“All week you’ve been far more…solicitous,” she used her chopsticks neatly to pick up a slice of twice-cooked beef and a snow pea as she continued flipping through the file.
“Was I that bad before?” If so, he didn’t want to hear about it.
“No, you were wonderful before. Now you’ve tipped over into amazing.” Cornelia continued doing three things at once as neatly as she always did everything. In fact, the only time he’d ever seen her do only one thing at a time was when she was in his arms—which he decided he should take as a high compliment. “So, what are you up to, Feinman?”
Janet came in with a stack of memos. Most, he was glad to see, were only one or two pages long. Out of sight of Cornelia, she sent him a broad wink.
“Well,” he kept a weather eye on Janet so that he could gauge her reaction. “Being solicitous is what comes from being in love with you.”
Janet’s snort of laughter wasn’t seemly on a woman of her age and dignity.
That dragged Cornelia’s full attention out of her file, even making her chopsticks pause halfway back to her plate. She looked at Janet, who wasn’t making the least attempt to appear innocent, then at him.
“You,” she pointed her chopsticks at Janet, “have been messing with my dating life. What did you do to Damien?”
“Oh no, Ms. Day. I would never do that,” shocked hand to ruffled blouse.
“You should have been an actress,” Damien should never have said a thing to begin with. It only encouraged them.
“I might interfere with your love life though. Your boy needed a good nudge.”
“Hey. I’m a man, not a boy. And that wasn’t a nudge, it was more like a hard boot in the ass.”
“Shush when your elders are speaking.”
“She threatened me,” he did his best to make it sound like he was a whining child. It didn’t help that she was right.
“Threatened you about what?”
Damien caved, “Taking you to the West Wing to see Christmas was only partly my idea. She,” Damien pointed an accusing finger, “said I should be paying more attention to you the person than you—” he almost said ‘the goddess in my bed’ but caught himself in time, “—as a girlfriend.”
Janet’s glare told him he was entering the danger zone. Maybe he should listen to himself and keep his mouth shut.
“Would have helped if she hadn’t been so right,” he grumbled out the last, ignoring his own directive.
“He’s a good sort, Ms. Day, best I’ve seen since my Harry. Damien merely required a little hint to bring out the best in him.”
Damien kept his harrumph to himself.
“Now what has Cornelia Day in such a twist?” Janet actually planted her fists on her hips like some over-dramatic actress.
“I’m not in a twist,” she denied Janet’s accusation. “Except over the latest disaster that is Egyptian politics,” Cornelia tapped a finger on the thick file she’d been studying.
“But—” Then Damien bit down on his tongue remembering his own “be silent” advice.
Janet was looking at him. Waiting.
“But you are.” She was. “And have been since the dinner in the Residence last week.”
Janet nodded as if once again he’d done something right. “Don’t stop there, young man.” She set the memos on Cornelia’s desk and headed back to her own.
“What’s going on, Cornelia?” He kept his voice low. Not because he was trying to hide anything from Janet; that was clearly a waste of time. Rather he did it to soothe whatever was bothering her.
“What do you mean?” She stabbed her chopsticks hard into a perfectly innocent piece of shrimp egg foo young and left them there.
“Ever since that night you’ve been even more yourself than usual. More studiously Cornelia Day than the Cornelia Day I met in the Sit Room that first day.”
“You’re making as much sense as usual,” she reached for her file, but he intercepted her hand and trapped it between his. He could feel nerves coursing within her that he hadn’t noticed until this moment.
“You are brilliantly meticulous. You are my idol of rational thought. Just to be clear, I’m not accusing you of being Spock.”
“That’s good,” her voice went suddenly small and he realized how many men must have said that or something similar to her. Only someone who didn’t know her would call her “ice bitch” but he could practically hear the phrase echoing about her. So many times that she had come to believe it of herself. She gave a chilly first impression.
“It’s not true. All those assholes were wrong. You have more warmth and passion inside you than any woman I’ve ever met.”
“You haven’t met many women then.”
“Like you? I’ve met a grand total of one, Cornelia. You’re it. That’s why I can say I love you and mean it. Nobody gobsmacks me the way you do.”
She looked up at him and impossibly she looked to be on the verge of tears. He wasn’t sure he could handle a crying Cornelia Day. His world wasn’t structured for such things.
“But all week you’ve been ever so careful. Last week you were slouching against a door jamb while Janet teased me and looking relaxed about the whole situation between us. I haven’t seen you out of your formal best since.” He indicated her buttoned blazer. “What’s going on, my lady?”
“My lady? Now you’re getting all knightly on me?”
“Hello, Marine and librarian. I come by noble and knightly and arcane—all three—completely naturally. What do you do completely naturally?”
“Be a stone cold bitch,” it came out on a gasp of pain that totally belied the words. Shit! He hated that he was right.
“Well, either I’m attracted to stone cold bitches, or everyone in your past was an idiot.”
“Which seems more likely?”
“That they were all idiots. Seriously, you’re lucky you found me. New evidence, fresh in, shows that most of my gender are utter goons.”
Cornelia sniffled and looked at him, really looked at him.
He didn’t carry a handkerchief. He’d always thought it too old-fashioned but now he wished he had one. He’d buy a whole stack tomorrow. In the meantime he lightly brushed a knuckle past the corners of her eyes and it came away wet.
“You really do love me.”
She didn’t make it a question, but he nodded to confirm the truth—as much inside himself as for her. It really wasn’t a question.
“That’s what happened to me last week in the Residence, before the dinner,” her voice was a gentle whisper.
“What?”
She touched the ends of her chopsticks but didn’t retrieve them from the heart of the egg foo young. “I understood that I loved you.”
The soft words didn’t slam into him as he’d expected. Instead they were a gentle wash over him, a benediction as solid and complete as his oath of office on the day he became a Marine Corps officer.
When he leaned in to kiss her, she tasted of soy sauce and salty tears.
Then she silently rose, indicating he should stay seated. She stepped over to her office door, looked briefly into the darkened outer office, then closed and locked it. Turning off the lights, she crossed back to him.
The lights of the EEOB filtered through the curtains and the dark winter’s night as she sat straddling his lap.
“It’s not a closet, but I hope it will do,” she whispered as she embraced him.
This time all he could taste on her lips was her smile.
Making love to Damien in her own office felt a little risqué, a little wild. Cornelia decided that maybe she needed that in her life. Maybe the cold that she thought wrapped around her came as much from the inside as the outside.
As his lips traced down her neck, she leaned her elbows back on the conference table, opening herself to him. He unbuttoned her blouse and, as he continued his journey, she ran her hands through his soft hair.
Maybe she had become the job too completely. It was necessary. Zachary
Thomas was too charitable with his time. He was a good man who needed someone to control how much came to his attention how quickly.
She had become his control until she embodied it.
As Damien eased her bra aside, some part of that control slipped away. A piece of that hard shell broke off and scattered like snow onto the white carpet. And when he lay her there, naked beneath him, warm and safe in his arms, her shields shattered.
The ever-so-studiously constructed Cornelia Day that she had first formed as a precocious, over-tall preteen had become more than a persona—it had become her. Yet Damien had seen past that from the first moment. And he proved once more, evoking responses she’d never known were possible, that he would never see her any other way. Not merely desirable, which would have been a big enough surprise on its own, but as worthy in and of herself.
She’d always presented that to the world.
But as Damien made love to her, she knew all the way to her core that she truly was worthy of a man like him.
Chapter Twelve
“A tuba Christmas?”
“Tonight at the Library of Congress. Led by the Marine Corps Band tuba section.”
Cornelia stared at Damien. “You do understand what’s happening here?” They sat alone in the Sit Room.
He waved a hand at the massive files spread between them. “I’ve been reading the same things you have. What’s happening is absolutely nothing. Every single idea here is conjecture. Whatever President Javad Madani heard, there isn’t a shred of evidence that any of our intelligence agencies can scare up.”
“But—” He cut her off with a raised hand.
“I’m not saying that his warning isn’t valid. I’m saying that we don’t have a single hypothesis or communication here that gives us the least insight into its meaning. This—” he gestured helplessly at the pile of reports perfectly mirroring his own feelings, “—mess isn’t helping us with anything.”
She knew that. The problem was that as their “Christian holiday season” was fast coming to a close, the number of days in which an attack was possible were decreasing. Most leaders of intelligence and Homeland Security now agreed that it was a non-event.
Even if President Madani had heard a valid rumor, they still insisted, that doesn’t mean it actually came together.
“The naysayers’ perspective isn’t invalid. No chatter. No unusual activity.”
“We’re the last true believers,” Damien sighed and looked back down at the files.
That was what had drawn them together, to double-team the files once more in the hopes of finding some overlooked connection. Six hours later all it had earned them was a frustration that almost had them sniping at each other.
We shall cut out their heart with their own words.
“No unusual activity near the inscriptions on the Lincoln Memorial,” Damien shoved aside one report. “No unusual activity at the Supreme Court or the Library of Congress. Scans of surveillance footage at the Capitol record only the usual crazies. It’s even been too damn cold for all but the most hard core protestors on the Mall.” Report after report was shoved aside until the only thing remaining was the slim file of her initial debriefing.
Damien flipped it open and began reading Madani’s words aloud:
What can be done to help the gulf between us?
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people of good will to come together over good food.
This time the storm enters from the Bay, not the Gulf.
President Matthews had explained that one. President Madani had helped him foil a bio-weapon of mass destruction from being smuggled in through the Gulf of Mexico. So, not the “Gulf” this time. The Chesapeake Bay still remained their most likely candidate.
An attack coming. It is neither chemical nor biological. I am informed that it is also not explosive or electronic. Rather, it is cultural.
We shall cut out their heart with their own words.
I can only offer you my prayers during this, your Christian holiday season.
Cornelia sighed. She’d read every one of those phrases a hundred times until they were ingrained in her memory.
A very discreet inquiry through the US interests section of the Swiss embassy in Tehran—technically the only diplomatic connection between the two countries—had returned two words from Pejman: “Nothing further.”
“I wish we could call Javad right now and ask again.”
“You wouldn’t be able to reach him.”
“Why not?”
Damien flicked on the microphone that would connect the watch desk and said aloud, “Shab-e Yalda. We’ll see how long it takes them to figure that one out.”
Within moments a watermelon and a pomegranate appeared on the screens.
“Not very long, I guess,” Cornelia looked at them. “What do they have in common other than both being red and messy to eat?”
As if in answer, a title appeared on the other screen.
Shab-e Yalda: Winter Solstice Party (Iran)
Successive lines were typed in rapidly:
Highly popular gatherings where food, drink, and poetry (esp. by Hafez) are shared
Typically lasts past midnight
Red fruit symbolizes dawn and life
Gatherings symbolize coming together in times of darkness
“All right, already. Enough,” Damien called out.
One more line appeared before they stopped:
Ancient origin: Celebrates triumph of Mithra—Sun God—over darkness
“You done good, Bettani.”
“Suck my tush, Damien,” a woman managed over her own laughter.
It was the first time Cornelia had ever heard any at the watch desk talk back, or talk at all to the Sit Room. She liked that they felt comfortable enough to do it, even knowing she was there as well as Damien.
“As I said, big party.” Then he made a loud raspberry sound before flicking off the mic switch. “So, I have a suggestion.”
“A tuba Christmas?”
“Absolutely.”
Cornelia looked at the pile covering half of the big conference table and decided that maybe he was right.
The streets were too bitterly cold to walk. Washington often dropped below freezing, but ten degrees was frosty even by a Marine’s standards. They caught the Metrorail to Capitol South and nearly froze as they hustled the two blocks through the dusk and Friday evening traffic that was always completely mad around the Capitol Building itself.
“I can’t believe you’ve never been to the Library of Congress. How in the world can I be in love with a woman who has never been there?”
“I don’t have a lot of time to read. Especially lately,” Cornelia pulled her scarf tighter and hurried faster along the icy sidewalk. Damn but the woman had legs, he practically had to jog to keep up with her long stride.
He risked a laugh and nearly froze his lungs.
“If this is an outdoor concert, you’re a dead man.”
“It’s not. Besides, the Library of Congress isn’t only about books to read.”
“What else then?”
“I’ll show you,” he decided that stopping to admire the Court of Neptune Fountain and its stunning bronze statuary would probably get him attacked.
“Right, like a tuba Christmas.” He ignored her sarcasm and led her up the broad flight of stone stairs.
“I’ve always loved the Library of Congress; this is what a library should look like.” The Thomas Jefferson Building covered an entire city block and rose three full stories. The main steps led them into the middle story. The Ground Floor was all offices and archives. The entry was at the First Story.
Not pausing at the main arches—it was really too cold to stop and point out the busts of history’s great writers stationed in circular windows far above—they practically burst through the front doors into the Great Hall.
Cornelia staggered to a stop and looked about in clear shock. It was one of the grandest rooms in all
of DC architecture and almost nobody came here. The palatial hall soared aloft for two towering stories. Grand, white marble staircases swept up either side of the hall, ornate with deeply carved balustrades. The upper story was all arches and columns making the area feel even larger because it appeared to have no bounds.
And in the center stood a grand Christmas tree that looked utterly impossible in the space.
“How?” Cornelia whispered in a gasp of shock. “How did they get that tree in here? It’s so perfect.”
“It’s a secret. I could tell you, except you’re not a librarian.”
In moments she’d inspected the roof, the entryways, even tapped a foot on the dark marble of the inlaid floor.
“They use a magic wand.”
She rolled her eyes at him and moved closer to the tree. Over a dozen feet at the base, it towered over twenty feet high in a near perfect cone. Its branches were thick with ornaments—They were books!—and sparkling lights.
“Every librarian was asked for their two favorite books: one of historical significance, one of modern enjoyment. The top two hundred titles were painted up as ornaments: a hundred historic, a hundred modern.”
“That explains the crazy collection of titles. Which were your two?” She began moving around the tree reading as she went. He followed, not wanting to be left behind again. There were perhaps fifty people already gathered for the concert, it was early yet. But several were walking about the tree, making shouting through it awkward.
“I’m not an LOC librarian so I didn’t get a vote. But if I had to choose, I’d say Beowulf as the first work in English Literature.”
“Which you’ve of course read in the original.”
“I took it as a challenge in high school. Ended up doing my own translation, which was fairly crappy, but I did it. And I’ve always been a John le Carré fan. The old spy thrillers. How about you?”
“You probably tried passing girls mash notes in old English.”
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