Chapter 20
1186 Words
Chapter 20
Alice stretched comfortably back to consciousness.
No surprise revelation of where they’d landed. Daniel’s bedroom. Daniel’s bed. A sturdy four-poster that had belonged to an 1800s President. He’d said he liked the bed. So had she. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, and if she’d had a couple of bathrobe belts handy, she might have tied him to it. She’d have blushed at the thought, if he hadn’t suggested doing the same to her.
In Daniel’s office, with no protection handy, they’d still done more on his office carpet than two kids ever did in any backseat. At some point they’d dressed, traversed the corridors, and used the elevator to the third floor so that they wouldn’t disturb the President on the second floor.
Alice did her best to not look at the Secret Service agents they’d passed in the lower halls. Even if the agents didn’t reveal knowing looks, she knew they were there, carefully masked by neutral expressions.
Some of them did smile at her as she gawked at the decorations. Even the lower level passage of the Center Hall had been strewn.
“Last year was pretty somber, so recently after the First Lady’s death,” Daniel had told her. “I think we’re overcompensating this year, but it is terribly cheerful.”
She couldn’t argue on either point. The length of half a football field, it had been done as a Christmas in miniature. Walls had been lined with multi-tiered villages, as if the Swiss Alps had been shrunk down to fit into the White House. You could spend a week and never see it all.
She smiled to herself, remembering they’d spent less than five minutes in their desperate need to get upstairs.
Here Daniel did have protection and they’d made use of it until they were so exhausted and sweaty that they’d scampered down the hall wearing only a couple of his dress shirts, through the Music Room, and up the half-flight of stairs to stand on the wintery Promenade. They’d had to dance foot-to-foot because the deck glittered with a dusting of frozen dew. They’d held each other so close that they were almost warm enough despite the freezing temperature as they watched the chill moonlight battle the nighttime lights of D.C.
They’d scrambled back inside, plunged into a hot shower and fallen back into bed.
Yes, she knew exactly where she’d woken. No surprise there.
Where she’d woken alone. Also not a real shocker. It was mid-morning by the discreet bedside clock and Daniel would have plunged into meetings long since.
The surprise instead was how she felt.
Her body was languid and supple after such an incredible bout. Sore in more than a few spots, but Daniel was a gentle lover, even at his most energetic. Despite her fair skin, she didn’t see a single mark. Alice wasn’t sure if her body had ever felt this good.
But that bone-deep made-of-liquid feeling didn’t surprise her either. It was the guilt. She felt no guilt about the s*x, they’d both enjoyed it far too much for that.
No, Alice felt bothered by her own silence. Daniel had again probed into her past. Ever so gently, in that immensely tactful way she’d learned was the trademark of a very successful man. But she could feel his disappointment as she again evaded describing a past she’d much rather disown. He no longer fell for her redirection and razzle dazzle subject changes. He wanted to know about her past. Didn’t he understand how little it had to do with her present?
She dragged her lazy bones out of bed. There was a probably a maid waiting somewhere, but she did her best to reorganize the royal blue flannel sheets and the Irish Double-Chain quilt done in rich cheery golds and Kelly greens. She rubbed her fingers over it. Hand-stitched and a really fine job of it. Maybe from his family farm. She liked to think of that being his touch of home.
The rest of the room radiated maleness, with rich walnut wainscoting and white-on-white patterned wallpaper. A massive dresser stood staunchly in the corner, matched in style to the sturdy bed. The top was decorated with just two photos. She eased over and inspected them.
First, clearly a family photo. They were an impressive group. Daniel stood out for his beauty, but his sister could do very well in a pageant herself. The photo had captured Mom, Dad, gold retriever, and a big blue tractor the same color Daniel’s eyes had been last night. They had shone with a brilliance the moment before he jumped her. Or had she jumped him first?
Second, was a close-up of the sister. Her look was wicked. Just her shoulders and head showing above water that must be in a flowing stream. It was apparent that she had no swimsuit and was not in the least amused by her brother’s camera. The look promised a painful retribution. Alice could feel herself smiling at recognizing the shared moment, even if she didn’t know the whole story.
She’d have to ask.
Which brought her back to the guilt that kept tickling up her spine. Daniel would tell her anything, and she’d tell him nothing. It was an unfair bargain and she didn’t know what to do about it. Alice didn’t want to destroy what they had.
She turned for the shower, going past the red leather armchair that held her neatly folded clothes, including the sweater she’d lost somewhere in the hallway. Maybe it had been during their brief stop at the grand piano. No, they’d made love beneath that shortly before getting a late night snack in the kitchen. Early morning snack. The sweater had been long since gone by then.
She stood under the hot shower spray, appreciating the pressure that could deliver a needling massage even here at the top of the building.
The problem was during those moments they’d curled together to briefly recover. Her head on his shoulder, her hand tracing the fine outlines of his chest. Or when he’d curled against her, one ear resting in the center of her breastbone as he listened to her heart.
He’d left her silences to speak into, and she hadn’t. She’d felt them grow and expand, take on shape in the dark of the heavily curtained bedroom.
Alice notched up the heat in the shower a bit more, she’d always favored a searing hot shower.
She knew what he wanted. He’d made it clear in the last few phone calls as well. No matter how intimate they were, she was terrified of destroying it by bringing up her past. To someone like Daniel, the past was everything. Filled with family and life and joy. Poster boy for a good upbringing.
While her past hadn’t had the terror that some of her friends had, it was just not something that existed anymore. She’d discarded it all and rebuilt herself in her own image. She even had an imagined past; one she shared only reluctantly so that people didn’t probe. But with Daniel, each time she tried to pull out the granny who’d raised her after her dad had left and her mother died… It was just wrong. She hadn’t been able to lie to him.
What did it matter that she didn’t have a past? She was Dr. Alice Thompson, self-made woman.
She rinsed her hair and did her best to pretend that all of the water running down her cheeks came out of the showerhead.
- Writer
