. We can finagle the details so it works for all of us. We have a million rooms in the residence. Why couldn’t one of them be used as a nursery for your kids for when you’re working? The bottom line is we need you, Shelby. We’ll take you any way we can get you. I’d love for you to be the social secretary because I truly feel you’ve been preparing for that role all your life. But if it’s not going to work for you, we’ll keep things the way they are now and go forward. Take some time to think about it. Talk it over with Avery, and let me know what you decide. No pressure and no tears.”

  Shelby laughed even as new tears spilled down her face. “You’ve honored me beyond all comprehension by even asking me.”

  “You’re fully aware that I can’t do this without you, I hope,” Sam said.

  “The thought did occur to me.”

  Everyone laughed, and Sam felt better about upsetting her dear friend.

  “We won’t take any more of your precious time off. It was important to me that I ask you in person.”

  With Sam’s help, Shelby managed to stand and hug her. “Thank you for thinking of me for this. The people who’ve done the job before me are some of my biggest heroes and heroines. Letitia Baldridge,” she said with a shiver. “The master class.”

  Sam had no idea who that was.

  “Tish Baldridge was Jackie Kennedy’s social secretary. She more or less invented the modern role.”

  “See? You already know more about it than I do.”

  “Noah knows more about it than you do,” Tracy said, cracking up the others.

  “That’s absolutely true,” Sam said. “These things are in his DNA.”

  “Our people didn’t get that DNA,” Tracy said bluntly.

  Sam laughed. “Which is why I need my Tinker Bell.”

  “I’m going to think long and hard about this,” Shelby said, “and if we can find a way to make it work, I’m all yours.”

  Sam hugged her. “No matter what you decide, we love you. You and yours will always be family to us.”

  Shelby sniffled. “Same to you.”

  “I need a minute with Avery, and then we can head home,” Sam said to her sisters.

  “We’re with you, sis,” Angela said. “Take your time.”

  Avery led Sam into his study, which had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and dark wood furniture. A fire simmering in the fireplace gave the room a cozy vibe. “What a great room this is.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Have you read all those books?”

  “Most of them.”

  “Of course you have.” Sam took a seat on the leather sofa while he took a chair across from her. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re continuing the investigation into the MPD, and we’ve picked up a rumbling that I wanted to run by you.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, her stomach feeling weightless, the way it did when things went sideways.

  “Does the name Hector Reese ring a bell?”<
br />
  She licked lips suddenly gone dry. “What about him?”

  “Word on the street is that you tuned him up pretty good when he was in custody. Is that true?”

  Sam forced herself not to blink or give away how rattled she was to have this blast from the past land in her lap. “It is.”

  “Can you give me some context?”

  Her brain wanted to shut down and run away from memories she’d much sooner forget. “Hector’s brother, Clarence, murdered his wife and children. It was one of the worst scenes any of us has ever worked. It was the same day I took the lieutenant’s oath and Nick became a senator. New Year’s Eve, almost two years ago. Clarence was in the wind for days. He came back to the house at one point and shot Freddie.”

  When she suddenly began to feel overly warm, she took off the coat she’d left on for what she’d thought would be a quick visit.

  “While we were working the scene, we found newspaper clippings about my father’s shooting that made it even more urgent that we find Clarence. He came back to the house a second time, this time with his brother, who we were able to arrest even as Clarence got away again.” This was where the story got dicey for her. “I’ll confess to desperately wanting to find the man who’d shot Freddie and to know who was collecting those clips. It’d been two years since my dad was shot, and we hadn’t had so much as a thread to pull.”

  She swallowed hard and forced herself to finish the story. “I asked to have him brought to an interrogation room, and I went at him hard, trying to get him to tell me what he knew about where his brother might be. I crossed several lines during that interrogation.”

  “I was told you beat the hell out of him while he was cuffed. Is that true?”

  Sam had regretted her actions that day ever since. “It’s true. I’m not proud of it, but I don’t deny it happened.”

  “Who else knows about it?”

  “Do I need legal representation, Agent Hill?” Over the years of their tumultuous professional and personal relationship, Sam had begun to consider him a friend at some point. In this moment, she wasn’t sure if he was a friend or adversary.

  “Not at this time. This is between you and me for now.”

  “For now. What does that mean?”

  “I’m collecting information that may or may not be relevant to our investigation.”

  “I made a mistake, but I was running on emotion after my partner was shot and possibly finding a lead in my dad’s case.”

  “Do you have a sense of why Hector Reese didn’t file a complaint?”

  “Perhaps it was because his brother later forced his way into my car, kidnapped me and held me hostage, demanding we return the ten thousand dollars in cash that we’d recovered from the house. As you may recall, Clarence took his life when he was standing right next to me, which was actually devastating for me because I’d talked him into letting me help him before the SWAT team burst in.”

  “This helps to give me some perspective.”

  “What’ll you do with this info?”

  “I honestly don’t know yet.”

  “Will you give me a heads-up if you’re coming for me?”

  “If I can.”

  That was, Sam knew, the best he could do. “Was that all you wanted to talk about?”

  “I wanted to also tell you that we’re continuing to dig into your mother-in-law, and we’re finding some interesting things. I’m not yet ready to talk about it, but as you know, where there’s smoke, there’s often fire.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “She’s a piece of work.”

  “You have no idea.” She put her coat back on. “I need to get going.”

  “Before you do, thank you for asking Shelby to be your social secretary. I know it means the world to her that you asked.”

  “There was no one else in the world I would’ve asked. And I know it’s a big ask at this moment in your lives.”

  “We’ll find a way to make it happen if it’s what she wants.”

  He walked her out to rejoin her sisters. They said goodbye to Shelby and Noah, and as they headed home in the Secret Service SUV, Sam couldn’t help but wonder if a mistake she’d made two years ago was going to come back to haunt her.

  On Monday morning, Nick arrived at the Oval Office to discover that his lovely wife had been there. He grinned as he read her note and viewed the beautiful photo of the family they’d created together. Knowing his wife, she’d been up to other mischief, so he wasn’t surprised to find that the items he’d placed in the drawers had been “reorganized.” He found the second note she’d left and sighed with pleasure at knowing he was loved by the most extraordinary woman.

  He was asking a lot of her. He knew that. And yet, she’d stepped up to the challenge with admirable fortitude. Last night, he’d found her in bed, reading one of the books Mrs. Nelson had given her.

  “Did you know,” she’d asked, reading from Inside the White House: Stories From the World’s Most Famous Residence, “that the president is all at once the ceremonial head of government, leader of a political party, administrator of the nation’s laws and domestic affairs, director of foreign policy and commander in chief of the armed forces?”

  “Is that right?” he’d asked, amused by her as always. “I didn’t realize that.”

  “That’s a big-ass job, Nicholas.”

  “Yes, Samantha, so I’ve heard.”

  “You know what’s seriously hot?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You all the time, but even more so as the ceremonial head of government, leader of a political party, administrator of the nation’s laws and domestic affairs, director of foreign policy and commander in chief of the armed forces.” She’d shivered dramatically. “Way sexier than seersucker.”

  Nick laughed to himself as he recalled finding her reading Congress for Dummies way back when he was first in the Senate and she’d wanted to better understand his job. She’d been particularly intrigued by the Senate tradition of Seersucker Thursday. How far they’d come from those early days in the Senate when he’d been under the impression that he’d reached the pinnacle of his career.

  Terry knocked before he entered the Oval Office. “Mr. President, we’re ready for you in the Situation Room.”

  Nick walked with Terry to the most secure room in the White House, where the national security team waited to brief him on the incident in Iran with Ruskin.

  “Mr. President,” Teresa said, “per the reports you were provided with at your morning briefing, we’ve met with Secretary Ruskin and the security team that accompanied him. We’ve received two very different stories. According to Secretary Ruskin, he was told the talks with President Rajavi would continue at the resort. Once there, he claims he was denied outside communication. He believes he was tricked into the photos that were taken.”

  “He seemed awfully happy for a man who’d been kidnapped, tricked and misled,” Nick said.

  “That was our impression as well, sir. The security team told an entirely different story. The lead agent indicated that Ruskin was offered a weekend of debauchery, and he willingly accepted the invitation.”

  “Why were we unable to reach the security detail during the hours in question?” Nick asked.

  “They were put up in rooms at the resort that they believe were in some sort of blackout zone that made it impossible to use any of their communication devices.”

  Nick took in the information and looked for the truth in the various versions. “Who do you believe?”

  “The agents,” Teresa said without hesitation. “It seems Ruskin suffered a breach of judgment, perhaps in part because of the changing of the guard here and his belief that he wouldn’t be held accountable. One of the agents overheard him saying you don’t ‘have the stones’ to discipline him.”

  “Well, that was a significant error on his part.” Nick glanced at Terry. “Please ask the secretary to come in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  �
��Give him thirty minutes to get here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They left the Situation Room to return to the Oval Office, where Nick met privately with Terry.

  “What’s your plan, sir?”

  “I’ll request his resignation in exchange for not asking the Justice Department to investigate and potentially charge him.”

  “That was going to be my recommendation.”

  Having to fire the secretary of State on his fourth day in office wasn’t Nick’s idea of a good time, but it had to be done.

  “I’ve also heard officially from the secretaries of the Treasury, Homeland Security and Education that they’re not planning to stay on. Each will be submitting their resignations in the coming days.”

  “We’ll need to name acting secretaries until permanent appointees can be confirmed.”

  “I’ll work on that.”

  “Trevor and the communications team would like a bit of time this afternoon to prepare you and Mrs. Cappuano for the interview tonight.”

  “I can’t guarantee she’ll be available for that.”

  “It’s highly recommended, sir. That interview will set the tone for your entire administration.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to get her here early, but that’s the best I can do.” After Terry left the office, Nick called Sam’s secure phone.

  “Mr. President. What can I do for you?”

  Her voice was enough to send a shiver of desire down his spine. Any time away from her was time he wished he was spending with her. It had been that way from the day they reconnected nearly two years ago. Even before that, he’d longed for her after having spent one night with her six years before they found each other again.

  “Nick?”

  “I’m here. How’s your day going?”

  “Not bad so far. I’m about to sit down with my squad. I’ve got about two minutes.”

  “I wondered if you could be here around five to prep for the interview tonight.”

  “Oh, um…”

  “Did you forget about the interview?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Are you lying to me?”

  “Would I do that?”

  He laughed at the way she said that. “Never.”

  “I’ll be there.”