Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

Adam Quinn was coding again. He knew what it meant, of course. It meant that he was in a sufficiently good mood not to be drinking, but a sufficiently bad mood to want to work through whatever was in his head, bothering him.

And then, as it often seemed to these days, the thing that was bothering him interrupted him in the middle of coding. The look on her face was wild, and her eyes opened and shut like she had to do it herself, because the force of what she'd just had to watch on the television was too great to deal with. Like the Ellen Holden interview had just fried the part of her brain that dealt with normal function.

"I thought you said it went great," she says. Her voice is low and controlled and holds none of the screaming she's obviously thinking about doing.

"Linda, you caught the interview."

"Of course I caught it. Catching interviews, particularly big ones, is my job. It's what I'm paid for."

"What did you think?"

"Don't interrupt me," she said. Her eyes bored a hole in him. It was an unusual intensity from her, and he had to admit he liked it. What would he have to do to awaken this woman when their clothes came off, he wondered? "Now of course, I thought that it was just a formality, given how well you said it went. It cleared up all our problems, you made it sound like. Oh, it couldn't have gone more perfectly."

"Well? What was the problem?"

"What was the problem, Adam? Are you seriously asking me that right now?"

"Is this angry mommy act going to take long?"

Her eyes looked like they might just pop out of her head, and Adam thought that would have been perfectly entertaining if they had.

"Mr. Quinn, if you want me to resign—"

"I'm only teasing you, Linda. Relax a little, will you? You look like you're going to have a stroke."

"My blood pressure is high enough," she says, without a hint of irony. "You walked out of that interview feeling confident about it? As if it went well?"

"Well, I mean. I guess there are various definitions of 'well,' if you want to argue the point."

Linda presses her fingers hard into her temples and rubs a small circle. Then her hand comes up and jabs a button on the remote, and the TV comes back to life.

Ellen really does clean up well for television. She's an attractive enough woman—Adam wouldn't kick her out of bed—but there are too many hard edges to her. Too many defining features. Her looks are striking, but they're not strikingly good—just striking. The magic of a professional makeup crew makes all the difference.

The sound doesn't need to be on to know what she's asking. She's got her best professional face on, which in Ellen's case looks like she's about to stab Adam at the next opportunity she gets.

He doesn't need to read the captions, either, nor be a gifted lip-reader, to know the question she's asking, because he remembers his reaction to it. A second later, he sees himself lean back and bark out a laugh silently on the muted television. He could still recall, almost to the word, what he said.

She'd just asked him about his relationship with Sofia, the eldest daughter of the King of Spain. Mostly a figurehead, not a real King. Well, mostly. The only real Kings left are in the Middle East, and you don't get away with having a fling with their daughters.

He tried to recall the exact question. Something like, 'You've had several romantic interludes with high-profile celebrities; not all of them ended on good terms. Many started on bad terms, with women whose marital status—'

He'd cut her off then, with the laugh. Sure, she was right. He'd had a few good stories to tell. Then she'd finished her question.

'As President, what guarantee can you give the American people that trend won't continue, and that your relationship with, for example, King Nicolas, won't be harmed by your past indiscretions?'

He'd given her the truth, which might have been seen by a politically-minded observer as a mistake. He'd told her that there was no such thing as a guarantee when it came to the future.

Oh, he'd have promised not to do it again if it would help, but promises don't count for much, and there's no way around it. She knew it, he knew it, everyone knew it. And everyone knew there was no way he could guarantee anything like that.

There was no way a question like that wasn't going to make the final video package. No way in hell. And of course, it had.

"I don't see what the problem is," Adam finally responded, after Linda paused the video and looked at him expectantly for an answer.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and when she opened them again none of the anger that she'd been no doubt hoping to reign in had faded in the least.

"Adam, it's my job to try to keep the public from thinking of you as a loose cannon who can't be trusted with the Presidency. You hired me to do that job."

"And nothing has changed."

"If you're going to be going off and saying things like, well, like this, on national television, I don't see how I can."

Adam looked at her blankly for a long moment, and a scowl slowly soured his face. Yes, that was going to be a problem for her. It shouldn't be, which was what he'd been struggling with all morning.

It shouldn't be, because her job wasn't to stop him saying something stupid. It was to make sure that he didn't get hurt.

"I trust you, Linda," he said, with all the emphasis on the right places in the hope that maybe she'd get it.

"Do you want me to quit? Just let Tom do his thing? I know you'll have plenty of success. He's a brilliant strategist, but—"

"If I wanted you to quit, Linda, I wouldn't have hired you. Don't make stupid suggestions."

She took a deep breath and turned and took it the wrong way across back to her little cubby.