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that everything he had accomplished in life had all gone down the drain in one day. So, when he and Thompson finally knocked off for the day, he felt he only had enough energy to take the elevator, the one meant to be used only for those visitors who were of limited ambulatory means, to get to the penthouse suite of the building, the Presidential Suite, two floors up.
    Lambert entered the suite, barely nodding to the agent posted in the landing’s lobby, and started to strip off his jacket the moment he closed the door behind him. “Good evening, sir,” PJ, the house butler, greeted him as he entered. “Nice to see you back.”
    “Hello, P.J.,” Lambert replied. Electronic house butlers could, of course, be named anything. Many of them were simply addressed as “Butler” by their owners. But it had been decided at some point, decades ago, that the official butler of the Presidential Suite needed a proper name of some sort, to distinguish it from the rest. By unofficial decree, the name was often only referred to by its initials—some historians suspected it had had something to do with past use of the system for clandestine affairs, and that using initials, full names, or other derivations, was a private way to keep official and unofficial affairs separate… a suspicion that had, of course, never been proven—“PJ” was short for “President’s Jeeves.”
    As Lambert trudged towards the bedrooms on the north end of the suite, PJ asked, “Can I get you anything, sir?”
    “Send my usual evening drink to the bedroom,” Lambert replied. “Any messages?”
    “Just one,” PJ replied, “as follows: ‘Miss Vaughn is here.’”
    PJ made that statement, just as Lambert was opening the bedroom double-doors. He paused as the doors swung open, and took in the view of the room from there, allowing his eyes to stop, not on the bed, but at the coffee table and divan beside the balcony. A woman reclined across the divan, facing the balcony and the view, and upon hearing the doors open, shifted leisurely to a seated position, the side slit on her silk skirt shifting as she turned to reveal almost everything south of her hips. She smiled at Lambert, and held up a tumbler that was identical to one that waited on the coffee table.
    “And so she is,” Lambert smiled tiredly. “You can cancel that drink order.” He walked inside, allowing the doors to close silently behind him. He crossed over to the divan, and sat down. “Hello, Shay.”
    “Hello, Gaston,” she smiled, using one slender hand to brush her shoulder-length auburn hair away from her face. She used the other hand to reach down to the coffee table, and hand him the glass. “You’ve had quite a day.”
    “I’d like to say, ‘you don’t know the half of it’,” Lambert nodded, and took a swig from the tumbler. “But I’m pretty sure that you, and everybody else, know
exactly
the day I’ve had.”
    She regarded him levelly, her eyes dancing in the light. “Are you all right?”
    Lambert regarded her critically, though calculating more about himself than her. As for her, Shay was one of the most gorgeous creatures he’d ever laid eyes on, a nigh-elemental force. Her skin was a rich, deep, almost reddish-brown that was uncommon of most African-American women. She had an expressive almond-shaped face, dominated by prominent round cheekbones; her eyes were a dark brown with sparkling highlights, so striking that they operated much like miniature black holes, sucking you into their influence whether you liked it or not. She had a strong, lush figure and the legs of a singularly athletic goddess. As for himself, he would’ve given anything to be able to forget his troubles and just hold her,
ride
her, all day long. But unfortunately, it had already been a long, long day. Momentarily, he gave a small wince and a shrug. “Tired, mostly.”
    “Can I—”
    “Can you do me a favor?” Lambert interrupted her, and drained the tumbler. “Can we just not