Jack’s father, the President of the United States, slipped in while the women were chatting. Junior saw his allegedly tough father turn to jelly within moments of meeting his son’s brilliant and beautiful girlfriend. He was all smiles and bright banter; Junior chuckled to himself watching his dad trying to lay on some extra charm.
They had dinner in the dining room and the conversation was fun and flowing, Jack Junior spoke the least, but once in a while he caught Melanie’s eyes and they smiled at each other.
Jack was not surprised at all that Melanie asked the vast majority of the questions, and she spent as little time as possible talking about herself. Her mom had passed away, her father had been an Air Force colonel, and she’d spent much of her childhood abroad. This she told the President and First Lady when they asked, and it was just about all Ryan, Jr., knew about her childhood himself.
Jack was certain the Secret Service detail that approved her visit to the White House knew more about his girlfriend’s past than he did.
After dinner, after they slipped out of the White House just as covertly as they’d slipped in, Melanie confessed to Jack that she’d been nervous at first, but his parents had been so down to earth that she’d forgotten for large parts of the evening that she was in the presence of the commander-in-chief and the chief of surgery at Johns Hopkins’s Wilmer Eye Institute.
Jack thought back on that evening while he eyed Melanie’s curves through her bathrobe.
She saw him looking at her, and she asked, “Gym or run?” They did one or the other most every morning, whether or not they had spent the night in the same bed. When she stayed at his place, they worked out in the gym here in Jack’s building, or else they ran a three-mile course that took them around nearby Wilde Lake and through Fairway Hills golf course.
Jack Ryan, on the other hand, never stayed at Melanie’s apartment in Alexandria. He thought it odd that she’d never invited him to sleep over, but she always explained it away, saying she felt self-conscious about her tiny carriage-house digs, an apartment that wasn’t even as big as the living room in Jack’s place.
He did not push the issue. Melanie was the love of his life, of this he was certain, but she was also a little mysterious and guarded. At times even evasive.
It came from her training at CIA, he was sure, and it only added to her allure.
When he just kept looking at her, not answering her question, she smiled behind her mug of coffee. “Gym or run, Jack?”
He shrugged. “Sixty degrees. No rain.”
Melanie nodded. “Run it is.” She put her mug down and stood to go back to the bedroom to change.
Jack watched her walk away, and then he called out from behind, “Actually, there is a third option for exercise this morning.”
Melanie stopped, turned back to him. Now her lips formed a sly smile. “What might that be, Mr. Ryan?”
“Scientists say sex burns more calories than jogging. It’s better for the heart, too.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Scientists say this?”
He nodded. “They do.”
“There is always the risk of overtraining. Burning out.”
Ryan laughed. “No chance at all.”
“Well, then,” she said. Melanie opened her robe and let it fall to the hardwood floor, then turned and walked naked into the bedroom.
Jack took one last swig of coffee and rose to follow.
It was going to be a good day.
At seven-thirty Melanie was showered, dressed, and standing in the doorway of Jack’s apartment with her purse on her shoulder. Her long hair was back in a ponytail, and her sunglasses were high on her head. She kissed Jack good-bye, a long kiss that let him know that she did not want to leave and she could not wait to see him again, and then she headed up the hall to the elevator. Melanie had a long morning commute to McLean, Virginia. She was an analyst for the CIA, but had recently moved from the National Counterterrorism Center, across the parking lot at Liberty Crossing, to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, following her boss Mary Pat Foley’s move from deputy director of NCTC to her new cabinet-level position as director of national intelligence.
Jack was only half dressed, but he did not have to worry about a long commute. He worked much closer, just down the road in West Odenton, so he finished putting on his suit and tie, then lingered over another cup of coffee while he watched CNN on the sixty-inch plasma TV in the living room. A little after eight he headed downstairs to the parking lot of his building and successfully fought the urge to look for his huge canary-yellow truck. Instead he climbed into the black BMW 3 Series that he’d been driving for the past six months, and he headed out of the parking lot.
The Hummer had been fun, his own way to show his individuality and spirit, but from a personal-security perspective, he might as well have been driving a three-ton homing beacon. Anyone attempting to follow him through beltway traffic could do so with ease from triple the distance normally needed for a vehicle follow.
This allowance for his own security should have been made by Jack himself, as his profession necessitated watching his back 24/7, but in truth, losing the canary-yellow bull’s-eye was not his idea.
It came in the form of a polite but strongly worded suggestion from the U.S. Secret Service.
Although Jack had refused the Secret Service protection that came standard for an adult child of a current inhabitant of the Oval Office, Jack had been nearly compelled by his father’s protection detail to go to a series of private meetings with agents who gave him pointers on staying safe.
Even though his mother and father did not like him going without protection, they both understood why he had to refuse. It would have been, to say the least, problematic to do what Jack Ryan, Jr., did for a living with a government agent shouldering up on either side of him. The Secret Service was not happy about his decision to go it alone — but they, of course, would have been exponentially more unhappy had they any idea how often he put himself in harm’s way.
During the meetings they peppered him with tips and suggestions on how to maintain a low profile, and on the subject of maintaining a low profile, the first topic had been the Hummer.
And the Hummer was the first to go.
Jack understood the logic, of course. There were tens of thousands of black Beamers on the road, and his new car’s tinted windows made him even more invisible. Plus, Jack recognized, he could switch out his ride a lot easier than he could change his face. He still looked remarkably like the son of the President of the United States; there wasn’t much he could do about that, short of cosmetic surgery.
He was known, there was no getting around that, but he was hardly a celebrity.
His mom and dad had done their best to keep him and his brothers and sisters away from cameras since his father went into politics, and Jack himself had refrained from doing anything that would put him in the limelight other than the semi-official duties required of a child of a presidential candidate and president. Unlike seemingly tens of thousands of B-list celebrities and wannabe reality stars in America, even before Jack went into covert work at The Campus, he saw fame as nothing more than a pain in the ass.
He had his friends, he had his family; why did he give a damn if a bunch of people he didn’t know knew who he was?
Other than the night of his father’s win and his inauguration day some two months later, Jack had not been on television in years. And although the average American knew Jack Ryan had a son everybody called “Junior,” they would not necessarily be able to pick him out of a lineup of tall, dark-haired, good-looking American men in their middle to late twenties.