Chapter Thirty-Five
Josh
I was in the office early that day, earlier than everyone. I’d asked Ralph to meet me before the rest of the team came in because I owed him an explanation about what was going on and I wanted to do it face to face. I felt so sorry for the guy. I knew that he blamed himself for what had happened even though I’d told him that it wasn’t his fault. He had looked stressed out all week over it.
“Guess what?” he said the moment he walked into the office. He was holding two cups of coffees and handed one to me.
He grinned. “You really don’t know?”
“I don’t know anything. What’s going on?”
“You won!”
“What? How do you know?” I couldn’t believe my ears. If it wasn’t Ralph telling me, I would assume it was just someone trying to prank me. But Ralph wouldn’t do that to me, so I knew that it had to be true.
“I got the call this morning. Frank stepped down! Can you believe it? There were all sorts of allegations against him, and he decided it was not worth continuing. He was only backing himself into a corner he couldn’t get out of, anyway. Congratulations! I’m so glad that I am the first to tell you.”
I grinned. I knew what had happened. There was only one person that could’ve gotten word out about Frank, and I couldn’t wait to thank her for it. She had obviously jumped straight back into her role as my public relations officer. I couldn’t believe that she had managed to turn things around so quickly for me. She obviously knew what she was doing. She was incredible.
“This is amazing. I can’t believe it actually happened. After all our hard work, all these months of planning. It all came together. Thank you so much, Ralph. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you being here for me. I’ll be honest; I did not expect to get this sort of news today. I thought we were all going to be down in the dumps.”
“Yeah, I’ll be honest, after everything that happened I couldn’t help but think the same thing. I was dreading coming to work this morning. I couldn’t have supported a better guy. Is there a reason why you called me in so early though? You’re not firing me are you?”
“Firing you? Are you kidding me? I would never fire you. You’re the best guy on the team. Sorry for not talking to you right away, you just completely baffled me with the news of me winning,” I said and laughed. I’d almost forgotten that I was the one that had called him in for a meeting that day. “I just wanted to be the first to tell you that Reagan will be in the office today and that she did nothing wrong.”
“What? Are you serious? She’s still going to work with us?”
“Yeah. I’m serious, and I know she can’t wait to talk to you about it all. I was the one that got all my wires mixed up. I feel so bad for firing her. It’s a long story, and I will take the time to explain it to everyone. But I wanted you to be the first to know because you are her friend and I made you think badly of her.”
The relief was evident on Ralph’s face. “Oh, I’m so happy to hear this. I was going to phone her after the election. I was devastated to hear that she was a spy. I already had the conversations all planned out in my head. I was going to demand that she tell me everything and I was going to tell her that I would never be friends with her again. But I’m glad to hear she wasn’t in this. I thought it was very strange. She’s always been the most dedicated person here. And I know how much she cares about all of this. It was just so unlike her. Thanks for letting me know. I’m so relieved. I’m glad I don’t have to have those awful conversations with her anymore. Well, this day is starting out better than the others.”
“It sure is. It’s our best day so far, and now that we have won, it’s only going to get better. Do you have details on the speech today?”
“Yes. It’s going to be this morning. Nine thirty.”
“Perfect. Can you gather everyone in the conference room at nine, then? I’d love to do a little pre-speech before. And if you can make sure that nobody comes to see me until then. I have a few things I want to do before the meeting, and I would prefer not to get disturbed.”
“Absolutely. And thanks again for letting me know. If you hear someone screaming and then sobbing, it’s probably me. That’s more than likely what I’m going to the minute I see Reagan again.”
I laughed at the image, went to my office and closed the door. I wanted to get my speech ready and to make sure that I had everything written down that I wanted. I had been so sure that I would lose that I had barely given my speech any thought. My confidence had taken a dive over the course of the election despite my initial cockiness when I’d felt so sure of winning. Thankfully, I had gotten the basics down back when I had still thought I had a chance. I just needed to fine tune it now. I spent the next two hours working on it, and by the time it came to go to the conference room, I felt happy with it. To be fair, before everything happened I had probably practiced the speech a million times in my head. I took a deep breath and made my way to speak to my staff.
The moment I walked through the doors, everyone burst into applause. It was a far cry from the last time that I had been in the office. I looked around the room and smiled at all the faces that had helped me get to where I was that day. It was so good to stand there with such a big feeling of pride and happiness. I grinned at the sight of Reagan standing in the corner. She didn’t look tired anymore, and I assumed I didn’t, either. On Saturday night we probably had the best sleep of our lives. We were both the sort of people that woke up earlier than anyone else in the mornings, but that Sunday we’d both slept in late. I saw a few people glance at her strangely and I knew they were all wondering what was going on. I cleared my throat.
“We did it!” I said, and everyone burst into applause all over. I waited for the noise to die down before carrying on. “I just wanted to gather you all in before I went to give my speech because I couldn’t have done this without you. This is not just me winning today; this is all of us winning. So thank you. Thank you so much. I will take the time over the coming weeks to have a meeting with each and every one of you, but for now, please accept this collective thank you. Now, there’s one other thing that I wanted to address with you before I get out there. As you know, there was a spy in the office. That much was true. Ralph actually caught the one woman stealing some of our papers. What wasn’t true was that one of the spies was Reagan,” I said, and everyone turned to look at her. She gave them all a nervous smile and wave, and I carried on. “I had some false information that led me to believe that she was one of the spies, and I cannot tell you how awful I feel for firing her, especially after all that she has done for us. So I’m very sorry for that, and I hope we can all move forward from it. I’m sorry that I made you all think so badly of her when she did nothing at all. I’m the first to admit that I did wrong, and I will endeavor never to make that mistake again.”
I continued talking to the team and telling them how grateful I was to have them until it was time to go.
“I promise we’ll have a proper party soon with champagne and cake. But now, I have to go and deliver my speech.”
Everyone clapped again as I made my way to give my speech.
“Hang on,” Reagan said and quickly ran up toward me. I thought she was going to kiss me, but instead, she sorted out my crooked tie.
She smiled. “Much better.”
I heard someone whistle, and when I turned around one of the team members laughed.
“Uh, you do realize how obvious the two of you are, right?” he said.
“What? What do you mean?” I said and tried to keep the smile off my face from giving away too much.
The boy groaned. “We’ve all suspected that there was something going on between you guys for the past few weeks already. It’s pretty obvious.”
“Oh dear,” I said and laughed. “And here I thought we’d been discreet.”
“Oh, you have been. But we all knew anyway. It’s a little bit hard to hide something like that. You like the pants off her,” he said, and I burst out laughing. I looked at Reagan and saw that her face had turned pink. I resisted the urge to tell her how beautiful she looked right there. I’d have to tell her later, when the two of us were finally alone.
“It’s okay,” the boy said. “You don’t have to feel bad about it. We’re just finally glad it’s out in the open. The two of you are perfect for each other.”
“I haven’t admitted a thing,” I said and winked at Reagan.
“You don’t have to,” the boy said.
I laughed and walked out the room. So the team had been talking about Reagan and I all this time without us even realizing it? We had no idea. And there we were thinking that nobody knew about us. Goes to show how lost we were inside our own heads.
I made my way up onto the stage and smiled at the crowd. It felt good to be there, and I knew it was where I belonged. This was the moment that I had been waiting for.
“Thank you so much for appointing me today. I couldn’t have done it without you, and I thank you for putting your faith and trust in me,” I said. Everyone applauded and whistled, and I grinned at them. Then I looked down at my papers and read through the speech I had prepared. Afterwards, I looked up and smiled. “I’d like to end by thanking my amazing team for helping me on this journey, and a special thank you to the very talented Reagan Knead for showing me the importance of integrity, as well as the value of a good suit.” The crowd laughed, and I winked at Reagan who was standing in the corner with Ralph.
As I walked off the stage, I pulled Reagan aside and thanked her again for everything.
She grinned. “You were amazing up there. I’m so proud of you. Nice suit by the way,” she said.
It was the suit that she had made me buy the first time we went shopping together. I laughed. “Oh yeah? You like it?”
“I do prefer you without any clothes on, but yes, I love the suit. And you know what? You’re actually starting to get less and less cocky.”
“That’s because you’re blinded by lust for me,” I said.
She laughed. “Okay, I take that back.”