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

It wasn’t that she hadn’t believed him. She’d known full well that some Russian baddie wanted to use Zack and was willing to hurt any or

all of his friends to do it. But she’d seen Liz’s trembling, pale reaction to the fact this killer had broken into her apartment and tossed around nasty threats. Even normally unruffled Holland seemed a bit more shaken after her near brush with death than she wanted to let on.

What had Krylov’s savage confrontation been like for Mad?

The glow from under her bedroom door let her know she wasn’t the only one not sleeping.

How much longer would she wait to really hear the man she’d once claimed to love? She’d cut him off when he’d tried to tell her his story. Of course she’d listened to the basics, assuming she needed nothing more to comprehend the incident so she could logically and calmly pass judgment and decide that he should have been able to do the same.

But she’d behaved as though the visceral truth didn’t matter, as though her love for Mad somehow entitled him to less of her understanding, not more.

They were going through something horrific. After today, the danger seemed so much more real. Sara fully grasped now that someone had been targeting Zack Hayes since birth, maneuvering him into place, then using his friends to bend him to their will. Mad had merely been one of those chess pieces.

How had Mad’s beating at Krylov’s hands felt? Painful, yes. But what had it been like for Mad, who had always been larger than life, to have suddenly felt so helpless?

She needed to know.

Sara rose and wrapped her robe around her. A quick glance in the mirror made her wince. She should probably wait until morning to see him. She wouldn’t look so tired then. But need won out over vanity. It didn’t matter if Mad saw her without makeup. He’d seen her bare face before. Besides, they should have this conversation without any artifice between them.

She eased the door open and glanced to the couch, but he wasn’t there. The sheets and blankets he carefully folded up each morning hadn’t been spread over the cushions to prepare for his night’s sleep. They were still in a neat pile. Mad sat at the kitchen table, frowning at his laptop.

“Still at it?” she murmured softly.

He glanced her way and stood, as though he couldn’t stay seated while she was in the room. “Hey, yeah. I thought I’d go over a few things again, see if there’s anything I missed. But I’ve studied everything about Frank’s time at the embassy. Connor managed to find every paper the man ever signed, all the way down to toilet paper requisitions. It’s the most boring crap I’ve ever read. I definitely don’t see any smoking guns.” He scoffed. “Why are you up? Are you hungry? I could make you a sandwich. Or some tea.”

That seemed to be Mad’s mission in life now, taking care of her. He’d done nothing but wait on her hand and foot since they’d gotten stuck here together.

When they’d first arrived, she’d been convinced he would annoy her. Instead, she’d rapidly grown to depend on having him near. He was an oddly peaceful presence. Every now and then the old Mad would emerge, with his frenetic energy and audacious humor. But he seemed more thoughtful now, as though some piece of Mad that had always been agitated was now at rest. She’d fallen for the old Mad…but she liked the new one even more. “I would rather you talk to me.”

His face fell. “Sara, please give us more time. I know that—”

“Tell me what happened the night Ivan Krylov came to see you.”

His brow furrowed as he made his way to the living room. “I’ve told you what happened. There’s nothing more to say.”

She sat and studied Mad. He looked tired, and she wondered what sleeping on this couch had cost him. “Help me truly understand what it was like for you that night. Walk me through everything so I grasp what made you think you had to take the drastic action you did.”

He sank down on the opposite end of the couch, the tension in his body telling her how wary this conversation made him. “I’ve explained why.”

Did he think she would use his words to build her walls even higher? What had she done to him in the last few days? They’d been companionable, but she knew she hadn’t exactly been warm or understanding, even when he’d done everything possible to make her comfortable.

“You told me the facts. You didn’t really tell me how you felt.”

His jaw went tight. “I felt like I was going to die.”

Maybe she needed to give him something first. She hadn’t been easy on him, after all. She’d avoided talking about anything personal in a futile effort to contain her own feelings. Her aloofness hadn’t exactly inspired him to open up.

“When I got your text, I was in my bedroom looking at myself in the mirror, trying to assure myself no one would be able to tell that I was pregnant.” She bit her lip. “I thought maybe you would ask me to marry you that night. I was hoping, anyway.”

He hesitated, his stony gaze fastened on the wall. “I was. I had the ring and a plan.”

Her heart caught. “I didn’t want you to ask me because you thought you had to.”

Then again, what would have happened if he’d asked her sooner? If she’d had a ring on her finger and they’d already told all their friends and the tabloids had known, what would have become of her when Krylov came calling?

Mad chuckled, though there wasn’t a lot of amusement to the sound. “I wanted to ask a lot sooner, but I honestly didn’t think you would say yes before you got pregnant. The day you told me the test was positive, I kind of felt like I’d won the lottery.”

How could he think that? Once they’d gotten together, her whole world had revolved around him. “But we were dating. We were exclusive.”

He turned to her with a cynical glance. “We were fucking, Sara. I know when a woman is using me for sex, and in the beginning that’s what it was.”

Had it been? “I was always attracted to you. From the time my hormones kicked in, you were the be-all, end-all of men for me. I dated guys who looked like you. My mother joked that I had a type, but you were always the benchmark. So when I took the job at Crawford, I decided that if the opportunity arose, I would sleep with you. I intended to prove to myself that you couldn’t be as good as I dreamed. Then I hoped I would actually be able to have a real relationship with a man.”

“I turned out to be pretty damn good, huh? I’d had a lot of practice by then. You should have taken me on in the early days. I would have been easy to walk away from then.”

There was the Mad she knew, the real self-deprecating human with the easy humor behind the gorgeous mask. “Somehow I doubt that, but yes, you turned out to be spectacular. That first night with you was a revelation. Finally, I knew what I’d been missing. I meant to tell you the next morning that we couldn’t do it again. I was worried about my career. No, I was worried about you breaking my heart.”

“I know. But I was smarter and I kissed you before you could say a word.” His eyes lit with a warm intimacy as he remembered. “I suspected what was going through your head and I knew if I could get you underneath me again, you wouldn’t be able to dismiss me so easily.”

“That weekend turned into something meaningful.” They’d been at a conference and they’d hooked up the night before they were supposed to fly back to New York. She’d thought she was so smart, that she could fuck him out of her system, then go home and get on with her life. Thanks to Mad’s persistence and a freak storm, they’d stayed in bed for another two days, putting off travel in favor of exploring the intimacy between them.

“It meant the world to me.”

She believed him. “I should never have accepted those texts from you at face value. I should have marched to your place that night and demanded to know what was going on. I was afraid. I was weak.”

“No, baby. You weren’t weak. I knew exactly what I needed to say to keep you at arm’s length so I could protect you. Everything I said was designed to cause maximum damage. I hated being so vicious and cruel, but I was…panicked. I couldn’t have you anywhere near me.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “You were scared. Mad, tell me why. Exactly why.”

He w

as quiet for a moment, and she almost called back her words. Did she really need him to rehash what must have been the worst moment of his life?

“At first I thought Krylov and his cohort would simply talk to me, threaten me.” He couldn’t seem to look directly at her as the words spilled from his mouth. “I thought I could bargain with them. After all, I made deals all the time.”

“Why didn’t you run?”

“Where? They confronted me in the back of my car, then took me into my house. They’d done their homework. They knew there was a good chance I would be alone. But I still thought I could worm out of whatever they intended…until they handcuffed me. Then I knew there was no way out. And I never imagined what they would do to me.”

She swallowed, afraid for him. “Mad, you don’t have to go on.”

“No, you should know, but I have to warn you, I don’t come out of this story looking so great.” He clasped his hands in front of him and focused there. “Krylov talked a lot. I wish I remembered even half of what he said. Some of it might have been helpful, but the whole time he spoke, his ‘friend’ worked me over. That guy was a consummate professional; he didn’t touch my face. Krylov told me I needed to be able to go out and be seen, pretend like everything was normal. The rest of me was fair game though.”

“Oh my god.”

He swallowed. “You think you understand pain, but you can’t really until it becomes your whole world, until you can’t see anything past it. That’s when you realize how fragile you are, how delicate life is. It’s startling when all sense of security is stripped in an instant, and you can’t escape the fact that you’re helpless to do anything except wait and see if you survive.”

She closed the space between them, laying her hand over his. “Mad, I’m so sorry. I hate that it happened to you.”

“They beat me for what felt like hours and hours. Krylov talked about what he would do to my friends if I didn’t stop investigating the foundation. He talked about your brother in vivid detail, and let me tell you if you ever get nieces and nephews, you’re welcome.” Mad took a shaky breath. “I couldn’t put you in the way of that kind of violence. But I hated myself for breaking.”