No Way to Treat a First Lady Read Free Page A

dinner had given him the most memorable evening he had ever spent in New Orleans, which was saying a lot. She had moved in later that week. Their relationship had been cemented in boldface type by the New York gossip columnists. She was smart enough not to have brought up the subject of marriage just yet, but the question was there every morning, fluttering over the breakfast trays like the Dove of Damocles. Boyce did have an excuse: four previous wives. It did give Perri pause. No romantic woman dreams, in her heart of hearts, of becoming Mrs. Number Five.
    Boyce had called Perri after getting off the phone with Beth. She'd nearly hyperventilated. What a scoop. Her ambition sometimes made Boyce wary, as, to be honest, did her extraordinary ability in bed. Confronted with a truly skilled partner, a man had to wonder, even as he gasped and whinnied in ecstasy: Where did she learn to do that?
    But now his thoughts were of Beth, upon whom he had last laid eyes a quarter century ago.
    "You gave it to that woman, didn't you?" she said. "Sweater Girl."
    "That's right. I wanted a big crowd down there today. I wanted to send a message to the U.S. government—"
    "You did. It read, 'Boyce Baylor is a flaming egomaniac.' "
    He was—stunned! It wasn't the sort of romancing Boyce expected from supplicant clients.
    "I got up at five o'clock this morning," Beth said, "and spent four hours on I-95 feeling like O. J. Simpson in the Bronco, being chased by a half dozen Eyewitness News teams. Then I arrived to your welcome wagon from hell. So if you'll excuse me, I'm in no mood to kiss your ass."
    With that she sat down and began pulling off her gloves. Beth had always worn them, for the uncomplicated reason that they kept her hands soft. When she became the wife of a presidential candidate, and no shrinking violet, the media seized on the gloves for a convenient iron-hand-in-the-velvet-glove metaphor.
    Boyce couldn't help himself watching her take them off finger by finger in an incredibly sexy Barbara Stanwyck let's-get-down-to-business way. He couldn't take his eyes off her. Men are men and fools to a man, but it amazed Boyce, seeing her this close, that Ken MacMann had needed to screw all those other women when he had this waiting for him at home, warm in his own bed at night. She was a few years younger than he, and looked perhaps a few years younger than that. She had aristocratic cheekbones and black hair with streaks of gray that made the black richer and more lustrous. Her eyes looked straight at you in an evaluating but not unfriendly way. Her figure, un-marred by childbearing, was full and handsome. If she'd been an actress, she would have gotten the part of the take-charge businesswoman who turns out to be an absolute panther in the sack. He remembered how every time he walked behind her and saw the lovely sexy sway of her bottom, his mouth went dry and his heart soared with possession.
    And so here she was, twenty-five years later, in his office, a client.
    "Coffee, skim milk, one sugar." She crossed a black-stockinged leg. He heard the siren song of nylon on nylon. "So how are you, Boyce?"
    It now dawned on Boyce Baylor, lion of the American Bar, that in less than thirty seconds he had been reduced to the status of coffee boy—in his own lair, with a view that God would envy, amid walls hung so thickly with honorifics and photographic testimonials to his greatness, his hugeness, that the very Sheetrock cried out under the strain. No no no no. This would not do. Not do at all. He must assert control, quickly.
    He buzzed for the coffee and, sitting down opposite, said, "Not so bad. Haven't been indicted for murder."
    She gave him the hint of a smile.
    "Why," he said, "didn't you call me sooner?"
    "I was waiting to see how bad it was going to get. I thought it might not get to this point. And I didn't want to make it appear worse by hiring a lawyer."
    Boyce shook his head silently, wisely. How often he had heard this.
    "Anyway,"