“You’ve got fight in you, lady.” Total truth, he’d always admired that about her. He wondered why he’d never taken the time to notice all the wonder of Ginger before. “You would have found your way around the grief, but there’s no question it’s to our country’s advantage you channeled that energy into finishing out Benjamin’s term.”
“When I lost him, I just remember being stunned at how you survived losing Jessica. I mean, at the time, when she died, I understood the tragedy of it all. Still there’s just no way to fully comprehend until it happens to you.”
“You had the Congress. I had my small kids. Just about broke my heart watching Alicia trying to mother the two younger ones when she deserved a childhood of her own.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I had to keep plugging along.”
Her wise eyes filled with indecision. “So what are we doing here?”
She’d turned to him for advice before. Why did now feel different? Still, he pushed ahead to answer as he always did when Ginger looked to him for support. “Acting like damn fool teenagers with our hormones raging out of control.”
“Your hormones are out of control around me?”
How could she not know? “Can’t you tell? Good Lord, woman. I’m fifty-five years old and we’ve had sex twice already tonight. There’s a good chance you’ll get lucky again if you keep wiggling around like that showing me curves that make my hands start itching and another part start—”
She kissed him quiet fast. Then slow. Then again for leisurely fun because she could and had been secretly yearning to for longer than she would admit to him. “I get the picture. And thank you, but I haven’t been a teen in a long time, Hank.”
Now there was a comment he couldn’t let go past. “You turn me on a helluva lot more than any giggling Barbie doll type.”
She swatted at his bare stomach. “You’re just trying to get in my pants, and let me tell you, Hank Renshaw, even when I was a teenager, I was never easy to sweet-talk around.”
He covered her body with his again, a low growl rumbling his chest. “How about I try a different form of persuasion?”
A knock sounded on the door, jerking his head upward. Ginger tugged on the covers and Hank frowned, readying to call out for whatever room service or maid waited outside to come back later—
The opening door preempted him. What the hell? He’d secured the lock—pissed off already because of the old-fashioned keys. Heads were going to roll in security in about sixty seconds.
But first, he reached for the gun he’d kept on the bedside table for Ginger. Gripping the barrel and blocking Ginger from sight ranked as his number-one priority.
The portal filling with a quartet of men cut short anything else he’d even considered saying as recognition stunned him silent.
The oldest of the crew, apparently the only one not shocked speechless, stepped forward. “Mom?”
“Thank you for a most enjoyable afternoon, Senator Landis.”
“Thank you, Chancellor. I look forward to the rest of the visit as well.” Ginger gathered her composure as she nodded to the German Chancellor as well as Franz Kohl, the Minister of Arts, and Igor Mashchenko, the Vice-Chancellor from neighboring Kasov. The meeting had been called seconds after she and Hank had tossed out her sons and tossed on some clothes. Which left no time for her or Hank to speak to her sons after the enormously embarrassing encounter.
In the grand hallway outside the dining room, she finished her farewells to the heads of state after their lengthy luncheon. Her eyes lingered on the two special guests as she took a final moment to gather her impressions of them. She thought of Hank’s concerns regarding the crèche being the focus of the threats.
Could the Minister of Arts want the crèche for monetary reasons? She studied the ambitious young man, a traditional-looking academic in his layered sweater and jacket with slightly rumpled pants. She could have sworn she caught a hint of paint on his brown leather shoes. His thinning hair, however, had been neatly groomed for the important occasion.
She shifted her attention to their guest from neighboring Kasov, Igor Mashchenko. A grandfatherly figure with a full head of steel-gray hair, he had a regal bearing that inspired confidence. He’d risen to the heights through shrewd investments that had helped finance his rise to power. He definitely didn’t need money.
Mashchenko bowed over her hand with an old-world elegance that elicited a low growl from Hank only Ginger would have heard. She lightly elbowed her general in the side before smiling at the visiting dignitary and wishing him farewell until the sunset ceremony.
Now that this final meeting was past, she and Hank had no excuse to avoid what waited in the sitting room back in her quarters.
Walking down the castle corridor with Hank distinctly quiet by her side, she winced to think of the conversation still waiting to happen between her and her boys. She wanted to say it didn’t matter what they thought. They were the children and she was the parent.
Except they were adults, and actually their opinions did matter to her. She didn’t want dissension in her family. Something special had happened between Hank and her, and she wanted to start things off on the right foot with her boys.
Plus, it was damn embarrassing to be caught in flagrante delicto, no matter what her age.
Rounding a corner, she followed the path of sconce lights, updated with bulbs made to resemble candles, as she found her way back to her and Hank’s quarters. Strange how, in the past, meetings with the heads of state of other countries had given her less anxiety than the upcoming one with her boys.
Outside the door, Hank gripped her by the arm, stopping her. She blinked, her eyes wide at his public display in touching her in front of the security personnel stationed at the end of the hall.
Given the widening of Hank’s pupils, the touch to her arm was only the start of his intent. He leaned closer, his mouth a whisker away from hers. “What happened earlier was amazing and don’t you doubt for a minute that, given the chance, I would dive right in for a repeat. Don’t let anything that’s said in there steal a second of what we had. Got it?”
“Roger that, General.”