Billionaire In Hiding: The Complete Series (Alpha Billionaire Romance Western Love Story) (119 page)

I
tapped the baton back before the table, bringing everyone’s heads back up from
their notes. It was nearly five-thirty, which meant that I had overworked
everyone well beyond their five-o-clock end time. I thanked them, nodding my
head succinctly. “Good work today. I think if we follow this plan to a T—if
everyone does his or her job appropriately—we can win this thing.” My eyes were
drawn to Xavier once more in this moment. He still looked so dark beneath the
fluorescent lights of the great conference room. I tapped my papers on the
table. “You can all head out,” I announced. “Thank you.”

The
conference room erupted. People began their long-held conversations that had
surely been bursting in their hearts. They turned toward each other and
discussed dinner plans, first dates. They allowed their thoughts to stem away
from the campaign. I wondered what that was like. Everything about my life:
from the cameras positioned in my apartment to the very real love I held for
Xavier was rooted in the campaign. Thusly, I couldn’t very well rip myself away
from it. I couldn’t’ find another topic in my head!

The
people ran into the hallway to grab their coats and head into the fall day. I
stayed behind, toward the white board, taking final notes for the day. Even
Jason nodded toward me with a sense of near-decency, telling me to enjoy my
afternoon. I wanted to kick him in the shin, but I held back. “Have a good
evening,” I told him. My voice was brimming with constricted hatred.

As
everyone left, I was still very much aware of the final, dark figure lurking at
the top of the conference room. I turned to the left and tapped off one of the
central lights, leaving my area in grey. I walked up the steps, clinging to my
folders. I swallowed. “Hello,” I nodded coolly to the president. “How are you
today?”

But
Xavier stepped forward with such an anxious ferocity, I nearly stepped back—a
step that would have forced me to fall down the steps. “Amanda. I need to talk
to you. Immediately.”

I
raised my eyebrows, my heart quickening in my chest. I didn’t allow my eyes to
meet his. I knew this eye contact would churn me into a sense of sadness, of
remorse. The last time I had looked at him, really looked at him, he’d told me
that I wasn’t worthy of his campaign. He’d told me to leave. He’d essentially
taken back every expounding of love he’d ever given me. It was over. It had to
be.

“I
actually can’t talk right now,” I stated, looking down at my folder as if to
check something. “I’m on my way to meet with a member from Congress.”

His
head reared back. “Which one?”

I
raised my eyebrow, still peering somewhere over his left shoulder. “Jimmy
Everett.”

He
scoffed, shaking his head. “That old crabby man. You don’t want to talk to
him.”

I felt
offended for Jimmy, even though I was lying. “I’m certain you don’t mean to
speak of your supporters that way,” I reprimanded. I readjusted my folders.
“You’re going to need all the help you can get next fall. I crank these numbers
every day. Talking to Jimmy is going to give me insight on how to proceed.” My
words were so forceful, brimming with anger. I could feel him deflating before
me, and the thought of his sadness brought me a small sliver of pleasure.

He
brought his hand out to grab my wrist as I walked by. I turned my head,
frowning. I still didn’t give him my eye. “I told you. After the meeting with
Jimmy, sometime before the next reelection campaign. Please respect that I’m
doing everything in my power to get you re-elected.” These final words were my
stand, assuring him that I was capable, that I wasn’t some silly
twenty-nine-year-old bimbo. I wasn’t Clinton’s intern. I had pounded my way to
the front door of the White House and I wasn’t turning away without a fight.

“But—Amanda.”
He was pleading with me, now. I could hear it in his voice. “Know that this
isn’t a work matter. I need to speak with you about something private.”

I spun
toward him once more on my way to the door. I was sure that the president was
not used to being walked out on. I tipped my head to the right, thinking that a
private matter was nothing I wanted to talk about, then. Not now. Perhaps not
ever. “A private matter?”

“Yes.
It’s incredibly urgent.” More words of pleading, of anxiety. His heart was
clearly lurking beneath his eyes.

But I
just turned my eyes toward my papers. “I’m incredibly busy the next few days.
But I’ll see what I can do,” I said to him, still speaking as if this was about
the campaign. My voice was rimmed with authority. “My best to you and Mrs.
Callaway.”

And
then I was out of there, leaving that final spurn in the air between us. I
caught my things up at my desk, and then I spun toward the door. I sped down
the steps, my heart still in my throat. I couldn’t believe I’d just turned away
from the man I truly loved. I felt so strong, so empowered in this moment—even
as I felt that my heart was breaking.

I soon
found myself speeding away in a taxi. I felt myself diving into a state of
solitude. I couldn’t even dredge up the words to say thank you to the taxi
driver. I found myself dragging up to Rachel’s apartment, feeling so low. I
thought of the events coming over the next few days, and I couldn’t picture
myself at any of them. Something was shrouding over my mind, over my muscles.
It forced me into the chair by the window, a glass of wine in my hand. I didn’t
know yet that I was coming into sadness, into a sense of mourning. I had never
fallen in love before; I’d never lost love before. I sipped at my wine.

Rachel
burst through the door about an hour later. She placed her bag on the table and
sat beside me, placing her hand at my back. She pursed her lips before asking.
“So. Did you tell the media? His wife?”

I
shook my head slowly, feeling a bit of laughter churn up from my stomach. Of
course I didn’t tell on him. He was my love; he’d been my life. I was trying to
shell myself to him. But I was rattling around, feeling empty. I laid my head
on my friend’s shoulder, and she sighed beside me. “It’s going to be okay,
Amanda. Do you think—do you think you could stay home?” she whispered.

I
shook my head, feeling the anxiety ramp through my arms, my legs. “I have so
much to do for the campaign. I can’t stay home. Not tomorrow, not ever.” I felt
my voice break as I said the words. I felt myself begin to shake.

“Shh,”
Rachel began. She rubbed at my neck and held me. I didn’t realize that I was
crying so profusely, that I was allowing all the emotion from the previous few
days to exit my body. She brought a Kleenex toward me, and I sighed into it,
quaking.

“What
am I going to do?” I kept asking her—her and the world. I hadn’t realized that
all this emotion had been brimming to the surface all along. The stress I had
been under was too much, far too much for any one person to handle. However, I
had thought I could handle it, like I could handle anything else. I had thought
that it would work itself out. I had thought I could beat Jason at his game.

As I
sat and cried with my friend that evening, I knew that I had to stay home, at
least for the rest of the week. I knew that I needed to escape the penetrating
anxiety of the White House if I was going to live through the campaign. This
would be the wayward way I worked through the emotion of the previous few
weeks. I would release the emotion I held inside of me. I would say I was
sick—say anything at all to get me out of the office. Then, I would return a
brand-new person, the type of person who would never be caught with her skirts
up around the President of the United States. No. Never.

Rachel
tucked me in that evening, and I stayed in bed the following day until noon. I
stretched my arms high above my head, still feeling the stifling anxiety
glimmer through my brain. I knew this meant I wasn’t ready, that I couldn’t
face the music. I reached toward my cell phone and dialed a number I thought
I’d never dial again.

“Jason,”
I croaked into the phone. I even sounded sick, to myself. My heart pumped
slowly in my chest.

“Amanda,”
Jason hissed, his voice urgent. “Where the hell are you? We’re supposed to have
the re-election campaign meeting in ten minutes. I don’t have any of your
notes.”

I
nearly laughed out loud, but I kept it cranked in tightly. Clearly, Jason hadn’t
been doing his job. If he’d been following along in our countless meetings,
during our countless discussions about the campaign, he should have everything
he needed to guide the troops, so to speak. But he didn’t. Not even close.

“I’m
sick, Jason,” I said sweetly. I turned over on my pillow and gazed toward the
wall. “I’m so, so sick. I probably won’t be there tomorrow, either. Please.
Just do the best you can. Fake it till you make it. I know that’s what you do,
anyway.” My voice croaked a bit as I spoke, but the sentiment lingered strong.

He
paused, huffing into the phone. “If you don’t get here immediately, I’m going
to tell your boyfriend I know all about yours and his little shenanigans.”

This
threat didn’t make me quake, even for a moment. My “boyfriend” already knew
about Jason’s comprehension of our non-relationship. But I just giggled into
the phone. “I’d love to be there when you tell him, so please, please don’t
yet.”

“Um.”
Jason’s surprise was apparent over the phone. “Well. You’re sick, huh? Okay.
Um. I can get through this. Just—if you could send me a few of your notes?”

I
snorted and pretended it was all a part of my illness. “Oh, excuse me. Um. I
don’t honestly know where they are right now. I’m on my way to the doctor. But
I’ll try to get them to you as soon as possible. Okay, Jason? You can do this,
man.” I hung up the phone with a smile, loving the feeling of tossing Jason out
on a lifeboat, into the wind-tossed sea. Would he sink? Would he float? One was
better for me, as a campaign leader. And one was far more likely and far, far
more hilarious.

But
this happiness—this joy at his struggles—flushed away in the following few
moments, as I lay in silence in that comfortable cloud bed. I tucked the sheets
around my shoulders and zoned in toward the ceiling, counting the wayward lines
in the whitewash. Work was calling to me. But I had to re-build myself from the
inside. I remembered pushing myself through every illness throughout my life; I
remembered bickering with my mom about not wanting to stay home because of my
flu—telling her that I wouldn’t fail any quiz just because of some microbe
lurking in my body. I remembered turning my nose toward people who fell prey to
the workings of their tumultuous bodies.

But
now, I understood. The mind had such an effect on the body. It held you
tightly, like a gloved hand around your throat. It allowed you to breathe, but
only if you struggled and fought for it—only if you allowed everything else to
fall away.

In
those days when I avoided work—four days in total—I learned how to breathe once
more. I learned how to stand. I learned how to train my thoughts to fall away
from Xavier. I learned how to be a better version of myself: one that didn’t
require the desire of the President of the United States to survive.

I
stood tall on the final day—a Friday, of course. I drank coffee, like a past,
stronger version of myself. I pretended to be that Amanda, and not that current
shell. I would get through this. I’d scrape the grime from my past life and
propel myself into a better future. I was made for this world.

Chapter 4

On
that Monday, I rose early and made a pot of coffee, ready to meet the world
once more. I showered for a long time, thinking only of Xavier in an abstract
way. “So funny that I once thought the entire earth revolved around him,” I
murmured to myself, scraping the grime from my shoulders, from my sides. Down
the hall, Rachel could hear me singing a bit as I scrubbed myself. She told me
later that she knew everything would be all right again in this moment—that I
would return to work and meet my success head-on.

I
strapped my tights to my body once more and I marched across the guest bedroom,
this room that was suddenly becoming so much like home. I slotted my feet into
too-high heels, knowing that I could strut around the office with an
assuredness in these suckers that I couldn’t create with the other shoes. I
knew I had to dress the part, if I was going to pretend that I didn’t hold any
sort of emotion toward the president. I knew I had to convince both myself and
the outside world of this fact.

The
taxi steamed into the White House once more. I blinked up at it as if I had
never seen the monstrosity in my life. At one time, I’d thought it was my home.
And now: it was far more like my prison, like a cage. I hoped that one day, I
could escape it. But I was far too strong to allow this place—and the people in
it—to get to my head.

I paid
the taxi driver. He gave me a curt nod and eyed my ass. I wanted to smack him,
to tell him that I was a high-level official in the White House. But I was
keeping my cool, I told myself. This was my journey toward a better self—a self
that kept her emotions in check.

I
allowed the Secret Service agents to fondle me on my way in, checking for
bombs, for guns, for anything and everything. And then, almost immediately, I
marched toward the Oval Office, pursing my lips.