Night Is Mine (37 page)

“You’d fire me, claiming theft, or reckless endangerment of the First Lady, or spying for a corrupt FBI Director.” Suddenly what she’d meant as a joke felt all too possible. If she and Mark were right, and in her gut she knew they were, nothing rated too extreme for Katherine Matthews to do. Emily’s stomach wrenched, and she did her best to wave it off by taking a sip of the wine.

The thought, “Poison!” ripped through her brain, but she suppressed it. She couldn’t spit the wine back out now. As if guessing her thoughts, Katherine sipped from her own glass. Emily swallowed. After a heartbeat, then two with no side effects, she relaxed, at least on that one account.

“I’d be hit with a dishonorable discharge from the Army that I love, and my father would be ruined. I’m not likely to choose that.” She did her best to slide a little bonelessly into the chair as if she too was sated by her man, rather than wound up like an overfired turbocharger by Mark’s searing kiss and skillful manhandling. It was pure lust. That’s all it was.

Not on the helicopter two nights ago. That hadn’t been lust. He had made love to her. No other word for it.

“I wouldn’t do that.” Katherine’s cool voice said that was exactly what she’d do. “Besides,” she added brightly, “we’re just two lusty girls together.”

There was no way she’d bought into Mark’s act.

“He still hasn’t gotten you into bed?”

Well, they had. But they couldn’t.

“Sure he has… we’re just, um…”

“Having a few problems.”

It wasn’t a question but she didn’t argue the point.

“I know. You obviously saw…”

“Yes. Looked like fun.” Emily had to give a reason for why she and Mark were found in a tight clench less than ten minutes after Emily had observed Katherine in one of her own.

“You told your boyfriend. And he liked the idea.” Katherine rolled it around on her tongue to check the taste of the idea. “You weren’t so sure.”

Emily hated being transparent about men. She could fib her way through the back hills of Argentina, despite being a tall blonde, and not speaking a word of Spanish, but she’d never been able to lie about men.

“He’s, a, little wilder than I thought when we…”

“Hooked up. You’re really far too sweet a girl. You know that.”

Maybe she’d distracted Katherine. Changed the topic away from finding the First Lady and the Chief of Staff naked on the office rug.

“And you liked it, too.”

Way too transparent!

“The way he can kiss, I wish he’d never, ever stop.” The words slipped out without her meaning them to. She barely recognized them as her own.

Katherine settled back in her chair and sipped her wine in long consideration.

“That gives me such an exceptional idea.”

Emily was less sure about using the word “exceptional” as a part of this particular plan’s definition.

She lifted off the South Lawn an hour before sunset with Mark and Katherine settled in the back. Her instructions? “Go up and fly around a bit. Act as if you’re heading toward Camp David. We’ll change our mind later because I have a date tonight.”

Their late departure was to due to finagling time into the First Lady’s schedule. Even as whimsical as she had built a reputation for being, Katherine couldn’t brush off the wives of four very pivotal governors until after an early dinner of grilled sea bass on a bed of blackberry sauce swirled with strawberry sauce for contrast and a single, perfect basil leaf from Emily’s rooftop herb garden to top off each portion. One way or another, Emily guessed this would be her last meal cooked at the White House. And she was almost sorry about that.

They cleared D.C. airspace and headed north by northwest. An Alfred Hitchcock image suddenly popped into Emily’s mind of a biplane ending its life in a fiery crash into the side of a gasoline truck. This didn’t bode well at all. The Secret Service flight that always dogged her tail cruised above and behind. Out of her visual, but clear as a bug on the windshield by radar.

Frank Adams must have thought her completely nuts. She’d found him while the First Lady was seeing her guests out of the building.

“I need you to trust me. I need you to be in the bird following me. I’m not sure what will happen, so I can’t tell you.” He’d hated it, but he’d gone when she’d played her last card. Not Army to Secret Service. Not Peter’s crazy letter of authorization. But she’d asked it warrior to warrior. It was a kind of cred that made a higher calling. One time only, but if this didn’t play out, she was finished anyway.

Now if only she could keep her nerves in place long enough to fly a helicopter.

“We’re going to chat a bit back here.” Katherine’s voice was crystal clear over the headset. “You just do your flying thing. Okay, honey? Mama Katherine will make it all better.”

“Thanks, uh…” Emily had never used the First Lady’s first name. Time to break character for trust building. “Thanks, K-Katherine.” It didn’t come smoothly off her tongue. Maybe it merely sounded as if she weren’t used to using Katherine’s name.

“Good girl.”

Emily muted her own microphone from the intercom system. And she heard the click of Katherine turning off the feed from the passenger cabin to the cockpit.

Or so she thought.

Emily had never liked that setting, being used to the wide-open intercom on a military flight. And now that feeling had changed from dislike to a long list of alarm signals. So, when she’d picked up the helicopter, she’d disabled the cabin switch.

***

“Can she hear us now?” Katherine slipped her hand onto Mark’s knee even as she asked the question.

“Honey?” Mark spoke into the mic.

Emily casually looked down to check her instruments, offering no response to his call. He knew she’d disabled the intercom cutoff and could hear them just fine.

“I’d have to say no.”

“Can you be sure?” Katherine’s voice had picked up a cooing tone somewhere along the way. She sounded a bit more… Southern.

“Well, can’t say I know much about these here helleecopters.” He let his fake Texas grew thicker in response, almost to John Wayne depth. “I have one idea. Hey, Em, baby?” he called out.

He didn’t spot the flinch, but he could feel it through the airframe from her hands on the controls.

“She hates that nickname for reasons I haven’t found out.” He knew, and it was cruel, but he couldn’t resist teasing her. He wasn’t particularly excited about his role tonight.

“If she didn’t react to that, she can’t hear us.”

No, she hadn’t spoken. But she might try to castrate him later, so he’d have to be careful for a while.

“So, you were in the military?” the First Lady cooed at Mark. Not subtle, rather a full-on mating call.

That the President had married such a wanton—

Mark curbed his thoughts and stuck to the script, the one he had to write as they flew along.

“We call ourselves paramilitary. I mean, called ourselves that. You’d probably call us, them, mercenaries. Guns for hire. To the highest bidder.”

“And who’s the highest bidder for you so far?”

“No one, pretty lady.” Mark found it easy to slide into his lady-killer voice, but for the first time it didn’t feel right.

“Yet,” he added on a sour note. That was the problem. Emily Beale had spoiled all other women for him. He sat next to one of the most blatantly sexual women he’d ever met, and he couldn’t stir the least interest.

“Ain’t had a passel of luck getting any bids at all of late.”

“Shucks.” The South was pouring out of Katherine now, almost as thick as his Texas. “A pretty boy like you, I bet you have to brush them off like flies.”

“Wa’al, up ’til I run upon this filly, I admit that trouble was pretty common. But when a high-class dame walks through your sights, sometimes you just have to take the shot on a wing and a prayer.”

“And she’s riding roughshod over you.”

“A bit,” Mark drawled. “A bit.” She’d run roughshod right over his goddamn heart, something he thought no one had access to. His crew had called him heartless enough times behind his back that he’d decided it was true. And it had been.

“Perhaps…” Katherine’s breath was heaved out with such a sigh that the First Lady’s generous chest strained against the form-fitting black blouse she’d chosen for the warm fall evening.

“Just perhaps, if you could do me a favor, I could do you a favor.”

“Depends on the favors.” Mark blinked to refocus on her face; it was a magnificent chest as chests went. Didn’t drag at his heart, but his eyes had other thoughts.
Remember the role.

“I do like being paid. Er, did. Keep slipping up around you. As far as my Emma-girl knows, none of that is even in my past.”

“Cross my heart.” Katherine languidly crossed her hand over her deep, deep cleavage. “Your secret’s safe with me. Under one condition.”

“That is?” Mark was less certain.

“I thought all big boys sealed their promises…” Her voice went low and seductress. “With a kiss.”

Mark hesitated. He knew it was wrong for the role he was playing, but he couldn’t help himself. He didn’t want to lose the taste of Emily’s last kiss. Especially if it had indeed been their last kiss. Now there was a depressing thought.

But he’d signed up for the game. Hell, he’d gate-crashed the White House to play this particular game.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

He tipped their microphones out of the way, making sure to slide a finger along her cheek as he did so, and leaned in. If kissing Emily Beale was part blooming rose and part jet fuel, being kissed by Katherine Matthews was an Olympic sprint. She drove, attacked, laid out a battlefield, and took no prisoners.

This time Mark definitely felt the helicopter twitch.

When they finally came up for air, Mark offered a long, low whistle. “Whoa, Nelly.” The mic picked that up softly, then rattled and thunked loudly in Emily’s ear as he moved the mic back to his mouth.

“If ol’ Emma-girl there saw that, she’d crash us both into the ground but good.”

“Oh, not her. I’ve got her right where I want her. And you, little boy with the tender lips, I need to get you right where I want you.”

She was even more shameless than Emily had thought. And that was pretty shameless. Peter couldn’t know about this and look the other way. If he did, then he wasn’t the man she knew so well, the man that she knew he must be deep down. Katherine had probably lied about Peter knowing. It would fit.

She considered calling back to have Mark open the door and shove Katherine out. And then Frank Adams would shoot her and Mark out of the sky. Not exactly a happy ending for all.

“Under that seal, it must be one hell of a favor.”

Good, Mark. Get her back on track.
Things were making less sense the more Emily worked at them.

“First you. How badly do you want your Emily?”

You better nail this one, Marky, or she won’t believe you.

“Wa’al,” he drawled out. “You, lady, are a luscious package of pure dy-no-mite. But Emily, she’s got a slow burn there that I’d wager could last a man a whole lifetime just lighting the fuse and enjoying every damn second of it.”

Emily could feel her cheeks burning and was glad she’d opted for her helmet and had the visor down rather than the lightweight headsets Katherine and Mark wore. She’d heard the guys talk about her in the barracks when they thought she wasn’t around. A fair bit of smut, some pretty nice, and she’d shrugged both off.

This felt different. Even if the First Lady didn’t buy that line, it made Emily’s body turn pretty warm and gooey inside. Did Mark Henderson really want to spend his life with her, or was that just Marky Herman speaking?

She focused ahead and vectored off the Bolling and Dover TACANs to check her GPS course just to have something to do. Still on a clean course for Camp David, but at a mosey that must be frustrating the daylights out of Adams in the chase helicopter.

The silence stretched. It wasn’t quite enough. C’mon, Mark, pick up the cue.

“Let me tell you a little bit about what I do… what I did. I expect your Secret Service boys picked up pieces of it. Maybe ten percent or so.”

Good boy. Now make it sing.

“There were these two boys having a bit of a territory battle.”

“Estanze and Peres.”

“So much for my hidden ninety percent.”

“I know everything about you there is to know.”

At least the layer of his disguise that her father had designed to be discovered.

There was a brief silence, and Mark groaned softly at the end of it.

“We’ll discuss this ten percent later.”

Emily almost turned around. Had Katherine just groped Mark’s pants?

“Lady,” Mark gasped it out at the end of a long breath. “Now y’all just stop that. You’re making my eyes cross, and it’s right difficult to think in that state.”