Billionaire In Hiding: The Complete Series (Alpha Billionaire Romance Western Love Story) (122 page)

We
whizzed past the Washington Monument. I stopped, watching as the stark sword
shot into the orange sunset. I was breathing heavily. Rachel continued jogging,
leaping ahead of me, until she understood that she’d left me behind. Because
I’d been left behind so much, lately, it seemed natural—natural to be the one
falling behind. I brought my hand in the air and waved ahead, toward her. As if
to say: “Jog on.”

But
she didn’t. She walked back toward me, her neck bobbing this way, then that,
stretching out. She frowned, a small patch of fear appearing in her eyes.

I
spoke lightly, efficiently. “I’ve left the White House.” The orange wafted over
my cheeks, over my lips. I heard the words echo over the water. “It’s over.”

Rachel
nodded primly.

“I
just need a bit of time to think about everything that’s happened,” I
continued. I didn’t know why I felt I needed to verify myself to the woman
before me; I didn’t know why I felt that she was my protector, she was my only
savior. “Xavier and Jason—the whole spiel. It was all becoming far too much for
me. So I took a step back.”

“I
think you made a good choice,” Rachel whispered. She brought her hand to my
shoulder and helped me right myself, helped me come out of my lean. Her eyes
affirmed: you must stand up straight. You must live strongly. I knew what she
meant. She’d ducked out of the political field so long ago, and yet her eyes still
spoke of the harsh reality of what that world truly was. She knew the reality,
and she knew how to stand in the aftermath, an affirmed woman.

“Thanks
for understanding,” I whispered. The park around us was eerily quiet. Everyone
in D.C. had given up on summer officially and wafted into their homes for the
duration. We’d see them again in April.

“You
know you always have a place to stay with me,” Rachel continued. “You don’t
have to go back to your apartment ever again, as far as I’m concerned.” She swallowed.
“I was ever so lonely without you, before you came. I didn’t have a friend in
the world.”

I
bowed my chin. “With everything going on at the White House—with everything
falling apart in other aspects of my life, I couldn’t be happier to have a friend
and a place to feel safe, right now,” I admitted.

The
tension between us was great. All too often, we’d been drinking buddies, just
girls who got together and gabbed, gossiped, talked about boys and sex and
getting ahead in the world. But we were getting older, then. We were
discovering the wisdom of the world. We were discovering what kinds of friends
we had to be in order to get each other through.

Rachel
interrupted the tense silence, finally. She chortled before saying it. “Do you
want to go grab a drink somewhere? I know this great wine bar.” She raised her
eyebrow. “I think we should celebrate you making these active choices in your
life. Don’t you?”

I
brought my hand over my stomach, feeling the anxiety dissipate. “God. A drink.
Yes.”

We
stretched our legs and ran back to the apartment. We showered and changed
quickly, feeling the vitality come back into our hearts, our muscles. I wore a
slim, black dress, one I knew made my breasts grow so high on my chest. They
seemed to glow beneath my chin. My hair coursed down over my shoulders, and my
eyes blinked, big and wide. I half-heartedly thought about meeting a man at the
bar that evening, but the only person I could think about was Xavier. I
imagined meeting him with this look. How he would grab my waist and pull me on
top of him, ready to kiss me, to make love to me. I shivered in the bathroom,
finally hearing Rachel out in the kitchen.

“Amanda?
You almost ready?”

We
burst into the bar only twenty minutes later, both of us looking stunning,
sensual. The wine bar was quite ritzy, with this suave-looking bartender
leaning against the counter, a bowtie tied beneath his chin. “Ladies,” he began
in a French accent. “Please. Zee corner table.”

The
corner table was already well-lit with candles. The wine menus were draped over
the fine wood. I eyed the wines: from France, from Argentina, from Australia,
bringing my finger down the long list. I knew that Xavier knew the texture, the
feel of each of these wines. But I was a bit lost on my own.

Rachel
leaned toward me, a bit of gleam initiated in her eyes. “Argentina. 1977. You
game?”

I
raised my eyebrow. Aged wine had never been a part of my regime. “Do you
remember college, when we’d buy the cheapest wine possible? I think I bought
bottles for three, four dollars.” I laughed, taking a sip of water. The
candlelight wafted from the glass.

She
nodded, returning a giggle. “We’re high-class broads now.” She turned toward
the waiter and pointed at the wine, unable to pronounce it.

“Very
good, my lady,” he murmured, bowing his head. “And I suppose you ladies would
enjoy a cheese plate, as well?”

I
nodded voraciously, my stomach rumbling beneath my dress. “Oh, yes please,” I
murmured. Rachel smiled at me across the table.

“You
look happier,” she said as the man skirted back, toward the wine cellar.

I
shrugged. “Maybe just the endorphins from the run. Maybe just from quitting
today. I don’t know!” I allowed my hands to fling back, blasé.

She
shook her head. “I can’t believe you finally did it. Are you feeling—relieved
in any way?”

I
shrugged my shoulders, nodding a bit. “Falling in love was quite an experience.
Perhaps it was wonderful, sometimes. But more often than not, it was stressful,
far too much to handle while also trying to run the president’s campaign. I
don’t know. Maybe I was far too young for the job.” I shrugged my shoulders,
blinking up toward the sky.

Suddenly,
the server was back, presenting the 1977 wine to us at the table. A different
server placed the cheese plate before us, allowing the smell to emanate into
our noses. I closed my eyes and nodded to the first server, who twisted the
cork from the top and poured the deep red drink into my glass. Rachel and I
turned toward each other and clinked our glasses, allowing the noise to flow
throughout the near-empty wine bar.

The
wine drizzled down our tongues, making our bodies warm and loose. I placed my
hand on the table and peered at it, wondering what to say next. All this time,
my mind was whirring with thoughts of Xavier, with thoughts of what I was meant
to do next.

Rachel
cleared her throat. “Listen, Amanda,” I she began.

My
eyes darted up, blinking toward her. I was removing myself from my tense
thoughts.

“I was
thinking about what you’ve said about everything, about your relationship with
Xavier. And I just wanted to tell you that I think—I think that his reaction to
what you told him about Jason really sucks, of course. It was completely
unconventional, and you have every right to be upset. In fact, you know that I
would have been upset, as well.”

I
nodded, peering toward her. I didn’t know what was coming next. Her voice was
so hesitant, like she didn’t want to hurt my feelings in any way. “Yeah?”

“But I
have to say. This is a tricky situation, one that doesn’t warrant an
appropriate response all the time. I think his reaction might make sense, in a
way. Just like us, the president worked hard for his position. It’s not like he
just sloughed into office, like so many of our other presidents with important
daddies. He is a prestigious man with good ideas for this country. But he had
to elbow his way to the top.”

I
swirled the wine in my mouth, listening to the words. I nodded a bit. The taste
was bitter.

“And
he risked so much to be with you,” Rachel continued. “I know you risked a great
deal to be with him, as well. But please consider his side.”

“I
did, sometimes,” I murmured. “I didn’t want to tell his wife about us, for fear
that she would leave him and create a presidential scandal. I didn’t want to be
‘that girl’ who became famous, only for sleeping with the president—“

“But
don’t you see? Already, your thoughts have diverged back into thoughts of only
yourself,” Rachel whispered. She swallowed, knowing how she came off. My heart
burned, but only because I knew that she was my only friend—that she was trying
to help me, not to hurt me. “I’m not trying to reprimand you,” Rachel
whispered. “It’s just that after everything you’ve been through, I don’t think
you can blame Xavier for being upset with you, just the first time you tell him
that he’s this close from allowing everything to fall apart. Can you imagine,
living on a precipice like that—and also being the most powerful man in the
entire world?” Her voice was breathless, almost pleading with me.

I
nodded, feeling a bit ashamed. “I just wanted everything to be perfect,” I
whispered.

“I
just think you have to give him a bit more time to comprehend something as big
as this,” Rachel whispered. “You kept this from him for many, many weeks.
Perhaps, in many ways, he feels betrayed by you? He has told you so much about
himself, about his marriage. And you’ve kept your troubles on the sidelines.”
She shrugged, peering down at the untouched cheese plate. “Perhaps you could
talk to him once more. Perhaps you could give him a chance.”

I
cleared my throat, taking a small piece of Brie into my mouth. The creamy
cheese glided across my tongue. So savory, it made my eyes water. “Perhaps
you’re right,” I whispered. I began to understand that perhaps not all was
lost, that perhaps I could still have the man I loved, I could still have the
career I’d always dreamed of. Everything could fall into place, if I just
worked for it. If I just gave Xavier time to come to reason.

“You
know that I envy you,” Rachel began again, pouring another layer of wine into
my wine glass. “I admire the way you take action, the way you get what you
want, no matter what.” She shrugged. “When the president of the United States
gave you grief, you essentially told him to fuck off. That is powerful, Amanda.
That is more than many of us can ever say we’ve done.”

I
looked down at the cheese platter once more, my mind spinning. I had quit the
White House that day, and I needed to find a way back in—a way back in to see
if I could reason with Xavier, to needle my way back into the position. Only if
I did it appropriately, with a sense of tact, would I feel right about it. “I’m
never going to be stupid about anything ever again,” I whispered toward Rachel,
laughing a bit. A slight jazz had begun over the loud speaker, making me speak in
time with the music.

Rachel
nodded. “If only we could all say that and truly mean it. But alas: I’ll
definitely make a mistake today, tomorrow, the next day. I’ll look stupid at
least three more times this evening. That’s life, isn’t it? No preparing for
it, I suppose. We trip. We fall. We get back up.”

“I’m
just lucky I had you there to catch me when I fell down, down, down—all the
way,” I said to her. We clinked our glasses once more, feeling the camaraderie
initiated with this true, effortless friendship.

But I
knew I would take the weekend off, to fume, to understand what was going on
inside my mind. I couldn’t go rushing back to the president’s arms. Not yet.
Perhaps if I spent enough days away from the White House, they’d pull me back
to help them. I was the only one with any clue back on the campaign team.
Jason’s actions during my last absence had been orchestrated to him by a series
of notes he’d found in my desk—notes that I had meant to involve a long-term
strategy, not a one-year-before-the-election strategy. But all was not lost. I
had ideas brimming up to my ears.

After
another bottle of wine, after allowing drunkenness to pummel through us, Rachel
and I both stood up, woozily. We sauntered toward the door and gave a hearty
goodbye to the bartender. The bartender pointed, telling us that a taxi was
waiting outside. We rustled into it and cackled, bringing the window open so
that we could see the glinting stars from the October night sky. It seemed like
things were both beginning and ending, all at once. Everything was up in the
air.

Chapter 7

The
taxi swept us back to Rachel’s apartment. We cackled all the way up the steps,
feeling no strained anger toward each other for the previous conversation. She
was watching out for me, and I knew it. The anger for Xavier was dissipating,
as well. I felt calm, cool. Ready to take on the following few weeks.

I
collapsed into my bed that evening, still wearing that slim, black dress. I
laid on my side, feeling the way my body dipped into the mattress. The moon
gleamed outside my window, and I brought my hand in front of it, noting the way
the light made my fingers just shadowed outlines before my face. I wondered, in
that moment, what Xavier was doing, whether or not Camille was with him. I
wondered if he was thinking about me, as well.

I’d
never stayed up at night, thinking about boys. I’d never kept my eyes open,
staring ever out into the darkness, wondering about the man of my dreams. I’d
never before assumed there was any one person out there for me. In many ways, I
wished that my one person could have been anyone else.

With
the anger dissipating from my body—leaving me with a shell of off-white sadness
and interior loneliness, rather than madness—I now understood Rachel’s point
wholly. I knew that Xavier’s reaction was warranted. But I still didn’t think
that my reaction to his reaction WASN’T warranted.