American Queen

Oh God.

I peer around him, and he waves a hand. “My security detail is waiting for me at the end of the hall. They can’t hear us.”

I should ask him why he’s here, why he’s at Georgetown, in my office, at nearly midnight. I should ask why he didn’t call or email or have some secretary chase me down. Instead, I ask, “Isn’t it a little late for dinner?”

He glances at his watch without uncrossing his arms. “Maybe, but I’m confident that any restaurant you’d pick would be happy to open up for me. Or open up for you—I’m pretty sure there isn’t anyone in this town that doesn’t still owe Leo Galloway a favor or two.”

“I don’t throw my grandfather’s name around,” I say, a little reproachfully. “I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”

“Just because you want to forget who you are doesn’t mean the rest of us can forget you.” His voice is soft.

I take a step back. I swallow. A subdued and dignified anger, sculpted into a careful, quiet shape after five years, rises from its slumber. Because, of course, Embry had once been very good at forgetting me.

“Why are you hiding away here?” he asks, uncrossing his arms and taking a step forward. His voice is still soft, too soft, the kind of soft that croons promises in your ear and then breaks them.

I should know.

“I’m not hiding,” I say, tilting my head at my desk, stacked high with papers and books and Moleskin journals. “I’m working. I’m teaching, I’m writing a book. I’m happy.”

Embry takes another step forward, swallowing up the space in my office with one long stride. He’s close enough that I can smell him again, a smell that hasn’t changed after all this time.

I close my eyes for a minute, trying to reorient myself.

“You never were a good liar,” he murmurs, and when I open my eyes, he’s so close to me that I could reach out and run my fingers along his jaw. I don’t, turning my head away and looking out the window instead.

“I’m not lying,” I lie.

“Come to dinner with me,” he says, changing tactics. “We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

“Five years.” The words are pointed, and to his credit, he doesn’t parry them away.

“Five years,” he acknowledges.

Strange that such a long time can sound so short.

I sigh. “I can’t have dinner with you. If I’m seen out with you, then my face will end up on Buzzfeed and all over Twitter, and I can’t handle that.”

Embry is listening to me, but he’s also reaching out to touch a strand of white-gold hair that’s fallen free from my bun. “That’s why we’re going late. To an unannounced place. No one will know but me and you and the chef.”

“And the Secret Service.”

Embry shrugs, his eyes starting to crinkle again. “They won’t write their tell-all memoirs until after they’ve retired. Until then, our dinner is safe.”

I can say no. I know I can, although I’ve never been able to say it to Embry. But I don’t want to say no. I don’t want to go to the pristine townhouse, impeccably furnished and impossibly soulless, and spend another night alone in my bed. I don’t want to be staring up at the ceiling of my bedroom, replaying every moment, every glance, my hand stealing under the sheets as I remember the citrus-pepper scent and the way the shadows fell across Embry’s cheeks. I don’t want to be whipping myself for another wasted night, another missed chance…especially with him.

Just for one night, I can pretend I’m someone else.

“Dinner,” I say, finally conceding, and he grins. “But that’s it.”

He holds up his hands. “I’ll be as chaste as a priest. I promise.”

“I hear not all priests are that chaste these days.”

“Chaste as a nun then.”

I reach for my trench coat by the rack near my desk, and he grabs it for me, holding it open for me to step into. It’s attentive and intimate and charming while being dangerous—all the things I remember Embry being, and I can’t make eye contact as I step into the coat and belt it closed over my blouse and pencil skirt. For a moment—just a tiny, brief moment—I imagine I feel his lips on my hair. I step and turn, facing him and trying to keep my distance all at the same time.

Embry notices, and his smile fades a little. “I’ll take care of you, Greer. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

Oh, but I am. And not a little bit afraid of myself.

Teller’s is a small Italian restaurant a few blocks away from campus, and it’s one of those delicious tiny places that’s been around forever. Embry doesn’t seem surprised when I suggest it, and after a few phone calls and a very short trip in a black Cadillac, we are inside the old bank building being seated. We’re the only ones there, the waiter’s footsteps echoing on the cold marble floor and the lights dimmed except for those around our table, but the chef and the servers are nothing but polite and happy to feed us. The Secret Service find discreet and distant points in the dining room to stand, and for a moment, without them in sight, with Embry’s suit jacket thrown carelessly over the back of a nearby chair, I can pretend that this is normal. A normal dinner, a normal conversation.

I take a small drink of the cocktail on the table, trying to wash away history, drown it in gin. My history with Embry is hopelessly tangled up in my history with someone else, and as long as I let that someone else cast a shadow over our dinner, there’s no way I can hope to have a conversation that isn’t strained with pain and regret. The only answer is to put everything in a box and shovel gravel on top and bury it until it suffocates.