Under His Protection Read online

  Since she’d started reading the darker novels back in college, she’d loved the idea of strong, leading men who’d used erotic restraints and toys on their submissive females. The fantasy of being held in place without a choice and having her bottom smacked was one she’d allowed, in her dreams. But she also enjoyed reading about vampires and spy thrillers and that didn’t mean she wanted Dracula or Russian spies to meet her for lunch in DuPont Circle.

  Even if she’d had the privacy to explore a little kink, there was no way in hell she had the confidence to enter that kind of relationship. Any kind of commitment with the opposite sex was a challenge for her after her senior prom date had made a name for himself with his tell-all school exposé about how he’d banged the president’s daughter. She’d been a lot more careful after that; the only other serious boyfriend was for a year or so during college, and that relationship had ended just as badly as the high school asshole.

  She didn’t know Agent What-the-Fuck’s real name and didn’t want to care, but faced with his stern command and a no-nonsense stand, she had no resources to even communicate with him, much less stand around and wait for him to bare her ass. Starting for the door, she risked one more glance at the dark-haired man with even darker eyes still burrowed into a steely frown. Firm shoulders filled out the nicely cut blue suit and those monster hands really were as big as they’d felt across her bottom. His hair was cut close to his head, the effect giving him an even stronger aura of authority, but the ugly red scratch on his cheek justified both his stern expression and nonverbal commands to keep her moving. She obeyed like a chastised child.

  Once she was in the hallway with a solid wood door closed firmly between them, Victoria could breathe a little easier but the mortification and confusion continued to twist together until frustrated tears bubbled to the surface. Working hard to keep her hand away from the lingering burning on her ass, she avoided eye contact with the two agents outside the door, confident that everybody in the West Wing knew what had happened in her father’s private office. Keeping her head low, she returned to the lobby and hurled herself into the oppressive heat that fired her core temperature even more than it already was. Only the formerly swampy bottoms of DC in August could melt you with the temperature and soak you with a layer of humid sweat in a simultaneous second.

  Safety. She needed to go someplace safe, but the relative meaning of the word had nothing to do with her security detail, who’d had enough sense to stay as far away from her as possible. Experiencing any comfort in her physical surroundings had been lost ever since the presidential election that had spun her high school, drama-filled world on an axis with a new school, new friends, and new rules, all while living under the prying eyes of the American public, but the damned White House was as close to privacy as she was going to get before her tears betrayed her. With the press setting up their evening news feeds on the north lawn and the judgmental eyes of the hordes of tourists and protesters behind the big iron gates on Pennsylvania Avenue, she needed to move quickly.

  She entered the mansion through the Palm Room, but the cool breeze from the hard-working air-conditioning system didn’t defeat her tumultuous emotions or the constant reminders of dead presidents and their bleak histories filled with war and more death. Her head still low, she walked past a half-dozen nameless strangers who nodded politely without ever really making eye contact, but, thankfully, nobody stopped her before she reached the private residence on the second floor, twenty thousand square feet of luxurious prison. Leaning against the door in relief to have made it that far without crying, she realized that she wasn’t alone. Of course not, she said to herself, closing her eyes in defeat.

  A maid turned off the vacuum she’d been running across the expensive oriental carpet. Glancing at Victoria’s face, the slightly pale woman cringed and that damned special agent’s lecture on people’s perception of her temper replayed itself with relentless persistency. No matter how she reacted on the outside, once she was allowed some time to think about her actions, she really did hate that look people gave her when she was being unreasonable. And she’d actually drawn blood on the guy, a new low for even her. Always elegant, Victoria’s mother would have been aghast at the reputation her only child had gained in the last few years.

  But none of it was this woman’s fault. Victoria wiped at a rogue tear like she might have had a little dust at the corner of her eye. She’d seen the woman before, but had to read the woman’s ID tag to continue, willing herself to be polite. “Good afternoon, Teresa.”

  “Thank you, Miss Bradford,” said the woman, a little confused. “Can I get you anything, today?”

  “No,” said Victoria quickly. “I mean, no thank you. I’m just going up to my room, but thank you.”

  “Are you okay, miss?” asked the woman sincerely. “You look upset.”

  “I... I’m fine,” she responded dully, staring in the direction of the creepy Lincoln bedroom that still gave her nightmares. Little Willie Lincoln had taken his last breath in there, and the rumors of a spiritual Abraham Lincoln haunting the hallways had preceded their tenure at the White House. Back in those early days of the Bradford presidency, she’d studied all of the past presidents and their families when she and her mother had spent hours wistfully theorizing how history might remember them. That little dream had turned into a new kind of nightmare just before her eighteenth birthday.

  The maid shifted her weight nervously, bringing Victoria’s attention back to the present. “I... I have to admit,” Victoria said softly, “that this place doesn’t make me very comfortable.”

  Surprisingly sad, Teresa looked around the expansive hallway filled with an undeniable elegance. “I’ve been coming here since I was a little girl,” she said softly. “My mother had this job when I was growing up, and my grandfather worked as an usher before her. But when she died...I was still in high school, so getting hired here was kind of a way to be closer to her.”

  The personal revelation left Victoria feeling uneasy, and she shot the thirty-something-year-old woman a suspicious glance. Separating friends from enemies was tough when your father was famous, and her father had been famous ever since her second birthday when he’d won his first political office as a state senator for Massachusetts. But Teresa seemed oblivious to Victoria’s discomfort. “I’ve been working here for over ten years,” Teresa continued with a sad smile, “but I like the personal changes your mother made much better than President Morrison’s White House. She was very kind to me when I was going through some difficult personal times. I miss her, and her beautiful things remind me of her every day.”

  Victoria swallowed hard, forcing a polite nod when all she wanted to do was burst into tears. “Some of these things came from our house in Boston,” she responded slowly. “But Congress gives every First Family money to renovate after the election, and a lot of these paintings and furniture are borrowed from the Smithsonian and the National Art Gallery. My mother spent weeks working with the curators to make a home for us here.”

  Teresa nodded, but remained silent. Like everyone else in the United States, she knew that cancer had defeated Victoria’s family fourteen months after the inauguration, taking her mother without enough warning, and Victoria was left to continue without her. “I miss her too,” Victoria added to fill the awkward silence. “I think she would have enjoyed these last few years a lot more than I did. Thank you for sharing your feelings with me. It means more to me today than you can imagine, but I think I’ll just go up to my room now.”

  The room she’d chosen six years earlier had big windows facing Pennsylvania Avenue, with high ceilings, ornate trim, and a white marble fireplace. As a teen, she’d guarded the space as fiercely as she’d guarded her privacy, not even allowing close friends easy access for fear the details would end up in the media. Throwing herself on the pale yellow Amish quilt her mother had helped her pick out on their last big road trip together, she curled next to Mr. Monkey Face who’d lived on her bed for as long as
she could remember and finally allowed the protective barriers to drop. Huge, choking tears emanated from a deep place inside of her, the release leaving her exhausted, but emotionally relieved by the catharsis.

  With no place to go, she wrapped herself in her quilt and dozed, a half sleep that delivered a rare peace and granted access to forgotten memories buried in the mansion. Her mother and father were always happiest when they were together; her father’s inauguration, the bright sun warming the frigid January temperatures and her mother’s only official state dinner, a dazzling array of gowns and jewelry surrounded by some of the most influential people in the world.

  By the time she heard the television in the solarium that indicated her father had returned for the evening, darkness had fallen over the city, casting the third floor in more eerie shadows. Getting off the bed, she brushed her hair and touched up her makeup in the big oval mirror to destroy any signs of weakness that came from unrestrained tears. With a sad smile, she ran her hands across the rumpled yellow bedspread to smooth it to perfection, the touch of nostalgia still a little crippling. Picking up the high-heeled shoes that she’d kicked to the floor, she walked away with a final glance at the last vestige of her childhood before closing the door behind her and following the noise down the hall.

  The White House solarium had a wall of windows facing the south portico to showcase the twinkling majesty of the Washington Monument overlooking the National Mall. With his back to the view, however, her father sat in front of the flat screen in an oversized leather chair from their Boston townhouse that he’d insisted make the move to DC. Far removed from his Oval Office formality, he wore a pair of sweats and a tattered sweatshirt that she remembered from a beach vacation they’d taken as a family a lifetime earlier. With no security or staff in sight, he looked almost like everybody else’s father, and, for a brief second, she saw the telltale signs of stress, his hair significantly grayer than it had been on election day and the lines around his eyes and brow much deeper.

  Given the rare opportunity, she watched him drinking his traditional scotch and eating off a tray by his chair. He looked... tired... but eventually he glanced up. “Victoria,” he sighed. “I didn’t know you were here. Would you like to have some dinner brought to you? I’m afraid my hamburger and fries isn’t going to go very far.”

  Sitting next to him in a matching leather chair, she shifted uncomfortably. Her father had always been such a strong presence; his booming laughter and no-nonsense attitude toward any childish behaviors usually kept her a little distant as he navigated his political career with long absences from home. A few months after her mother died, she’d fled toward college independence, never returning to the White House for more than a few nights of expected holiday visits.

  “You shouldn’t eat that garbage,” she said quietly, not totally trusting her voice. “You need to watch your cholesterol.” She wasn’t exactly sure what his numbers were, but her mom used to say that all the time.

  “Quirks of the job, Victoria. I’ve got my own personal physician and an entire naval hospital taking care of me, so don’t worry about it.” Without missing a beat, he took a sip of his scotch, adding, “I understand that you were looking for me earlier. Did you get what you needed?”

  Her heart fluttered nervously, and she froze over his choice of words. What exactly did he know about her horrible afternoon? She knew for fact that there was no surveillance equipment in that office, and there was no way Agent What-the-Fuck would have told anybody what he’d done to her. Would he? Maybe he’d squeal to the press in some carefully leaked exposé after he retired, but he’d certainly never tell her father. Looking away, she took a breath to steady herself. “No. I took care of it by myself.”

  “As long as you’re sure,” he said lightly.

  In hindsight, asking him for the money and permission for her security detail to accompany her to the Caribbean with friends had been a stupid idea. She was glad she hadn’t interrupted the meeting, cursing softly with the realization that Special Agent What-the-Fuck had been right. “I, uh... No, it wasn’t important, Dad.”

  “Good. I’m glad it all worked out, honey,” he said with a kind smile. He put his bare feet up on the coffee table and handed her a newspaper. “I’m glad you stopped by, though; I was going to send somebody for you tomorrow. Do you want to explain this?”

  And just like that, he was back to being the president with a large staff who could bring her to his side like an errant child. She tensed, staring at the front page of the tabloid with a picture of her in a DC nightclub. Dressed in a skimpy outfit that showed a little more cleavage than she’d realized, she’d contorted her expression to a snarl as she tossed a drink in a shocked stranger’s face.

  She had no idea how the press managed to find her every time she lost her patience. It didn’t happen that often, she assured herself, but they never gave her a minute’s peace, so it was no wonder they were always catching her at her worst. That particular drunken idiot had bumped into her hard enough to almost knock her off her feet, then called her a bitch before she’d dumped her Manhattan in his face, but the headline had left those details out, only reporting, ‘Vixen Vicky Strikes Again.’

  After her emotional afternoon, she wanted to explain all of that to her father, to share with him the details of her life and explain how hard it was to be constantly watched, constantly judged. She wanted him to understand that she tried, she really, really tried, but since her mother had left them, she had nobody to talk to. Nobody who put her before the needs of three hundred twenty million other Americans. But William Bradford never even made eye contact with her. “I asked you a question, Victoria. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  With no other resources, her temper snapped. “It was nothing, Dad. I don’t understand why you get so uptight about everything. Get a life, for god’s sake.”

  In the dog-eat-dog world of politics, her father had never been a pushover, and he rankled with a temper to match hers. “Watch how you speak to me, Victoria. I’m not in the mood to listen to your childish responses. As you well know, I have a lot going on that doesn’t include dealing with the actions of a selfish brat.”

  “Of course you do,” she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes in exasperation. “Now if I were the spoiled princess of some country that you were seeking a trade agreement with, it would all be different, wouldn’t it?”

  “What does that even mean?” he roared. “All I know is that my communications people need to clear up another one of your disasters. You’re an adult. You’ve got to stop making my job that much more difficult every time you turn around. And that relationship with the internet paper has to stop. I’ve told you not to give interviews and yet, they seem to have a quote from you almost every week.”

  Her best friend, Amanda Grant, had hooked her up with Trevor King and the rest of the group at The Party, a well-known internet magazine run by a politically savvy group of young graduates from Harvard. Amanda had been in and out her life since grade school when their fathers were freshman senators, and Victoria’s relocation to DC six years earlier had put them in the same elite high school before going on to college together. They’d talked for hours about life after graduation, convincing themselves that they’d gain more respect if they showed some intellectual thought on key challenges facing the country, but Victoria’s name had made it into the paper way more often than Amanda’s.

  Even when her views had contradicted her father’s well-documented positions, she’d felt firmly about the stands she’d taken. Well, mostly firmly. It didn’t do much good to parrot all of her father’s policies if she was looking to make a name for herself, but if he’d just read what she’d said, he’d find that she almost always agreed with him. Reality, however, had never been his concern.

  “I’m not a minor,” she snapped, refusing to take the paper he still held out to her. “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a free country, and in case you haven’t read the Constitution, there are a few
lines in there that protect my right to give a damned interview. And whether you believe it or not, I have an opinion that might not be the same as yours.”

  “Do you really plan on lecturing me on Constitutional law?” he asked incredulously. “I think my law degree and my current position pretty much qualifies me to remind you that you have responsibilities that extend beyond legal rights. You know damned well that this publicity stunt has nothing to do with your opinion. You’re doing this to cause me grief. I deal with life and death decisions every day, and I shouldn’t have to worry about your selfish actions.”

  Him. It was always about him and never about what she needed. Her mother would have wrapped her in her arms and let her cry, never shouting and passing unreasonable dictates. Before coming to Washington, Victoria’s entire life had revolved around her mother in their Boston townhouse while her father had commuted to DC as a member of Congress. Her gentle mother would have given her the chance to explain instead of bringing the sum of all the world’s problems to an argument, but he had no such skills. He might have been the political wonder of the twenty-first century, but his cold, distant demeanor had no place in her heart.

  Tears rose to the surface, churning the deepest, darkest sadness that she kept buried inside of her, and there was only one way to destroy that horrible feeling. “I don’t understand what the fuck you’re saying half the time! This is insane. I’m twenty-three years old, and I get to live my own fucking life. It’s bad enough that I’ve given up my life and my privacy for this stupid job of yours. Stop interfering and stop telling me what to do.”