Secrets Of A Good Girl

“Can I assume MP Ashton wants to meet regarding the ambassador’s Northern Ireland peace initiative?”

“Correct.”

“Right, tell her tomorrow is fine. Anytime. I’ll fit the agenda around her. And Sir Pritchard, tell him Wednesday or Thursday of next week, midafternoon is best.”

“All right.”

Cassidy left the large room, rounded several corners, walked down several long hallways. The sharp heels of her black leather ankle boots clicked authoritatively, a sound she secretly liked.

She greeted the plumber at the main entrance and escorted him up three floors. Standing together in the otherwise empty elevator, he gave her a friendly, appraising glance. She winced as the elevator dinged and wordlessly led him to a small room on the left.

Cassidy maneuvered many locks with keys and codes and eventually let them both into a small nondescript room. She perched on a table and waited as the plumber investigated the leak Cassidy had reported last week. She would have to wait until he was done, as only a small handful of people had the top-secret clearance to even enter this room, which was filled with classified files.

She glanced at her watch. She wanted to call the public affairs department before two o’clock, and there was that meeting at three…

Cassidy crossed her legs at the knee and noticed splotchy raindrop marks on her shoes. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and swiped at them. At dawn, she’d been out on a Heathrow Airport tarmac with bodyguards to greet an assistant U.S. secretary of state, and although she’d been standing under an umbrella, London’s legendary dreary rain had soaked her feet and dampened the cuffs of her trousers. She’d had to grin and bear the splooshing between her toes as she’d escorted the official in a limo to his breakfast meeting with the ambassador.

At least the sun was out again, but Cassidy was annoyed to be even thinking about the weather. She was so accustomed to constant motion and decision-making that it was maddening to have more than five minutes of downtime.

Downtime led to quiet contemplation, to thinking. Cassidy had trained herself long ago not to sit and think. Keep moving, she told herself, from the minute she woke up every morning to the last moment before she dropped her head on the pillow. Keep moving.

Don’t stop.

She whipped out a small pad of paper and pen from an inside pocket of her fitted black pin-striped jacket and began to scribble a list of things to do in the next hour. Call Winfield House and ask the head housekeeper to fax her tonight’s menu to make sure nothing was forgotten, update the ambassador’s schedule for tomorrow to fit in the meeting with the MP—Cassidy’s stomach rumbled. Oh, yes, get lunch. If time permits.

After the plumber indicated he was finished but would need to get into a rest room one floor above, Cassidy let them both out, secured the room and called Charles to take the worker to the rest room. Then she returned to the front office and resumed running around for several more hours.

At promptly three, Cassidy escorted five men and one woman to a public meeting room. They were representatives from an American lingerie company called Underneath It All. They wanted to open a London branch, and they were set to make a pitch for support from the ambassador.

But Ambassador Cole had not yet returned from his appointments. Cassidy sighed, and as she chatted informally with the businesspeople, her cell phone rang. “Maxwell.”

“Cassidy, it’s me,” Ambassador Cole said, but his voice sounded very far away, and strained through static.

“I can’t hear you well, Ambassador.”

“Bad connection. Listen, I’m running late. We’re sitting here in traffic the likes of which I’ve never seen.”

“Since yesterday?” Cassidy couldn’t help herself.

“I did say that yesterday, didn’t I?” The ambassador chuckled. “Cassidy, you’ll hold down the fort.” It wasn’t a question. It was a confident statement.

“Yes.”

“I shouldn’t be longer than a half hour. Shouldn’t, but who knows for sure. There’s a double-decker bus in front of the car, and we can’t see a bloody thing.”

Cassidy smiled. Like herself, Ambassador Cole hadn’t picked up a British accent, but had managed to adopt several choice phrases. “Don’t worry. We’re good to go here. We’ll get things done.”

“I know you will.”

“I’m fitting MP Ashton in tomorrow.” She decided not to tell him about the averted wine crisis. It would just sound like showing off. “And there are a few documents on your desk that need approval before I send them out.”

“Thank you, Cassidy.”

He clicked off and Cassidy faced the small group. “That was the ambassador. He’s running a bit behind. If you spend more than two days in London, you’ll know that isn’t an unusual scenario.”

The guests chuckled.

“Right,” Cassidy said. “I’ll arrange for tea service, and while we wait for the ambassador, you can ask me anything you like about London. I’ve been working here at the embassy for just about ten years, so I should be able to answer just about any question you might have while we wait.”

One phone call and ten minutes later, Cassidy’s fellow Americans were pouring tea and looking delighted about it. Cassidy remembered when she first arrived in London and how she thought tea was so refined and classy and relaxed. Now she was lucky to gulp down two sips from a takeaway thermos on the way to a meeting.

The businesspeople asked Cassidy many questions about many topics, from London’s shopping areas to the weather to the hot-button political issues. They seemed pleased with Cassidy’s straightforward, knowledgeable answers, and the more information she supplied, the more questions they asked.

Cassidy loved her job, but often felt tired at the end of the day, and not from running around. She often grew weary from all her talking. She’d never talked much, as a child, as a teenager. She’d chosen not to. She supposed she’d always liked to watch life, and listen.

At the embassy, she had to be an effective communicator, and she believed she was, but sometimes she secretly longed for the time when she could say nothing and have her feelings be understood anyway. The person who never failed at that understanding was—

Not in her life now.

Cassidy shook her head with a tiny motion and kept talking so she didn’t have to think about him, about anything. When it came to suppressing unthinkable thoughts, she was a professional with a decade of experience.

“Ms. Maxwell,” said one of the men. She looked at him. He was easily the youngest one in the room, perhaps the most eager to show his bosses that he meant business. He reached into a large portfolio at his feet and pulled out a posterboard featuring a black-and-white photo of a scantily clad couple in a heated embrace. “You’ve been so helpful, that I think we can use your personal opinion. Tell us, how do you think Brits would feel about this poster on a Piccadilly Circus billboard?”

Cassidy looked at the poster, but a flash of movement caught her gaze and coaxed it over the man’s shoulder. She could see through the glass wall of the meeting room, straight to the embassy lobby.

Straight into a pair of eyes.

Cassidy sucked in a breath so hard she almost choked.

Bottomless black eyes.

From here, a stranger might think the distance made those eyes look black. But Cassidy was no stranger, and she knew if she walked out of the meeting room, walked closer and closer until she was an inch away, they would still be an almost-impossible ink-black.

Those eyes—Cassidy remembered how as a smitten child, as a teenager with a crush, as a young woman in love, she would do anything to make those eyes look her way. Then, after her mistakes, she feared she could never look into those eyes again. So she’d run away.

There was nowhere to run now.

Every memory she’d banished to the far corners of her mind now leaped out like monsters in a haunted house. Every single thought she’d outrun now clawed at her back.

The only man she ever loved was standing right in front of her again, and there was no escape.

Eric didn’t smile. He didn’t wave or nod. He just held her gaze, and Cassidy was forced to face the hurt she’d inflicted.

“Ms. Maxwell?” she heard, and snapped her attention back to the poster. “Ms. Maxwell? How do you think people in London will feel about this ad?”

Cassidy parted her lips, intending to give a professional response, but her mind tricked her into honesty. “Stunned,” she mumbled. She looked over the man’s shoulder. Eric hadn’t moved. “Shocked,” she whispered.

The uncomfortable rustling in the room brought her back once again. “Excuse me?” the one woman asked. “I rather thought Europeans were less reserved than Americans.”