A/N: I know nothing about golf, so please do let me know where I've gotten things wrong. Also, if you didn't know, Téa is a good golfer and has been featured on the cover of golf magazines.

~~~ Part 11 ~~~

When the Government of Anguilla had caught wind that Elizabeth would be visiting, the Governor had wanted to host a welcoming reception in her honor. Elizabeth had graciously thanked him but declined, as she was no longer a government official and because - and this was the primary reason - she wanted her vacation to be a break from pomp and circumstance before her campaign. Still, he had been determined to recognize her visit in some way, and so they had reached the mutually acceptable compromise of sending someone from Government House and a couple members of the Anguilla Golf Association to join Elizabeth for a game of golf during her stay.

Henry had opted to stay at the hotel and read while Elizabeth golfed, providing her a rare opportunity to drive alone. Henry had offered to drive her to the golf course and back, and surely the delegation would have sent an escort had she asked, but Elizabeth preferred to drive herself. If she was actually elected President, she realized, she would never be allowed to drive again. So for now, she would relish driving. However, she hadn't really thought about the fact that she would be driving a on the left-hand side of the road for the first time in over a decade. How hard could it be? There were hardly any cars on the road, and it had looked easy enough when Henry was driving.

Despite the blinding sunrise, it turned out that it wasn't that hard, although she had to concentrate more than usual to stay in her narrow lane, and she turned on the windshield wipers once when she had intended to use the turn signal. After parking, she walked to the clubhouse, admiring the adjacent resort's Greek architecture, the foliage - various types of palm trees and hibiscus and bougainvillea in every color - and a hydroponic garden, and of course, the ocean.

The other three members of her foursome were already at the clubhouse and dressed, as Elizabeth was, for golf. They introduced themselves and presented her with an Anguilla golf hat, which she immediately swapped with the one she had been wearing. She had brought her own clubs, gloves, and shoes, not even earning her much teasing about overpacking from Henry, who had undoubtedly expected nothing less. The others made sure she had everything else she needed: a scorecard and pencil, extra balls, water, a cooling towel, sunscreen, and insect repellent.

They headed to the golf course, passing a few boisterous seabirds in one of the ponds. Her companions were sufficiently impressed to learn that her handicap was - or at least had once been - 12, and they jokingly offered to make her an honorary member of their golf association on the spot. While she hadn't played much recently, she had been an avid golfer since childhood when it was an activity that she shared with her father. In fact, one of the golf clubs she had brought with her had been his. She allowed herself a moment to wonder what it would be like to be able to play with him now, for him to meet Henry, Stevie, Alison, and Jason, to tell him all that she had accomplished, and for him to see her run for President.

They reached the first hole, a 388-yard par 4 with a large sand trap on the right. They chatted about themselves and their families while doing golf stretches to warm up. The ocean shimmered under the early morning light that illuminated the silhouette of St. Martin on the horizon. The bright green of the grass and short plants on the manicured course contrasted with much of the drier scrub and bush Elizabeth had seen around the island. It was an exceptionally beautiful course.

Elizabeth was first to tee off. She pulled out her driver, gripped it securely, and almost instinctively got into her golf stance, feet shoulder-width apart and knees slightly bent with her weight evenly distributed and on the balls of her feet. She widened her stance, bent forward, and squared her body with the golf ball, visualizing where she wanted it to go. She shifted her weight to her back foot and lifted her straight arms back slightly before rotating fully into the backswing, raising her club high. She hovered momentarily, then tilted her front shoulder downward and shifted her weight to her front foot, rotating her body quickly in a smooth downswing motion led from her front hip. As the club made contact with the ball, she tilted her hip and front shoulder up and completed the rotation towards the target to follow through the swing with the club ending up over her shoulder. Only then did she look up to watch the ball sail through the air, landing on the fairway about 200 yards away. She smiled, pleased with the start of her game.

Later that day, she and Henry were again sipping drinks at the beach: this time a bushwacker and a mojito on Rendezvous Bay at an eclectic beach bar that had been recommended to Elizabeth that morning. The bar structure was sort of a cross between a wooden gazebo and a split-level treehouse. Reggae music played from the speakers. The long arc of sand stretched in either direction, and the water was an almost impossibly clear cyan. Elizabeth was telling Henry about her morning and the golf course.

"With periodic droughts, this is hardly the ideal climate for a golf course, but they have really tried to minimize their environmental impact. They have solar panels and a desalination plant so they can use ocean water to water the greens. One of the golfers told me all about the setup."

"The other golfers were all good company. We mostly steered away from politics and talked about our kids and golf." She continued, "It's a very well-designed course. It was challenging, with numerous lagoons and sand traps. The wind was really something. The views were stunning: this beach, the ocean, the salt ponds, St. Martin, and the course itself."

"I got a ton of pictures of me playing golf and posing by the seventh hole. Mike B. was adamant that I take photos there because Bill Clinton once got an eagle-two on that hole. I mean, photos at the RFK tournament where I'll be speaking is one thing, but how many people are going to recognize a specific hole on a golf course on Anguilla and know who else played there? And how is that going to influence their vote?" she asked, shaking her head incredulously.

"At least he isn't asking for pictures of you in a bathing suit," Henry commented wryly, flipping through the photos on Elizabeth's phone, before putting it away. For the most part, they hadn't had much difficulty limiting their use of cell phones to photos and communicating with the kids, but as their vacation was winding down, they were both feeling the urge to start catching up with the rest of the world prematurely, or rather, they wanted to get a jump on their email backlog before it got even worse.

"I wouldn't put it past him," Elizabeth groaned. "If I hadn't vetoed his idea of sending a photographer down here to follow us around for a day, I'm sure he would have asked for bathing suit shots."

"Naturally you'll be wearing a bikini at the beach. Nice optics there!", Henry imitated Mike's voice.

Elizabeth laughed before continuing, "While I usually advise against appearing feminine, the polls show that people love you more than ever now since seeing you in a wedding dress. So you know what I think would really make voters go wild? The sight of you in a bikini!" She outlined the shape of her body with her hands.

"I know the sight of you in a bikini makes this incredibly lucky arm-candy go wild," Henry replied flirtatiously. "But," he amended quickly, knowing that Elizabeth could be rightfully sensitive about how much attention was paid to her appearance, "the sight of you putting Mike in his place for suggesting such a thing would also make me go wild."

Elizabeth smiled at Henry. "I like that I can still make you go wild," she said simply.

"But?" Henry prompted, sensing there was more.

"But, I'm - we're - going to have to get used to a lot more comments about my appearance, what I wear, what I eat, what the kids are doing, ..., everything. As much as it felt like we hardly had any privacy before, that was nothing compared to what we'll face during the campaign. And as a female candidate? Henry, people are going to say a lot of horrible things. Accusing me of having an affair with Conrad was just the beginning," Elizabeth warned, her brow furrowing.

Henry swallowed thickly. He had been more affected by reading the rumors about Elizabeth and the President than he cared to admit. It wasn't that he believed them, though the article sure did make it sound plausible; it was that having planted a fictitious image in his mind, it made him stop and think about various scenarios that could have happened if things had been just slightly different. He sighed. He trusted Elizabeth, and he could manage his own response. But he was not looking forward to hearing the mean and hurtful things people would say about his wife. And not being able to protect her or the kids from hearing them, and not being able to come to her defense and respond because that would just fan the flames. Even worse, he worried, there could be people who would want to physically harm her, merely because she had the audacity to be a woman running for office.

"This is a lot to put our family through. It will change us," Elizabeth said, doubt and anxiety creeping into her voice. "I know they're not really children anymore, but am I really going to do this to our children?"

"You were right about diving," Henry said suddenly.

"Huh?" Elizabeth responded, not sure where Henry was going with this, but sensing that he wasn't actually changing the subject.

"I liked getting to experience the world underwater. But before I'd done it, it was kinda scary, and I needed your nudging and understanding and support to do it."

"Okay, I see what you did there," Elizabeth said after a pause, letting the meaning of his words sink in.

"Running for President is unchartered waters for us. It won't all be smooth sailing. But I'll be there with you, every step of the way: physically whenever I can join you on the campaign trail, and emotionally when we have to travel apart," Henry promised.

"Thank you, Henry," she said, touching him lightly.

"Anytime, babe, anytime." They were both silent, lost in thought and the sight of the endless ocean in front of them.

"Soooo," Elizabeth started, drawing out the word with a long 'o', "exactly how wild does the sight of me in a bikini make you?"

"Wild enough that we should take this conversation somewhere much more private," Henry replied with a wolfish grin.

"Let's go then!" said Elizabeth, already gathering their things.