Her Secret Service (Jane Roe 1), Jason Letts [story reading .txt] 📗

hadn’t had much of an impact. If he noticed her attire, he must not have thought it worth commenting on.

But that was fine. Jane was the kind of girl who much preferred to show off her optimism and sense of adventure rather than her curves anyway. It was another beautiful sunny morning with a light breeze.

“Get ready, because you are in for the ride of your life,” Jane said, gripping the handlebars.

“Alright then,” Alex said with a weak laugh that struck Jane as a little patronizing. Part of keeping good headspace was not letting others’ lack of enthusiasm get her down. If Alex didn’t want to join in her fun, it was his loss. Had he even heard about how she personally managed to pinpoint the person who tried to kill him?

They got going, and despite Jane’s limited ability to train she felt good and got into a strong rhythm. At a couple of points, she had to remind herself that riding was just her pretense to protect the president and slow down so as not to pull away from him. His tips continued to pay off on the hills, which didn’t seem nearly as intimidating now that she could maintain a steady climb.

But as they went on, two things happened. The first was that her gusto and inspiration were only able to cover up for her lack of training for so long, leaving her struggling to keep up and breathing heavily. The other was that Alex’s subdued mood seemed to be something other than a lack of interest in her.

Riding with a vacant look on his face, he appeared distracted, preoccupied, and considering he was the president it should’ve come as no surprise to Jane that he had other things on his mind than what, if anything, might’ve been going on between them. At one point he appeared to be so unfocused on what he was doing that she felt she had to say something.

“If you’re not feeling it today, we can definitely stop. Don’t think you have to keep going on my account,” she said in an attempt to be sympathetic.

Alex glanced over at her as if snapping out of a daze.

“Oh, no, I’m good. Sorry. It’s been a tough week,” he said.

Jane nodded. Despite her good fortune, she realized that his was worse than ever. The Leslie Hodge article was spiraling out in unexpected directions, with other old girlfriends even from as far back as high school chiming in. Suddenly everyone he’d ever kissed was worthy of national attention in a way that struck Jane as lurid. At least it was purely gossip without any hint of scandal, but it was soaking up bandwidth and preventing him from getting anywhere with his agenda. Thankfully Bethany Morrin was being true to her word and avoiding the spotlight completely.

“It’ll blow over,” Jane said. “People can only talk about your love life for so long.”

“Can they?” Alex said incredulously, making her think that perhaps her statement had been naive. “Arundhati has done a complete one-eighty on this. Now she’s talking about shelving bills and scaling back plans because things are going to get tainted by this sideshow. Mostly I’m just embarrassed. This was stuff I did in private that I thought would stay that way.”

Pursing her lips, Jane wondered what she could say to a guy like him in a position she could only glimpse from the outside that would help.

“If you don’t like the news, do something to change it,” she said, shrugging. When their eyes connected, she could tell she’d gotten through to him. He appeared relieved.

“Time to get out front and lead,” he said with a devilish grin, pumping the pedals harder.

Even though they’d been talking about his work, he somehow took it as a sign that he needed to ride faster. Jane was thrilled that she’d discovered a way to improve his outlook and renew his sense of determination, but keeping up with him was more difficult than ever. Gasping for breath, she felt the effort taking a toll on her, and it got to the point where she was breathing so heavily she couldn’t have continued talking to him if she wanted to.

Beginning to wonder how she could possibly hope to last another forty-five minutes, she came around a corner with him and tried to take it sharply to reduce the distance she would have to cover, but she nearly veered off the road and then overcompensated the other way.

That sent her wide to the left as she struggled to regain control of the bike. Suddenly Alex was right there, and she bumped into his side. While the contact had allowed her to right herself, she watched in horror as Alex tipped over and crashed against the pavement, leaving him sprawling on his side with the bike tangled up around him.

“Alex!” she cried, coming to an immediate stop.

Groaning and sucking his teeth, Alex was writhing on the ground in agony as she rushed over. The presidential limo behind them came to a stop, doors opening so that the medical personnel inside could come rushing out.

Jane felt like she could’ve died right then and there. Alex was gritting his teeth and squirming while all she could do was blubber apologies and try to get the bike off of him. When he rolled onto his back, she spotted blood beginning to seep out of a wound on his leg.

“Get out of the way!” one of the White House doctors called to her so that they could attend to the president. Other agents were coming down from their positions around the loop. The looks she was getting were withering until it got to the point where no one looked at her and she may well have vanished.

Standing there and literally shaking, Jane couldn’t believe what she’d done. Her carelessness had endangered and injured the president. What if he’d fallen and managed to crack his head open despite the helmet? She was barely able to breathe with how one