First Lady (15 page)

She had to have money, and Terry Ackerman was the only person she could trust to get it for her without turning her in. She made her way to a pay phone and called him.

FBI Special Agent Antonia “Toni” DeLucca pulled out of the parking lot of the truck stop near Mc-Connellsburg, Pennsylvania, where Jimmy Briggs had stolen the Chevy Corsica. She and her partner had questioned employees and truckers, but no one had seen anything. In a few hours, they’d come back to talk to the workers on the next shift.

She gazed across the seat of the government-issued Taurus at her new partner and wondered how she’d ended up with someone named Jason. Secret Service Special Agent
Jason Williams
. Nobody over the age of thirty had the first name of Jason. And maybe that was what irritated her the most because Jason Williams wouldn’t see thirty for another four years, while Toni had passed it more than a decade and a half ago.

When Toni had entered the Bureau in the late seventies, she had been one of only two hundred female agents. More than twenty years later, she’d managed to survive the gender wars by being tougher and smarter than everybody she’d started out with. She’d considered it her duty to rise through the ranks, only to discover that what she loved most was working as a field agent. Three years ago she’d gone back to doing just that, and she’d never been happier.

Late last night she’d been ordered to report to the resident agency in Harrisburg, which was too small to have a field office, and at the early morning briefing, she and the other agents who’d been called in had learned of Cornelia Case’s disappearance. As concerned as she was about what had happened to the nation’s First Lady, she was excited to be part of an elite task force of agents assigned to find her. Unfortunately, she’d been given a new partner—one who wasn’t even with the Bureau. And, although she’d worked with the Service before, the agents had been seasoned veterans, not twenty-six-year-olds named Jason.

He had that scrubbed-up white bread look of a lot of Secret Service agents. Short light brown hair, symmetrical features, and what looked like a tiny zit on his chin. How could they have given her a partner who still got zits?

They’d also given her a partner who didn’t have to battle his weight or worry about wrinkles. A partner with no gray in his hair. She didn’t have to look in the rear-view mirror to know how much of it threaded her own short dark hair. Still, her olive skin was relatively unlined, and even though her shape was curvier than she’d like, she was still fit.

So far, she and the kid hadn’t said more to each other than they needed to, but now Toni decided it was time to put her new partner through his paces.

“So tell me something, kid. Whose butt did you have to kiss for this assignment?”

“Nobody’s.”

“Yeah, tell me another one.”

He shrugged.

She was Italian, and she hated being put off with white bread shrugs. The kid sank another rung lower in her estimation. “Interesting. All you had to do was show up, and they decided to put you on an elite task force. Aren’t you the lucky one? In the Bureau, we have to work for assignments like these.”

He turned to her and smiled. “I was handed this assignment because I’m very good at what I do.”

“They gave me a real live hotshot,” she drawled. “Isn’t this my lucky day?”

He frowned, so she knew that she’d scored. Her satisfaction faded, however, as she realized the frown wasn’t a sign of irritation but deep thought.

“How bad do you want this?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“How bad do you want to find Aurora?”

Aurora was the Service’s code name for Cornelia Case. The members of a president’s family always had code names that started with the same letter. Dennis Case had been Arrow.

She took her time deciding how to answer. “I wouldn’t mind having it on my record.”

“Not good enough. And not honest, either. The word is, you’re the one who’s a hotshot.”

“Is that so? What else have you heard?”

“That you’re arrogant, hard to work with, and one of the best field agents in the Bureau.”

“Snoopy little shit, aren’t you?” She decided to turn the tables on him. “I don’t like failure. And I don’t like scrubbed-up kids who think just going through the motions means they’ve done their job.”

“Then we’ve got something in common.”

“I doubt it. Your career’s so new it doesn’t matter whether you’re the one who finds Aurora.”

“It matters to me. Setting aside the fact that it’s hard to stomach the idea of losing the First Lady, I’m ambitious.”

“Yeah? How ambitious?”

“Ambitious enough to know that finding Aurora gets me noticed by the director, the Secretary, even the President.”

She gazed at his earnest, unlined face. “Lots of people are ambitious, hotshot. It’s doing the work that’s hard.”

His eyes skimmed from her graying hair to her slightly overweight body. “Oh, I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble keeping up with you.”

He’d thrown down the gauntlet, and she smiled. “Yeah? Well, we’ll see about that, little boy. We’ll see which one of us knows the most about how to find a missing First Lady.”

Both girls were cranky, so Nealy ordered room service for them and pretended she wasn’t annoyed with Mat for not returning. Lucy watched a movie, then fell asleep with Button curled beside her. Nealy showered, strapped the detestable padding around her middle, and slipped into her nightgown.

When she came out of the bathroom, she was startled to see Mat standing in the open doorway between their rooms. He was barefoot and his T-shirt hung out of the denim shorts he’d changed into earlier. His body seemed even larger silhouetted against the light, and despite the two girls sleeping on the bed, she felt as if they were very much alone.

She spoke softly, her tone light. “So you decided not to abandon us after all?”

“I want to talk to you.”

His low, harsh tone made her uneasy. “I’m tired. Let’s talk tomorrow.”

“We’re going to talk right now.” He jerked his head toward his room. She thought about refusing, but something in his expression told her it would be a waste of breath.

He shut the door behind them, and his eyes were wintry. “I don’t like being lied to.” Although he hadn’t touched her, she realized she was backed against the wall. “What do you—”

Her words got lost as he caught the hem of her nightgown and pulled it up. She tried to jerk away, but he clasped her arm.

“Stop it!”

He stared down at her, taking in the pillow tied to her waist and the lavender lace panties just below.

She struggled, pushing against his chest, but he was too strong for her. “Let me go.”

He’d seen what he wanted, and he slowly released her.

The fabric slid back down over her legs. She tried to push past him, but that big solid body was in the way.

His eyes bored through her. “You haven’t told me the truth about anything.”

He knew her pregnancy was phony, but did he know who she was? She tried to swallow her panic. “I—I told you I wasn’t endangering you or the girls. That’s all that counts.”

“Not in my book.”

“We can talk about this in the morning.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” He caught her shoulder and pushed her into the chair.

In all her life, no one had ever manhandled her, and she was so astonished she sputtered. “That was uncalled for!”

He splayed one hand on each arm of the chair, caging her. A cold finger ran down her spine as she gazed up into those hard eyes. This man had rough edges that she couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

“Play time’s over, princess. Let’s start with your real name.”

Her
name
? He didn’t know who she was! She gulped for air. “Don’t call me that,” she managed. “And Kelly
is
my real name. My maiden name.” She’d been thinking on her feet all her life, and she struggled to put a story together. “There’s no reason for you to know my married name.”

“You’re married?”

“I’m . . . divorced, but my ex-husband won’t accept it. His family is very powerful, quite wealthy. I—I need some time to . . . to—” What? Her mind went blank. She regarded him haughtily. “My personal life is none of your business.”

“You made it my business.”

He straightened so she was no longer caged, but he didn’t move away. She struggled to sound reasonable. “It’s complicated. I needed to disappear for a while, that’s all. There might be some . . . detectives chasing me, so I decided to disguise myself as a pregnant woman to throw them off.” She couldn’t let him push her around any longer, and she glared at him. “Stop looming over me. I don’t like it.”

“Good.” He didn’t move, and as she gazed at that tough, grim mouth she realized how fond she’d grown of his smile. He didn’t use it a lot, but when he did, it melted her bones.

She knew scores of military men, so she understood the value of a retaliatory strike. “You’re going to be nasty about this, aren’t you? Even though it has nothing to do with you. You physically attacked me!”

“I didn’t attack you.” He scowled, but he backed off half a step.

“Why didn’t you just ask me if I was really pregnant? And how did you know, by the way?”

“You fell against me, remember? Right after we got here when you were holding the Demon. Pregnant women’s bellies don’t feel like pillows.”

“Oh.” She remembered how strangely he’d looked at her. At the time, she’d thought he was reacting to the sexual chemistry she’d felt percolating between them, but apparently the percolation was only working one way. She rose. “Your behavior is inexcusable and boorish!”

“
Boorish
? You do have some vocabulary, princess. What comes next? Off with his head?” He rested the heel of one hand against the wall, about a foot from her head. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re alone in a motel room with a man you don’t know real well.”

His words were an implied threat, but she wasn’t afraid. Mat might be stubborn and crotchety. He might not have any soft edges, and he certainly wasn’t in touch with his feminine side, but she couldn’t imagine him physically hurting her.

She regarded him levelly. “Back off. You need me a lot more than I need you.” That wasn’t true, but he didn’t know it. “Starting right now, I don’t want any more questions about my past. I’m not involved in anything illegal, and I’ve said it doesn’t concern you. You’ll just have to accept that.”

“Or what? You’ll take away all my castles?”

“And marry you off to the ugliest lady in the kingdom.”

She’d hoped to make him smile, but he looked as grouchy as a bear being poked with a stick. “Take off that damned pillow. It looks stupid.”

“Go pound your chest and eat a banana.” Oh, God, she was playing with fire, and she didn’t even care.

He went completely still. “What did you say?”

“Uhmm . . . nothing. A slight case of Tourette’s. It comes and goes.”

He almost smiled. “You don’t scare easily do you?”

“Well . . . you are acting a bit like an ape.”

“As opposed to your civilized rich boy ex-husband who’s hunting you down with a team of detectives?”

“On the positive side, he . . . uh . . . hates bananas.”

“You’re making this up. Every bit of it. There isn’t any ex-husband.”

She lifted her chin. “Then how did I get pregnant? Answer that one, wise guy.”

The corner of his mouth quirked, and he shook his head. “All right. I give up. We’ll play this your way for a while.”

“Thank you.”

“Except for one thing . . . I have to know the truth about whether or not you’re still married.”

This time it wasn’t hard for her to meet his eyes. “No. I promise you. I’m not married.”

He nodded, and she saw that he believed her. “All right. But I don’t want to see that damned pillow around your waist ever again. I’m serious about this. Traveling with Sandy’s kids and me is all the camouflage you’re going to get. Understand?”

She realized she wasn’t going to be able to fight him on this, but would the presence of two children be enough to hide her identity? “What am I going to say to Lucy?”

“Tell her you gave birth during the night, then sold the baby to a band of gypsies because it reminded you of her.”

“I will not.”

“Then tell her the truth. She can handle it.”

She shrugged, something he could interpret any way he chose.

Silence fell between them. She heard a door thud across the hall, the clatter of a room service cart, and she suddenly felt awkward.

He smiled. “At least now I don’t feel like such a pervert.”

“What do you mean?”

“For getting turned on by a pregnant lady.”

Her skin prickled. “Really?”

“Don’t act like you’re surprised.”

“I don’t think men usually get . . . turned on by me.” A lot of men liked her, and even more were attracted to her power. But they weren’t attracted to her sexually. She was too powerful. Her position, her
dignity
, had leached the sexuality out of her. “I really turn you on?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“Want a demonstration?” The husky note in his voice felt like a caress.

“I— Oh, no . . . No, I don’t think—”

He smiled and came toward her. His jeans brushed her nightgown, and as she gazed up at him, she had the unfamiliar sensation of feeling petite. And very female.

His big hands settled at her waist, and he drew her close. He was smiling a little bit, as if he knew a secret that she didn’t. She realized he was going to kiss her, and she was going to let him.

Would she remember how? Surely it was one of those things a person wouldn’t forget, like riding a—

Their mouths met. Her eyelids drifted shut, and she felt herself melt against him. Then she stopped thinking and simply gave in to the sensations.

Those big hands moved along her spine, around her sides. His lips parted. Demanded. She felt as if she were drowning.

And then panic set in because he didn’t know he was kissing a national institution. He didn’t understand he was kissing someone who knew all about how to be First Lady . . . but very little about what it took to be a woman.