Free Power Play (An FBI Thriller) by Catherine Coulter

Brooxey Wallingford was still in sight. It was Madame Secretary of State Abbott who snuck a look toward the door her aide and her husband were currently negotiating, Brooxey swaying a bit, the aide speaking to him quietly.
    Natalie said, “Arliss, I’ll tell you about it later. Oh, yes, Perry told me she’s coming with Day.”
    Arliss Abbott placed a beautifully manicured white hand on Natalie’s arm and moved in close, her voice pitched low. “We need to talk. I don’t think in my office, it would invite speculation. Some afternoon we can both get away?”
    Natalie kept her voice steady. “Of course. We need to discuss this—situation.” She drew a deep breath, her head very close to the secretary’s. “I need to hear your advice about what I should do.”
    Arliss Abbott nodded, beamed a practiced, smooth smile at Davis, and turned to greet a plump older woman with a smoker’s wrinkled face, a congresswoman from Connecticut, Natalie whispered to him.
    Natalie moved gracefully from one small conversation group to another, all in all about thirty A-list men and women, as jeweled up and beautifully turned out as she was. Davis noticed when Natalie neared, conversation stopped for half a second, all eyes focused on her, until the guests remembered their manners and responded as naturally as they could to her greeting. Davis kept a bland smile planted on his face. He was sure they were burning to know what the secretary of state had said to her and what they were planning. He wondered if she would still be ambassador if the two women hadn’t been best friends since college, along with the president of the United States. Davis had a feeling that despite that fact, this roomful of politicians would bet their galoshes that Natalie would end up thrown under the bus.
    Davis stood a little behind her, aware of everyone who came near her. Of course, information was the currency in Washington, and everyone wanted a big chunk, but they weren’t rude enough or honest enough to ask Natalie directly. She smiled and nodded,ignored the covert stares, and her voice was cultured and beautifully pitched, but she wasn’t saying what they really wanted to hear. She deflected supportive comments about the events in England with great skill and charm—
events
—as if that was the only polite word for a man’s death and Natalie’s attempted murder. If her laughter was a bit thin at times, no one let on that they wondered why, but of course they did. She continued from one group to another and neither her conversation nor her expression revealed that her reputation, and her life, in fact, was in the balance.
    She always carefully introduced him whenever she came into a new group, referring to him only as her “friend.” She’d been right about how he’d be perceived. He’d never considered what it would be like to be a boy toy. It was a novel experience, particularly since he was the youngest person at this fancy party, except for a couple twentysomething trophy wives. He was given sideways looks by some of the men, who apparently wondered what he had going for him. The women were assessing him, too, in a different way, maybe wondering if he was good in bed. But always, everyone’s gaze returned to Natalie, the poor beleaguered woman they seemed to think would be cut loose long before the midterm elections.
    He might have known there would be talk about football, too, an easy subject for Natalie and everyone else. From a congressman he learned Perry had rocked the football world that very day with the actual facts about the Tim Tebow rumors flying around.
    And then, speak of the devil, Biker Babe waltzed in, not in a black leather jacket, black jeans, and boots, but in a long shimmery dark green gown that left her tanned shoulders bare. Where’d she get that tan? Her thick brownish-red hair was loose, pulled back with gold clips, a mess of lazy curls falling to below her shoulders.Black dangly earrings nearly touched those very