Chapter 6
1435 Words
Chapter 6
Daniel had spent most of his lunch hour in the workout room. Now, he was reading through the overnight reports, ones that he’d been trying to get to since breakfast, over a quick lunch of a BLT sandwich and a Coke when she came into the kitchen.
She entered the kitchen from behind him, but he didn’t doubt that it was Dr. Alice Thompson for a single second. The President would have arrived with his normal bravado and be already in the middle of a sentence before the door was even open. A trait he shared with his deceased wife, a comparison Daniel kept to himself as the man would not have appreciated it. If it had been the Secret Service entering the room, as they would have done if the President was in tow, there’d be at least two sets of very business-like footsteps.
But there weren’t.
The kitchen door opened part way, paused for a long moment, and then swung a bit farther. No soft slap of the rubber soles the agents wore for traction, but instead the almost silent step of a pair of sneakers on a woman who weighed half as much your average Secret Service agent.
“Good afternoon, did you sleep well?”
He didn’t turn to look at her, but remained instead perched on his stool, his reports spread out across the light and dark stripes of the maple-and-cherry wood island. Didn’t want to acknowledge the advantage he’d taken of an exhausted woman. He’d wanted to take that advantage though. For the first time in a long time, he really wanted to. Daniel tried not to cringe and simply hoped that she wouldn’t recall how he had kissed her.
She wasn’t drunk, you i***t. Just tired.
“I guess. Not really awake yet. Did you get any sleep?” She drifted into his peripheral vision over by the refrigerator.
“Not much.” Not at all really. First he’d gone back down to his office to clean up the mess. Then the phone rang and he’d clarified the instructions the President had set in motion half-a-world away. That was the problem when he and the President classified something “need to know” only, all the little questions shot straight to the top.
Then he saw the report newly placed in the middle of the teetering stacks on top of his desk. The upcoming G-8 summit had just had another bomb threat which led to a meeting with the Secret Service detail in charge of arranging that. One thing led to the next as he caught up with e-mail, fired off instructions to his staff for the morning. The overnighters discovered he was awake and began routing their questions to him.
Around three-thirty a.m. the President had drifted in from the Oval Office, “just to see if Daniel was available.” They’d spent the next hour reviewing and revising the new South African trade agreement, which had involved rousting the policy analysts from bed to straighten out an addition that someone had slipped in about Japanese whaling rights around Cape Horn. All of which had to be in place by five a.m. local-time before the eleven o’clock African-time round of talks restarted in Johannesburg.
When Janet arrived at six-thirty, Daniel had managed to clean up exactly three papers from the foot-deep stack that spread all the way under the couch beside his desk. With the rough edge of her contempt for how he let his desk become so out of control in first place, all communicated articulately by her not uttering a single word, she had it completely reorganized in less than twenty minutes.
Daniel hadn’t even tried to go to bed, especially not just across the hall from Dr. Alice Thompson. He’d been too aware of her from all the way over in the West Wing. Here in the residence, way too close.
The only reason he’d come over now was for a workout and late lunch. The break helped recenter him before the typical afternoon mêlée.
Some part of him had thought Dr. Alice Thompson would have long since been awake and gone. And some part of him had known she still slept across the hall.
He waved a hand toward the refrigerator, “Help yourself.” Then he tried to recall the notation he’d been intending to write in the report’s margin which lay open before him. Completely vanished.
Tossing down the pen, he sighed in frustration. He didn’t even know what the report was about at the moment. All he could think about was how much he wanted to taste her kiss again. You aren’t a sixteen-year old dying of hormones, he instructed himself; which had no affect at all on the path of his thoughts.
“Sorry to interrupt you, maybe I should just go.” She turned for the door. Daniel ran a hand through his hair. “No, this is a never-ending quest here at the White House. The elusive Completed Task.”
“Maybe if you hunted it with …”
“A butterfly net?”
She laughed. It was a light, merry sound. One quickly muffled by the hand she raised to cover her mouth.
In that moment Daniel discovered just how much he enjoyed making her laugh.
“Please,” he waved at the refrigerator again. “I can make you coffee or tea.”
A quick glance checking once more for permission, she finally opened the door and peeked inside the stainless steel monster. “Juice is fine.” She took a bottle. And a container of Greek yogurt.
“Or the chefs could make you a proper lunch.” He pointed toward the silverware drawer for a spoon.
“I think breakfast will be fine. And this is good, honestly.”
She went to sit across the island from him and peeked into the open box in the middle of the counter. “Ooo, Christmas cookies!”
“Help yourself.”
“I couldn’t. They’re so beautiful.”
Daniel looked in. They were. “Old family tradition. We make cookie boxes for anyone, family or close friends, who can’t be around for the holiday baking. My big sister probably made most of these.” He poked around until he found a gingerbread man sticking out its tongue at him. He held it up for Alice to see. “Definitely Melanie Anne.”
She took a reindeer that had one leg lifted to relieve itself against an elf. “You sure I’m not interrupting?”
“No need to be so tentative. Please, join me. It has to be better than,” he had to flip to the cover of the report to remember what it addressed, “Pacific Northwest Reforestation.”
It wasn’t that she was just hesitant. He watched as she settled onto the bar stool opposite him. He’d shared several meals here with Emily Beale when she’d been posing as the First Lady’s chef. Major Beale cooked like a magician and looked like a modern-day warrior goddess. And while it was hard not to be stunned by that, combined with her military achievements, it was also exhausting. The woman was driven in a way that left even the President breathless.
It was an interesting contrast to Dr. Alice Thompson, sitting exactly where Emily Beale had sat across from him just a year before. The steel backbone, the warrior’s reflexes, and the black-and-white razor of the Captain’s mind contrasting with the quiet thoughtfulness of Dr. Thompson.
Alice was, Daniel had to cast about his mind until he found it, she was shy. An odd and unusual feature in the world of political extroverts who constituted the bulk of the White House Staff. Perhaps last night had been an aberration, her relaxed attitude and quick ripostes a result of guards lowered by exhaustion.
He knew that having missed last night’s sleep, he’d be in a similar state by late afternoon. But at the moment, he’d rather put her at her ease.
“About last night, I’m—”
“Not the least bit sorry.” She cut him off. Her head popped up just enough from where it had been concentrating on her yogurt for him to see that one eye peeking out from under her bangs.
Well, no question remained regarding her memory.
“You’re luscious.”
Daniel found himself dangerously close to a blush. Clearing his throat didn’t seem appropriate, something his father would do.
He had to say, something. “Uh, so are you.”
That earned him the head toss that cleared both of her eyes and revealed that smile that had lit up his imagination last night.
“Good thing we’ll never see each other again then, hunh?”
Daniel could feel himself blanch. Never see her again? No. That couldn’t be… “You’re teasing?”
“Oooo,” Alice clapped her hands and rubbed them together as if preparing for evil deeds. “A gudgeon! This is going to be fun.”
“A what?”
“A small fish.”
Daniel did his best to glare at her, but she didn’t appear daunted in the slightest.
“It’s also military slang for someone who will take a straight line, hook and sinker. Straight man. Gudgeon. Dr. Drake Darlington. All one and the same.”
Then she slapped a hand over her mouth again and her eyes grew quite wide and very distressed, looking as comic as she had last night right after he’d kissed her. And she’d kissed him back. Nothing wrong with his memory either.
He couldn’t stop the laugh.
“Sorry,” she mumbled through her fingers. “I promise I’ll cut my tongue out later.”
“I’ll help.” Gudgeon indeed. He could keep up just fine.
- Writer
