Page 67 of The Press Secretary's Passion
“This was waiting for Jules in her office inbox this morning when she arrived,” he says before opening the little tabs and upending the contents all over the conference table, much like I did this morning.
“What the fuck?” Jake asks with a hard face. Ryan doesn’t say anything at all. Instead, he grabs a chair from the table, picks it up, and hurls it into the wall. I let out a little scream and cover my mouth with my hands.
“Come here,” Ryan says, and I know he’s talking to me, because he’s pointing his finger at the ground directly beside himself. When I hesitate, he growls, “I’m not going to ask you again, Jules.”
And then I go. I don’t waver now. I run directly to him. And when I get close, he holds his arms open, and I hit him full body. He rocks back on a heel to take my weight and then closes his arms around me. I bury my face in his chest and cry.
“No one is going to touch you,” he assures, still growling. “Not one fucking hair on your head. Do you hear me?”
I just nod.
“What are we going to do about this?” he asks the men in the room. I clearly have no idea. I knew he was going to lose his mind, so I called Rick. And it turns out I was correct, because when Ryan saw the pictures, he threw a chair. It was impressive when it was my answering machine, but now we’re escalating in size and value of the items thrown. At this rate, we’ll never be able to keep up financially, and I’m quite rich.
“Honey, what are you thinking?” Jake asks.
“That if Ryan keeps throwing things, I’m going to end up in the poor house trying to replace them,” I admit without thinking. “And I’m pretty loaded, so that’s saying something.”
“Babe,” Ryan says, and I tip my head back to look him in the eye. His lips twitch like he’s trying not to smile.
“What?” I ask. “It’s true. All of it.”
I look around, and Gus, Rick, and Jake are all smiling flat out.
“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way,” Rick inserts, “let’s sit down and discuss this. I think we need a plan.”
We all sit down around the table, and everyone passes the pictures, and I hand them along, not wanting to look at them for a multitude of reasons, one of them being I don’t want to toss my cookies in front of all these people and answer awkward questions. My mind flits back to what Rick said in my office. Could I be pregnant? I just don’t know. I make a mental note to find a moment to get to a drug store and buy a pregnancy test.
“She needs full coverage,” Ryan says. Well, so much for finding a private time until all this is over.
“We can’t justify her having Secret Service coverage,” Jake replies. “We would get raked over the coals for it.”
“And we can’t explain to the public why she needs it,” Rick adds.
“I have a buddy,” Ryan reminds. “His name’s King. He owns King Security. We were in the Marines together until he needed to get out for personal reasons.”
“Call him,” Jake says.
Ryan produces his phone from his pocket and swipes his finger across the screen to unlock it. He presses a bunch of numbers, and it starts ringing through the room.
“King,” a gruff voice answers.
“Hey, man, it’s Black,” Ryan says.
“Hey, I got some things going down,” he says. “Can I call you back in a few days?”
“Actually, I have some things going down too,” Ryan replies. “I was hoping you could come and help me keep my girl safe.”
“I’m on a… difficult job right now,” he tells him. “I can send a man though.”
“Can your man take over for you and you head to D.C.?” Ryan asks.
“I fucking wish,” King grumbles. “But no. The client wants only me.”
“I understand,” he says. “I’ll let you know what we decide.”
“Sounds good, brother. I’ll get in touch if this job uncomplicates itself anytime soon.”
“All right. Later,” Ryan replies before he disconnects. “Fuck.”
