WARNINGS: Mild allusion to sexual assault.
…
Kellerman slammed his fist on the table when she told him.
Sara closed her mouth, and stared down at the splinter that had cracked open the layer of polish on his wooden desk. It was not the first time she'd seen him lose his temper like this. But it had been such a long time, she expected he had matured out of it.
"Marry you?" he said. "Marry you?"
"Those were the terms he used. Though of course, that wasn't the intent. He means to humiliate me. Bring us back to the most primal form of power there is."
Sara knew this, intimately.
When Jacob Ness had stood there, kissing her hand like a gentleman, he had not achieved less than if he had reached under her dress and grabbed her genitals.
His offer for marriage was really a show of domination. Threatening Michael. Thinking he would bend her, whom many would consider to be the most powerful woman in the world, through her lover.
Sara tasted bile on her tongue.
Powerful.
Funny, how deceptive the image was. Since she had entered the White House, she had never felt least in control. Armies waited at the snap of her fingers, and she could right some injustices with a strike of a pen through presidential decrees. As the recent reform on gun control had proved, she could even sway some of the legislators toward putting their people first and their bank account second.
But did it change the rules?
Did it change the country?
Meanwhile, Sara had no power over anything she did. Who she dated. How she dressed. Even what she ate made the national news, to the extent that in the early months, Kellerman tried to coax her into being seen with a cheeseburger in her hand.
"You want me to betray my inmost convictions so people will find me more relatable?"
He'd shrugged. "American politics in a nutshell."
Sara had not budged on the issue of cheeseburgers, but compromised by not advertising her penchant for tofu and almond milk outside the White House.
On the other hand, she supposed that Kellerman did not find the thought of power jarring when he held it up to his self image. Working from the shadows, he enjoyed almost all the influence she had without being constrained by the scrutiny of the public eye.
Kellerman was not used to losing control. Losing power.
This much was obvious as she stared at the crater of veneer on his desk.
"Jesus, Paul. A little restraint."
He did not seem to hear her. She had rarely seen the storm rage beneath his face, so close to his eyes. "Jacob Ness tricked you into a dinner date and asked for your hand in fucking marriage?"
"Not that your outrage isn't music to my ears, but don't you think your energy would be better spent on damage control?"
He sighed.
She could tell, from how his nostrils flared, that he was trying to drain the anger out of his body.
"What did the press see?"
"He kissed my hand."
His eyes flared.
Sara didn't explain. I was too shocked to stop him. It all happened so fast.
She would sound like a teenage girl, and she was too old and too weary for this. So was Kellerman.
"We have to retaliate," he said.
"I spoke of damage control. Not retaliation."
"This is an act of war, Sara. You know it."
"Of course I do. He threatened Michael. He made me picture what a spectacular wedding we could showcase to the nation. If you think I don't know that he was standing there with his foot in my face, you're wrong."
Sara ran a hand through her hair, closed her fist around a mass of auburn strands. God. Why were men so bad at this? So bad at holding back from doing the things that felt good—violence. Revenge.
The answer was upbringing, she knew.
If my father had raised a son instead of a daughter, I would not have turned into the same president.
Frank Tancredi would not have taught his son to take bird-like bites at the dinner table, even when she was starving. Would not have taught her that no matter what she felt, betraying anger was not an option.
"The first thing we've got to do is prepare a statement. He must have had reporters, snapping pictures of us through the window." Sara looked at her watch. Nine p.m. "The headlines tomorrow will say Ness and I are engaged. That's how he evens the score—how he gets back at me for passing the People's Bill. He puts me in the position where I have to explain away that picture. Deny it. Everyone will want to know. If Ness and I are not dating, what was he doing with his lips on my hand? Why did I let him touch me? It's going to cost us money, time, and energy to set the records straight. And even then, some people will think I'm seeing him in secret. I'll be a traitor to liberals, a whore to conservatives. It's lose-lose. He knows this."
"Goddamn it."
Paul's fingers pressed into the table, and though it wasn't possible, she was sure she could see the cobweb pattern on the wood widen.
Now was as good a moment as any to add the coup de grace.
"There's more."
He looked up. "More than your nemesis kissing your hand on camera?"
"Jacob Ness is not the man who tried to have me killed."
Kellerman's lips pursed.
She knew the topic was a sensitive one to him.
God. Her inner monologue droned on. She shouldn't have to worry about this. How talking of her attempted murder affected Paul Kellerman. Yet he was a friend, before he was a member of staff.
He had his strengths and his weaknesses, which she knew before she appointed him to such an important position in her life. And one of those weaknesses was that his feelings for her were not strictly professional, or strictly friendly.
He was too formidable a person not be made an ally. She often teased that one of the reasons why she had won him over from the Republicans, all these years ago, when she was just a college kid and he was one of her father's rising stars, was that she would sooner have him for a friend than for a foe.
I wouldn't like to be in my shooter's shoes, when Kellerman gets his hands on him.
"Paul," she said, "I'm sorry, I'm really going to need us to keep our heads here."
"Do I not look like my head is on my shoulders?"
Sarcasm did not mean Paul's anger had cooled down. He was one of these men who could spit out ice even while a volcano was bubbling up his stomach.
"How do you know?" he asked.
"He told me."
Paul cocked his head to the side.
"That doesn't mean much, in itself. But I believe him."
His shoulders relaxed. "So, basically, you don't know."
She grabbed the edge of the desk with both hands. Paul lent back in his chair. "This whole time, we've been focusing on that angle. The idea that whoever shot me—it had to come from the NRA."
"This James Whistler guy," Kellerman's mouth tightened. "He fits the profile of the sort of man the NRA would hire. Trained sniper. Affiliated to some private club who put their clients' privacy ahead of their country. They're both private organizations. They speak each other's language."
"But other than the fact that I was going to pass a bill that would make them lose millions of dollars—what evidence do we have?"
Kellerman drew in a breath. His eyes never left hers. She wondered at how he didn't look out of control now. "Give me half an hour with him. He'll whistle all right."
"You'll need to find him, first. Without more than an alias to go on, how are you going to do that?"
"General Krantz will break. Eventually. We're going to come down on him with the whole power of the White House. Go through his tax records going back decades if we need to. If he kicked the neighbor's dog when he was twelve, we'll know. Soon we'll be at his throat. Between protecting his client and protecting himself, he'll make the smart decision."
Sara didn't protest. Without a name, James Whistler was a needle in a haystack. Finding the killer through the shooter he'd hired seemed flimsy to her.
Kellerman must have read her mind, because he said, "I'm not saying it's impossible, Sara. You've made enemies, in the past years. Heck, you make more enemies in a week than most presidents do in a lifetime. The NRA's a good bet, but it's not the only one."
"Who else?"
"Top off my head?" He shrugged. "Big Meat. Big Dairy. Most lobbies whose interests clash with people's lives. Even if we put the whole money-related bad blood aside, there's all the ideologues. All the nutjobs who think their cause is worth killing for. The fascists, the pro-livers, anyone who listens to Theodore Bagwell and calls himself a goddamned Knight. Just take your pick, Sara. They're all waiting for their ticket to shoot you."
Her knuckles whitened around the edge of the table. She said nothing for a while. "All right. Let's put a pin on that."
"Are you serious?"
She couldn't blame him for asking. You put a pin on picnic plans, books you really wanted to read but never got the time to. Not on finding out who had given strict orders to execute you.
"It's not like the country is going to wait until the person behind the assassination is between bars for me to govern."
"Behind bars?" Paul cocked an eyebrow. "Don't you mean in his grave?"
"We don't have the death penalty in D.C."
"We have it when I'm holding the gun."
"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, just like I didn't hear your comment earlier about torture."
The look she gave him was serious. There'd be time to debate what to do with James Whistler, she supposed, once he was in custody.
"Anyway. Can I trust you to handle the whole Ness issue?"
He made his knuckles crack. "Sure. Do you want to use the sexual assault card?"
"Please, don't call it a card. Also, he'd paint me as a hysterical woman in a heartbeat. Let's not hand him the belt to whip me with."
Kellerman exhaled. "Thanks for that image."
She cracked half a smile. He cracked half of his. For a moment, she felt those moments when they ate instant pasta in her shoe-sized campus bedroom at university were close enough to brush against their fingertips.
More earnestly, she resumed, "Sexual assault would make me sound vulnerable. I can't afford it."
Kellerman nodded.
"This is going to look bad," she said, "whatever story we tell. The fact I allowed Ness to take me by surprise, to put his lips on me—it's a show of weakness, no matter how thick the sugar coating. As long as he remains an enemy," she added. "I suppose I could marry him to spare myself the embarrassment."
"That sounds like a reasonable course of action."
Her index beat against the edge of the desk. "No sexual assault. Try and paint it as close to the truth as it was. He ambushed me. Had time to squeeze a continental kiss before I had the good sense to leave him with the bill. The fact that I did not slap him will haunt me in my old age."
"All right." Formality slipped back on him, like a glove. "Is there anything else, Madam President?"
Whenever he spoke the words, she couldn't repress the gut feeling of how much he loved saying them. "Yes," she said. "The car I use, to go to Michael. I'm going to need it tonight."
…
"I'm in danger?" Michael raised an eyebrow. A smile was still etched deep into his cheeks.
He had not stopped smiling since she showed up at their hotel room, after doling out a last minute warning.
This time, she'd really thought they would talk, first. Get out of their clothes second. They'd been together only twenty-four hours ago, and for crying out loud, Sara wasn't a teenager.
Yet he didn't get farther than, "Hi," with that stupid smile on his face, before she grabbed his face with both hands and pulled him on top of her.
It wasn't until they were lying atop the sheets, naked, and she was braiding her fingers through the pelt of hairs on his chest, that she remembered she had not, in fact, called him here tonight so he could make up for all the bad lovers she had known in her life.
"He threatened you," Sara said. "Explicitly."
"The CEO of the NRA?"
"Yes."
"How did he find out about us?"
Sara licked her lips. If Kellerman had been able to find out, once, then others must have their way of coming to the same conclusion. "It's not important. What matters is he did find out. And he thinks he can put pressure on me, on my decisions, by putting a target on your head."
She traced her fingers up to his throat, his jaw, contouring his face. "I can't have that happen, Michael. For my life to be on the line—it's one thing. It's a risk I took, with my head clear, when I put my hand on a Bible and let myself be sworn in as president. But I can't risk you. I can't lose you. All right?"
His eyes became grave.
The smile almost faded from his mouth. "What do you have in mind?"
"You're not going to like it."
He straightened into a half sitting position. "Tell me."
"Canada." She went on, at his puzzled look. "Or Europe. Or, really, any country you'd like to call home for the next few years."
"You—you want to ship me off?" he laughed. "Are you serious?"
"This isn't a joke, Michael. These people are not kidding around."
Then, the smile did go down. A pang of guilt crept into her chest. "You think I don't know that? Hey. I took that risk too, Sara. When I decided to quit my job and come to Washington. When I decided to help people the government turns a blind eye to. When I earned that nickname—the Batman of lawyers—I put a target on my own head. Not as big as you. But I did this. It's what I chose."
She shook her head. "No. It's not the same. The only reason Jacob Ness is interested in you is to get to me. I put you at risk."
He sighed. "You know what I'm hearing here? That it's okay for me to live with the fact that I might lose you, but not the other way round."
"That's not what this is about."
She didn't know it was a lie until the words were out.
The hardness of his unblinking stare drilled .into her.
"Okay, maybe a little."
"I'm not disappearing while you're here, in the White House, ten thousand times more visible than I will ever be in this life."
She sighed. "There's another option."
"Okay. Hit me."
He looked so composed that she didn't dare for a second. A vertical line shot between his eyes. "Sara?"
"You enter the White House. With me. I provide you with the same level of security I have. It's not perfect, as you well know. But it's a lot better than nothing."
He shook his head with a chuckle. "Backtrack for a bit, Sara. I'm not following. Are you asking me to work for you?"
She didn't break eye-contact. Knew she owed him to look him in the eyes when she said this.
"No," she answered. "I'm offering to marry you."
...
End Notes: I can't overstate how much I enjoyed writing this chap. Please share your thoughts in the comments-and know that you're a saint if you do, most people just read and check out ;). But comments are super important. They're what reminds me to update, what keeps me connected with the readers. On my end the story ends when I post it (or forget to post it).
Connecting with you is the second best part of writing, after, well, writing.