by Shayla Black
So Zack was back to mooning over his press secretary. Little surprise. Roman tried to refocus his friend. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means Liz is driving me to drink.”
Roman sighed, searching for patience. “That wasn’t what I was asking.”
Zack slanted him a challenging stare. “Tell me you ever felt an ounce of true passion for Joy.”
“Of course I did.”
“Bullshit. You had a hard-on for the idea of her, not the woman herself. And even that’s a crock of crap.” Zack tossed his hands in the air and resumed pacing. “God, how are we still here? How are we still stuck staring into our Scotches with long faces, denying ourselves everything our hearts want?”
Roman tried to hold on to his temper. Zack didn’t understand. He probably never would. “You might be. But you’re wrong about my feelings for Joy. You don’t really grasp what I want.”
“Is that what you think?” Zack scoffed. “You want a marriage that’s the polar opposite of your parents’. You want a wife who won’t fight with you, who never turns your gut inside out. You want to spend your life with a woman who’s incapable of making you wish you hadn’t met her one minute, and then forces you to realize that you can’t live without her in the next. You, my dense friend, want to feel nothing. You want a housekeeper, hostess, and cook you have sex with, one who wears your ring on her finger like a trophy and doesn’t tug on your heart at all.”
“That’s pretty fucking hypocritical coming from a man who chose the same path.”
“I did, and you know what? I regret it. I didn’t wait long enough. I wasn’t patient, or maybe I just didn’t believe in love. Life is all about perspective, isn’t it? I know you hated the seemingly endless cycle of your parents’ breakups and makeups. Their fighting and the resulting upheaval. But I saw something different. I saw passion. I saw two people who loved each other so much they were willing to fight every day and never give up the struggle to make their marriage work. My parents never did that. My father was the head of the household and when my mother became a problem, he decided she was no longer an asset. So he sent her to a mental ward. Tidy and clinical. Cold. Ruthless.”
Roman conceded that Zack’s father had been downright arctic where Constance was concerned, but his friend didn’t understand what it was like to grow up with constant bellowing and shrieking rattling the walls. To this day, he had recurring nightmares about the stairs vibrating under his feet with the thunder of his parents’ shouted obscenities and slurs while he sat praying they wouldn’t kill each other. The next morning, he’d often creep from his room, expecting another bloody battle in World War III, only to find them sharing a kiss so fiery they’d forgotten he even existed.
“You and Joy were never chilly strangers.”
“No, we were friends. We cared deeply for each other and shared common interests. We were compatible because we had one mutual goal to bind us together: the White House. That was all we talked about, all we planned for. We had sex maybe twenty times our entire marriage.”
Roman felt his jaw drop. They’d been married for six years before her death. “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m pretty sure you and Gus went at it more than that the first week you started sleeping together. You can discount that kind of passion all you like, but I can’t live without it anymore. I can’t be this hollow on the inside for the rest of my life. I need Liz to come back.” Zack cast an agitated glance out the window again.
Roman watched numbly. Oh, his first week with Gus. He remembered those golden days with perfect clarity, as if they had just happened yesterday. The two of them had gotten into a horrible argument about politics. One minute she’d been calling him a blind nationalist who couldn’t see the future because his head was too far up Zack’s ass…and the next he was tearing off her clothes and thrusting as deep into her as he could manage on the kitchen table.
He’d been so desperate. He hadn’t wanted sex with Augustine. He’d needed it. He’d had to have it or he would fucking die.
And that had scared the shit out of him.
Roman stood. “I didn’t know about you and Joy.”
Zack took a deep breath and turned. “I didn’t want anyone to know. I went into the marriage knowing exactly what it would be. I expected peace. What I didn’t expect was the emptiness. I truly loved her, but I was never in love with her. Then, when I met Elizabeth, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake.”
“Augustine isn’t Elizabeth,” Roman insisted.
“And you aren’t me. But Elizabeth drives me crazy.”
“The way Gus makes me insane,” he admitted.
“But in a good way…if you’d let her.” Zack shook his head. “I see you making the same mistakes over and over. It damn near kills me. What the hell are you doing with Darcy Hildebrandt? A woman like that would put you to sleep for the rest of your life.”
“I’m not doing anything with her except working and being polite. Why does everyone assume there’s something going on between us?”
“Because I watched you with her tonight.”
Roman couldn’t BS Zack—or himself. He’d paid careful attention to Darcy. The woman had been nice to a fault. She never raised her voice and she knew how to make a man feel as if he was in control, powerful. She checked a lot of the boxes on his list.
Damn it. Even listening to his own thoughts, he sounded like he needed therapy. Or a swift kick. He didn’t want to be this asshole.
“Are you going to date her?”
“No.” Roman couldn’t. While he admitted that Darcy interested him on some level, she didn’t intrigue him. She didn’t tie him in knots and make him sweat. She certainly didn’t make him hard, like Augustine, who was so close he could almost taste her. “I want Gus. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t seem to stop myself.”
“Why the fuck should you stop yourself? I understand the past. We were all young and stupid and ambitious, but I’m going to ask the only question that matters now. Are you happy?”
“Of course.” Wasn’t he? He’d accomplished everything he’d promised his ladder-climbing twenty-something self he would. He’d reached the pinnacle of power.
“Well, I’m not. I’m done. When we get back to the States next week, I’m going to announce that I won’t seek a second term. Maybe if the Russians figure out I’m not going to play these games anymore, they’ll let up.”
Roman stopped, his whole world tilting askew. All of their lives, they’d worked to be here. When other kids had dreamed about being baseball players or rock stars, he and Zack had dreamed of the White House. Now Zack intended to throw it all away without a fight? “How could you make a decision like this without consulting me?”
Zack slumped back on the couch. “I don’t know what to do, Roman. Some moments I think that’s the right move. Others…I’m not sure if announcing I won’t seek a second term would launch the conspirators’ plans into more rapid motion. The not knowing is killing me.”
Roman sat beside him. There was zero chance he would allow Zack to give up his second term. They still had a lot of work to do for the people, policies to implement that would make a difference in Americans’ lives. Zack was a popular president who knew how to get things done. And Roman would protect his friend’s legacy, as always. That meant dealing with the situation they found themselves mired in now.
“I’ll figure this out and take care of everything,” he promised Zack. “I leave for Homewood Sanatorium the day after tomorrow. I’ve got myself set up at a B and B. It’s way out in the country. I doubt anyone there will know who I am. I’m going to figure out what happened to your mother. Maybe then we’ll know who’s coming for you.”
“And why. I want to know why.” Zack looked older than his years, a deep crease of worry furrowing his brow. “I want to know why all these people around me had to die. What do these assholes want? Why did they put me here? Roman, what if I’m not Zack Hayes?”
His stomach flipped. He’
d looked at the problem from all angles, and this was one of the ugliest scenarios he’d considered. “You are. I don’t care what happens or what comes out of this investigation. You’ve got to be Zack Hayes.”
“What if I’m really Sergei?” He finally voiced the question, his tone strained and hollow.
This was the possibility they’d all begun to fear. “You’re Zack.”
“Natalia Kuilikov gave birth to a son around the same time I was born. Her child died, according to all the records. And yet when Connor and Lara talked to her, she still spoke fondly about her Sergei, as if he was still alive.”
This was the most compelling evidence they had to support the conclusion that Zack was actually the son of his former Russian nanny, but it was all circumstantial. With one bullet, the Russians had ensured that Natalia would never talk to anyone ever again.
The only other way to know for certain, comparing DNA samples, was impossible. The president of the United States couldn’t demand the genetic material of a dead Russian citizen who’d cared for him as an infant without raising brows and setting chins wagging. And since Franklin had given away everything of Constance’s shortly after her death, Zack had no hairs from a brush or the like with which to compare her genetic material to his. Nor could he exhume her body for answers since she’d been cremated. Even if he could, turning up graves wouldn’t go unnoticed—either by the press or his enemies. “We don’t know for certain if that was her son’s name.”
“We don’t know it wasn’t, either. I remember my mother babbling about a baby dying. She did that when she was drunk. She’d also weep, apologize. I didn’t understand. My father never explained. When Mom got on a jag, he’d hustle her out of the room before I could ask questions. But recalling those times got me thinking. What if Constance’s baby died and I’m the one they replaced him with?”
“No.” It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. That would make Zack a non-American born on Russian soil, and thus constitutionally unable to serve as POTUS. He’d be impeached. Dishonored. The repercussions of that were too horrible for Roman to even contemplate. “Impossible. You look so much like your father.”
“We both know my father likely had an affair with Natalia Kuilikov. God knows he was never faithful or even terribly discreet. Maybe he got her pregnant, and I’m the result. It would explain so much. If that’s true, the Russians would have the perfect reason to ensure I made it to the White House. Once I was sworn in, they had a nearly foolproof way to blackmail me into doing whatever they want. Which could be anything. We have sanctions against Russia right now. Putin is looking to expand his power base. They could ask me to look the other way as he annexes another part of the old Soviet block. They might want me to pull out of NATO altogether. I won’t do it. They’ll have to kill me before I’ll betray my country.”
Roman clenched his fists. Zack had been thinking about this possibility a lot, and he hated to admit it…but this theory made far too much sense. “Have you asked your father?”
“Asked him what?” He laughed, the sound bitter. “He’s not in his right mind. Hell, most days I’m the only person he remembers.”
Once it was clear the dementia had completely overtaken Frank Hayes’s mind, they’d tried to put him in a memory care facility. But the man was a master of escape. Once he slipped out and tasted freedom, he inevitably found himself surrounded by the press. Or maybe the scumsuckers found him and took advantage of the old man’s state. Either way, reporters snapped pictures of him walking the streets in his robe and slippers, ranting that his son was never around.
Whenever he and Zack secured Frank in the White House, the man was calmer, as though proximity to the son he’d invested his life in quieted the demons ravaging his brain. He still had moments of lucidity. Not many, but every so often Roman would hear Frank talk about how proud he was of his son and share a fond memory or two. “But there are times he remembers the past.”
“They’re getting fewer and further between. Let’s see what we can find out while we’re in the UK,” Zack replied. “If we come up short, once we’re Stateside again I’ll try to probe him about the past. Maybe he’ll have useful information, if he can recall anything. I spoke to his nurse earlier tonight. Seems he’s okay right now. He thinks I’m in another part of the White House working.”
Frank could be difficult when his son was gone. They’d catch him roaming the halls, looking for Zack—his last link to a normal life.
The gravity of the political tangle they were in sucked the air from the room. Roman shifted and glanced at the clock again. Worrying about Gus was far preferable to worrying about Zack’s future as the leader of the free world. Not that he could keep his mind off the vixen for more than a minute or two.
“Where the fuck are they?” Zack asked, in sync with him as always. “I should have left her at home.”
“If you had, you wouldn’t have been able to watch over her. We shouldn’t let Gus too far out of our sight, either. Her father already lost his life over this plot. I can’t lose her too.” He sat back, realizing how possessive and protective his words had come out. “I mean, Dax… He couldn’t handle losing his sister.”
“Sure you did, buddy. Let me give you some advice. Ditch the Brit for tomorrow’s event. Take Gus instead. Bend a little. You know you want her. You’re both older and wiser. Try again.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. Even if I do, it’s got to be kept quiet. The last thing we need is the scandal pages making a big deal out of me dating someone who… Well, we all know the rumors.”
“Are you serious? Fuck the rumors. You know damn well they aren’t true.”
“Some of them are. She did sleep with Mad. And everyone in the free world thinks she had sex with you, too. Do you want some rag putting together one of those maps connecting us with a million and one lines running through Augustine’s square?”
“So we’re back to me being a whore. Nice.”
Roman whipped around to the sound of her voice. Naturally Gus chose that moment to stroll in. Liz followed her. Both women looked stunning in low-cut designer cocktail dresses made to catch the attention of any heterosexual man with freaking eyes. Liz’s blonde hair flowed around her like a halo while Gus’s sun-stroked brown curls and vampy lipstick made her look like sultry sin personified. The angel and the she-devil. They’d likely had every man in London panting after them.
“Elizabeth, I thought I made myself clear.” Zack stood, his eyes turning steely. “You were to stay here unless you’re working, and then you are only allowed to leave if someone I approve of accompanies you.”
“They were out having a few drinks.” Connor sauntered in behind them with an easy smile, waving a hand as though telling them to cool off. “And they weren’t alone. They had three Secret Service agents with them. They weren’t even far, just a couple of blocks away.”
Roman could bet they’d had a Secret Service escort. He knew a few of the detail would have had time off tonight. Had Augustine gone looking for Matthew Kemp? Had she spent the evening flirting with him? Making arrangements to meet up with him later for a hot fuck?
“Then why the hell didn’t you find them more quickly?” Zack asked. “You’ve been gone for hours.”
“I spotted them about an hour ago. I thought they deserved some time out, like the rest of us. As neither one of these lovely ladies is attached, I didn’t see any reason I should play dad and drag them home like wayward girls. So I watched over them and let them have some fun,” Connor replied, his tone even.
“That wasn’t what I asked you to do. I asked you to find them and bring them back immediately,” Zack spit out. “And Elizabeth, if you disobey me one more time, you’ll find yourself in custody.”
Liz frowned. “With the same hot Secret Service guys we just spent the evening with? Count me in, Mr. President.” She gave him a terribly sarcastic salute. “And I’ll be up bright and early. I know you have a date tomorrow night. We’ll need to make sure your tux is press
ed and you’re presentable. You’ve clearly done some drinking tonight. I’ll make sure the cook brings you my momma’s patented hangover cure.”
“I’m not drunk,” Zack shot back.
It didn’t slip past Roman that this was the same argument Zack and Liz had earlier, the roles merely reversed.
“Still, your date tomorrow night is barely twenty-two. We’ll need to work overtime to ensure you don’t look like a creepy old man next to her. You getting so little sleep won’t help the cause.” Liz turned to Gus with a hug. “Thanks for tonight. I had a blast. I’ll see you in a few hours, and we’ll go over our schedule.”
Gus winked her way. “Bright and early, sister.”
Liz stopped when she reached Connor. “Thank you for giving us breathing room and time. It was good for me to see some of the world and realize how many possibilities are out there. I appreciate it very much.”
“I meant what I said, Elizabeth.” Zack seemed determined to get the last word.
“You always do, Mr. President. Right up until the moment your words become an inconvenience. Don’t worry. I won’t give you trouble and I’m done making a fool of myself. I thank you for being so concerned about my and Augustine’s welfare that you would send your friend after us. I’m so sorry you had to wait up. Bless your heart.” With that parting shot, Liz turned on her heels and strode away.
Roman winced and glanced at Zack. Yeah, he knew Liz’s last words were the Deep South’s equivalent of fuck you.
Gus smoothed out her skirt, using the gesture to smother a laugh. “On that happy note, I’ll go to bed myself. You two can continue plotting world domination or whatever.”
“No, you’re going to stay right here because we’re having a talk,” Roman insisted. It was time to put his foot down. He couldn’t tell her why they were acting this way, but he could damn straight let her know he wouldn’t put up with her rebellion anymore.
