“So, Kim-Ly, did you enjoy the speech?” Peter knew it was a lame opening, but he didn’t know how else to start off. The tree was lit, the crowd had cheered, and America had been given both a colorful display and a happy Christmas message. Now, clear of the reporters and their cameras, his nerves had set in.
He’d managed to time his placement in the crowd for the five-minute walk back to the White House so that he’d be beside her through the Presidential Park. It would have been too much to have her walk with him down to the tree lighting, so he’d come up with them meeting at the tree itself as a comfortable place to begin. But now he didn’t know where to start.
“Geneviève. Only my Vietnamese grandmother calls me Kim-Ly as I was named for her.”
Okay, so she went by her middle name. He’d
