INVITES
Charlotte
Weeks and months fly by as I prepare the baby’s room and continue with my Kids for the Future campaign while Matt continues meeting with heads of state, signing treaties, tweaking trade agreements, and more.
One of the schools I’m visiting on my new, less hectic schedule inquired whether the president could make a speech for the high school students, and I was thrilled when he said yes.
Everywhere he speaks, Matt draws crowds. You’d think it was due to the mythical importance of his father’s legacy and his family’s name, but I know that it is not. People like to feel close to him. Hear him speak. All around America, there are proud people—proud to be American.
Today, I admit I get a little giddy watching him speak again.
“It’s easy to believe that we aren’t capable of living up to our potential. I never believed I would—or even cared to try to. After the loss of my father, I continued to be reminded of all that the world lost, and I felt a sense of powerlessness. I wasn’t powerless. I had in my power to give you the one thing he most wanted to give. Me. Never underestimate the power of your own worth.”
Once he closes, the claps and cheers are so deafening, they follow us out.
He rides with me back home, Wilson and Stacey accompanying us, both of them grinning ear to ear, not even bothering to hide their satisfaction.
Our economy is growing by leaps and bounds, our exports have increased by twenty percent, and there are new jobs being offered every day. Aside from that, Matt is a champion of consumer rights, minority rights, gay rights, women’s rights, and controlling nuclear proliferation, and advocates embracing the diversity our country has thrived on and welcomed for generations.
He speaks to reporters like they’re his best friends, stops to greet all men and women, and the message is always clear—in whatever he does. YOU can make a difference. YOU can create new jobs too. YOU can be innovative, different, free. YOU can be yourself.
Governing is not easy. Sometimes it feels as if ages ago, Matt and I were idealists. But sometimes, like for the past year, it feels like we were the realists.
* * *
Months go by fast, between governing and the social scene that comes with the White House. I’m close to full term now—my body so very curvy, and somehow very arousing to my husband, and even to me. It feels so sensitive—his touch always electric on my skin. Tonight we were invited to the Washington, D.C., premiere of a movie one of his friends produced, and I’m wondering how I’ll manage to wear heels. Maybe ballerina flats and an empire gown would work.
“Look stunning,” Lola advised.
“You mean sometimes I don’t?” I arched a teasing brow.
“Haha. Truly, Charlotte. People are obsessed with you, and Matthew Hamilton’s devotion to you. Millions of women in the world dream of fitting in your glass slipper.
The hot president, his hands gliding over your body as you dance, his worshipful eyes only on you, the most desirable world leader with his clear adoration of you. Politics are dynamic and young—a symbol of the revitalization in our country. Look daring, edgy.”
“I’m nearly nine months pregnant,” I say.
“Exactly! And you’re still standing.”
“Lola, you kill me,” I laugh.
But I definitely pulled out a lovely chiffon empire-cut gown in a light pink color, which I’m wearing with my hair back in an elegant waterfall look.
It’s classy, but edgy for a pregnant woman, I suppose.
Matt zips up the dress for me and as I stare at myself in the mirror, he remains behind me, drinking me in. His voice appreciative, his smile wolfish. “You’re so gorgeous, sometimes it’s too distracting,” he chides, turning my face and placing a soft kiss on my lips.
“You have no idea the amount of cells that become inactive in women’s brains when you walk by,” I say.
He lets go a surprised laugh, and I laugh too, grabbing my little purse as he escorts me out.
There’s a party after the movie, and Matt and I decide to hit it for an hour, have a little fun.
During the night, as I meet the lead actors and Matt talks with his producer friend, I notice the women approaching him and I find it very interesting to watch them fawn, even knowing that he’s married. He’s cordial and polite, of course, he’s a Hamilton, but the ease with which he’d been standing is gone and he seems to close himself off from any flirtation. He’s so loyal, and I adore him for that.
I’m surprised the women continue to persist, though, too excited and infatuated to notice that he’s definitely not interested.
I think it’s more than his beauty they’re drawn to. More than his power.
I think it’s his humanity that calls them. The fact that he never puts on a show or acts as if he’s perfect; instead he’s always acted as if he’s not perfect but attempts to be. As if he knows that all of his imperfections—his amusing and heartwarming overprotectiveness and even his fear of not being both the best husband and father along with the best president—make him real, that all of our imperfections make us real and relatable because not one of us is perfect, not even a president. We simply want the one who will give us his unfailing best. Like he has.
I find myself blatantly staring and when I realize it, I quickly chide myself in silence and turn away. When I turn back, our eyes lock—and his eyes drift over my empire-cut gown, to my abdomen, where I carry his son. I’m due in mere weeks. And like I’ve noticed these past months, when he looks at me—at what I hold in me—there . . . I see it. A flash so quick and bright, it nearly blinds me.
He seems to push it down, under control, but I saw it. All the love, all the desire, all the craving that could ever be in a man is in him. For me. For us.
“The president never fails to make heads turn,” Alison says beside me as we mingle with the crowd, her camera always at the ready for her to snap the next shot.
It’s true people stare. Although I know people love him for more than his face, because despite the fact that he grew up with everything, he lacks pretention. His parents reared him to be a normal guy, with chores, discipline, and an attitude that was honest and never self-serving. In fact he never liked people doing special things for him, such as not allow him to pay for things; he always paid his way, even when they insisted they wanted to do the gesture for him. Fairness was ingrained with him, or maybe it’s just part of who he is.
The man is unforgettable and he knows it.
And now he’s the president, my husband, soon to be my baby’s daddy.
I frown when I notice Wilson approach him as discreetly as possible, which, considering how much attention Matt draws, is not very discreet, and Matt ducks his head to him. He nods and then lifts his eyes, his gaze instantly landing on me because he’s been keeping tabs on me all night.
Something in his expression alarms me. I pick up my skirts and start walking across the room as he motions me to the door.
“Something wrong?”
“We need to go,” he says.
He escorts me to the door, his hand on the small of my back as we climb into the state car.
I know whatever has happened is big; otherwise we wouldn’t have left. Something needs his attention ASAP.
“We’ve been attacked in the Middle East.”
I gasp. Then I set my hand on my stomach when a contraction hits. I’ve been feeling them on and off, and was told it was normal—the body preparing.
“What is it?” He looks at me in concern.
I meet his gaze, unsure. “Hopefully . . . practice.” But Murphy’s Law says it won’t be.