INAUGURAL BALL
Matt
“President Hamilton. Mr. President.”
I pull my gaze to the man drawing my attention. I’m at the luncheon, and my damn mind keeps wandering to tonight.
“I apologize; it’s been a long day already.” I grin and run my hand restlessly along the back of my hair, leaning to speak to the Senate majority leader.
It’s incredible how we never rest. Even at social events, we’re discussing policy.
I try to pick the brains of most men there; it’s in my and the country’s best interest that my ideas for change are aligned with those of Congress and the Senate. Whether they’ll be easy to align remains to be seen.
“I asked if the first bill on your agenda will be the clean energy bill?”
“It’s one of my priorities, but not necessarily at the top,” is all I give him for now.
All in due time, old man. All in due time.
I’m relieved when we get ready for the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. We walk surrounded by black presidential state cars. I’m flanked by my grandfather and my mother as we head to the most famous address in the country. Hundreds of thousands of people line the streets to watch the parade. U.S. flags flap in the wind.
It’s an honor to be the one heading to 1600 Penn.
Grandfather is marching like a proud king, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m proud of you, son. Now you need to get in line with the parties or you won’t do shit.”
My grandfather isn’t necessarily my hero, but I know when to listen. And when to brush him aside. “The parties will get in line with me.” I wave at the crowd.
To my right, my mother is silent.
“You have a room in the White House,” I tell her, reaching out and squeezing her hand.
“Oh no.” She laughs, looking like a young girl for that fleeting moment of happiness. “Seven years was enough.”
I release her hand so we can greet the crowd again. I know she’s remembering a day like this a decade ago. Not only the day she rode the motorcade parade for the first time with my dad. But the day he died . . . and the motorcade that carried his coffin.
“Besides, I have a feeling it’ll soon be occupied,” she adds.
It takes me a moment to realize she’s referring to her room in the White House.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I know you. You won’t let that girl go. You haven’t. I’ve never seen you . . . look sadder, Matt. Even after you won.”
I’m so blown away by how well she knows me, I can’t think of a reply. That she knows it’s taken every ounce of my restraint not to call Charlotte. That for months I’ve told myself it’s for the best, that I can’t do it all, that I will fail if I try. But I don’t buy it. I want my girl, and I will have her.
“She’s the light. Walks on water,” I tell my mother.
We reach 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The gates open, the red carpet is rolled out. From within the house, my dog Jack, who was transported from Blair House earlier today, bounds down the steps to greet us.
My mother is dressed to impress. You’d think she was thrilled that I’m back in the White House. Maybe a part of her is. I know that another part is full of fear that I’ll meet the same end my father did.
We walk up the red-carpeted steps of the North Portico entrance.
“Mr. President,” the chief usher greets me. I shake his hand. “Welcome to your new home,” he says.
“Thank you, Tom. I’d like to meet the staff tomorrow. Help me arrange that.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President.”
“Tom,” I hear my mother say, pulling him into a hug.
Jack is leading the way as we step through the wide-open front doors.
“Mr. President, sir,” one of the ushers announces. “There’s a buffet set up for you and your guests in the Old Family Dining Room while you prepare for the balls tonight.”
“Thank you. Nice to meet you . . .?”
“Charles.”
“A pleasure, Charles.” I shake the man’s hand, then head to the West Wing. I find Portia, my assistant, already organizing her desk outside the Oval Office.
“How’s it going, Portia?”
“Uff,” she huffs. “It’s going. This house is immense. Your chief of staff, Dale Coin, told me I could call the ushers’ office if anything seemed out of reach.”
“Good. Do that.”
I walk into the Oval, Jack trailing behind me.
I had my father’s desk returned—it had been in storage. I walk to it now, glancing down at the presidential seal on the rug beneath my feet. I run my fingers over the wood. The U.S. flag behind me. The presidential seal flag beside it. Then I rap the desk and take my chair and go through the documents readied for me. Jack is sniffing every nook and cranny of the room as I flip the pages.
Today I’ve become privy to confidential information—deals with other countries, high-security risks, things our CIA and FBI are engaged in that will proceed as usual unless I indicate otherwise. Intel on the situation with China. Russia’s playing with fire. Cyberterrorism on the rise.
So fucking much to do and I’m ready to get started.
I set the files aside an hour later, but instead of heading back to the buffet, I proceed to the residence to get ready for the inaugural balls.
The White House is never truly quiet, but this evening the top floors are quieter than I remember. No sound of my father or mother, just me. In the place of forty-five men before me.
Jack is sniffing around like there’s no tomorrow as I head to the Lincoln Bedroom, the room I’ve chosen to stay in. “Welcome to the White House, buddy. Like Truman said, the great white jail.”
Crossing the room, I stare out the window at the acres of land surrounding the White House, the District still foggy and cold outside.
Ready to go see her, I shower and change for tonight’s inaugural balls. My hands easily working on my cufflinks as I think about finally, finally looking into her beautiful blue eyes again.
“You miss her?”
Jack raises his head from where he was watching me from the foot of the bed. As if there is only one her in the whole goddamn world.
I smile, then I reach down and I stroke the top of his head while I reach for the tuxedo jacket. “I miss her too.” I shove my arms into the sleeves, then glance down at him. “We won’t have to miss her for long.”
* * *
Charlotte
“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States!!”
I almost spill my drink when the announcement echoes across the ballroom.
I stand with Alison, who’s thrilled to be one of the White House photographers. While she was snapping pictures of the partygoers, I was mingling by her side, a drink in hand, when those words rang out.
And if someone had just grabbed a bat and smashed the air out of my lungs, I would absolutely believe it.
This is the smallest ball among all five being held tonight. Everyone expected the president to make it to the other grand balls first. I was barely prepared to see him—I’d only drunk one glass of wine so far!—and now he’s here.
Oh god.
I’m ten times more nervous than all the women in the room. Hundreds of them, all important, highly intelligent or highly beautiful women, all tittering excitedly as Matt Hamilton, my Matt Hamilton, walks into the room.
Um. No. He’s not yours, Charlotte, so you’d better stop feeling possessive over the man.
But I can’t help it.
The sight of him makes me yearn to be walking by his side, with my arm hooked into his, no matter how ludicrous the idea is. It was one thing looking at him at a podium. Farther away.
But it’s another thing being in the room he’s now occupying.
In a tux.
A hot black tux.
So much closer to me than he’s been in two months.
I can almost smell him, expensive and clean and male.
Alison is snapping pictures at my side.
Snap, snap, snap.
Matt takes over the room with his long, confident walk, briskly greeting those who greet him. Is he taller today? He really is towering over everyone. And are his shoulders broader? He looks so much larger than life. His very posture and stride that of a man who knows the whole world revolves around him. Which wouldn’t be entirely false.
“You know what I like about Matt? That he actually backs up the hotness with brains,” she says, making an O with her mouth and exhaling, then licking her lips with a mischievous sparkle in her eye. “Yum.”
Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m licking my lips too. I really need to never do that again.
Alison shifts positions to capture a dozen different shots—not only of Matt but of people’s awed and ecstatic reactions to him.
His eyes are sparkling as he greets one person after the next. They crinkle at the corners when he smiles, and I remember that crinkle. I remember the feel of the stubble on his jaw in the mornings even though his jaw is smooth and perfectly clean-shaven now, his lips curved upward.
His hair is combed back, his features chiseled and beautiful. My whole body spasms uncontrollably. It’s as if every pore and every inch of me remembers him. Still wants him.
I lift my fingers to stroke the place where I used to wear his father’s commemorative pin—but all I touch is my bare skin, revealed by the long, strapless gown I’m wearing.
My heart thuds crazily as he continues greeting the people he passes, approaching where I stand with my drink frozen in my hand. He looks so happy. My stomach clutches with a mix of emotions. Happiness, yes. But his presence is also a reminder of what I’d lost.
Did I lose him?
He was never really mine.
But I was all his. His to take. Body and soul. And I would have done anything he wanted me to. But I’ve tried to regain my sense of self. While traveling through Europe, I’ve tried to see the reasons why it could never have worked, among them that I’m inexperienced and young and not the kind of woman a president needs. I am not ready for what he is. No matter how much I wish I were older, more experienced, more fit to be by his side.
Not that he wanted me there.
I am torn when the crowd keeps parting and he keeps advancing.
“I’m going to the restroom,” I breathe, and I head off, wondering why I came here. Why I said yes. It was his important day. I didn’t want to miss it. But it hurts anew, as if today were the day he was elected, the day I walked away from him—booked a flight to Europe and spent two months there with Kayla, freezing our asses off, drinking hot chocolate. I came back in time for his inauguration—I could not miss it.
But landing in the USA felt bittersweet—it’s the home I love, where I was born and want to die, and fell in love, but also the country that’s led by the man I love and am trying desperately to get over.
So I steal into the ladies’ room to find it vacant. And I just look at myself in the mirror—and whisper, “Breathe.” I shut my eyes, lean forward, and breathe again. Then I open my eyes. “Now get out there, and say hello to him, and smile.”
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever told myself to do.
But I exit the room, and watch him with every step I take as I head back to the crowd—everyone waiting to greet him. To be greeted. Acknowledged.
Alison spots me and snaps my picture. “You’ve got it bad. Can’t say I blame you,” she says.
“I don’t want to,” I whisper.
She smiles and continues snapping pictures.
I drink him up like a starved woman, six feet plus of pure fantasy, all packaged in a real man—beautiful beyond belief. So beautiful, I can’t believe beauty like that exists.
And then he’s three steps closer, his voice so near. “Thanks for coming.”
Two steps. “Good to see you.”
One step.
I try to smile when he stops before me, towering over me, dark and gorgeous. Everyone is holding their breath. A silence settles over the room. I blink in disbelief.
Matt Hamilton.
God. He looks hot as sin, his eyebrows slanted as he looks piercingly into my eyes, a half smile playing on his beautiful lips—lips that are full and lush, and very, very wicked.
There’s a catch in my breath, and so much pride welling in my chest as I duck my head in a slight nod.
“Mr. President.”
He reaches out to take my hand in his grasp, his fingers sliding over mine.
“It’s good to see you.” His voice is especially low.
I remember him telling me he’d get hard when I called him Mr. President, and now I can’t stop blushing. But it’s not like I’m going to bring it up now.
His fingers are warm and strong. His grip just right.
His hand so right.
We’re not even shaking hands. He’s practically holding my hand. And every part of me remembers this hand. This touch on me.
When he lowers my hand to my side, he slips something into my palm and ducks to murmur in my ear, “Be discreet,” and I grip what feels like a small piece of paper in my fist as he proceeds to greet the other guests.
Slack-jawed, I watch him retreat, then I discreetly open the paper. It reads:
10 minutes
South exit
up the elevator
take the double doors down the hall.
He’s expecting me.
I count the minutes as the live performance by Alicia Keys begins, and Matt opens up the dance floor with his mother.
The most handsome president I’ve ever beheld.
Where did he learn how to dance like that?
I’m holding a glass of wine as I watch him twirl her on the dance floor. She’s laughing, looking younger than her years, though the pain in her eyes never really fades. Matt is grinning down at her, trying his damnedest to relieve that pain.
I love this stupid man so much I want to punch something.
When the dance ends, other couples join, and I see Matt—who’s still causing titters in the room—excuse himself from his mother and head out a different exit than the one he indicated for me.
He’s tugging on his cufflinks as he crosses the room, his agents already moving at the sides of the room, toward the same exit, and I set my wine aside. I’m telling myself it’s no good—that if I go there, it’ll just be to get my heart broken a thousand times again. But a part of me . . . just doesn’t care.
This is Matt.
I crossed an ocean to forget him, but I’d swim across thousands for this man.
My heart will always beat for him.
The heart that had to put a whole ocean between us for fear of seeking him out.
The heart that beats like a mad thing in my chest as I go meet him.
I follow instructions to the T. I spot Wilson outside the room, along with an army of other agents of the Secret Service.
Wilson whispers something into his receiver as he nods at me and reaches for the doorknob.
“Hi, Wilson.”
“Miss Wells.” He nods briefly as he opens the door. “The president is inside.”
“Thank you.”
I suppose my heart is whacking so loudly because I’m seeing him again, and also because I don’t know what to expect.
I walk into the room, the door shutting with a soft click behind me.
The air is sucked out of me as if by a vacuum.
A Hamilton vacuum.
It feels as if the whole room is just a backdrop for him. He’s so . . . imposing. Electrifying. I have eyes only for the tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered man at its center. His stance confident but easy, one hand inside the pocket of his slacks. The bow tie he wears is perfect. Even his hair is perfect, not a strand out of place, and I ache to run my fingers through it.
But inside his eyes there is a whole universe, dark and endless, an intensity in his gaze that pulls at every fiber of my being as he slowly drinks me in—every inch of me in this dress, from my eyes, to my nose, to my lips, my throat, my shoulders, my chest, my abdomen, down my legs.
It’s hard to speak. The way he’s looking at me is thawing my resolve to be strong, and I need to pull his attention away from stripping me naked with his eyes. “Being president looks good on you,” I can’t help but say, because as he undresses me with his eyes, I sort of get an eyeful of him too. His athletic, muscular frame and how the tux hugs his shoulders.
At my words, Matthew’s eyes leisurely trek back to my face to lock on mine again. He responds simply, his voice as deep as I remember, the tone firm and completely unapologetic. “You’re beautiful.”
I inhale sharply, his words like a punch at the very core of my being. Warmth blooms in my cheeks. It’s as if he’s lit me up, this man. And nothing I do can dampen the fire he ignites in me. “I didn’t go into this for a happily ever after,” I whisper.
“But you deserve a happily ever after.”
Matt is not smiling. His eyes are dark and somber as he continues to stare at me intently. “I’ve stayed away from you,” he says, taking a step, withdrawing his hand from his pocket.
“I’ve noticed.” My voice sounds raw, and I’m so overcome with his presence as he prowls around the room that I drop my eyes, my emotions all over the place. I raise them after a second and meet his unflinching gaze—which he hasn’t removed from me. Not for a second. “Is it getting easier for you?” I ask.
“Fuck no. It’s taking everything in me not to touch you right now.”
He drags a restless hand over his face, a tinge of regret in his voice as he stops a few feet away. “Being with me could hurt you—you know that’s why you wanted me to stay away. You know that if I’m with you, I’m going to hurt you even when that won’t be my intention. Not at all. I know that wasn’t my father’s intention when he hurt my mother for years.”
“Seeing you is hurting me now.”
He clamps his jaw, then reaches out to tilt my head back. “Look at me,” he says, his voice gruff and low, his dark gaze carving into me. “I can’t give you what you deserve. I can’t give you a house and I can’t even take you out on a normal date. But I want you. I fucking need you in my life, Charlotte.”
His touch is making my knees quake. I breathe, “I’ve accepted that I can’t have more and that’s okay with me. It’s not worth it. You’re doing more important things than being with me.”
He frowns thoughtfully as he curls his hand and drags his knuckles down my cheek, grazing my skin. “The bigger risk is you getting hurt because I can’t give you what you need. But I want to. I want to give you everything.”
I battle a tremor, lick my lips nervously, craving more of his touch, more words, more Matt. “That’s not why I came here. I want you to have the best presidency, and I wanted you to know I’m okay that this is over between us.”
“I don’t want this to be over.” His eyes glimmer mercilessly as he drops his hand and just looks down at me. “I’m fucking selfish. I want you all to myself. Jesus! Every day, I wonder what you’re doing, who you’re talking to, who you’re smiling at, and I want it to be me.”
“I don’t want this to be over either. But it has to, Matt.”
He shakes his head, smiling ruefully. “It doesn’t have to. Fuck trying to stay away from you. That’s not what I want. What do you want from me? Do you want this?”
“What’s ‘this’?” I ask uncertainly.
“Everything.”
My stomach feels as if I’m riding a roller coaster, so many dips and tugs I can’t stand still as Matt waits for my answer.
I’ve never been able to lie to him, and I don’t think I ever will be. “I don’t want you to stay away from me.”
“I asked you a question. Do you want everything I can give you?”
God. The pull he has on me, his magnetism tugging at me. The pain in his eyes only reminding me of my own.
He’s the president now, but he’s still Matt. My first crush, my first love. And I know that after Matt, I’ll never want or love another man again.
“I don’t know what ‘everything’ means. I want to start slowly,” I begin.
“How slowly?”
“Slow, Matthew,” I say.
He exhales, his eyes softening.
“It’s too much. You’re too much,” I groan. “But I don’t care about anything else. I don’t want you to stay away from me.”
His gaze is alive with heat as he gazes down at me.
“I just don’t see how this can even work without a media explosion I don’t want,” I add. “It’s too close to the campaign—people will think we had an affair all that time.”
“We did.”
I feel my cheeks heat at both the memory and the gruffness in his voice.
The times I spent with him are too valuable to me to willingly give them up as fodder to the media. “Yes, but those were our moments.” I flush even more at the look in his eyes, as if he remembers too. “I don’t want the world to use them against you. Or me.”
He’s silent for a moment, simply staring at me, everything about him making my mouth water—his achingly familiar espresso eyes, warm and liquid as he looks down at me. And when he lifts his hand to hold me by the chin, my whole body jerks in response. Wanton. Aching. Swaying toward him. “Come to the White House. Be my acting first lady,” he says, his voice husky.
“Matt, I couldn’t possibly.”
“You can very possibly.”
I’m stunned to realize he means it—his eyes steely with determination and certainty.
“You can do whatever you want with the role, it’s self-defined.”
“But your mother would be so much better at it,” I insist.
“And yet I’ve got my eye on you for the part.”
“Why?”
That lovely playful sparkle I remember so well appears in his eyes again. “Because you look good on my arm.”
“Haha.” I’m suddenly smiling, I can’t help it.
His lips are curved too, but his stare is deathly serious. “Because I can’t see any other woman standing next to me. And because no one could do the job that you could.”
My heart flips in my chest.
“We’ll figure this out. You try the role on for size. Let me date you out in the public eye without hiding this time. We’ll take it as slow as you need.”
“The media will begin to speculate.”
“They can speculate all they like. As acting first lady you sleep in the White House, you’re on the president’s arm, and you can do so many things, Charlotte. I want to see you spread your wings and fly high, and I want to give you the platform to do it.”
“I don’t see myself as one of those ladies. I’m not posh enough.”
“You’re a countess; your grace is innate.”
“Stop flirting with me. You’re a cad, Mr. President.”
He laughs, and I scowl, and then he reaches out. “I’ll take this”—he leans over and pecks my lips—“as a yes.” He sets his forehead on mine. “A team will stop by to get your belongings, set them all in your room in the White House, and your new detail will pick you up tomorrow and bring you here.”
“I can’t move, Matthew—”
“Listen, I know you don’t want a media circus outside your apartment building every day for four years. I want you to be safe, and you’re safer with me.”
“I . . .” I can’t even think of an argument, and I definitely don’t think my neighbors deserve a media circus and Secret Service around 24/7. “Well, see, that’s something I really don’t need, a detail—”
He interrupts me as he crosses the room to leave. “We can talk more tomorrow. Expect them early.”
I watch him step outside to a trail of Secret Service agents behind him. I stay back for bit until he disappears out the door—and, it seems, until that moment when I can finally breathe. When I start to follow, he suddenly fills the doorway again.
“I forgot something—wait a minute.”
He pulls me back into the room, and then his lips are pressing firmly down on mine. I gasp at the contact, having missed it too much. Him too much. His taste, the way his tongue massages mine. And it’s massaging mine so wickedly as I open up instinctively, a moan leaving me and muffled by him as our tongues rub, tangle, twirl. Taste. Taste. Oh god, his taste. It’s divine ecstasy when he kisses me. Impulsively. Ravenously.
Head slanting, going as deep as he can go in the precious minute the kiss lasts. He groans as he pulls back, my face engulfed by both his warm hands as he drops his forehead on mine, his tone fierce.
“This isn’t over yet.”
“Matt—”
“It’s not over.”
Trying to pretend that a thousand and one things didn’t just awaken in my stomach, I push at his chest, urging him out the door. He doesn’t budge.
He takes a long moment to look down at my kissed lips—at me. In the way only he sees me, as if he knows my every dream and fear and nightmare, and all I have been and will ever be.
As if he knows that I . . . was and am and will always be his.
He smiles, and after one last glance at my wet lips, he steps out and leaves me with knees that just turned to putty.
“Mr. President,” says Wilson as Matt buttons his jacket, which I seemed to cause to come loose.
Matthew just nods and strides confidently down the hall with the men after him.
* * *
“Jackie Kennedy, Princess Diana—all young and beautiful and loved.”
“I just cannot believe you’re comparing me to them,” I tell Kayla as she sits on my small couch that night.
“Why?”
“I don’t see myself like one of them. I don’t know the first thing about it. I’m not my mother—it’s easy for her, smooth-talking, cool, and collected. My palms sweat, thinking of all these important people looking for reasons why I don’t fit the part.”
“You are the part. The president has asked you. The people have been fascinated by you and Matt since the whole campaign began. You go out there and show them Matt was right in picking you. He’s an intelligent man; let them see what he sees.”
I exhale.
“You don’t need to do it all at once,” she says.
“Oh, I’m definitely not doing it all at once. Small steps. Jessa would tell me that when I was little. Small steps take you farther, and one at a time.”
She continues gaping across the room, clearly still mind-blown. “Wow. God, I still can’t believe it.”
“Don’t tell Sam, or Alan, anyone, until he makes the official announcement, please.”
“Of course.”
I stare out the window, as mind-blown as she. I wanted a man to love and to make a difference. Does this mean I can have both?
Why is it that when the opportunity finally comes, the fear is so great, you almost want to back down?
“Whenever you doubt whether you belong there, know that you do. Jackie and Di. Both very beloved. They brought something new, something you cannot buy with experience. Tell yourself, Charlotte, ‘I have been asked by the president to be his acting first lady. And I’ve accepted.’”
I swallow, nodding. I’ve missed him too much. I’d do anything to be close to him. Anything. They say to grow as a person you need to challenge yourself, go for something higher, something that you might fail at, even.
There is nothing higher or greater for me than this.
To try to be with the man I love, no matter how big he is, how grand, how larger than life. Try to make a difference, not a small one, but one that reaches across cities, states, continents.
Oh god.
I’m going to be Matthew Hamilton’s acting first lady.
I’m afraid of it, and at the same time, I’m scared of how much I want it. To be his true first lady. His only love. His girl, his wife, just . . . his. His in public, his at night, his every morning, his by right.
Is he thinking he wants something like that in the future? Everything … he said.
But I don’t want to ask what he meant yet. Because . . . baby steps. I cannot handle more right now.
* * *
I don’t sleep that night. I lie awake in bed in my small apartment, touching my lips. Squeezing my eyes shut as all the memories come washing down on me. As Matt’s eyes come back to haunt me. Matt telling me he wants me at the White House. Matt once telling me of the woman he’ll settle down with someday:
“One day I’ll do all the things I need to. And she’ll be mine. Mark my words.”
“Does she know this yet?” I ask, quietly.
“I just told her,” he says.
Warmth races through my bloodstream as I remember. I want to prove myself worthy. That I deserve to be there. That I deserve to be the woman by Matt Hamilton’s side.
I know it won’t be easy, winning the public. But I know that despite the fear, the uncertainty, the self-doubt, I am still that girl. The one who wants to make a difference. The one who offered to help him with his campaign. The one who fell irrevocably in love with him.