Disclosure of the Heart (The Heart Series) (28 page)

Placing my hand around the back of his neck, I moved in close to him. “I’m so sorry, Adam. This really isn’t good timing, is it?”

“I don’t think there’s ever good timing for something like this.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed my cheek. “But considering that I’ve got you back, I’d say the timing is as good as it gets.”

“I love you,” I said with some relief.

“I love you, too.” He pulled away and smiled. “So if you talked to them on the plane, why did it take you so long to get here?”

“I figured I owed it to Juan Carlos to let him know immediately. I went to see him.”

“You did? What did he say? What did
you
say?”

“I was honest about everything, and he was angry…really angry.” I frowned, not wanting to relive the bad scene. “I deserve it—even if he and I were on the outs. I deceived him.”

“He must despise me.”

“Pretty much.” I didn’t think I should recount all the insults. “He said something about Felicity being a ruse.”

“I assure you, she was not a ruse. She may even be a bloody pain in the arse later, but we’ll worry about that when we have to.”

“Will she say something?”

He was thoughtful for a moment and took a swig of beer. “Even though we’ve seen relatively little of each other in the last six months, the break-up didn’t go very well. She immediately brought up your name.”

“What did you say to that?” I asked in fear.

“I said, ‘Nicki and I are close enough friends that I’ve realized what’s missing in our relationship.’ That’s it.”

“Oh, that must not have gone over well.”

“No, it didn’t. Felicity has never thought herself lacking in any way. To hear otherwise was quite an insult to her.”

“Will she talk publicly about you?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. Will Juan Carlos?”

“Never. He’s too loyal to Logan. If he gossips about me, Logan looks bad. But I also think he’d be too embarrassed by it.”

“I’m sorry about that, but overall, what a stroke of luck.”

“Yeah, finally.”

“I realize things can still go sideways pretty quickly, but right now I think we’re doing okay.”

“Right now, yes.”

“I’m very happy,” he said, leaning down for a kiss.

“I’m happy, too,” I answered before my lips met his.

As we kissed, I felt some relief come over me and loosened up for the first time all day. Our hands roamed around each other’s bodies, and when I felt his erection, he murmured, “Let’s go to bed.”

“I want to, but I shouldn’t.” My to-do list reemerged in my mind, causing me to sit up straight. “Shit. I’m not done. I need to tell Lisa…and my dad. Before they hear it anywhere else.” I smiled. “But I’ll call my mom while I’m on the road this week. For any reservations she may have had at the beginning, I know this news will make her very happy, so I don’t have to talk to her immediately.”

“That’s right. There’s another trip.”

“We leave tomorrow night, remember?”

“
We
don’t leave tomorrow night. Only
you
now.”

“No more trips together.” I frowned.

“Hardly.” He wrapped me in a tight hug. “Many more trips together. Just the two of us, though. No fucking Dan Roark along.”

I giggled at that. “Where should we go first?”

In one continuous motion, he stood up and cradled me in his arms. “To my bed, of course.”

“Adam, I just said—”

“The night is young. You’ll see Lisa soon enough, and your parents can wait until the morning.”

“But you haven’t resigned yet.”

It was such a half-hearted protest that I knew it wouldn’t stop him. He continued carrying me back to his bedroom and said, “No, I haven’t resigned yet. I’ll do so tomorrow morning, but I’ll text my boss right now if it finally gets you in my bed.”

“No need for that,” I said, kissing behind his ear.

When we arrived at his room, our kisses were slow, but we hurriedly shed our clothes, helping each other out while tugging at our own. He pulled away to look at me. I felt like I was being judged, but also admired. “What?” I asked.

Tracing the dip of my waist with his fingertips, he smiled. “You’re just as beautiful as before.”

I glanced down at my chest and muttered, “Not much going on down there.”

“You’ve got a lot going on down there.” He held me close and patted my rear. “This part is great as well. No more insults about someone I love.”

That earned him a big kiss. When he grabbed my ass, I kissed him again with a laugh before jumping up and wrapping my legs around him. I could feel his erection right beneath me and asked, “Shall we stand?”

“Why yes, thank you.” He kissed me, letting his tongue tease mine, and after a minute, I just about died when he said, “Put me inside of you.”

“God, yes.” My hand reached down to place him just so.

We ended up against a wall, but it wasn’t fast and furious like last time. Instead, he was slow and determined, watching me the entire time, which made me come even harder.

Afterward, we went to the bed, and he curled up next to me, pulling me in tight. I touched his chest hair and smiled. “Nothing’s changed…”

“No, it hasn’t. Though I do hope I lasted a little longer than before. I remember not doing too well your first time. I believe you lost your virginity in the blink of an eye because I couldn’t control myself.”

“Neither one of us was good at controlling ourselves back then.”

Adam laughed. “Some would say we aren’t very good at controlling ourselves now.”

For the next hour, we planned out the rest of the week—how he would resign, how I’d tell my parents, and when we would see each other again. His father was doing so poorly, Adam planned on going back to London mid-week, but I wasn’t coming back from the president’s tour of the West until Saturday.

“Will you come home next week, then?”

“If I’m not working anymore, I should just stay in Cambridge and be with him. Don’t you think?”

He was so sad when he spoke that I immediately offered, “Do you want me to fly to see you on Sunday? I could take a few days off.”

“You’re wonderful,” he said, hugging me tightly. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“We’ll talk this week, though, right?”

“Every day, I hope.”

As I got dressed to go home, he frowned as I buckled my belt. “I don’t like it,” he said.

“What? This belt?”

“No. The fact that you’re leaving.”

“We just discussed this.” I kissed his cheek. “I need to talk to some people, and so do you.”

“But when we’re both back in DC for good, I won’t like that you’re not here.”

“What do you mean?”

Taking me in his arms, he smiled. “Well, I know we haven’t been together again for very long—”

“Like maybe a day.” I laughed.

“Yes, but given our history, can’t we skip the going-out stage?” He kissed my forehead, whispering, “I know that’s where my heart is.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, leaning back to assess what he was saying, whether he was about to play the wife card on me again.

“Will you move in with me? For now. As a start…”

I chuckled. At least he’d dialed it back a step. “We haven’t even gone on one date, and you want to live together?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s get through the drama around your resignation and our relationship first. Let’s see how that goes.”

“And then?”

“I agree we need to make up for lost time,” I said with a grin.

Lisa was asleep when I came in that night, so I didn’t get to speak with her until the morning. As I told her the whole story, she drank her coffee in silence but wore a self-satisfied smile.

After a while, she finally commented with a sigh. “God, I love being right.”

“Whatever.”

“I can’t take too much credit. I wasn’t the only one who called this. Rachel did as soon as she heard about Adam, and naturally David did, too. He said it was just a matter of time.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, his take was something like Adam finally had the opportunity to make things right and was determined to do it. Of course, he always refers to Adam as his ‘sorry sod of a cousin’ or something like that.”

I laughed. “How
is
David?”

“He’s good.” She smiled. “We will never last. We don’t want the same things.”

“How so?”

“His number one goal right now is to make a lot of money and have a good time, and you know me. I don’t care about money, and I’m not looking to be someone’s good time.”

“True.” She didn’t care about money, and with a former NBA player as a dad, she’d never need it regardless. Lisa simply wanted the same kind of stable marriage and family as her parents. Still, I was hopeful. “But he could be your good time for a while.”

“While I’m in DC,” she said with a naughty grin, “he’s a nice distraction.”

“Or as Rachel would say, he’s got a nice distraction.”

She winked. “One day we can all compare notes.”

Chapter Seventeen

A
FTER
M
Y
T
ALK
W
ITH
L
ISA
, I waited not so patiently for a call from Adam, jumping at anything remotely unexpected all morning long. Whether it be an unannounced visitor to my office or certain numbers appearing on my phone or emails on my screen, I feared the other shoe would drop at any moment. Adam and I would be exposed, and the shit would hit the fan, but when would it happen?

Adam called me at nine, sounding more chipper than I’d expected. “Are you sure you’re still interested in me? I’m just an unemployed bloke now.”

“Oh my God. You resigned so quickly.”

“Well, my bosses are in London, and they’re hours ahead of us. I didn’t see any reason not to contact them as soon as I woke up.”

“So how did it go?” I asked, my stomach flipping.

“All in all, it went relatively well, but only because I resigned. They asked how long our relationship has been going on, and I said it was relatively recent. They asked about Felicity as well. I was scolded, as could be expected, but since I was quitting, I’d taken away their thunder of sacking me.”

“That’s true. They don’t have much to do now.”

“My editor even cracked a joke that the school chums had become a little too chummy.”

“It’s good they could kid about it.”

“They immediately asked if the White House knew, and I said you’d disclosed everything to the president himself.”

“What did they say to that?”

“To be honest, I think they were a little surprised. They’re not daft, though. They called me the sacrificial lamb for the White House. I didn’t quite own up to it.”

“So are they releasing a statement?” I feared the BBC would feel the need to take the moral high ground and also make a news splash about it.

“No, they feel exposed as well, like the other press will criticize the BBC for going soft on the US president because of their White House correspondent. They said they’d respond only if asked, saying it was a minor personnel issue that had been dealt with.”

“Whew.” I felt the urge to wipe my brow, yet guilt soon overpowered my relief. “I’m really sorry this has turned out this way for you.”

“But I didn’t tell you the most important part.”

“What’s that?”

“They’ll hire me back in another capacity in the future.”

“Oh, that’s great! Especially because we won’t live here forever.”

“We won’t?”

“Well, I mean, I won’t have this job forever, and then in the future…if we were still together we could—”

“We’re absolutely going to be together. I was just wondering where we might live other than DC?”