Matt seems to be used to it, though, and once Patrick leaves for the night, I relax a little. Excusing myself to the restroom, I leave Matt alone for a moment with his mother.

I hear them talking as I return. “I see the way you look at that girl and wonder why run, why not settle down?” his mother is asking him.

Matt sighs and stands to gaze out the window. “If I don’t run, Dad’s death will have been for nothing.”

“No, it could never be for nothing,” his mother says passionately, heading over to him.

“It could be for nothing if we don’t change and everything stays the same,” Matt tells her with a sigh.

He hugs her to his side and kisses her forehead, and she rests her head on his shoulder.

There’s a very tender, powerful mother-and-son bond. She looks older and frailer when next to him; his strength is striking compared to her fragility.

In one interview, Matt’s mother confessed that the day of the shooting, she thought she’d lost them both. How devastating for her! How afraid she must be now, the shooter never having been caught.

President Hamilton’s assassination went on to be an unsolved mystery, like so many political murders before that.

After such grief, though, Matt’s mother is still so refined. There’s a strength beneath the silk.

Her clothes rustle as she returns to take a seat on the living room couch. Then there’s confusion in her voice as she stares at Matt’s back. “You had a tough life there, giving your father away for the betterment of the people. Hardly any privacy, no normalcy even when I tried so hard to give it to you. Why do you want to go back?”

“Don’t you want to go back?” he asks her, looking confused as he turns and walks to take a seat next to her. “Tend to your tulip beds? Galas were your life. You were the finest First Lady this country ever saw. Don’t you want to fill that front fountain with ducks again? Come home on Marine One to the South Lawn of the White House all lit up for the night?”

Her eyes water and she lightly pats the corners to keep them dry.

“I want to see the ships Dad had on the walls of the Oval Office hung up there again. I want to be on the other side of Dad’s desk, make the calls that he could never make.”

“Matt!” she says.

“It was your home for seven years.” He waits a moment. “The White House is not just the White House, Mother; I see that now. The White House is the world. Help me change it.”

“I know what you’re thinking. Every widowed or bachelor president has had a relative acting as First Lady. I heard you at the debate. But Matt, I cannot act as First Lady anymore.” She stands up, then puts her hand on the top of his head, like she probably did when he was a boy. “Please rethink this. The White House is only the White House. Out here, you can have a life.”

She looks at me as I step inside the room quietly, unsure whether I should stay quiet or let them know I’m here. “I know you want one,” she tells him, still looking at me. Kissing his forehead and grabbing her glittering designer clutch bag, she smiles radiantly at me, like a queen getting her bearings. “So nice to meet you, Charlotte.”

Matt scrapes his hands down his face as she leaves, and for a long moment, I sit in Matt’s living room, letting him collect his thoughts.

“Charlotte, could you reorganize things and get me a few days off? I need to be by myself. I need to think.”

I start at his request, not expecting it. “Of course. Of course, Matt.”

He glances at his watch. “We should probably take you home. The media will be counting exactly how many minutes you remained at my place after my mother left.”

I stand quickly.

“Wait. Not so fast.” He takes my hand and tugs me down again so that I take a seat next to him.

My heart starts pounding wildly in my chest.

“Ever since I saw you walk through the door of the campaign kickoff, no one else is worth thinking about. From the moment we started talking, I knew I wanted you around.” He tugs me closer. “I want a kiss right now.”

With effort, I lift Jack by the paws and he licks Matt’s lips, and Matt laughs and wipes his jaw and mouth, petting the top of Jack’s head as he shoots me a look. “Correction, I want your kiss right now.”

I know better, but I can’t resist teasing him, so I lean over and kiss his jaw, feeling the warmth of Jack’s head between our abdomens as he settles on Matt’s lap.

“Don’t kiss me like you’d kiss your father. Kiss me like you’d kiss your secret lover. Like this.” He holds my face in one hand and presses his mouth to mine. He parts my lips with his.

Slow kissing.

The kind that curls your toes and makes every sense acute.

I respond, taking his jaw in my hands, feeling its muscles flex under my palms as he moves his mouth over mine, feeling the shadow of beard on his skin. He says, “Hmm,” and deepens the kiss as I kiss him softly back.

My mouth feels wet and swollen and tingly when we ease apart. “Come here,” he gruffs out. “Jack, scat,” Matt orders.

Jack heads to his spot by the fireplace and I somehow end up on Matt’s lap, and we kiss again, deeper, heavier, our breaths starting to labor.

Did he stop, or did I, I wonder dazedly a few seconds later.

His hands are on my hips and he’s looking at me with dark eyes.

“I find it drastically inconvenient that I think about you at the most inopportune moments. How am I to govern a country when I can’t control my own thoughts of you?”

“Every moment you think of me can’t be inopportune. There have to be some good ones.”

“True.” He frowns as he thinks about it. “In the shower, and most definitely in my bed.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Don’t put that idea into my head.”

He chuckles. “Like it’s not already there.”

I’m blushing.

I love when his full lips soften with humor and a smile spreads upward to light his eyes. But then his square jaw tenses visibly. He leans forward and moves his mouth over mine, devouring. His mouth slows, becomes softer and yet firmer.

He withdraws, leaving my mouth burning with fire.

I feel raw, vulnerable, and I don’t want him to see. So I close my eyes and kiss him softly. His lips leave mine to nibble my earlobe, and then as I try to catch my breath, his tongue comes to graze mine, playing, tasting, stroking.