Long May She Reign (50 page)

“Have you and your friends ever spent any time discussing me?” she asked. It was arrogant to bring the subject up, but it had happened too many god-damned times, particularly starting after her mother had won the Iowa Caucus. A mere Senator's daughter lacked the cachet of the potential Democratic presidential nominee's daughter, let alone the offspring of the full-fledged President. “About whether I'd, you know—” not to put too fine a point on it— “be inclined to put out, and that sort of thing?”

He nodded. “Absolutely.”

A very rare case in which honesty just might be overrated.

“We talk about everyone,” he said, “not just you. We've gone through the whole Face Book about a thousand times.” Which she wasn't in, for security reasons. As if one more public photo would make any damned difference, insofar as her safety was concerned. “Your friend Juliana is in just about everybody's top three.”

Terrific. “Well.” Meg shoved her half-eaten pastry away. “If she breaks up with Mark, you'll have to make your move.”

“Hey, you knew I was an asshole before we even sat down,” he said.

She had, however, made the mistake of overlooking that fact briefly.

“If you don't want the answer,” he said, “don't ask the question.”

She didn't like it, but it was hard to refute that one.

Or the part about him being an asshole.

He picked up his cheeseburger, but then lowered it. “We don't really talk about you anymore, actually.”

Maybe he would offer to sell her a secondhand car, next, which had never, ever been driven, except by a sweet, little old lady, who only used it to go to church on Sundays.

“Because guys don't, once it seems like maybe—” he shrugged— “well, you know, you actually like her. If they talked about you now, that'd just be
wrong
.”

There might be a tiny ring of truth in that.

“So,” he looked right at her, “I haven't told any of them that, lately, I pretty much can't concentrate on anything other than wanting to be inside you as soon as possible, for as long as possible.”

Talk about an ill-timed moment to have lifted her coffee cup. She stared at the large splash of liquid now on the table, and then at him, suddenly so aroused that—damn.
Seriously
aroused.

“Jesus, Meg,” he said, and leaned back, looking almost as stunned as she felt. “Do you know how much heat you just gave off?”

How utterly inadvertent. She could feel the heat rising up to her face now, instead—or, anyway, in addition—and decided to concentrate her energies on cleaning up the spilled coffee.

Jack frowned down at something below the edge of the table. “Well, shoot. I'm not going to be able to stand up in public any time soon.”

If possible, her cheeks were now twice as hot as they had been a few seconds earlier. Then she thought of a pugnaciously ribald response, and had to work to keep a grin back.

“What?” he asked.

Oh, what the hell. He had started it, right? Meg decided not to fight off the grin. “I was going to say, ‘Come on, get ahold of yourself, man,' but in this situation, that would only make things worse, wouldn't it?”

“No, it would actually
help
,” he said, thoughtfully, “but it might take a couple of minutes, and this really isn't the place for it.”

Jesus Christ. Someone had just snatched the safety net out from underneath her very high trapeze. She wanted to laugh—hard—but people might well be eavesdropping on them, and—catching a movement in her peripheral vision, she glanced towards the Snack Bar counter, and saw Simon, who must have come in to get some takeout, and was now staring at her with total consternation.

Oh, dear. She looked at Jack. “Are you still indisposed?”

He nodded vigorously.

“Okay.” She reached for her cane. “I'll be right back.”

Jack nodded, his face about as red as she suspected hers currently was.

When he saw her heading in his direction, Simon turned to leave.

“Simon, don't,” she said. “You know it's going to hurt if I try to limp after you.”

He scowled, but stopped, his hand clasping the take-out box so tightly that he was probably crushing whatever food was inside. He motioned accusingly towards the table. “Since
when
?”

It was going to hurt his feelings even more if he found out that tonight was technically their first date.

“You're practically having sex right there on the table,” he said, sounding outraged.

A little bit, yeah. Meg sighed. “Simon, we're sitting quietly. We weren't even holding hands.”

He just looked at her.

Okay, it must be pretty obvious that they had—at least, verbally—leaped way past holding hands. But this was a very sweet guy, and maybe even someone who was going to become an Actual College Friend, and the last thing she wanted to do was hurt his feelings. “Simon, I am a completely unreasonable pain to be around, on a pretty regular basis,” she said. “And you're going to end up being very glad that you and I decided that we just wanted to be really good friends.”

“‘We' didn't decide that,” he said.

Meg nodded. “No, we did, Skip. I
swear
we did. We had a long conversation about it, and everything. Several, in fact. You just forgot, because you're stressed out about midterms.”

Simon still looked upset, but he was starting to smile, too.

“And that means you also probably don't remember that we agreed we were maybe going to meet on Spring Street tomorrow afternoon and go drink too much coffee together,” she said.

He studied her for a minute, then nodded. “I did forget that, yeah. What time did we say?”

Good. Potential platonic crisis averted. “Four o'clock,” she said.

“Okay.” He sent a quick scowl in Jack's direction—maybe just for general pride, and then looked at her seriously. “You do know that guy's an asshole, right?”

It seemed to be the general consensus. Meg nodded.

“All right. Just wanted to be sure.” He headed for the exit with his food. “See you tomorrow.”

She waited until he had left before she made her way back over to the table.

“What was that all about?” Jack asked, frowning.

Meg sat down. “My friend Skip. I was saying hi.”

Jack frowned even more. “I thought his name was Simon.”

Same difference.

“You looked pretty—friendly. How well do you know him?” Jack asked.

Shades of her recent Frances fixation. “It's probably a good sign if you're already jealous,” she said. “Or else, a really
bad
sign.”

He nodded wryly, and bit into what was left of his cheeseburger.

In the meantime, there were lots of french fries still on his plate, tragically going to waste. She helped herself to one, and then went back for a few more.

“Mind if I add about twice as much salt and pepper?” she asked.

He grinned and pushed the two shakers in her direction. “Knock yourself out,” he said.

They sat there for a very long time, until Meg remembered that it had been one
hell
of a long day, and that she had promised to go to brunch with Susan's family in not too many hours.

They had yet to hold hands, or even do much more than stare across the table intensely—but any idle questions she might have had about the validity of the phrase “copulatory gaze” had been definitively answered.

“Um, this was very nice,” she said, as they went outside, making a point of staying a couple of feet away from each other.

Which took some effort. On her part, anyway.

“Yeah,” he said, and started to lean towards her, but then stopped. “Let me walk you home.”

That was almost certainly a bad idea. “No, thanks. I mean—” she pointed at her dorm with her cane—“it's right there.”

He nodded. “I know. But, I'm still going to do it.”

Her dorm was very close, but it would mean walking several hundred feet, and—no. Okay, they had crossed a couple of rooms together, and passed each other here and there on campus, and that sort of thing, but he had never really seen her
walk
at length. Up close and personal.

And this was no time to start.

“What?” he asked.

Christ, did she really have to spell it out? Apparently so. “It takes me a really long time,” she said, quietly, “and—I don't want you to see me that way.”

Jack cocked his head, looking confused.

Christ. “I limp and stagger and lurch, and sometimes I even have to stop and rest for a while,” she said.

He touched her good hand, which was wrapped around her cane. “It's how you get around, Meg.”

She was, after all, a notorious campus cripple. Meg moved her hand, and the cane, out of his reach. “Yeah, well, trust me, it's worse when I have to go more than a few feet. So, I'd really rather not have you come with me, okay?”

Her agents had been keeping their distance all night, but now they suddenly seemed more obvious. In fact, Dave was shifting his weight, ominously, and Brian and Jose didn't look very happy, either—although Jack seemed to be oblivious to this.

“You want to know how I see you?” he asked.

Not really. Meg shook her head.

“This is how,” he said, and moved forward to kiss her with great enthusiasm. Then, he stepped back. “Okay?”

Along with her agents, several people from her dorm had just walked by, and also managed to witness this. Meg was more than a little embarrassed, a feeling which seemed to be shared by everyone, except Jack, who looked quite pleased with himself.

“Uh, hi, Meg,” Mikey said, on his way past them, and she nodded, too self-conscious to meet his eyes.

It seemed to take about three hours to make it to the entry door, even though she made a point of
not
stopping at all along the way, no matter how much she would have preferred to do so. Needed to do so, for that matter.

“You all right?” Jack asked, on two separate occasions, looking anxious, one hand poised to grab her if she fell.

Except for the part where she felt like crying, and was trying not to show how difficult every single inch was. So, she just shrugged and trudged. When they were finally standing just inside the main door, she was all the more aware of her agents—especially Casey, who was at the front desk—although they all seemed to be trying to disappear in plain sight again.

“I'll come up with you,” Jack said.

Which would lead to many other things, and—no. Not yet. She was too tired. And maybe a little scared, too. Meg eased backwards on her good leg. “No, thank you. It's very nice of you, but, um, I'm fine from here.”

“A gentleman always escorts a woman to her door,” Jack said.

Most gentlemen probably didn't escort women accompanied by large coteries of armed guards. “And, this is my door,” Meg said.

He shook his head. “No, I need to take you to your
actual
door. It's good manners.”

Upon which, presumably, she would face a protracted and stressful “no, I'm sorry, you really
can't
come in for a while” tussle in front of her room.

Which wasn't the way their first date ought to end.

“I'm going to let you kick me out, once we get up there,” he said. “I promise.”

Famous last words.

“I
promise
,” he said.

She didn't believe him for a minute, but she was worn out, and—to hell with it. She started to go up the first small flight of steps, but he put his hand on her back.

“There's an
elevator
, Meg,” he said.

Yes. She was aware of that. And, after the past five or ten minutes, he
did
already know how extremely crippled she was. So she nodded, and made her way to the elevator, instead.

Since they rode up alone together, she expected him to immediately start trying to kiss her again, but he just stood politely next to her, with his hands in his pockets.

Maybe he really
was
only going to see her to her room.

But then, when they got off the elevator and she unlocked her door, he followed her inside before she thought to stop him. She would have expected him to look around and check things out—most notably, the photos of her family—but after a vague glance, his attention stayed on her.

Inescapably
so.

She knew he was going to make a move, but she wasn't sure if she was ready to—surprising her, he pushed her hair to one side and gently kissed her forehead where the gun-butt scar ran through her eyebrow. Embarrassed, Meg brushed her hair back over to cover it.

“Christ, Meg, it's a badge of courage,” he said.

Yeah, right. Meg instinctively checked to make sure that the scar was fully obscured now. “There's nothing brave about getting pistol-whipped.”
Machine-gun
–whipped, in her case, but, regardless. “All you need is a little bad luck.”

“Takes some guts to keep fighting back, afterwards, I figure,” he said.

No, just more bad luck. It was late, and it would be very nice if he left now.

“Okay, never mind,” he said, and reached out to touch one of her breasts, instead.

She looked down. “Who says romance is dead?”

“It's a
little
romantic,” he said.

On the planet Neanderthal, maybe. “Did I miss the part where I gave you permission to do that?” she asked.

He shrugged, keeping his hand right where it was. “Well, you haven't said no, and you didn't start sobbing hysterically, and that's pretty much what I look for.”

The World According to Jack Taylor. “But, my option to say no remains open,” she said.

He nodded. “Absolutely, yes. The sobbing, too.”

Good to know.