Remembering Christmas by Drew Ferguson Read Free Book Online Page B

strange feeling you don’t like me?”
    James squirmed, wanting to be home in bed, sound asleep, the sheets pulled over his head.
    â€œThat’s not true. I don’t even know you. How could I not like you?”
    â€œWhen you’ve been on television for, oh, a hundred years, people assume they know you.”
    â€œI’ve never even seen your show.”
    He regretted sounding incredibly snotty, like one of those culture snobs forever prattling on about high art—performances at Lincoln Center, gallery exhibitions, the latest releases from small university presses—while feigning complete and utter ignorance of the household names whose escapades are documented by Entertainment Tonight and Us Weekly. He felt a sudden urge to confess his addiction to That ’70s Show to purge his conscience.
    â€œDo you know Ashton Kutcher?” he blurted out.
    Archie Duncan clearly had a sense of humor.
    â€œIt took you four hours to think of a celebrity to ask about, and that’s who you could come up with?”
    â€œLook,” James said. “It had to be awkward for you, Alex practically pushing me onto your lap. I think he expected us to fuck under the dining room table. I know how he is. Believe me. No one likes having someone shoved down their throat, and I didn’t want you to get the impression I’d been begging him for an introduction.”
    â€œThat was sweet of you to be so considerate of my feelings.”
    â€œNot really.”
    â€œAnd funny.”
    â€œWhy was it funny?”
    â€œBecause I asked Alex to introduce us.”
    James was stunned by the admission, it having been a long time since he had been an object of curiosity, let alone of desire.
    â€œI invited them for a drink at the apartment I’m subletting after being introduced to them at a fundraiser. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure they invited themselves after they tricked me into offering to share a cab with them. Alex picked up a book I’m reading and asked if I liked it.”
    James was pleasantly surprised Archie Duncan wasn’t the type to volunteer the salacious details of the erotic conquest.
    â€œI told him I loved it. It’s a new American classic. He told me he knew the editor.”
    The gem of a memoir that had won the former President the National Book Award and selection as one of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year continued to reap rewards, none as unexpected as the interest of—yes, James would now concede under close, personal inspection—an extremely good-looking and charming man.
    â€œI know what you’re going to say. You didn’t think anyone in Los Angeles knew how to read.”
    â€œNo, I wasn’t going to say that. I swear,” James protested.
    â€œI know you weren’t,” Archie Duncan teased, playfully squeezing James’s arm.
    â€œSo what deep, dark secrets can I reveal about our beloved former Commander in Chief? What would you like to know?”
    â€œOnly what’s in the book. Even a President is entitled to his privacy. Is he working on a second volume?”
    James smiled cryptically, a look that could be interpreted as can’t talk about it yet. The sad news was not yet public. In the first quarter of the New Year, the former First Lady would be announcing that the President’s royalties had been donated to an Alzheimer’s research foundation that would thereafter carry his name. James had never embraced the man’s politics but had grown to love him and his careful precision with words and sentences; now the multi-volume epic they’d once envisioned, a work to stand beside the memoirs of Grant, would never be written.
    Archie was far more erudite than James would have expected for a man who had earned a fortune by his impeccable comic timing and skillful delivery of punch lines. He’d read many of the popular biographies James had edited. His passion was American