some friction between him and Lyn Carson. What he expected now was a severe dressing down, culminating in a stern order to send her daughter back with Wilde.
“Hello, Jack.” Lyn’s voice was cool in his ear.
“Ma’am, if I may, Alli can’t come with me,” he said. “It’s out of the question.”
“Good luck with that.” Wilde gave a brief nod toward Alli. “I’ll wait outside, Mr. McClure. I won’t leave until you escort her to the limo or you take off.”
“I’m afraid neither of us have a choice, Jack,” Lyn Carson said. “Much as I hate to admit it, she’s better off with you.”
“Edward would never allow—”
“Edward’s not here,” the First Lady’s curt voice cut in. “He’s in the air on the way back to the States, he doesn’t have to deal with his daughter or her threats to slip her guards and lose herself in the Moscow streets. Can you imagine what a nightmare that would be? And you know better than most why I don’t dare keep her under lock and key.”
“But Mrs. Carson, you can’t expect me to take her now.”
“I can and I do. Listen to me, Jack. I know we’ve had our differences, and maybe I’ve never told you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done—and are doing—for my daughter. But tonight I’m asking you to keep her safe. I have important state functions I need to attend over the next week. I don’t want to be at any of them, but I have no choice, it’s my job now and I have to do it. The same goes for you.
“Need I repeat that Alli has threatened to ‘go off the reservation,’ as she colorfully puts it. You know her, Jack, she doesn’t make idle threats. The American press has been on her like flies ever since the . . . incident at the inauguration; they’ll ask too many awkward questions and when she doesn’t appear at the functions with me the Internet blogosphere will go ballistic.”
Jack turned to see Alli walking down the aisle toward where Annika sat, swiveled around to face her.
“Jack is married. He told you that, didn’t he?” she said to Annika.
“The subject never came up,” Annika said. “Not that it matters.”
“No?” Alli eyed her with one eyebrow arched. “I’d have thought otherwise. You look like you’re ready to jump into the sack with the man who’s standing closest.”
Jack, feeling desperate, said, “Lyn, this is a very bad idea.”
“If you have a better one, let’s hear it,” she said.
“Jump into the sack?” Annika repeated in confusion.
“Fuck,” Alli said. “You understand the word ‘fuck,’ don’t you?”
“Okay, okay.” Jack felt boxed in by both Alli’s impetuosity and her mother’s inability to control her. “She stays with me.”
“Thank you, Jack. I won’t forget this kindness.”
“It’s hardly a kindness when—” But he was already talking to dead air. Snapping shut the phone he hurried back down the aisle.
Annika smiled placidly into Alli’s scowling face and said, “Jack McClure, who is this delightful imp?”
Without hesitation, Jack said, “She’s my surrogate daughter.”
This sentence, spoken to a person Alli didn’t know, had the same effect as Aladdin rubbing the grime off the magician’s lamp. The real Alli, or rather the Alli Jack knew in their quiet, private moments together, appeared like a genie with the power to charm whoever laid eyes on her.
“My name’s Alli. Jack’s my father,” Alli said, taking off her midnight blue parka and plopping herself down on the seat across from Annika.
“I’m Annika.” She held out a hand, which Alli took briefly.
She looked Annika over critically, analytically, as if she were Anna Wintour interviewing a potential assistant. “But, really, you
Annika appeared not to have taken offense at any of Alli’s deliberate provocations. Not yet, anyway. “What makes you say that?”
“Look at you, I’d get a nosebleed in those fuck-me pumps. Look how you’re dressed with the tops of your boobs popping out, look how you’re made up with lips and nails the color of blood. And, my God, you smell like a well-used whorehouse.”
“My friend and I were going clubbing,” Annika said mildly.
Alli leaned across the aisle and leered at her. “Oh, yeah, that explains it.”
“You know, I think this is your problem, not mine,” Annika said. “You’re acting like a jealous lover.”
Alli recoiled as if bitten, which, in a sense, she had been. “What the fuck?”
“Yes, you have the best of both worlds. You have a father who isn’t really your father.” Annika pressed her advantage in a way that, though not quite cruel, led Jack to believe that in fact she had been stung, or at the very least had been made to feel that she had entered a field of battle. “It’s okay to have a crush on this man, isn’t it? To have fantasies about him, sexual and otherwise.”
“You don’t know me at all,” Alli said as stiffly as a soldier addresses his superior.
“On the contrary,” Annika replied, relentless, “I know you quite well. Unlike Mr. McClure, your real father is a constant shadow looming over you. You prefer to think of him as an impostor, even while you crave his approval and his love.”
“Hello, ladies,” Jack said, stepping between them, both literally and figuratively, “getting to know one another?”
“Fuck no,” Alli said, standing up. “She’s a stone-cold psycho.”
Jack put his hand on her shoulder. “Sit down, Alli, we have some things to talk about.”
“Mr. McClure,” Annika said with a certain urgency, “it would be prudent to leave, don’t you think?”
“In a moment,” Jack said as soothingly as he could. “This situation has to be straightened out before we can take off.”
“What situation?” Alli said. “Let’s go. I’m ready, the psycho-bitch is ready, what’s the problem?”
“You,” Jack said. “You’re not going with us.”
Alli crossed her arms over her breasts. “Oh, but I am.”
“Alli, be reasonable—”
“Not my strong suit.”
Despite himself Jack allowed his anger to spill over. “Don’t play the damaged girl card with me.”
“I
“You’re too smart to be damaged in the way your doctors and your parents fear.” Jack stared her down; someone had to be the alpha dog, otherwise things would remain out of control. “You know it and I know it, so let’s cut the bullshit. You know the rules. Whatever mind games you play with other people you don’t play with me.”
She broke off the staring contest and gazed down at the floor. “I’m dying back in that hotel room, Jack.” Her voice had shrunk to the size of a grain of sand. “I can’t go back. Please, I’m begging you.”
“Where I’m going is too dangerous—”
“Not too dangerous to take the psycho-bitch, is it?” she said acidly.
“Apples and oranges,” Jack said sternly. “Alli, set your mind to it, you’re going back. I can’t let anything bad happen to you.”
She rose again, facing him, her face imploring. “But, don’t you get it, if I stay one more night in that hotel room something bad
Jack hesitated, which was when Annika made a tactical mistake.
“Surely you don’t believe her, Mr. McClure,” she said. “You’re not seriously considering letting her stay on board.”
Alli remained silent, which was the smartest thing she could have done. In fact, thinking about it afterward, Jack suspected that she had played him and Annika perfectly. She knew how to get what she wanted in all kinds of weather, the heavier the better. At the moment, however, he was otherwise occupied. He knew her well, better than her parents and certainly better than her doctors, whom she delighted in tricking. The desperation in her eyes was genuine. He’d seen it before when he’d rescued her from the house where Morgan Herr had kept her imprisoned.
That look—the desperation—was utterly naked, unbridled, elemental, a world unto itself, and as such it had
