Page 16 of Enemy of My Enemy

“Your photo op is here, Mr. President.” She paused, the air thick like cotton. “Should I tell them to expect you in the Roosevelt Room in five minutes?”

Turning, Ethan caught Mrs. Martin’s smirk. She was the proverbial White House grandmother, a little old lady who kept the president’s schedule in perfect synchronicity and peered over the tips of her bifocals at you if you tracked mud on her office carpet.

“Yes, please, Mrs. Martin. Roosevelt Room in five. Got it.” Jack sent a little wave over his shoulder. He didn’t turn around.

Ethan didn’t relax until the door clicked shut behind Mrs. Martin. He buried his face in his hands and groaned.

Jack doubled over and braced his hands on his knees. A half second later, he snorted, and then a torrent of giggles escaped.

Pulling the tips of his fingers down below his eyes, Ethan glanced across to his lover. He found a red-faced, giggling Jack bent over and trying to palm down his boner tenting his suit pants, his hair sticking up every which way thanks to Ethan’s hands.

“Photo op?” Ethan’s voice was still husky, and he shifted, trying to will his own erection down.

If possible, Jack’s cheeks reddened further. “The Episcopal Diocese of Washington. Bishop Collins. I didn’t realize the time.” Exhaling again, Jack straightened and adjusted himself. There was still a bulge in the front of his pants.

Ethan helped Jack finger-comb his wild, interrupted-sex hair and then tied his tie for him, gently sliding the knot into place at Jack’s neck. Jack cleared his throat, shook his right leg, and blushed again. Ethan dropped a kiss to Jack’s pink cheek. “Knock ’em dead, gorgeous.”

* * *

Ethan headedto the East Wing and his office after that, walking alongside a grinning Daniels. Ethan side-glared at him through the West Wing until Daniels spilled in the Colonnade. “Mrs. Martin told us all.”

“Us all” was the team of agents on hand waiting to pick up Jack and Ethan as they made their way around the White House. Scott, Daniels, Welby, Hanier, and others. All had been trying to smother grins when Ethan slipped out of the Oval Office after Jack.

“I’ll be sure to walk through mud for her.”

Daniels winked and tugged open the door to the East Wing for Ethan. “Your funeral. But the blue balls will get you before she will, I’m sure.”

* * *

Knocking justbefore five broke Ethan’s concentration. He was back at the bins, looking through the cards they’d received. Dozens stuck up at odd angles. He’d show those to Jack.

“Permission to enter the first gentleman’s office?” At the doorway, Scott Collard, Ethan’s near-lifelong best friend and lead agent on Jack’s Secret Service detail, grinned.

“Scott.” Ethan rose and the two met in the middle, wrapping each other up in a giant bear hug, complete with back slaps and squeezes on the shoulder as they pulled apart. “You free? Where’s Jack?”

“He’s on the phone with Congressional leadership behind closed doors. I left Welby there to pick him up after, along with a bottle of aspirin.”

Jack’s conversations with the leadership had turned frigid and acerbic, going from awful—after their outing—to cataclysmic after the weekend. Ethan tried to shove the guilt away. “How are you doing?”

“Doing good. Tickled pink that I get to stay here in DC for my daughter’s spring break.” Scott tipped his head toward Ethan. “Thank you and the president for that.”

“We were strongly encouraged to stay put.” Ethan headed for his desk, and he and Scott ended up leaning side by side against Ethan’s huge desk, hips bumping. “Not like this is going to be a good spring break.” Ethan jerked his chin to the snow falling outside the window.

Soft flakes were descending over the city, blanketing the White House grounds. “Oh it’s not so bad. It’s a great view, Mr. First Gentleman. A step up from Horsepower.”

Ethan snorted. Horsepower, the Secret Service command center for the White House, had no view. A basement beneath the president’s Oval Office, Horsepower was as much a bunker as anything else. “This can’t all be real. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up back in Iowa clutching a bottle of tequila and all of this…” He gestured around his office and then to himself. “It’s all just some deranged drunk fantasy I’ve built.”

Scott’s eyes softened. “It’s real, Ethan. You made this happen.You.Despite what everyone told you, evenme. You made this work with him.”

With him. With Jack. With the president of the United States. It still stopped him in his tracks, sometimes, that Jack had decided to take a chance on finding love with him.

It had almost ended too soon.

“All of this would be gone if it weren’t for you, Scott.”

“And don’t you forget it.” Scott’s tone turned teasing, but the gentleness was still there. “Hauling your big butt across half of Africa and Saudi Arabia. You know my back still isn’t right from carrying you, you big ol’ baby?”

Ethan leaned his shoulder against his friend. “You saved my life.”