Her Amish Christmas Gift. Rebecca Kertz

major role in keeping Gilbert on the Saunders faculty.

      “Won’t it be great to see her again?” they asked Gilbert, one by one. “It’s been so long! Isn’t it terrific she might come back?”

      What no one would have ever guessed was that if Gilbert had his way, he’d keep good-girl Cassidy as far away from Saunders University as possible. The other side of an ocean wasn’t even far enough.

      If Cassidy came back, she’d also bring back Gilbert’s deepest, darkest secret. A secret she’d discovered a long time ago, accidentally. A secret no one else knew.

      That secret could not only destroy Gilbert’s career, but his entire life as he knew it—his and the lives of others.

      Gilbert put his head in his hands again. I’m so sorry, Eric, he thought with shame. I’ve never before wanted one of my students to fail.

      But I hope you do.

      Chapter Two

      “What do you mean, we can’t get the Château Clinet?” Cassidy asked.

      She held the phone slightly away from her ear as the wine supplier offered a rambling explanation for not being able to meet Cassidy’s wine order for the ambassador’s reception tonight. Unfortunately, Cassidy didn’t have much time for explanations. She was more a solutions person.

      “Right,” Cassidy interrupted. “Well, since it won’t do to be without wine tonight, we need a Plan B. Can you replace the Château Clinet with Château Clos Fourtet? If I can’t get the Pomerol, the Saint-Emilion should be just as good.” The wine supplier put her on hold to check and, lifting her chin to her open office door, Cassidy called, “Sophie?”

      The eager junior staffer appeared almost immediately. Cassidy waved her in and handed her a stack of paper samples. “If you’d please call the paper shop, the number’s on top, tell them the stock they recommended for the official stationery is excellent, but the color was a little dark. Tell them the light cream is what we want.”

      “Right away.” As Sophie scurried out, the wine supplier came back to the phone to report they could indeed deliver the needed quantity of Château Clos Fourtet to the ambassador’s residence that afternoon. Cassidy was relieved. Ambassador Alan Cole was hosting a Winfield House reception that night for his good friend, the artistic director for a prominent Chicago ballet company, who was in London to collaborate on a project with the Royal Ballet. The ambassador was pleased to have his friend in town, and Cassidy didn’t want any problems, no matter how minor.

      Of course, as Ambassador Cole’s office management specialist, Cassidy’s job was to ensure all U.S. Embassy problems were kept to a very bare minimum.

      Cassidy thanked the wine supplier and hung up, and the moment she lifted her finger from the End button, her cell phone jingled again. “Maxwell,” she answered. She looked at her index finger, where a permanent dent seemed to have formed. The front desk secretary informed her that the plumber had arrived.

      “I’m on my way,” Cassidy said. She breezed through the front office, where many people were typing, faxing, taking calls. Charles, another junior staffer, stood and sprinted over to her. People in the embassy were always running to catch up to Cassidy.

      “MP Violet Ashton wants to meet with the ambassador as soon as possible,” he said. Cassidy was appreciative that Charles knew to waste no time on pleasantries. “And Sir Neville Pritchard of the House of Lords wants to see the ambassador, also.”

      “Can I assume MP Ashton wants to meet regarding the ambassador’s Northern Ireland peace initiative?”

      “Correct.”

      “Right, tell her tomorrow is fine. Anytime. I’ll fit the agenda around her. And Sir Pritchard, tell him Wednesday or Thursday of next week, midafternoon is best.”

      “All right.”

      Cassidy left the large room, rounded several corners, walked down several long hallways. The sharp heels of her black leather ankle boots clicked authoritatively, a sound she secretly liked.

      She greeted the plumber at the main entrance and escorted him up three floors. Standing together in the otherwise empty elevator, he gave her a friendly, appraising glance. She winced as the elevator dinged and wordlessly led him to a small room on the left.

      Cassidy maneuvered many locks with keys and codes and eventually let them both into a small nondescript room. She perched on a table and waited as the plumber investigated the leak Cassidy had reported last week. She would have to wait until he was done, as only a small handful of people had the top-secret clearance to even enter this room, which was filled with classified files.

      She glanced at her watch. She wanted to call the public affairs department before two o’clock, and there was that meeting at three…

      Cassidy crossed her legs at the knee and noticed splotchy raindrop marks on her shoes. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and swiped at them. At dawn, she’d been out on a Heathrow Airport tarmac with bodyguards to greet an assistant U.S. secretary of state, and although she’d been standing under an umbrella, London’s legendary dreary rain had soaked her feet and dampened the cuffs of her trousers. She’d had to grin and bear the splooshing between her toes as she’d escorted the official in a limo to his breakfast meeting with the ambassador.

      At least the sun was out again, but Cassidy was annoyed to be even thinking about the weather. She was so accustomed to constant motion and decision-making that it was maddening to have more than five minutes of downtime.

      Downtime led to quiet contemplation, to thinking. Cassidy had trained herself long ago not to sit and think. Keep moving, she told herself, from the minute she woke up every morning to the last moment before she dropped her head on the pillow. Keep moving.

      Don’t stop.

      She whipped out a small pad of paper and pen from an inside pocket of her fitted black pin-striped jacket and began to scribble a list of things to do in the next hour. Call Winfield House and ask the head housekeeper to fax her tonight’s menu to make sure nothing was forgotten, update the ambassador’s schedule for tomorrow to fit in the meeting with the MP—Cassidy’s stomach rumbled. Oh, yes, get lunch. If time permits.

      After the plumber indicated he was finished but would need to get into a rest room one floor above, Cassidy let them both out, secured the room and called Charles to take the worker to the rest room. Then she returned to the front office and resumed running around for several more hours.

      At promptly three, Cassidy escorted five men and one woman to a public meeting room. They were representatives from an American lingerie company called Underneath It All. They wanted to open a London branch, and they were set to make a pitch for support from the ambassador.

      But Ambassador Cole had not yet returned from his appointments. Cassidy sighed, and as she chatted informally with the businesspeople, her cell phone rang. “Maxwell.”

      “Cassidy, it’s me,” Ambassador Cole said, but his voice sounded very far away, and strained through static.

      “I can’t hear you well, Ambassador.”

      “Bad connection. Listen, I’m running late. We’re sitting here in traffic the likes of which I’ve never seen.”

      “Since yesterday?” Cassidy couldn’t help herself.

      “I did say that yesterday, didn’t I?” The ambassador chuckled. “Cassidy, you’ll hold down the fort.” It wasn’t a question. It was a confident statement.

      “Yes.”

      “I shouldn’t be longer than a half hour. Shouldn’t, but who knows for sure. There’s a double-decker bus in front of the car, and we can’t see a bloody thing.”

      Cassidy smiled. Like herself, Ambassador Cole hadn’t picked up a British accent, but had managed to adopt several choice phrases. “Don’t worry. We’re good to go here. We’ll get things done.”