Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 27065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 27065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
“You’re making hundreds of them every day, sir. That’s understandable.”
I grunt, refusing to give myself the out.
“Take the excuse,” she whispers to me, winking. “It’s okay. You’re working hard.”
Yeah. Already, this relationship feels inappropriate, and I don’t know when or how it happened. Perhaps I’m just inappropriately attracted to Ms. Eloise Rogers, thus every word out of her mouth feels like she’s whispering it to me across a pillow.
Dismiss her now.
Get back to work.
I will. In a minute.
I just…can’t remember a time when someone’s presence cut through all the noise like this. I’ve been trapped in a whirlwind of chaos while campaigning. Now I’ve been sworn in and the mayhem still hasn’t stopped. I’m presented with a sea of faces and voices every day, yet she stands out over all of them. By a goddamn landslide. I can’t explain it.
Maybe that’s why I don’t dismiss her when I know damn well I should.
“If I recall correctly, your primary cause is mental health, as it pertains to our young people.”
She brightens, visibly pleased I remembered. “Yes, sir. Under your guidance, of course, I plan to create easy and recognizable government resources for struggling youth. I want us to be synonymous with 9-1-1 for emergencies.”
“It’s an ambitious plan. That’s why I liked it.”
“Thank you.” She shifts side to side in her shoes, ducking her head briefly—and the fact that I can see her part of her hair only highlights how much taller I am. If I picked her up right now, her feet would dangle in the vicinity of my knees.
And I really shouldn’t have thought about picking her up.
Whether or not she’d wrap her thighs around me automatically.
Or if I’d have to use my general’s voice to order them high and tight.
Something in her smoky, blue eyes tells me she wouldn’t need to be told, though.
Fuck. What is going on here?
“I hear you’re leaving for West Virginia in the morning,” she says. “To meet publicly with the senator and the coal miners who were rescued last week.”
Yes—and thank God. It will be good to get some distance from this girl. She’s a temptation and I need to rip this attraction off at the root, before it consumes too much of my focus. “That’s right.”
“One in five girls aged twelve to seventeen experience depression in West Virginia,” she says, a small line appearing between her eyebrows. “The statistics aren’t that different from the rest of the country, but it’s one of the states where I thought the administration would be open to my initiatives.”
“Then you should come with me and speak with the senator,” I hear myself saying, like the biggest fool on the planet. Fly with this beautiful girl to another state, stay overnight, spend more time getting to know her? It’s on par with my worst ideas, yet I’m immediately relieved she won’t be here without me. If she doesn’t already have a love interest, someone is going to nail her down within the week. And I’m not going to worry right now about why that pisses me off so fucking much. “There will be a tight schedule, not to mention the gala he’s throwing in honor of the visit, but there should be time to catch his ear. Can you pull together some talking points in time? We would be leaving at 0-800, Ms. Rogers.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” she breathes, her whole face lighting up. “Thank you.”
Is my fucking pulse racing? I…yeah, I think is it.
I haven’t lived a comfortable life. I grew up on a ranch, busting my ass every morning from the crack of dawn until sunset, seeing combat immediately after enlisting. Compared to a ground war, campaigning to be the president is a pleasure, but it’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination. I haven’t stopped toiling in decades. Burning my energy until it’s sapped, determined to make a difference on this earth if it kills me.
But right now, all I want to do is stand still and stare at this girl.
It’s bad. It’s very bad.
I’m pretty sure the public would frown on me taking up with a fresh-faced twenty-something—over whom I have the utmost authority—romancing her when I’m supposed to be running a country that frankly needs a ton of work.
Pull your head out of your ass.
Resolved to keep things professional between us, I lift an arm to gesture at the door, indicating she’s free to go, but to my horror—or delight, I’m not sure which—she mistakes it for a hug. Her eyes widen a little in surprise, her distracting lips parting on a breath. And then she all but throws herself into my arms, wrapping me in a hold that is akin to an electrocution. My heart flies into overdrive and my muscles flex, the pleasure of this soft angel in my arms almost more than I can bear after years of nothing but hard. Rough. Work.