He shot in front of her, blocking her path without touching her. His features were stony in the moonlight. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to insist.”

She gazed at the mouth she’d kissed only last night. It looked grim and forbidding. They’d planned to make love when they got to Iowa, but now they wouldn’t. Even men as confident as Mat Jorik didn’t make love to icons.

She struggled against a wrenching sense of loss. “Insist? Insist on what?”

“I need to know what’s happening. What you want.” That awful formality.

“That’s simple. I want you to forget about this.”

She slipped past him, and he didn’t try to stop her. He’d had no qualms about manhandling Nell, but he wouldn’t touch the First Lady.

Mat stared at Nell’s back as she disappeared inside the motor home. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for this. She hadn’t admitted she was Mrs. Case, and for a moment he tried to convince himself he had it all wrong. But there was no sidestepping the truth. Despite that pink rose tucked behind her ear, the woman he knew as Nell Kelly was Cornelia Case, the widow of the President of the United States and the country’s First Lady.

He felt as if he’d taken a sucker punch right to the gut as he moved blindly toward the old farmhouse and sagged down on the crumbling front step. He tried to sort it all out. For three days, they’d traveled together. They’d laughed, argued, taken care of Sandy’s kids. They’d been friends. And they’d almost been lovers.

He remembered those blood-boiling kisses, the caresses. His skin grew hot, as much from embarrassment as arousal. The things he’d done . . . the suggestions he’d made. To the First Lady.

He was suddenly furious with her. From the very beginning, she’d lied. She’d toyed with him like Marie Antoinette amusing herself with a peasant she could enjoy and then discard. And he’d been sucked right in. She must have been laughing her ass off.

He swore and began to rise, only to feel as if he’d been hit again. He sagged back down onto the step. Drew a ragged breath.

He’d just been handed the story of a lifetime.

The First Lady was on the run, and he was the only reporter in America who knew where she was.

Through his daze, he realized he’d just been given back his professional pride.

He jumped to his feet, began to pace, tried to think, but anger kept getting in his way. She’d broken a trust—broken his trust—and he wouldn’t forgive that.