At the Pleasure of the President (The Perfect Gentlemen 5)

“Hopefully they’re working it out.” He wanted to go down and visit them, but he’d been especially busy…with Elizabeth. He hoped Mad found himself similarly occupied.

Roman winced. “Let’s just say Mad is not sleeping in the bed. I went down there and he’s apparently all about the couch for now. But I wasn’t referring to their relationship. Mad and Sara have been working. They’ve found some things you should know about.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. After all, Mad and Sara had been poring over Joy’s records. Gus had wanted the job, but she and Holland had been far too close to Joy. They’d been sorority sisters and friends. The idea that Joy had been anything less than the perfect political wife she’d seemed might crush Gus. Sara had never been close to Joy, and Joy had actively hated Mad, so they were the perfect duo to look at her records with impersonal eyes.

“What have they discovered?” Zack wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“We’re having them look through all of the evidence we collected in England, along with Joy’s calendars. So far, they haven’t found anything new. If Joy visited your mother clandestinely, she somehow managed it without you knowing.”

“How would she do that?” It wasn’t as if Joy could have hopped in the car for a quick trip to England.

“She did take a couple of official trips to London. Would it have been that hard to sneak up north to the facility where your mother was being treated?”

“First, don’t use that word. They didn’t treat her. They held her captive for my father so she couldn’t talk and screw up my political career. It was a glorified prison for Constance.” Zack found it hard to call her mom now. She’d never really been any sort of normal mother to him. Second, he didn’t even know if she was his biological mother. Still, he hated how his father had all but discarded her in her later years.

Roman nodded but continued. “Point taken.”

“And we’re also speculating. We don’t know if Joy’s records are accurate. We know there’s a chance the facility’s have been tampered with.”

But if Roman’s supposition was right, Zack’s sexless marriage had made it easy for Joy to be dishonest with him. He would never have had any reason to suspect that his wife wasn’t precisely where she claimed she’d be. They had rarely called each other without a specific reason. Still, why would Joy have secretly visited his mother? And could she really have been the mysterious “family member” to check Constance out the night she’d died. It seemed unfathomable.

“What do you think Joy was guilty of?”

Roman glanced away, his eyes full of an old shame. “I don’t know. Do you think I even want to accuse her of any wrongdoing? I loved Joy.” He put a hand up, stopping the denial Zack was about to express. “No, I know now that I was always meant to be with Gus, and marrying Joy would have been a horrible mistake, but at the time I thought I loved her.”

“Have you ever considered that you’ve spent your entire life backing me up?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I wonder if deep down you didn’t see how much I wanted Elizabeth, how miserable I was in that marriage to Joy, and you offered me a way out.” He’d thought about it a lot after finding out the truth of Joy’s death, contemplated that time over and over again in his head. Roman was ruthless, but so loyal he had no idea how he would have survived this without him.

“It felt right at the time.” Roman’s voice was softer than normal. “Strangely, nothing like what I feel with Gus. When I thought about having a life with Joy, I felt content.”

“And with Gus?”

“I feel alive.”

That was how he felt with Elizabeth. He felt fire and passion and life. He felt the weight of all his responsibilities float away because she wasn’t a responsibility. She was a necessity. She was air in his lungs, blood in his veins. “Good. You deserve that. Now tell me the rest of it because I can see by the look in your eyes that you haven’t laid the worst on me yet.”

“You’re the only person in the world who can read me,” Roman admitted. “Well, Gus can for the most part, but she also puts the worst possible spin on every expression I have.”

“Tell me.”

Roman sighed. “One of the things Sara and Mad have uncovered while going through Joy’s old notebooks is that she already had chosen her initiative and she’d found a group she wanted to work with.”

Fuck. “I think I know, but tell me. We never discussed what her initiatives would be. She told me it would be premature and bad luck.”

“She’d already decided. She was going to focus on women and girls’ education in America and around the world.”

Every single rock they turned over uncovered another shitty secret. “Are you telling me she’d planned to partner with Tavia Gordon’s organization, the one that was a front for a Russian syndicate?”

“Yes. According to her planners she’d had several meetings with Tavia. And she wasn’t the only one.”

Another nail in the coffin. “Who else?”

“Liz went with her to at least one of those meetings, one of the early ones.”

Zack tensed in denial. “Elizabeth went to a lot of meetings with Joy. She was running press for the campaign. If she thought Joy needed backup, she absolutely would have gone with her.”

“But she hasn’t mentioned this get-together to us.”

“Do you remember every single person you ever met with in the last five years?”

“Yes.”

Roman was a bastard. “Well, I don’t. This proves nothing except that Elizabeth did her job.”

“Don’t blame me,” Roman said, his jaw tight. “I hate telling you these things. I’m not the fucking grim reaper everyone thinks I am, but I can’t be Suzy Sunshine. You need me to tell you the hard truths, and I’m not done with them yet. Did you know Liz was found in the Treaty Room by herself the day we brought her to Camp David?”

The Treaty Room was his private retreat. Some people called it the Man Cave, but it was where he did the majority of his work, especially if he put in hours on nights and weekends. Why would she be in there? There was a simple way to fix the problem. He would simply ask her.

When he stood, Roman got to his feet and blocked Zack’s path. “You can’t go to her with this, not unless you want to sit her down and truly interrogate her. This is not something you casually mention or, if she’s guilty, she’ll know we’re onto her.”

“How do you know she won’t tell me the truth so we can be done with all this suspicion and bullshit?”

Roman shook his head. “It can’t work that way. This is not merely about you, Zack. I hate to say it, but you don’t get the freedom the average citizen has. When you make this decision, you’re not making it as Zack Hayes. You’re the president of the United States and you took an oath to serve the needs of the people first. This is precisely why I thought getting involved with Liz was a bad idea. When it comes to finding the truth, you can’t treat her like your girlfriend.”

Zack hated this—all of it. But Roman’s questions still circled in his brain. Why would Elizabeth have been in his unofficial office? What would make her go there in the middle of the day?

“Where was my father at the time?”

Roman sighed. “Gus said she’d heard he’d wandered in there, but she didn’t actually see him.”

Zack smiled. “Good. Now I have one person I can ask.”

Chapter Nine

“My phone has been blowing up all day about this Capitol Scandals article.” Vanessa looked frazzled as Liz walked into the press office. She turned her screen Liz’s way. “Have you seen this? It’s ridiculous. Tell me we’re suing the hell out of whoever runs this trashy rag.”

So the story was already making the rounds. Liz had known it wouldn’t stay a blip for long.

She headed for her office. “We’re not suing anyone. I’ll have a statement for the press in an hour or so.”

“Do you know what they’re saying?”

Vanessa managed to make her shocked expression somehow look pouty.

“I’ve read the article.” She didn’t mention that she’d helped Lara write it.

“They’re accusing the First Lady of having an affair.”