Mr. President (White House #1)(51)

“This pushes us back a day,” he says.

He groans in displeasure, and inside me, I feel a deep, instinctive, visceral tightening of my belly muscles at the sound. Not just my belly. My sex grips too. Even my chest seems to constrict. All of that in reaction to that very male, very sexy sound.

Reminding me too much of sex. Between Matt Hamilton and me.

“I’m sorry, Matt, I’m just . . . I can’t figure out how to get the rest of the team there on time to fit in another big speaking engagement. Maybe something small—”

“Hey. It’s all right.” He slaps the folder shut and eyes me. Can he tell I hardly slept? His gaze softens. “I should take you somewhere. Treat you to breakfast and coffee.”

I bite my lip.

Matt’s eyes darken.

I release it.

“I wouldn’t say no to a big vanilla coffee.”

“Let’s do it.”

I feel myself flush because—it sounds too much like a date.

“We can’t!” I laugh. “I can’t even stay here for more than a few minutes for fear of them watching us even more.”

He sits, and his thick thighs are revealed by the towel. “I’m sorry. I can’t really blame them for being obsessed with you,” I add.

He looks at me.

All I can think of are his hands on me. My hands creeping under the towel. Fingers touching his chest. And that big, heavy cock of his.

Wow. Did I just think that?

What is happening to me?

“Come kiss me.”

Matt seems to read my mind.

Startled by the command, I laugh and bite my lower lip. “What?”

“I said, come kiss me. I’m the one who should be nibbling on that lip.”

I take one step forward, Matt’s eyes darkening as he watches me.

There’s a knock on the door. Followed by the sound of a room key. I quickly take back the one step forward I took.

Carlisle and Hessler join us.

Carlisle dives straight into business after a brief, “How’s our American prince today?” and a wink in my direction. Matt heads into the bedroom, to change I suppose.

“I should go.”

Matt steps out in slacks, buttoning up a blue shirt. “No. I’ll take you home.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m meeting a friend actually for a croissant and a catch-up—it’s three blocks away. And her birthday is coming up; I promised to make it. I’ll be home later. Call if you need me.”

I hurry outside, then check the time and head to my favorite coffee bar near Women of the World. I wait there for my friend Larissa. She arrives ten minutes late, and all that time, I’m sort of mad at myself for physically responding to Matt as hard as I do.

I’ve tried so hard to be focused on work and my career. Why do I need to be falling for the man I work for?

I exhale when I spot Larissa hurrying across the restaurant, trying to push America’s Prince off my mind.

We end up doing coffee, then shopping, and then drinks.

“So what’s it like working for that god?” she asks me, lowering her voice as we sit at the bar of one of our favorite cafés. “No. Really. Tell me—I’m dying to know.”

“It’s exhausting,” I say.

Please, god, don’t let my expression give anything away.

That I want him.

That, miraculously, he wants me.

That we’ve slept together.

That I still don’t want it to end and I’m pretty sure because of the proprietary way he looked at me at his hotel room, neither does he.

As I sit there lying through my damn teeth, I realize that for the first time in my life, I’m doing something that I shouldn’t.

I realize how uncomfortable it is to have a secret. To want to scream something to the world but at the same time, want nothing more than to protect it. Have the world never, ever touch any part of this precious secret of yours.

For nobody to ever know your weakness has a name, and a heartbeat, and a very famous face.

“I would kill for just one day in that campaign, Charlotte. I mean, Matt Hammy! Is he as gorgeous in person as they say he is?”

“More so,” I groan, rolling my eyes.

I divert the attention to her new boyfriend, and thankfully, that’s the end of my Matt Hamilton conversation.

If only it were that easy to steer him out of my every thought.



By the time I reach my apartment that night, I’ve had too many coffees mixed with alcohol. The exhaustion is weighing on me and there’s a pain in my temples when I step off the elevator to my floor. A figure sits by my door, a large figure. In a blue cap.

Matt.

Scrumptious.

Hamilton.

“I needed to get away. Mind if I crash here for the night?” A devilish light glimmers in his eyes, and his lips tug at the corners when he notices the shock on my face.

Inside, I’m babbling and stumbling.

How did he shake off the press?

I’m pretty sure Wilson must have kept the coast clear for him to escape unnoted, but . . . oh my god, Matt is at my apartment door.

My mother would die that he’s at my “shitty” little apartment.

I open my door with shaking hands, letting him inside, worrying she might be right. He’s looking around with a frown, and suddenly my worries multiply, and I grab his hand and try to distract him.