She quickly looked away, afraid he’d decide to pee in the river while she watched. She yearned for a hot shower, clean clothes, and a toothbrush, the exact comforts she would have been enjoying if she’d walked down that aisle. A pot of coffee. A decent breakfast. Ted’s hands on her body, coaxing those delicious orgasms from her. Instead she was surrounded by empty beer bottles and a man who openly admitted he “wanted to get laid.” She hated the mess, the uncertainty. She hated her panic. He still hadn’t turned, but she didn’t see him fumbling with his fly, so she risked a question. “Are you … going back to Wynette this morning?”

Another grunt.

She’d never been comfortable in Wynette, although she’d pretended to love it as much as Ted did. But whenever she was there, she could feel everybody judging her. Even though she was the adopted daughter of the former president of the United States, they made her feel as if she weren’t good enough for him. Of course she’d proved them right, but they hadn’t known that when they met her.

Panda continued to stare at the river, his long body silhouetted against the limestone cliffs, his shirt a mass of wrinkles, the tail hanging out on one side, everything about him disreputable. Her shoes were torturous, but she wanted the punishment of pain, so she didn’t pull them off.

He abruptly abandoned his lookout duty to stalk toward her, the heels of his boots grinding into the dirt. “Are you ready to get back to your screwed-up life?”

More than ready. She was done with postponing her responsibilities. Even as a fourteen-year-old, she’d been responsible. How many times over the past seventeen years had Nealy and Mat told her they couldn’t do their jobs if she weren’t such a good caregiver to her siblings?

She’d worked hard at her own job, too. At first she’d used her bachelor’s degree in social work to counsel troubled teens while she got her master’s in public policy. But after a few years, she’d left the casework she loved and begun using her famous name for the less satisfying—but more impactful—task of lobbying. Thanks in part to her, important pieces of legislation had been passed that helped disadvantaged kids. She didn’t plan to give up her lobbying work after she was married either, no matter how tempting. She’d fly to Washington for a few days every month and do the rest of her job from her Texas base. It was long past time to face the consequences of what she’d done.

But her stomach didn’t agree. As the churning got worse, she hurried into the woods and made it into the trees just in time to throw up. She hadn’t eaten in so long that it was painful.