He stepped into the room, reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. “You’re beautiful.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about you scheming behind my back with my sisters, although Vera and Manolo told me I should go easy on you.”

His face lifted into the smile she loved so much. “Did they now?”

“Where’s your sling?”

“Don’t need it anymore.” He made a big show of twirling his arm around, but she caught the grimace he tried to hide when his collarbone protested.

“It’ll be back on tomorrow.”

“If you insist.”

“I do. Where’re we going?”

“That’s a surprise.” He offered his good arm. “Shall we?”

Ready to go anywhere he chose to take her, Sam slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. “By all means.”

He had a limo waiting at the curb.

Sam stared at it, suddenly filled with trepidation, nerves and a strange sense of foreboding. What was going on? What did he have planned? Didn’t he know she hated surprises? Shouldn’t he know that by now? The dress and the shoes were one thing…

“What’s wrong, babe?”

“Where’re we going, Nick?”

He put his arms around her and brought her in close to him.

Sam was grateful that the press seemed to have taken the night off from stalking them.

“Trust me?”

“You know I do.”

“Then let’s go have some fun.”

She tried her best to relax. “All right.”

As the limo worked its way slowly through the congested city, he asked about her first day back to work, told her about a low-income housing bill he’d been asked to co-sponsor and refused to say another word about where they were going. They glided along Pennsylvania Avenue, past the Old Executive Office Building and came to a stop in front of the White House.

“Nick?”

“Go with the flow, babe.”

“You never said anything about the White House,” she stammered.

“Didn’t I?”

“You know you didn’t!”

“If I had, would you have come?”

“No!”

“Exactly.”

The driver came around to open the door for them. Nick scooted out ahead of her and held out a hand.

Sam sat stubbornly still, her heart racing and her stomach hurting for the first time in weeks.

“Samantha?” He gazed in at her. “Please?”

He never asked for anything, so something about that softly uttered “please” had her reaching for his hand.

“I’ll deal with you later, mister,” she growled.

“Yay. Something to look forward to.”

“This was very sneaky,” she said, oddly let down by the whole thing. She’d hoped for a rare night alone together with neither of their jobs interfering, and here they were at a work-related event, even if it wasn’t your average work-related event. “Did my sisters know where we were going?”