Chapter One
June 10th, 1962.
New York City.
There was a bounce in Colten’s step as he walked into the office where his boss, Cadman Benson, currently sat behind a desk, speaking on the phone. When the man signaled for him to have a seat, he did.
The wooden-back chair was not built for comfort, but Colten did not care. He would not be here long enough to get comfortable. After this unexpected summons to Cadman’s office, he would be on his way to North Dakota.
As he waited for Cadman to finish the conversation with whoever was on the other line, he wondered what his boss wanted. He assumed, however, it was to tell him to have a good time while on his vacation, so he settled in and waited for Cadman’s conversation to end.
Cadman hung up the phone and cleared his throat as he stood up. Placing his hands behind his back, he delivered the news. “They have revoked your time off.”
Colten blinked. “Excuse me?” Hell to the no on that, he thought to himself. He’d been planning this trip for almost a year.
“The president has a special request for you.” And with that Cadman clarified what the favor entailed.
“He wants me to do what?!” Colten’s voice boomed as he jettisoned out of the chair, nearly knocking it over in his haste. “Is he out of his goddamn mind?!”
He began to pace, though it looked more like a prowl as his six-foot, two-inch frame circled the room.
“I can assure you he is serious about this.”
Colten stopped and pinned Cadman with a glare that was frightening enough to peel paint.
Cadman shrugged, ignoring the lethal expression. He knew Colten would not be happy about this turn of events, but it was out of his hands. “Listen, I’m only the messenger.”
Colten continued to stare. Perhaps he believed if he looked at his boss long enough, the man would suddenly break out in laughter and tell him this was a joke.
“He announced it during this morning’s briefing. And by the way, everyone is still talking about the splendid work you did in January, stopping that counterfeiting ring.”
Colten waived the compliment away. He did not consider having broken up that west coast counterfeit operation as anything more than having done his job. It had printed a half-million dollars’ worth of counterfeit money since August of last year and it needed to be stopped. He did not want compliments; he wanted his damn vacation.
Through clenched teeth, Colten said, “I don’t care what the president wants me to do; he’ll have to find someone else. He approved my time off, damn it! I’m going home.”
Cadman’s hazel-colored eyes roamed his office. He knew nothing he said would appease the man standing before him, so he remained silent.
Colten exploded with a string of curses. “God damn it!” He kicked the chair he had been sitting on earlier, launching it a few feet away from him and into the wall. It hit the innocent wall with a resounding crunch. Without a doubt, the chair would need to be replaced.
It had not survived Colten’s wrath.
“Why me?” Colten exclaimed, spinning on the heels of his dusty cowboy boots as he, once again, faced his boss. He considered Cadman a friend and would want him protecting his back if the need arose. “Why me?” he repeated, striking his right hand over his heart with a hard slap. “There are countless agents who would love, and I do mean love this whole assignment. Why would the president pick me, for God’s sake?”
Crap.
His grandfather was turning 96 in a few weeks, and even though the ancient man was spry and had his wits about him, Colten wanted to see him before that was no longer the case. The man was a walking history book. The stories he told about his childhood, growing up in North Dakota’s Badlands, kept Colten riveted to his storytelling. He and his grandfather shared a love for the state of their birth and a passion for quarter horses.
Colten planned one day to build a home in the Badlands and open a tourist spot, one which would offer trail rides into that rugged land. The scenery was a breathtaking kaleidoscope of color at sunup and sunset. There was no place on earth to enjoy such a spectacular view more than in its heart while on horseback. He wanted to retire from this job and hoped to do so before his 40th birthday. That was in ten years, but time had a way of speeding by. Then, suddenly, dreams were only that, vanished without having the chance to flourish.
Colten repeated, “Why me?”
Cadman shook his head as though he could not believe Colten was not jumping at the opportunity they had handed him. “I can’t believe you’re not excited about this. Rosalinda Vallombrosa is a babe.”
“You do it then,” Colten replied. “I wouldn’t care if she were Marilyn Monroe or Jean Shrimpton. I am not a goddamn babysitter!”
Cadman, damn him, had the balls to chuckle, “Well, honestly, that’s what we are. We just have a more glorified name.” He used his fingers to place quotation marks around his next words, “Secret Service; we babysit diplomats.”
“Rosalinda Vallombrosa is not a diplomat!” Colten snapped. “She’s an actress from France-” He paused, frowning. Something about that last name seemed familiar, but he brushed the thought aside.
Strolling past Cadman, Colten stopped at the large window and looked out. New York City stretched out before him, and he grimaced. Honest to God, he hated this city. Wall-to-wall people and the population continued to grow as fast as breeding rabbits in the wild. For the millionth time, he wondered how he wound up here, employed by the United States government. He wanted solitude and far less adventure. Colten knew he was too young to be feeling melancholy, and he wondered if the time to retire from the Secret Service was sooner than expected.
Wasn’t it funny? Dreams had a way of turning around on a person. Once, he desired to be away from the heartache, but now he yearned to go back home, and wasn’t that a laugh? He left North Dakota almost six years ago because he could not bear the memories of what he lost, but now all he wanted was to go back and have a fresh start. As though that was possible because no matter what, Caroline would still be six feet under and Clinton….
He closed his eyes, feeling remorse. When he made the trip back to the state of his birth, he spent more time with his grandfather than his own son because he did not know how to relate to Clinton.
He told himself it was better for the child to live with his grandparents. He believed Clinton didn’t need him in his life because, after all, what did he have to offer him? Colten was never around, and Clinton needed a stable home.
Throughout the positive pep talk he gave himself Colten knew it for the lie it was. He stayed away from Clinton because he could not handle the fact that he had fathered a retarded child. Harder still was not to hate that child for having been born the night Caroline died.
He knew it was not Clinton’s fault to have a slow-developing brain. Nor was it the child’s fault that the umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck, cutting off his air supply during the birth. For all Colten knew, had that not happened, Clinton would have been normal.
And yes, Colten loathed himself for his shallowness.
With a will of iron, he pushed the dreadful thoughts from his mind and switched back to the subject at hand. Turning back to Cadman, he sighed and asked one more time, “Why me? Surely there must be someone who would be more than willing to look out for the overrated star?”
Cadman’s eyebrows shot up as his eyes widened in disbelief. “Are you telling me you have never seen her perform?!” he exclaimed. “She’s a very talented woman. Some say she has more talent than Monroe.”
“That’s not saying much,” Colten mumbled under his breath. He honestly did not think Marilyn had any more talent than a tree frog spinning around on a wire. Others found her beautiful; he thought she was a bubblehead.
Benson ignored the comment. “The fact is, we all thought Rosalinda wouldn’t mind having an agent who had something in common with her.”
For the second time that day, Colten’s jaw dropped as his eyebrows flew skyward. “I don’t have a damn thing in common with her!” Seriously, had there been drugs at the meeting today with the president?
“Well, sure, you do.” Cadman drawled. “You’re good friends with her distant cousin, Antoine Vallombrosa.”
“Tony!” Colten roared, staring disbelievingly. No wonder the last name sounded familiar. “We are not good friends.”
“But you know him.”
“Yes. Tony’s grandparents spent time in the Badlands of North Dakota. My grandfather worked for them during that time, but we aren’t best buddies.” Tony Vallombrosa was on his list of strange ducks, regardless of him being the current Duke of Vallombrosa since the man’s father passed away a few years earlier.
“You’re telling me,” Colten clarified, almost calmly, “that the only reason the president gave me this assignment is because I know Tony Vallombrosa?” It was another reason not to like the man, Colten thought with annoyance.
Cadman shrugged. “Yep. That about sums it up, you lucky dog.”
“Lucky!” The word boomed out. “This is a joke, right? During this morning’s meeting, all of you, including the president, thought it would be side-splitting to tell me I had to guard Miss Fancy Pants. Well, ha, ha. I hope all of you bust a gut when you report back to him what my reaction was.” He spun around, grabbed his black cowboy hat with its gold-tone-accented hatband, and headed for the door.
“Colten, this isn’t a joke. Rosalinda is being hassled by some crazy nut, and Kennedy wants you shadowing her for the duration of her stay in America. The fact you know her cousin was simply icing on the cake.”
Colten stopped short of the door. Turning, he looked at Cadman and uttered a sound from his throat that could only be described as a growl, “Then if she is being bothered by some loony, which might I add, isn’t unusual given the fact that she’s a celebrity, shouldn’t she have her own bodyguards? Since when does the president demand protection for a celebrity?”
“She has security. You’ll want to report to the person responsible for that, but it doesn’t matter. You know Kennedy. When it comes to women, he’s a goner. Besides, it’s at the request of President de Gaulle. I’m afraid France’s president is quite a fan of Miss Vallombrosa.”
Colten rolled his eyes. With two of the world’s most powerful leaders involved in this ridiculous affair, there would be no way he could get out of this ludicrous assignment. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to resign himself to the fact that he was going to babysit some stupid actress, for God knew how long.
Oh, he was angry. Pissed as hell. But he was a servant of the United States, so he would do the job. However, when this was over, he planned to go to the White House and have a long talk with JFK.
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End of Excerpt
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