“Oh my god. I’m so sorry, Mr. Vice President,” Harvey struggled up out of his seat. “Are you okay, sir?”
With Harvey’s help, Zack clambered out of the two sleeping agents’ laps. He rubbed at his jaw. It wasn’t broken. He checked his aching teeth with his tongue and detected no chips. But oh brother, it was going to hurt for a while.
“Is that how you wake up? When you find a wife, she’s in trouble, Harvey.”
“Uh. Are you sure you’re all right, Mr. Vice President?”
Zack patted the agent’s shoulder, reminding himself to never do that again with a sleeping Secret Service agent. “Nothing that time won’t heal, Harvey. Sorry to wake you,” he worked his jaw again and a jolt of pain was his reward, “more sorry than I’d expected. Where’s Anne?”
Harvey blinked at him stupidly for a moment.
“We need to turn back and get her. She’s—” Zack started to turn for the cockpit.
“She’s already gone, Mr. Vice President.” Harvey rested a restraining hand on Zack’s elbow. “Sorry, I assumed you knew. She flew out this morning. Commercial flight. Destination Tennessee.”
Zack eyed Harvey and was just tired enough to consider returning the favor of fist to jaw.
“Gave me a note,” he found it and handed it over.
Zack read the single line. “You were wonderful.” Were! Past tense.
Harvey must have spotted the rage that swept over Zack.
He held up both hands as if in surrender, perhaps in retreat. “Through Agent Detra Willand. I never saw Ms. Darlington, Mr. Vice President, or I would have made sure that you saw her. Detra said she worked like a demon until the PJs got a command-and-control team in place. Only then she collapsed. After the medic cleared her, she caught a ride to the Milan airport with the British minister.”
“Where’s Detra?”
“Escorting Ms. Darlington home.”
Zack wished there was a chair handy for him to collapse into, but they were all occupied by sleeping agents. Some of their clothes were still wet, many torn, only two still had ties. They had scrapes and bruises, one had his arm in a sling. He probably didn’t look any better; they’d battered themselves against the disaster right alongside him.
“Harvey, when these guys wake up, tell them that I’m giving each of them a thousand dollars out of my own pocket to spend on their families this Christmas. Christ knows they deserve something better than that, but it’s a good start.”
Harvey hesitated.
“You too. I know you have no one special for Christmas, though you damn well should.”
“I’m not the only one who should, sir.”
Zack grimaced. He’d barely had time to absorb the idea that he’d found the only woman for him, before Anne had slapped that down hard. “Just don’t spend it all at the horse races,” he dodged Harvey’s sympathy.
“Yes, sir,” and then he smiled. “Awfully sorry about the chin, Mr. Vice President.”
Zack offered his best nonchalant shrug and ignored the pain in his jaw; Harvey had really caught him. He went back to the 757’s VIP stateroom. He almost crashed face-down onto the couch, but he was just exhausted enough that he could still see Anne lying there, curled up asleep after they’d had sex.
No, damn it! They’d made love. He knew the damned difference.
Then he dropped into his chair.
He just didn’t know what to do about it.
Chapter 10
Anne arrived at the Darlington Estates Farm in far worse shape than she’d left it, which was really saying something. She’d left in a fit of pique, wishing there was some way, any way out of her own life.
An idyllic affair with a powerful and wonderful man.
An Italian getaway.
And she’d been the one to find the remains of the Thai Minister of the Environment, whom she’d recognized by the Old World cufflinks that he’d worn to one of the dinners…there’d been little else to identify him by, though she was doing her best to block out that particular memory.
He’d been the first of many. Though there had been the miracle moments as well. She’d seen fewer and fewer of either as the relief effort took some shape and her role shifted away from the front line itself. Her ability to organize dinner and entertainment for five hundred guests had translated surprisingly well. “Winery Tour” in her mind became the search through the bar and night club that had also been demolished by the avalanche. The “Main Meal” was naturally the conference center hall and meeting rooms. The “Kitchen Tour,” an ever-popular viewing before a Darlington dinner, was all of the staff and help areas. The “Crops Tour” started working the open field and roadways. “The Stables” were all of the little chalets.
Thankfully, it had been mid-morning and there was a day’s hiatus of the meetings, so most of the people had been out of the building. Had the attack been planned as a demonstration with minimal casualties? Or had they not known about the hiatus and intended to kill both government officials and townspeople alike? None of the answers reached her. Detra also claimed no further knowledge.
Three Caucasian, three Arabic. No IDs. Mercenaries for some industrial super-conglomerate? A personal vendetta against some single member at the conference?
The Vice President’s decision to attend had indeed escalated the rank of politician that every country had sent and thus increased the value of the target.
For the hundredth time she wished she’d never left home. Had merely watched the disaster as some obscure news piece on television. She’d never confronted death in any form more violent than a clean hospital bed or under hospice’s gentle care.
Zack had been magnificent. She’d kept receiving reports about some group who wouldn’t identify themselves, but were proving very effective. They covered twice the ground of anyone other than the PJs. She’d finally gone to see who they were for herself and had spotted Zack and his phalanx of Secret Service agents lifting sections of a collapsed roof. Mother, child, dog, and a form wrapped in a sheet had emerged. They were handed off to the medical teams and Zack had moved on to the next structure.
She had retreated back to her temporary headquarters in a single-car garage that had been untouched by the devastation. There she had continued until she could barely see the three-man military team that came to take over from her.
Anne had thought about going to Zack, but what more was there to say? He hadn’t seriously proposed, but she’d ended the relationship just as thoroughly as if he had when she turned him down.
When the British Minister of the Department of Energy and Climate Change had offered her a lift to wherever she wanted to go, she took it. Sitting in the car morphed into gathering her belongings at the untouched hotel where she couldn’t bear to imagine Zack finding her. The first step toward home had become a second, then a third. By the time she’d reached Milan, she was on a conveyor belt back to the farm; every choice turned toward Tennessee right down to two open seats on a one-stop flight to Charlotte, North Carolina leaving in an hour.
Her mother had taken one look at Detra and herself and sent them both off to bed without questions.
Anne didn’t remember undressing, but must have because she’d woken to find her clothes in a heap on the carpet.
Now she sat on her bed, showered and dressed in fresh clothes, but with no energy to do more despite a dozen hours of near catatonic sleep. The broad queen size four-poster bed that had rarely seen a man let alone a husband. The flowered curtains and matching bedspread: ivy twined improbably with buttercups and field daisies. Oaken bookshelves with dressage trophies from high school and steeplechase from college. She barely recognized it as her own room after the last two weeks.
With the changes that she had gone through, that her heart had gone through, it was impossible that she was still the same person. She held up a hand and twisted it back and forth. It was defin
itely hers and it was attached solidly enough to her arm, so she must be herself. Even if she didn’t feel it.
A soft knock and her mother slipped into the room. She looked completely the Tennessee matriarch. Leather, knee-high riding boots. Snug black slacks. A white, pleated-front blouse exquisitely tailored to advertise both figure and wealth without ostentation. Her gold-blond hair a perfect coif. Minimal makeup on her clear skin. Mary Annette Darlington fit her looks well, thoughtful and kind with a spine of steel when needed. Except now she looked very worried.
“Can you talk about it yet, dear?”
Anne could only shake her head no.
Her mother came in, closed the door quietly, and then simply gathered Anne against her bosom. She smelled of talcum powder and ever so slightly of horse. She’d already had her morning ride. It was the smell of home.
“Agent Willand caught me up over breakfast. Italy sounds awful.”
“Parts of it.”
“You’re not in the news.”
Anne flinched.
“And no, I’m not telling anyone about how wonderful you were. There’s marketing, and there’s my baby girl. Guess which one wins.”
It was an old routine going back as far as she could remember. “Baby girl always wins,” they said together, but Anne was unable to join in the laugh.
“They’ll figure it out at some point, but Zachary Thomas has made such a big splash I just may have to vote for him myself when the time comes.” Which was quite a concession because her mother had always voted straight line for the other party. “Is he really as wonderful as he appears to be?”
“He’s better.”
Her mother let her go and rose from the bed, then sat in another chair and scooted it up until their knees were practically touching. In front of them, a grand arched window looked out across the fallow winter fields, the big horse barn of natural wood with a green roof. Beyond it ranged the misty Smokies of the Cherokee National Forest, as familiar as the feel of her own hands and as foreign now as remote wilderness.
“Now, child. I know that face. That’s a face I’ve watched since the day you were born to light up the world. But it’s not being very lit at the moment.”
“Vice President Zachary Thomas proposed.” Anne hadn’t meant it to slip out like that, hadn’t meant to tell that to anyone, anywhere, ever.
“Might quick by my reckoning, but he’s a wise man. Knows when he’s met the best woman he ever will. Other than myself of course, but I’m taken after all and old enough to be his mother no matter how hard I do try to not look it.”
She wanted to snap at her mother. There was nothing special about Anne Darlington. But Anne had made the mistake of saying that before and her number one fan, her mother, had stepped up to the plate. From there she’d line-driven the initial pitch right back down her throat, in front of Jeffrey L. Walters and his family. Jeffrey, the only even marginally decent candidate before Zachary, wisely had run for the hills.
Her mother couldn’t seem to see the truth. There was nothing special about her. Pretty, wealthy, polite, and from a socially powerful family. None of that sounded like it had anything to do with her.
“What did you tell him?” Her mother asked it like a foregone conclusion.
# # #
“She turned you down?”
Zack could only stare into his whiskey and nod. He was slouched on the couch in the Oval Office.
He’d come straight from the plane, a flight for which only he and the pilot had been awake. The President had taken one look at him, pointed toward a couch, and poured three fingers of whiskey. He was down by two with one finger to go. The problem was that, if it was football and not whiskey, the fourth down was over before he’d even had a chance to call the play.
“Said it almost without my asking. ‘If you ask me, I will say no, Mr. Vice President.’ She even calls me that during sex—I’m mean when we’re making lo—” He rubbed the glass against his forehead, but the President had poured it neat rather than over ice so it did nothing to cool his brow. “Sorry, too much information.”
Peter shrugged that it was okay. “I’m so sorry, Zack. I really thought she was the one for you.”
“Thank you, Mr. President. I was starting to think that myself.”
The last finger of whiskey had gone somewhere and the President refilled his glass. Reset the ball, three fingers to go. Maybe by then he’d be down.
“You earned a lot of good will in Italy. The rescues. Calling in your old pararescue unit. It will stand you in good stead next year.”
“Let’s just make sure the next conference is somewhere flat, like Nebraska.”
“Deal. I think you can make any plan you want after your performance over there, both before and after the attack. You saved the lives of dozens of countries’ top politicians. I know it was awful, but it was still well executed.”
“That’s not why I did it,” Zack stared down into the whiskey. Anne would know why, knew why. There had been no question as they landed the sailplane and sprinted to help, helping was just what people did. Or should do. So few did, but Anne, with no military training, had raced to help.
“I know that’s not what motivated you,” the President said patiently. “Of course I know that. But I’m trying to find you some light from the situation, buddy.”
“And why is he in need of light?” Genny Matthews came striding in, looking like her normal million dollars in a soft green dress that complemented the room’s Christmas ornaments. “Merde! Zachary you look awful.”
“Perfect. Goes exactly with how I feel.”
“Anne turned him down.” Zack was glad that the President was there to explain, he didn’t think he could say it again without his heart dying.
“You ask her already?” Genny spun on him. So much for someone else taking the front-line defense.
“No! Yes. Not really. She said, ‘I love you, Mr. Vice President.’ I asked what she was going to call me when I asked her to marry me and she said, ‘I will say no, Mr. Vice President.’ I don’t exactly call that encouraging.”
Then the irate First Lady turned on her husband and Zack once again hoped for relief. “And what do you say to him when he tell you that his heart is broken?”
“He said no such thing,” Peter Matthews held up his hands in self defense. “I told him I was sorry. What else was I supposed to do?”
The First Lady made a noise deep in her throat like a Black Hawk engine that was grinding to life but had no fuel. Zack wondered if the President would be sleeping on the couch tonight. Then he wished he hadn’t thought that because it reminded him of Anne sleeping on the couch on Air Force Two and that led him back to…
Whiskey.
His second glass was only a finger down.
Two to go.
Would six fingers of whiskey get him a new down? Ten earn him a first down plus yardage? No. It would get him a blinding headache and solve nothing. Regretfully he set aside the remaining two fingers.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“About what?” He looked up at the First Lady who was still storming back and forth in front of his couch. “I think I lost the thread of the conversation.”
“About Anne?”
Zack shrugged, “She said no.”
Genny Matthews stared at him in disbelief for a long moment, then smacked her palm against her forehead.
Chapter 11
“This is Anne,” she almost hadn’t answered her cell phone. She didn’t trust unlisted numbers. She hadn’t even known there was cell reception out here at Beau Ridge.
“Hold please.” And some thin thread of Southern politeness had her agreeing and in moments she was listening to Christmas carol hold music. She was sitting on top of her favorite horse, looking at the most beautiful vista in the entire Smokies: the forests behind her, the rolling fo
othills and the farm below, and in the distance the sun glinting off Boone Lake.
Christmas was only days away and she knew she was going to be a crashing bore on the family. She was past being able to help herself and her mother had merely patted her hand and promised, as she always did, that things just had a way of naturally turning out for the best. Ma was even right on occasion, but not this one.
To shake off her depression, for her family’s sake if not her own, Anne had saddled up Mephista. Her blood bay mare was part sweetheart and part she-devil. She was also a true dark red with a charcoal black mane and tail that reached down to her hocks which only made her more dramatic—and didn’t the mare just know it.
Anne had ridden across the farm fields and up into the Cherokee National Forest before Detra awoke. The Secret Service had been on the verge of recalling Detra, and Anne had worried about the loss of the agent’s cheery take on the world—it was all that had kept her sane these last few days. Then the news of Anne’s own participation in the Italian disaster recovery had broken.
For days Anne had been obsessed with the ongoing news coverage of the event. Perhaps by the intense media focus on Zack as well, but she wasn’t going to admit that to her mother or herself.
Then yesterday her own face had appeared on the screen.
VP’s Girlfriend Saves The Day!
Anne Is Disaster’s Darling!
Where is Anne D.?
Some PJ, answering questions before his unit pulled out at the close of the search-and-rescue effort, had offhandedly referred to the exceptional initial coordination by “a Ms. Darlington” that could be credited with directly saving dozens of lives if not more. He then quietly disappeared back behind his anonymous Special Operations smoke screen and received no more attention than a horse gave a kitten—one or two sniffs from the media and then a careful step around.
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