GIFT
Charlotte
The next morning, I take a bath, change quickly, and stop at a pet store on impulse to make a purchase. I don’t know why I want to make this particular purchase, but my mother has always been the sort of woman to have sweet little surprises for my dad. I don’t know if it’s her way of saying thank you for something nice that he did or just the way he made her feel. I want to get something for Matt, but I know that it wouldn’t be proper. But when the urge to get Jack a little something hits me, I decide not to even fight it.
Once I get to the campaign headquarters, I step off the elevator and I see Matt in the hall. Immediately my body responds: pulse skipping, nipples tightening, pussy clenching.
He’s in dark jeans and a soft-looking taupe cashmere sweater that contrasts strikingly with his dark hair. He’s talking to his campaign web manager when he spots me. He pauses mid-sentence, and my heart stutters when he smiles at me.
His eyes look warm and there’s something else in his gaze, almost like protectiveness.
He continues talking with the guy—positively oozing that confidence that seems to cling to him like a second skin—and I head to my chair. I exhale and glance around my desktop, telling myself I have to catch up.
Everyone here is smart, lightning fast, and eager to work, most of them confident. A little more experienced than me, too.
I’ve seen them effortlessly answer phone call after phone call, letter after letter, email after email. I get sentimental about these things. I’ve found myself needing a box of Kleenex or to cover my response when I read the letters.
After a whole day back, I still don’t know how to answer this little boy’s letter.
I’ve dealt with women in my mom’s foundation, but never anyone younger than eighteen. There’s something about someone younger having a hard time that gets to me doubly hard.
“Read this letter,” I tell Mark, whose desk is a few feet away from mine.
“What about it?”
“I’d like to ask Matt if he could squeeze in a visit—”
“What? No way. He’s got four hundred speaking engagement requests this week. He doesn’t have time for everything and everyone. We have thousands of letters just like it in these piles. Just answer and go to the next.”
I walk to my desk, unhappy about Mark’s suggestion.
He leans back in his chair and peers into my cubicle for a moment, and I’m sure he was trying to catch a glimpse of my boobs as I bent to take my chair. “What does it matter asking him? It’s just one among thousands,” he then asks me, rolling his eyes.
I wave the letter in the air. “It matters to this one.”
Back to the letters on my desk, I set it aside and duck my head to continue answering in longhand.
Dear Kim,
Matt is very moved by your letter and he would like you to receive his best wishes on your upcoming graduation. Please receive this set of bookmarks with both Matt and his campaign team’s most heartfelt congratulations. I’m sure we can expect great things from you in the future.
Kindest regards, Charlotte Wells, campaign aide
A few hours later, Carlisle summons us for a meeting. I grab a yellow notepad and stand to follow my coworkers toward the conference room.
Matt is watching every step I take into the room while we’re briefed on the new campaign strategy. When everyone leaves, nerves eat at the walls of my stomach as I go to my desk, get my purchase from this morning, and head to the corner nook of the building where Matt has taken up office.
He’s already behind his desk when I step inside.
“I got you a present.”
He leans back in his chair and our eyes hold, and the mere way he looks at me makes my stomach grip and my sex clench.
“It’s not for you, it’s for Jack,” I stumble to explain.
He peers into the box, looks at the collar with the metal symbol attached, and lifts it in one hand. “A flea collar.” He knocks the flea charm with one finger. “Funny.”
I press my lips together to keep from laughing.
“How are you this morning?” He drags the flea charm to the side of his desk, where he has a picture of his father, his mother, and himself.
“I’m absolutely fabulous, Mr. Hamilton,” I effuse, pressing the folders to my chest.
“Matt.” He enunciates every letter clearly.
“Matt,” I say.
His grin reaches all the way to his eyes. “Good girl, you get an A today.”
“You get a bully badge. Matt.”
I turn away, and when I glance past my shoulder, he’s reaching out for a pair of reading glasses and glancing over Carlisle’s proposal.
He looks smart and quiet and intellectual as he reads with his glasses on, absently running his fingers over the top of his head. That’s when I see him lift his head and eye the charm I bought for his dog, his lips twitching.
Just the tiniest bit.
* * *
I’ve seen Matt at campaign headquarters every day. At first he’d be smiling and looking directly at me, but lately I have seemed invisible to him. He looks past my shoulder when I ask him anything, answering curtly with comments like, “Good, appreciate it.”
Yesterday, his gaze fell to a pin I was wearing that was released in commemoration of his father’s presidency, a gold circle with an eagle in it and a Latin motto engraved below. I bought it the moment it came out—and the limited edition sold out within hours. The darkening look in his eyes confused me. He looked displeased, or very close to it. He took the folder I handed him and walked away, flipping through it as he headed to his office.
Following that encounter, I go to the restroom. I check my clothes; they’re not wrinkled or stained. I run my hands down my slacks and shirt, touching the pin at the collar. Insecurity tugs at me. Maybe he thinks my face is unfortunate? Maybe the ghost of his father stood behind me? Maybe he’s unhappy about the bad press I’m getting?
When I walk out, he’s talking to Alison—and staring straight into her eyes—and I turn around and use the long way to my cubicle.
Back in my seat, my sleeping computer stares blankly at me.
I’ve been trying so hard to collaborate and be efficient, and I’m disappointed he’s clearly not happy with my job.
“Don’t mock me,” I say at the screen as I grab a stack of letters and keep on reading.
So many petitions. So many people hoping for change. So many people wanting a piece of Matt Hamilton.
My eyes are tired. I’ve had about five cups of coffee.
I hear noise, and I spot him in his office.
We’re the only ones in the building. Two lights inside. I see him scrape a hand over his face and lift his head, and I lower mine so he doesn’t notice I was looking at him.
My stomach twists as I hear footsteps.
Matt’s energy begins to envelop me, and I feel my heartbeat start picking up as I hear him grab the chair from Mark’s cubicle next to mine and drag it so he can sit beside me.
He sets his coffee next to mine, and a folder, and his reading glasses. “No coffee?” He lifts my empty cup.
“If I have one more I’ll never sleep again in my life,” I groan, and he laughs, such a pleasant laugh, and takes my cup and goes to refill it.
He sets it down in the exact same spot it occupied before. Next to his.
Then he takes the seat beside me, and I can’t concentrate for a moment. I’m hyperaware of him, of nobody else in the building but us.
Matt has a way of occupying more space than his body does. He shifts to prop his elbows on his knees, and my heart trips at his nearness. “Hey. Why are you still here, Charlotte?”
“It’s my cubicle.”
He smiles sardonically and just eyes me for my sass.
I’m too aware of him sitting there, with the rich outlines of his shoulders pressing into the black, soft-looking fabric of his shirt.
I try not to notice. “I was trying to finish this pile of letters,” I finally answer, grabbing the pen as I pretend to get back to work.
I can’t.
He’s staring at me.
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t agree to help me so you could spend all night answering letters,” he says.
“Maybe I did. But why did you ask me?” I narrow my eyes.
“When you get a letter from a girl you just met, you know she means business.”
“I perfumed the stationery—of course I meant business,” I say slyly. “Though it seems you didn’t mean it when you said you didn’t want to run when we first met.”
“Yeah, well.” A chuckle rises up his chest, and he drags a hand over his hair.
“You changed your mind,” I say.
“You could say I matured into the idea. Takes time to gather the courage to believe you can do it. Then it takes another to believe you can do it better than anyone else.”
He seems calm, as if he’s got nothing to hide, his eyes warm and simply . . . friendly as he leans back and loops his arm behind the chair as he shifts. “I kept thinking if not me, who? If not now, when?” He gazes out the windows at the far end before glancing back at me. “I’d like to change things. Still no equality, still a need of jobs, still too many self-serving ambitions. We’re all wild wolves who were fed at the doorstep too long and forgot how to hunt. Where are the workers that built America? On unemployment?”
He sounds so passionate, and he’s so close, I’m a little breathless. “I love how proactive you are about jobs.”
“Because nothing feels as good as a day well invested in doing something right.” His eyes flick down to my lips for a minuscule moment. “Actually, not nothing. But precious few things.”
Neither of us is laughing.
In fact the air feels a little charged, a little bit electric.
He means kissing, a part of me whispers.
No, Charlotte, he means sex!
I feel myself flush at that, aware of Matt watching me as if he’s enjoying that immensely. I set the pen down and look up at him. “What you said the other day, about never being able to trust someone not running with the story. There are so many stories about your family and you . . . Are they all real?”
“Trust me. They’re not as interesting as you’d think they are.”
“Not true!” I protest. “They’re all fascinating.”
He smiles. Shifts forward. “You’re fascinating,” he whispers.
I nearly choke on my saliva.
“I find everything about you fascinating. Even the fact that you’re sitting here now at this hour.”
“So are you,” I counter.
“I’m the candidate.”
“And you’re my candidate. So, I’m here.”
The word my sort of feels different when I say it to him. The idea that Matt could be anything of mine is just mind-blowing, to say the least.
But he could be my president.
He was my first crush.
He is my boss, and my candidate.
And right now he is my very breath because nothing has ever felt as exciting to me as this man, this man in this moment, sipping his coffee, leaning back in his chair, watching me with such lazy eyes—as if he has no intention of going anywhere.
As if what happened when we ran/walked together sort of connected with him too.
“It is true you had a chimpanzee at the White House? You were gifted it by a foreign ambassador?” I ask.
I admit I’m addicted to talking to him, to learning more about him.
“Baboo. She was six months old when we got her.”
“Oh really? Were all your college girlfriends terribly jealous because she got to live with you? I can’t even keep up with the list of those girlfriends. Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lawrence—who was it really?”
Matt sets down his coffee, a smirk on his lips. “Neither. Both are friends. My White House years taught me to guard my every step and after . . . let’s just say I enjoy being the hunter in the relationship.” He eyes me mischievously. “What about you, Charlotte?”
“Oh no.” I shake my head, laughing. “My parents have given up on hooking me up with some promising political entity. I’ve simply not found the right guy.”
There’s a silence.
Matt seems oddly pleased. He leans forward. So close that his shoulder touches mine, and a part of me wonders if it’s on purpose.
“Do you want to?” His voice is deep and a tad quiet. He raises his hand and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, almost like he did when we were running/walking together, and a white-hot shudder races down my spine.
My heart is flip-flopping in my chest as we stare at each other and Matt lowers his hand, still looking at me with heavy eyelids.
“Of course, everybody wants to find that. I’m a realist, but I dream of finding what my parents have.”
“So why not . . .?” he prods, his gaze caressing me.
“Most politicians are old, stuffy, or boring.”
He laughs—a rich, deep sound.
When he falls sober, his voice drops a decibel. “Good thing I’m a lawyer and a businessman, and not a politician. Because I’m not stuffy, and I’m definitely not boring.”
My throat runs dry. Oh, god. He is most definitely nothing like politics has ever seen, even with the Kennedys.
But you’re not available, I think to myself, though I somehow feel too tongue-tied to say it.
A silence settles between us. I feel my nipples pop and I fear Matt, with one glance downward, will notice. There’s a pool of warmth between my legs and a tight clench in my sex, and I’m desperate to get rid of it.
It takes me a moment and a deep breath to get a grip on the sexual tension crackling between us. I remember why I’m even here, working so late, reworking an itinerary I’d already worked on a couple of days ago. I reach beneath my paperwork to pull out an envelope, glancing questioningly into his eyes.
“Would you read this?”
Before I know it, I’m extending my hand.
He takes an absent sip of his coffee and quickly sets it aside. Then he grabs his glasses, puts them on, and takes the letter. Our thumbs brush as he does, and another clench deep in my tummy happens.
He smiles, as if he definitely did that on purpose.
But his smile fades as Matt scans the letter. I know by memory what it says. It touched me deeply.
Dear Matt Hamilton,
I’m very happy that you’re running for president. My mother worries that something can happin to you so I think its very brave. I’m very brave too. I’m seven yrs old and getting a new experiment treatment on my very bad lewkemia called PCL. I asked if it could kill me too. But my dad says someone has to be the innovator and pave new unknown paths like you. My dream is to go to the white house when you become president. I know I will do very well with this treatment because im hopping to go with every breath. So win Matt! Oh and my name is Matt too my parents named me after you.
Matt
“Would you visit this boy?” I ask.
Matt pulls off his glasses and looks at me.
Just looks at me.
So intently and as if he can see everything that I am, have ever been, and ever will be.
I hastily pull out the following week’s schedule and my own version of it. “He’s a son of one of the women at Women of the World. I recognized her name on the mailing envelope. I think I can fit him in before we leave D.C.—he’s being treated at the Children’s National on Michigan Northwest.”
I put my new version of his schedule out for him to see.
But he doesn’t look at the schedule. Only at me. His voice is smooth but deeper than it was before.
“That’s why you’re here so late; you’re trying to fit this in,” he says.
It’s more a statement than a question.
I bite my lip as a gleam of admiration appears in his eyes.
He slides the schedule over the desk back to me without even looking at it. “I’d be happy to go.”
I grin, my chest swelling with happiness.
I launch myself forward and give him a hug and a sweet but chaste kiss on his jaw. “Thank you! So very, very much!”
As my lips touch his jaw, suddenly his scent is surrounding me in a cloak of elegant cologne and soap. I start easing back, startled by my own impulsive action. I realize his hands fell to my waist, gripping me gently but firmly. He looks down at me with a slight smile on his lips, and I look right back; our mutual shock at my impulsiveness turns into something else.
We share a moment of silent understanding, a more powerful connection than anything I’ve ever felt.
The loneliness of the building suddenly becomes even more pronounced. The warmth of his body. The specks of black in his eyes, the dark irises, the thickness of his lashes, and most especially, the look in his eyes.
I’m aware of the admiration in his gaze when he lifts his hand and brushes my cheek with the pad of his thumb. I hold my breath, aching for closeness, to physically establish this connection that I feel, his breath warm on my skin. He brushes his thumb over my cheek a second time, and then, as if that wasn’t enough, his lips follow. The barest touch, a thousand times more powerful than a full-on make-out session with anyone. “You’re welcome.” His voice is gruff.
As I pry myself free, we both can’t seem to stop looking at each other. He’s smiling again, his eyes like liquid metal and a little too hot, and I smile shyly in response. And somehow this is the most honest, hottest smile anyone’s ever given me and I’ve ever given anyone back.
I suppose things should feel awkward, but they just feel a little sharper for the next minute. The sound of his breath or rustle of his clothes as he gets his stuff back to his office, the timbre of his voice when he tells me if I’m done, he’s done and can give me a ride home, the outline of his body close to mine as he helps me into my jacket.
I ride in the back of the black Lincoln with him, his detail, Wilson, driving us.
Matt’s gaze lowers all of a sudden.
Gently he seizes the eagle pin at my collar. He strokes the eagle with the pad of his thumb. Once, that’s all.
“You always wear this,” he says.
A ridiculously sexy smile curls his lips, but this time, his eyes aren’t smiling. He searches my expression with curiosity. And his smile fades. He’s still holding the pin. I’m holding my breath, wanting more of these touches, more of him.
But I know how ridiculous thinking about anything with him is.
He’s so driven to win, I know the last thing he needs right now is a distraction like me.
“Reminds me of the good old days,” I finally reply, trying to push down the thick longing in my veins. “The ones you’ll bring back.”
“I’m ready.”
We smile. The very air between us seems to be on fire.
“Good night, Matt.”
I reach for the door, but he leans over me and sets his fingers on mine, clicking it open for me, his warmth enveloping me again, his fingers sliding over mine, caressing like a feather.
“Good night, Charlotte.”
He watches in the shadows of the car, his eyes dancing the way they sometimes do when I do something that amuses him, still the crush-worthy guy I met when I was eleven.
Can he see how much he flusters me?
Of course he can.
I get to my apartment and my feet ache, my back aches, my brain aches. I feel too drained to do anything but kick off my shoes, stretch my arms out, and fall flat, facedown on the bed. But I can’t sleep. His gorgeous dark-flecked eyes keep looking at me.
And they’re looking at me like a man looks at a woman he wants.
Matt is looking at me as if he wants me.
* * *
I can’t stop thinking about the way I impulsively threw myself at Matt and kissed him. The way he smelled, the way he felt, so warm and male and strong. I’m restless that weekend and call Kayla over to my apartment.
“So how is it going?”
Pushing the thought of having kissed him aside, I think of how great it feels to be campaigning with him. “Incredibly well,” I admit.
“Is he as lean and built and tall and dark as he is on TV?”
“TV can’t accurately capture his charisma in person. He’s . . . he’d be attractive with his face alone, but combined with his personality and energy it’s sort of naughty.” I’m starving, eating my dinner in a hurry so I can go to bed early.
“He’s running for president. Your childhood mega crush, and mine!” Kayla marches to the TV remote and flicks it on to the first channel. He’s on the screen—as attractive as he is in person.
“What are Republicans saying?” I ask her.
“They’re shitting in their pants.”
“And the Democrats?”
“Shitting in their pants.”
She sighs and drops down on my couch. “Never voted for an Independent candidate in my life, but this one is mine. Hamilton for the win!” She glances at me. “We miss you at Women of the World. Are you planning to come back after the campaign?”
“Of course.”
“Why leave WoW at all?”
“Because he’s what America’s been waiting for. We deserve it.”
“You hate the spotlight, even though you secretly admire how well your mother takes to it.”
“I’m shy.” I shrug. “It doesn’t come as easy to me as it does to my mother. But I want to be there when he kicks ass.”
“What about our trip to Europe this year?” Kayla asks.
I join her on the couch, sighing as I stare at the ceiling. “We can go to Europe anytime, but it’s not any day that Matt Hamilton runs for president.”
“The perfect baby father and every woman out there knows it. If you can’t have him in your bed or fathering your children, at least let him be our chief in command.”
“Commander in chief,” I correct.
“He can be anything he’d like.”
I groan and laugh.