At Any Cost (18 page)

President Ballard had invited the Hughes family to the White House for dinner with several members of the current administration. Tensions between the United States and Russia continued to worsen, and the president was eager to continue the dialogue between the two administrations, even if he had to do it under the guise of a friendly dinner.

In the President's Dining Room in the White House residence, the table was covered with a cream damask cloth. The lights of the candles softened the rich red and gold of the Reagan china and made the Kennedy crystal sparkle. The flowers were simple tonight but very rich: red daisies, red Floribunda roses, and green ivy in crystal pedestal bowls.

Fallon resented the part of herself that was impressed with all the pomp and circumstance. It was impossible for any American to not be a little awed by the White House and the history inside these walls, she conceded reluctantly.

Her parent's kabuki theatre of a happy marriage was in full swing. They were seated next to each other, and occasionally Elizabeth would lean into Preston and whisper something and they'd chuckle over a private, possibly sexy joke.

Elizabeth had two drinks—Fallon was counting—and it didn't show. It wouldn't show, Fallon knew from experience, until she'd downed five or six. Then the vases started flying. Then her mother would scream, pack her clothes, maybe run off for a few days. At least that was the routine in the old days. As First Lady, she wouldn't have that latitude.

“So,” Elizabeth was saying to President Ballard, “Preston finally relented and I will be making
Kill Shot
. My character chops off heads with a samurai sword so I will need fencing lessons, of course. I am due on set on the first of March.”

Fallon saw the planes of her father's face tighten, the smirk disguised as a smile. They had agreed to no such thing, Fallon knew, but her mother enjoyed embarrassing her father, pushing him into a corner where it would be impolite to correct his wife.

“You'll be redefining the role of First Lady,” Caroline Ballard, the current occupant of that title, said graciously. “I'll enjoy seeing you do it.”

And so it went, the standard desultory Washington, D.C. conversation.

Fallon mentally tried to hurry things along. She left work an hour early to be here; after leaving early yesterday she was going to get a reputation as a slacker. Whether or not she believed him to be guilty, Robert Chandler was relying on her and Sam Cahill in keeping him out of prison. Yet, once again, her father had insisted that this was for his career, so she had to show up.
What about my career?
More pointedly:
What about my life? My time?
She wondered what Tom was doing and squeezed her legs together to quell the sudden longing. She tried to reorient herself. Yes, she wanted Tom, but tonight, despite his seductive invitation, would not be just about sex.

Tonight would be about answers. She would ask the question she'd been privately pondering for years. She would ask why he left.

White-gloved waiters served dessert so unobtrusively they were practically invisible. Chocolate tortes with raspberry and crème Chantilly were served with sherry. Fallon accepted the sherry and drank it, while the torte remained untouched. Not accustomed to alcohol, the cumulative effect of the sherry and dinner wine was satisfactorily buffering.

A blind hour. The conversation dipped and swirled around her. When she was finally able to make a getaway, she could not recall even a single thing that was said.

Forcing herself to linger at President Ballard's dinner had been agony, but now as she arrived at the curb of Gwen's house, she felt the butterflies in her stomach. Excitement about seeing Tom was part of the reason. The other part was simple fear. She was scared to know the answer to the big question.

The door swung open and Fallon entered then shut the door behind her. Tom stood in the foyer, looking so beautiful she wanted to laugh or sing with pleasure. She, who had done a pretty good job of disguising her emotions for her parents and clients and even the media, of coming sixth or seventh—if at all—in the list of priorities, immediately felt that wild, buoyant joy that refused to be ignored.

Tom slipped her purse off her shoulder and placed it on Gwen's entry table, then took the sodden jacket from her shoulders and hung it in the closet. Only then, when she was comfortable, did he take her in his arms.

As soon as his lips touched hers, the grim energy of the evening dissipated like the end of a song. She melted against him, opening her mouth for him as he sensually stroked her tongue, hot and insistent. He pulled back. “How are you?” He spoke softly, conscious of the Secret Service outside the front door.

“Very good, now,” she answered, mimicking his low whisper.

He took her hand and gently tugged her inside. Only then did she notice that Tom had lit some candles on the living room table and over the fireplace mantle. A bottle of wine and two glasses had been set out in anticipation of her arrival.

“There's some food in the kitchen,” he said. “I stopped by the Italian Store and got a selection of antipasto. Are you hungry?”

“I nibbled at the White House but actually, I think I'd love some antipasto.”

“Sit here,” he said and strode into Gwen's kitchen.

Fallon sank onto the sofa and examined the wine. She loved Napa Valley chardonnay, and she briefly wondered if she'd revealed that in Greece. She must have, she realized, and she felt a certain bittersweet ache for the past, for the time spent apart. Occasionally during those years apart, she would grow frustrated with loneliness and think it foolish to keep herself in reserve. She should date! She should be open to others: Gwen was emphatic on this point. Fallon demurred, using her job as a convenient excuse to abstain from the dating derby. She never could verbalize that she simply couldn't move on because Tom had
mattered more than anyone else ever could
.

Her certainty on this point seemed justified and magnified tonight. He had thought of her; he remembered even the smallest detail.

Tom returned with a platter piled high with roasted vegetables, cheeses, meats and fragrant olives. “Oh my gosh,” Fallon sighed with pleasure, “That looks incredible.”

“Have some,” Tom said.

Fallon selected a fat green olive and a slice of Asiago, cooing over the delectable combination.

Tom opened the wine and poured two glasses. He handed one to Fallon. “To us,” he said.

Fallon clinked glasses. “To us.” The chardonnay was a cold, wet kiss. She remembered that she'd had two drinks with dinner and reminded herself to go easy on the wine. “This is wonderful,” she said. “Why did you do this?”

“Do what?”

“Come on. The candles, the wine, the food …”

Tom shrugged. “You've had a rough couple of days,” he explained. “I wanted to do something nice for you.”

She suddenly felt unaccountably shy, like he was answering a need directly from her soul, one that she herself could scarcely afford to acknowledge. She felt humbled by his perception and that he had taken it upon himself to remedy the plaguing stress.

“I wanted to …”

Fallon glanced up, her color rising. “Yes, Tom?”

He smiled reluctantly and set the wine glass onto the table. “I just wanted to see you happy and relaxed.”

Fallon smiled then and spontaneously pivoted on the sofa, throwing one leg over his hip so she was straddling him. It was a heady feeling being atop all that muscle and power as he blazed from beneath her. The bulge in his trousers pressed against her softest parts. She gently ran her fingers through the rough silk of his hair, looking into his face and taking in every detail. She was suddenly struck with how young he looked. No, not young. Vulnerable, she realized with wonder. It was a trait she did not associate with Tom at all, and it blindsided her. She had intended to say something flirtatious but the words evaporated. She felt his arms curl around her back and draw her closer. She bent her head and let their lips touch. The warm rose blush of his lips surprised her with their softness. She tasted the hint of chardonnay on his lips, the hungry heat of his breath as he delved deeper.

Fallon melted into him, surrendering entirely to his strength. His warm hands slid under her touch-me soft angora sweater, over the burning skin of her back, holding her close. Safe in his hot embrace, Fallon began to move seductively against him, and his hands moved down to the swell of her hips, pushing her into him so that she could feel his rigid erection through the layers of clothes. She sighed audibly and pulled back to look into his face. His eyes bore into hers with an intensity that shocked them both. He slid his hands to her breasts, cupping them reverently in his warm palms. The gentle stroking of his fingers through her lace brassiere was enough to make her nipples pucker, the desperate eagerness of her response undeniable.

She felt the clasp of her bra suddenly open and realized he'd unclipped it without her noticing. The excitement of his pleasure sent a jolt of affection through her. They were connected by an invisible current, she thought dreamily, the delight received multiplied by the delight returned. On and on, into infinity. He possessively pulled her against the powerful plank of his chest and took a taut nipple between his lips, gently teasing the sensitive flesh with the heat and wetness of his tongue. A heady twist of sharp pleasure spiraled through her as he sucked and laved the sensitive flesh. How unbearably pleasurable it was to be the focus of all Tom's concentrated affection.

Usually there was an undercurrent of danger and wild, untamed energy just straining to be released in Tom, but this time the gentleness and patience seemed heartrendingly genuine. Like he wanted to be fragile with her because he was feeling fragile. Like he cherished her.

Tenderness washed over her even as the intensity mounted and the pleasure grew. Her breasts felt hot, full of glowing light, and she had the strange thought that she might actually climax. If she just rubbed herself against the throbbing erection in his jeans … Oh no. Oh wow. She began to move more aggressively against him. Tom wrapped one arm around her narrow waist, keeping her tightly against the bulge in his pants. Suddenly, with a wrenching cry, the pleasure lifted and pitched her.

Fallon had resolved they would talk first, before any sex. How had she gotten so sidetracked? She could not go one more day without knowing. The awful timing embarrassed her, but she couldn't stop herself now. She squirmed out of Tom's warm, loving grasp and pulled her soft sweater down.

“We need to talk.”

“Now?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes. We should have done it before.”

The disappointment was all too obvious on his face. But to his credit, he was trying to be a gentleman about it, getting himself under control. “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

Fallon arranged herself beside him. She stalled by taking another sip of the wine. She wasn't sure if it was the cumulative effect of the alcohol she'd had all evening or the literally intoxicating effect he had on her, but her head seemed to swim. The words she wanted to say seemed to dash in and out of her mind as she struggled to find the courage as well as the phrasing.

“Are you okay?”

Her heart broke at the concern in his voice. He grasped her hand, supporting her. “Why did you leave me on Paxos?” she asked. Her voice was tiny. It sounded wrong. Blasphemous. The question cleaved the night into two halves: Before and After.

She was scared of the answer. She hoped he refused to answer. Because she could not meet his eyes, she looked down at the wedding ring pattern on Gwen's grandmother's quilt that was lying over the arm of the sofa and absently traced the tiny seams with her fingertips.

The silence seemed to go on for several minutes, or perhaps several lifetimes. Right when she resolved that he was simply not going to answer, he spoke. “I was married,” Tom said.

Fallon squeezed her eyes shut as the tears came.
No.
Everything in her body rebelled at this answer. An agonized high-pitched scream went off in her head. An icy chill permeated her skin, and she felt something like nausea well up inside her, but it was worse than that. She felt like she'd been poisoned. Like bleach was thrown on something living and vibrant and now it was shrinking and dying. But it felt so true. It was the answer she had been denying for all this time. The obvious truth.

She knew the damage infidelity caused. She'd seen it up close in her parents' marriage. She wasn't thinking specifically of her parents in that moment—no thought would hold, they all slid off her—but she felt, with a cold punch to the gut, that Tom was just like her father.

“I mean …” He gently squeezed her hand. “Fallon … I've never had this discussion before. I'm not sure how to.” She let go of his hand as if it were a scorpion and scrambled to move off the sofa, but Tom grabbed her. “No, listen to me.”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” The words trembled violently in a voice not her own. The agony and wretched anger in her shrill voice was humiliating. And yet she did not stop. She jerked her arm back so he could not touch her. “How dare you!”

“Fallon, listen to me.” He followed her out of the living room, toward the foyer. “Fallon, please.”

“Shut up!” she yelled at him. “I don't want to hear another word.”

“You don't understand.”

“I understand plenty. Shut up! Just shut up. I don't want to hear you, I don't want to see you. I can't believe you would do this!” She was shaking, her whole body coiled in rage. She felt betrayed and jealous and she had no idea why, but the emotions were tumbling out uncontrollably, or even understandably.

“Fallon, please listen to me,” he said, and grabbed her arms. Instantly, she twisted out of his grasp and slapped him across the face. The sharp crack stunned them both to silence. She held her hands to her mouth, shocked. Liquid pain stung her eyes. “I'm … sorry,” she said from behind her hands, horrified. She had never struck another person in her life. Suddenly sober, she stepped to him, reaching for him to apologize.