Night Is Mine (27 page)

Katherine laughed. Good.

“Okay. Are you ready?”

Katherine nodded. Breathing a little too fast to speak, but not hyperventilating.

Emily made one last check of the controls.

“Okay, here we go. Don’t move it until I tell you.” She set the throttle and pulled up lightly on the collective, increasing the angle of the rotor blades and thereby increasing the lift they supplied. The Bell was so responsive that they were off the skids and hovering without even feeling a change.

“Now. Just think forward. Don’t push, just think it.”

In a single smooth motion they lifted forward and up as Emily pulled on the collective.

“Excellent. Now think right.”

She saw the First Lady’s head move down.

“No. Don’t look at the instruments. I’m watching those. A pilot watches outside the craft far more than inside.”

She let them climb in a long, lazy spiral while she chatted with Air Traffic Control. Always good to let the local ATC know where you were and what you were up to, as if they weren’t following every move and the newly assigned Black Hawk tail wasn’t hovering a quarter mile back.

“Now, without raising your hands—remember it takes two to fly a helicopter—look out the left window and smile.”

The First Lady did and gasped. They were about a hundred feet up, and every camera of the White House Press Corps was aimed in their direction. The reporters were waving and applauding. Emily waved back with her free hand, making it clear exactly who had the controls.

“Well, you did it. You just made the hot spot on the five o’clock news on every network out there.”

“That was splendid!” Her hand wobbled and she gasped when the helicopter leaned abruptly to the left.

Emily took the joystick and waggled it to the right and back to center making the helicopter rock side-to-side.

“That’s how we wave back from up here.”

Katherine pulled her hands into her lap, without first checking that Emily had the controls, but that was a learned skill.

“You did really great.”

“You’re just saying that.” But Katherine was blushing deep red, almost enough to match her hair.

“Next time you’re on the Internet, search on ‘idiot student crashes helicopter.’ Now that was truly sad flying. You did great.” She really had. Was there anything Katherine Matthews wasn’t a natural at? The woman could really get on her nerves.

“How is it that you don’t hate me?”

The question surprised Emily enough to turn and stare. The First Lady’s eyes were focused on her intently.

“Hate me for taking you away from your people and forcing you to come back stateside and cook, of all irrelevant things?”

“It turns out it was a good thing I did.”

“Yes, I’m alive because of you. I know that for a fact. A debt I’ll never be able to repay, except by saying thank you once again.”

“That’s all that needs saying and is far more than I’m used to receiving. Usually, if you’re lucky, it’s a hearty ‘well done’ from your mission commander. The really spectacular stuff is never told. If we make the news, our assignment did not go well. If we nailed it, even you would never know.”

“But how…” Katherine trailed off and looked away. Down and away. Embarrassed or afraid, going by her body language, equally hard to believe.

“How do I not hate you?”

Katherine nodded without looking up.

She had come for Peter. Had there been a different President, one she hadn’t known since childhood, would she come to serve his wife at her request? Maybe, maybe not. But with Peter, there was no option.

“I could answer with the truth, that I serve at the pleasure of the President. I can’t even quit if I want to. I can tender my resignation, but I know a lot of Special Forces soldiers and SEALs who have waited a year, even two or three, for their papers to come through. Having invested so much in us, they are reluctant to let us go. When I am done here, I will be reassigned. Colombia, the Philippines, Africa, I don’t know. Wherever my unit is called.” If they let her back in. They had to. Mark had to.

She studied the woman beside her, the first woman to capture America’s heart the way Jackie Kennedy had done so long ago.

“But that’s not the whole truth. I came because you asked and an old family friend said you were afraid for your life. If I can be in service of that defense, I am here.”

“Lucky for me. Though I knew about you as soon as I met you. I knew you could save me. And you did.”

An odd way to phrase it. The same as some memory. The hospital. The voice in the hospital. So she hadn’t imagined it in her drug-induced haze. “I knew you could save me.”

Katherine laid her hand over Emily’s on the collective and squeezed it tightly between both of hers. The earnestness in those green eyes was unmistakable. Unquestionable.

“You are a splendid pilot, and I will get you back in your sky as soon as may be. For now, I will count you as my savior and my friend. If that’s okay with you.”

It was Emily’s turn to look away, humbled that so great a lady could care for her. She’d never been impressed much by rank, a matter her superiors never tired of pointing out. But Katherine Matthews dwelt in a different world. One of strategy and power. Of beauty and ruthless politics. And she was offering friendship.

Emily engaged the autopilot, then returned the handclasp tightly and, for perhaps only the second time in her life, felt as if she belonged exactly where she was.

“My God, Beale.” Mark perched on the stool in Emily’s kitchen.

His attention was riveted on his slice of fresh strawberry-and-custard tart with a honey-and-currant-jelly glaze. Under the island counter lights, it glistened. The light shone off a hundred facets of glazed strawberry as if she’d sprinkled it with gold glitter rather than the lightest grace of sanding sugar.

Daniel breezed in. And slammed to a halt when he spotted Mark. It was the only time Emily had seen surprise on his face. If she read his face right, a quick shift to disappointment. He stood in her kitchen looking like a stunned puppy, his gaze swinging from her to the rather disreputable looking character sitting at the counter.

“Hey, ya.” Mark offered a hand.

“Hello.” Daniel shook the hand, silently gathered a slice of tart, and retreated down the corridor to his office. He hadn’t even stopped for the
crème fraîche
she’d made to complement it.

The reaction didn’t make sense.

“He’s sweet on you.” Mark waved a fork toward the now closed door.

“No.” They’d flirted a few times, nothing more. And she didn’t have that effect on men.

Daniel couldn’t have gone there, could he? Sure, they’d had fun teasing each other over a few late-night desserts. He’d told her about his family’s farm and that he’d come to D.C. to support some secret farming plan that he’d been egging her on to drag out of him. He’d apparently been clerking for Senator Jamison, head of oversight for the Department of Agriculture when Katherine Matthews had spotted him and scooped him into her entourage.

Mark shrugged and returned his attention to his dessert.

“How did you learn to do this?”

“My dad always had a soft spot for the sweets, I liked making him smile.”

It was much nicer having him here than her earlier guest.

First Sister Jessica had been a nightmare. When the First Lady had been called away after dinner, the woman had parked herself at Emily’s chopping block with a half-empty bottle of champagne. While Katherine Matthews oozed tact from every pore, Jessica Cunningham swung outrageous jealousies of Katherine like a drug-crazed loon armed with a blunt ax and running around in a slasher film.

Yet Jessica’s comments hadn’t all fallen flat on Emily’s ears. The First Lady’s sister told stories of a very different “Katty.” Of a girl who always got her way. A queen bee who had to take any boy that any of her circle managed to land. The girls left crumpled in Katty’s wake were mere husks of their former selves.

Jessica’s inability to maintain a marriage had been laid directly at her avaricious little sister’s feet. Katty had needed to seduce both of Jessica’s husbands and then make sure Jessica caught them, both times, in her own marriage bed. All discussed in whispered confidential tones that wandered more and more as the level lowered in the champagne bottle, “to stiffen my resolve for being here.”

Emily had poured the First Sister into bed half an hour ago, mumbling how she’d rather be dead than be here but Katty had forced her to come.

Which Katherine Matthews was the real one? The charming woman the world knew and she’d flown with? Or the hellion described by an embittered and drunk sister?

Mark snapped his fingers in front of Emily’s face.

“What?”

“Where did you go?”

“Just wondering if Jessica was okay.”

“Happily pickled.”

“She…” Emily bit her lip. She didn’t feel comfortable discussing what she’d heard, not knowing when Katherine might breeze in unannounced.

Mark dolloped the
crème fraîche
onto his plate. “You make dessert a religious experience. I’ll convert if it tastes even half as good as looks.”

“It’s better.” She didn’t like to brag, but she liked cooking. Much to her surprise, cooking for Mark was touching her even more than when she cooked for her crew.

He took a bite, chewed, and after letting out a long sigh, opened those soft gray eyes and focused on her. Really focused. No matter how she had tried to compartmentalize him, he wasn’t looking at her like a sex object. She didn’t know quite how to read that look.

Army guys always saw her as another challenge to beat down. Emily Beale was always blocking their way to being the best because she had already parked at a level most of them would never reach. In the military “being best” was a major motivator. It kept her flying harder and better. But it left her feeling she was only noticed for what she could do with twenty thousand pounds of steel and av gas. While that was the whole point, it left a girl feeling, well, not very feminine.

Feminine had never been one of her concerns. The pilots didn’t make her feel feminine. Female perhaps, but not feminine. Right now Mark, however…

“What are you looking at?”

Moving away to the sink didn’t remove the one-two punch of his wintry-eyed consideration.

“You’re—Nope. Sorry.” Mark stopped himself. “There must be a better way to ask a question without, you know…”

“Asking it?”

“Right. Thanks. See, you’re helpful, too. But why the hell aren’t you, Beale?”

“Why aren’t I what? A clue would help here, Marky.”

“I was about to give the stupid speech about how pretty, smart, and wonderful you are and why aren’t you married?”

“Maybe the right man hasn’t asked.” Coy and flippant. She waited a beat for him to ask the obvious so she could reply with a “Nope, not interested,” and move on as per usual SOP. A standard operating procedure that had always worked before.

“That’s crap and you know it.” He poked a fork at the tart but didn’t eat it.

It was crap, and she did know it. And that’s why it always worked. No one expected anything else back. No one until Mark.

“What is it with you?”

“Hey. My question is on the table. No shoving it off the edge of the counter for the First Mouse to clean up. Why aren’t you at least shacked up with a guy?”

“Don’t believe in that.”

“You’re a virgin?”

“You know better.” Heat rose, bringing her up on her toes.

“Almost, close enough that I’ll accept that one. You don’t like ‘shack up’ either. One man at a time. Have to really like him before she does anything. Never lived with a guy.”

It wasn’t a question, and it really pissed her off.

“I’ve lived with hundreds. Huh.” That sure didn’t come out right. She cooled down a little at his smile. “Okay. I know where your seedy little mind is going.”

“It’s not little, but I’ll grant that it’s very seedy. And the U.S. Armed Forces doesn’t count in this conversation. I want to know about Emily Beale, not—” He glanced at the closed doors. Right, he wasn’t supposed to know more about her than she was cook and helicopter pilot to the First Lady.

She could run away again, hide behind another joke, or change the topic. But there was only so long that held up as a lifestyle. Funny, she’d never run from a fight if she had a helicopter wrapped around her, so why wouldn’t she defend herself when—Question for another time.

Emily could pop him one. That might cheer her up, but it wasn’t the answer to every problem.

She hooked a stool and faced him across the counter. Across four feet of solid cherry-and-maple chopping block. Across the mostly untouched slice of custard tart. Across far too little distance.

“So ask.”

Confident a moment before, Mark went coy. Took another bite of Emily’s tart. Closed his eyes to relish it and offered up a soft, “Damn.”