“Oh no, that badly?”
“No…” I trailed off. Truthfully, after kissing Zeke last night, things should have been good. I should have been on Cloud-9 today.
But the earful we’d gotten from Maverick when we went back downstairs had been enough to throw ice on the poor butterflies that had been fluttering in my stomach from my kiss with Zeke.
He seemed almostangryat me for spending time with Zeke.
Which, on one hand, I understood.
They weren’t technically a pack, but on the other hand, we weren’t technicallyanythingeither. So I could spend time with whomever I liked.
Besides, Maverick didn’t seem to want anything from me at all. Ever since our kiss in the kitchen at Camp David he’d pretended like it hadn’t happened and that he was basically what amounted to a Secret Service Ken doll, perfect and professional.
The alpha had been giving me so many mixed signals that it made me dizzy.
“So it’s going well?”
“No, it’s not doing that either,” I said with a groan. “Mom gave them a warning the night of the shooting.”
“Oh,” was all Grandma said, the exhalation full of understanding. “Have I ever told you that your mom is kind of a stick-in-the-mud sometimes?”
Despite myself I smiled. “You may have mentioned it once or twice.”
“Well, I know you never did the whole rebellion thing, Lennie, but maybe it’s time to get on that. Your mom is a control freak, but if you don’t tell her what you really want then you’re going to be fifty and still attached at the hip with her.”
“She’s supposed to let me go after this election,” I pointed out but the words sounded fake even to my own ears.
“Whatever you say, my sweet girl, but if I were you, then there wouldn’t be a force in the world that would keep me from licking each and every one of those men up and down—”
“Darling?” I heard my grandfather’s voice in the background of the call.
“Oh shoot, I have to go,” Grandma hurried to say. “Follow your heart, Lennie, and maybe follow your vagina a bit too, she knows what she’s doing.”
Then the line clicked dead.
“Are you ready?” Maverick asked, making me nearly jump clean out of my skin as my face burned with my grandmother’s final words.
“What?” I asked stupidly as I stared up at him with his neat facial hair and dark eyes. He looked good today despite acting like such an ass. The suit he was wearing hugged his muscular shoulders and I could see the tendons in his hands flex as he held them together in front of him, assuming the typical Secret Service position.
“Are you ready to head to the bus?”
“Oh,” I said, thinking about the crowd still waiting outside. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
I half-wanted to wait to see my mother’s speech later on today, but I was due at a fundraising dinner in New York tomorrow so we were already cutting it close as it was.
Maverick lifted his sleeve to his mouth. “Flicker is on the move, you ready?”
He must have gotten the affirmative because he nodded to me and Brooks took the lead as we headed out of the side of the stage where people were already screaming.
Dallas and Zeke were there, waiting for us.
“Is everything clear?” I barely heard Maverick ask over the roar of people and Zeke nodded as we headed down the thin pathway created by short metal barricades.
“Lennon!” “Lennon!” “A picture!”
My ears rang with the voices and I tried to keep my usual smile plastered on my face as we hurried along the line.
Then I heard the clang of metal and people were stumbling into our path.
