“What else but planning your wedding?” I frown. “It’s not easy to plan a thousand-guest wedding in a month.”

He smiles, running his hand over the back of my head, looking at me with that quiet possessiveness I’ve come to know so well.

“The team wants to know if we’ll agree to have the wedding televised.” I study his chiseled features. “What do you think?”

“I’m all right either way.” His eyebrows furrow thoughtfully. “We can’t hold a secret wedding—now that we’ve come out. I have no problem coming full out if that’s what you want to do.”

“I don’t know. I know you like your privacy, but these four years, they don’t come with that. Everyone is so excited.” I shrug. “There’s no reason why only the bad things need to make the news—we can put a good thing on the news too.”

“Then let’s go for it,” he says easily.

“And the vows? Will we write our own?”

“No,” he says. “The traditional vows say everything I want to say, and whatever more there is, I’d like them to be ours.” He cups my face and rolls over on top of me, looking into my eyes. “If I want to say more, I’ll tell it to you. In private. I might let the public enjoy you a little bit, but you’re mine. Just mine.”

He kisses me, and before we leave, we make love one more time.

I thought we were heading to the White House, and I’m surprised when the state car stops at a five-star steak restaurant, very well known in D.C.

Wilson tells Matt, “Everything is ready, sir.”

And suddenly Matt is pulling me out of the car and into the restaurant.

A restaurant that seems to have been fully vacated for us to have dinner in private.

“What is this?” I ask, eyes wide as I look at Matthew.

“I can’t marry you without an official first date. Now can I?” He pulls out a chair at a table by the window with a small candle flickering at its center, and I sit down and watch in awe as he takes the seat across from mine.

“I haven’t even eaten and this is already the best date I’ve ever had in my life.”

He rewards me with a delicious laugh.

And I remember the wink of a young man teasing a little girl, so many years ago.

“You do like every man’s attention on you, don’t you,” he teases me.

“Not every man’s, just the ones who capture mine,” I joke.

“I’d better be the only one now,” he says.

I smile, glancing at the engagement ring on my finger.

I slide my hand over the table, seizing his. “I love you,” I say, breathless and swooning inside.

He places a kiss on the back of my hand. “I love you too, baby.”

I move the index finger and thumb of my free hand an inch apart over the table. “This much?”

“Not that much.”

“Matthew!” I chide, pulling my hand free with a playful scowl.

Soon, several waiters approach us with a bottle of their best wine.

“Mr. President, First Lady. An honor to serve you tonight.”

While the waiter uncorks the wine, Matt looks at the menu. “Bring us all of the house specialties. Bring us each a different plate so we can taste them all.”

“Absolutely, Mr. President.”

We drink a light red wine, and once the plates are on the table, he looks at me, his espresso eyes piercing intuitively into mine. “How’s your lemon sole?” he asks as we dig in.

“Oh, so good.” And it really is.

He reaches out with his fork and steals a little piece from my plate, slipping it into his mouth. “Hmm, that is good.”

I pick up a piece of cut steak from his plate and speak through the corner of my mouth as I savor. “That’s good too.”

He pushes his plate in my direction, takes mine, and brings it over to his side. I actually have no problem with that.

“I always seem to like what you’re eating better than what I’m eating,” I say, digging into his rib eye.

“You’re a classic case of grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side, Miss Wells.”

“Says the guy devouring my lemon sole.”

“Pretty good. Do you want to try the chocolate mousse cake?”

“I would, but we’ll need an ambulance at the ready outside.”

He summons one of the staff, and a waitress hurries over. “One chocolate mousse cake, one homemade cheesecake. And an ambulance.” He grins and winks exaggeratedly at me.

The waitress smiles dotingly and flushes. “Yes, sir.”

We finish our desserts, and Matt leaves a huge tip and tells the staff he’ll take care of the bill from his office.

“Do I need a stretcher to bring you out?” he asks me. His eyes are brilliant with mischief, his smile amused.

“No. I can walk. Barely,” I add, loving how his arm still comes around me.

“Thank you, Matt,” I breathe, going up on tiptoes and kissing his jaw.

The following week, we’re getting dozens of confirmations from the foreign dignitaries who plan to attend the wedding as they receive our invitations.

Press conferences are the thing of the day, though Matt doesn’t attend them all. Lola has been delivering the news as it comes—the press wants every detail, down to what gifts we’re receiving, and since Matt has no intention of warring with the press over details, neither do I. I’m simply happy the country is getting swept up on cloud nine, right along with me.

24

A PRESIDENTIAL WEDDING

Charlotte

The gifts start arriving the week before the wedding, vetted by the Secret Service before they reach Matt’s and my sight. The President of China sends an American flag sculpture, cast in bronze. The Prime Minister of Canada sends a pair of swans that will find a home in the south fountain of the White House. The President of Mexico asked for special permission to send a mariachi band to sing to us on the evening of our wedding. Soon the rooms of the White House are piling up with gifts from all over the world.

And I’ll never forget this day.

Today, the Senate passed Matt’s first bill for education.

The White House is buzzing at full capacity as everyone gets ready for the event.

I get my makeup done early, and everyone has been very stern with Matt, telling him that he needs to keep out of the Queens’ Bedroom—that he can’t see me until I head to the altar.

The day begins with a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue that the citizens are welcome to attend. They pile down the streets to a twenty-one-gun salute while workers set up a line of tall white tents along the Rose Garden.

Banquet tables with grand arrangements of baby’s breath and peonies line the tents, their scent, along with the scent of the roses, filling the air.

I wear a dress with a plunging back, a long train, and a veil made of the most exquisite lace.

Matt and I settled, along with the chef, on a four-course meal with wine pairings, including crab and Bibb salad with pear and goat cheese, butternut squash soup, roast lamb with rosemary vegetables and poached Maine lobster, and my favorite dessert of the White House, the chef’s special apple pie cheesecake. All served on silver-rimmed plates that look gorgeous over the ivory silk tablecloths and with the gilded silver chairs.

Among our wedding guests are twenty-one presidents and their first ladies, two prime ministers, NBA players, Hollywood directors, actors and singers, Nobel prize winners, all of the children of the Children’s National hospital, and our families and friends.

But with my groom in the vicinity, even all of them combined play a second fiddle to him—the POTUS, in a sharp black tux, wearing one of his most charming, disarming smiles as he watches me walk down the long red carpet in the gorgeous White House Rose Garden with a train of white ruffles trailing behind me, finally making me his. Finally his in every sense of the word.

Matt looks stunning with his bow tie and crisp white shirt, the small flag pin of the United States pinned to his jacket.

Hot.

Powerful.

And mine.

With the backdrop of the gardens behind him and the thousands of white roses up the trellis behind the makeshift altar, I cannot believe that today America’s prince, who now so easily wears the king’s crown, is marrying me.