Dale always knew when Charlotte was on the phone.
It was the only time Peter ever looked as if he felt guilty.
Charlotte was lonely, and if she wasn’t the president and he the first husband, they would have been the type of couple who would have divorced and remained friendly enough to meet for lunch once a month. But they were not a normal couple.
Dale jumped out of bed when she heard Peter speaking in the tones reserved for his wife. She pulled on a robe and started separating their tangled clothes from where they’d been flung hours earlier.
Dale and Peter never took stupid chances. They were careful not to tempt fate. She never traveled to Washington, Connecticut, when his kids planned to sleep at his rented house. She refused his pleas to stay with him at the residence when Charlotte was out of the country. He never went to her apartment or her hotel room. But they were both growing anxious. Charlotte hadn’t set up a reelection campaign yet, and Dale sometimes wondered if she knew about their affair. Part of her would be relieved to have things out in the open. Peter could move out of the White House. They could have more than secret meetings and private moments. They could have a life together.
As she stepped into the shower, she heard him laughing at something Charlotte said about the state dinner the following week. Dale had been invited. In itself, that wasn’t strange. The White House always invited one or two members of the press corps to each state dinner. But because of her aggressive reporting on several of Charlotte’s Cabinet appointees and a general unease with her frequent scoops, Dale wasn’t exactly high on their list of favorite reporters. She was invited to bring a guest, and she planned to invite Brian Watson, the new Pentagon reporter. Dale made a mental note to e-mail him first thing in the morning.
Just as she was starting to worry that Peter was still chatting with Charlotte, the shower door opened, and he joined her.
She smiled all the way back to the airport the next morning. She planned to spend her day off getting organized and shopping for a dress for the state dinner. Brian had replied immediately to her invitation and was thrilled about coming to the dinner.
She hoped he wouldn’t get the wrong impression. For the most part, her friends had stopped trying to set her up after their efforts all ended without success. She often agreed to go on first dates—to dinners with other correspondents or producers on the White House beat or daytime dates to museums or baseball games. She felt she had to maintain some charade of life as a single girl, but she never accepted invitations to second dates. She had few female friends, so no one did much prying about her status. Her mother was the only person she’d confided in about her affair with Peter, and only because she’d begun to worry when she couldn’t reach Dale over the weekends. Her mother was so concerned about what would happen to Dale if word of her affair ever became public that she didn’t even share her daughter’s secret with Dale’s father.
On the night of the state dinner, Dale met Brian at the network’s Washington bureau. He was known as the “male Dale” for being just as much of a workaholic as she was, but that didn’t bother him.
Dale wore a long, sleeveless red silk dress with an open back—a little sexy for a night out in Washington, but everything else she’d seen at Neiman’s was black or beige and looked like mother-of-the-bride garb. The dinner was to honor the president of Panama, but it fell on Valentine’s Day, so Dale figured she could get away with wearing red.
Heads turned as Dale walked through the newsroom dressed for the formal affair. In a business suit or jeans and a T-shirt, Dale was a striking woman whose good looks rarely went unnoticed. With her hair swept off her face in a loose updo, her makeup expertly applied, and her elegant evening gown clinging to her petite curves, she was traffic-stopping gorgeous. She’d inherited the best of her mother’s Greek genes and her father’s Irish genes. She had olive skin, bright green eyes, and long, straight chestnut hair.
“You clean up pretty well,” Brian said to her.
“Thanks. You, too.” She laughed. “Ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
They entered the White House residence through the East Wing with the other dinner guests. As Dale and Brian passed through the entrance and walked toward the coat check, a military aide greeted them and directed them to the receiving line. Every guest was invited to have a picture taken with the president and Peter. Dale smiled at the members of Congress as they snapped pictures of the residence. Official White House functions had a way of turning even the most cynical Washingtonians into starry-eyed tourists. Dale spotted members of Charlotte’s Cabinet, a few Hispanic celebrities, and members of the diplomatic corps jockeying for spots in the photo line.
“Let’s get our picture taken,” Brian suggested.
“I’ve done it a million times. Let’s just get a drink and do some people watching,” Dale said.
Brian looked crushed. “Come on, Dale. Who knows when I’ll be invited back here? Come through the photo line with me,” he pleaded.
“I’m going to pass, but you should go through by yourself. Tell the president about your last trip to Afghanistan—she’d be really interested.”
“I can’t go through alone,” Brian whined.
“Sure you can.” Dale laughed.
“Please? I need the White House insider to introduce me to the Kramers.”
Dale reluctantly agreed to go through the receiving line with Brian. He looked like a little kid as he gazed at the well-known faces. As they neared the president and Peter, Dale grew anxious.
“When we get there, we should keep moving,” she said to Brian. “They have to do this all night.”
As soon as Peter turned to look at her, Dale realized her mistake. He stared at her with a mix of such blatant affection and possessiveness that Dale half expected Charlotte to smack him. She averted her eyes and said, “Good evening, Madam President, Mr. Kramer.” Charlotte didn’t look at her but instead took Brian warmly by the arm and stood between her cheating husband and Brian for a photo. Peter leaned in toward Dale before she could escape and said, “Meet me in the Family Theater in twenty minutes.” She spun around to face him to see if he was joking, but he’d turned his gaze to the couple behind her.
Dale knew instantly that it was a terrible idea to meet Peter in the Family Theater. She also knew that she would be there in exactly twenty minutes. Brian was giddy with excitement about being at the state dinner. He was taking pictures with his cell phone and sampling every appetizer offered to him. Dale made her escape.
“I’ve got to make a quick call,” she told him.
“No way. No work tonight. Not even you, Dale,” he protested.
“It’ll just be a second,” she said, sliding her cell phone out to see the messages that she knew would be there from Peter.
“Where r u,” he had texted.
She made her way down the stairs and walked quickly toward the theater. People were milling around outside the Library and the China Room, but the hall outside the Family Theater was empty. She nodded at Peter’s agent and walked into the theater. Her eyes were still adjusting to the darkness when Peter came up from behind and started kissing her neck and bare back.
“Not here!” she said.
“Why? Are you on a date?” Peter teased.
“Yes, I am on a fake date, so that people will stop debating whether I’m a lesbian workaholic or just a workaholic who can’t get laid.” She pushed him away. “Seriously, Peter, not here. Your wife is up there, my colleague is up there, and your guests are touring the residence. People could walk in at any moment. We shouldn’t even be in here.”
He looked amused. “I told the agents to gun down anyone who tried to come in.”
Dale shook her head. “You’re crazy!”
He put his arms around her and traced circles on her bare back. “Relax,” he said. She leaned her head against his chest and breathed in the smell of his shampoo and his deodorant and his toothpaste. She could smell that he’d been drinking. She looked up at him.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
His hands were still on her bare back. And then they slid her dress off her shoulders, and he was kissing her, and she gave in and kissed him back.
“Stop,” she said halfheartedly as they moved to the floor. “We really should not be doing this here,” she tried one last time.
As was always the case with Peter, he got what he wanted with her. Afterward, Dale pulled her hair into a ponytail and smoothed her dress down.
“You are out of control,” she said, “and you ruined my hair.”
“Your hair looks better like that,” he said, leaning over to kiss her while he tucked in his shirt with one hand and reached for his jacket with the other.
“That was the dumbest thing we have ever done,” Dale told him. She was furious at herself for letting it happen.
She put her hand on the door to go out the way she’d come in, but just before she opened it, she heard voices in the hall outside the theater.
It sounded like Charlotte.
She couldn’t tell whom she was talking to, but if Peter was in the Family Theater with her, it was a safe bet that Charlotte was no longer in the receiving line.