WARNING
Charlotte
It’s my first day as his official scheduler when I arrive at campaign headquarters the following Monday, step off the elevator, and immediately get to work.
I’m determined to impress and be as kick-ass as everyone on Team Hamilton is proving to be. Especially now that I’m his scheduler; there’s only one of me.
I’m trying to get into the meat of Matt’s most pressing things-to-do when Rhonda appears.
“How are we doing?” she asks me as she approaches.
“Great!” I grin, then spread out a few pages with scattered itineraries—it takes work to really oversee Matt’s schedule, not only because it’s his, but because it involves so many people. “I’m a bit concerned I’m losing some valuable time with the times it takes for the team to arrive by bus—I wonder if I shouldn’t make use of that time somehow for Matt.”
Rhonda drags a chair over and looks at the pages. Matt doesn’t want to plaster slogans across every town and city in the continental United States; he’s doing aggressive online campaigns with both personal opinions and proposed solutions. But even with the online campaign, his schedule is killer.
It could literally kill a man that wasn’t as energetic as this one is.
I can’t imagine either President Jacobs or Gordon Thompson, the Republican front-runner, both much older and much less athletic, enduring it.
As the main scheduler and as we embark on the touring of the country, I’ll be working in the field now. Rather than being cooped up in headquarters, I will be out there, overseeing all the local field campaign aides, ensuring everything runs smoothly on every location and engagement Matt is in.
Rhonda has made it repeatedly clear that my job is to manage both Matt’s personal and professional schedules, and not only that, but I’m to manage the advance teams that will arrive at each location before Matt does to make sure everything is as it should be. She tells me that a good flow of scheduling is paramount for the most effective campaigning. That I need to focus on Matt’s personal time first and foremost, then shoot for a balance between events aimed at high schools, veterans, industrials, the average working man. I am to include all minorities, and definitely women and young people, who seem to be his most devoted fans. To this list, after talking it over with the managers, I’m adding hospitals and hospices in the mix as well.
“He needs time to run every day. Every single day, be sure to give him an hour’s run and at least a half hour to shower and prep for the day. Trust me, he’s on the ball and so much sharper when he’s started his day with that. Add a night off during the weekends so he can see his friends and family or simply have time on his own,” she said when she first explained this to me.
“Just one night off?” I’m appalled to think he’s working so much.
“Only one—that came from Matt himself,” Rhonda assured me, but she looked as wide-eyed and concerned as I did.
Now we sit here as we jointly create his first active campaigning schedule, one where he’ll be traveling extensively.
As Gordon Thompson and Harold Jacobs are throwing themselves full-fledged into their campaigns, so are we. Our first states to visit are states known to be primarily red or blue, which means Texas for primarily Republican and California for primarily Democratic.
“Charlotte, there’s been talk.”
I lift my head. “Excuse me?”
“Some of the aides.” She signals out the door. “They talk about Matt paying more attention to you. Alison has appeased them that you’re childhood friends, but I’d still like to give you some friendly advice.”
I feel so shocked and uncomfortable at the thought of anyone assuming anything outrageous that I’m mute, unblinking as I meet Rhonda’s friendly but concerned gray gaze.
“Don’t,” she says quietly, holding my stare.
She shakes her head, glancing down at the itinerary, slashing a big red line over one event and adding a big red arrow for us to move it to the next day.
“Matt is unshakable right now where he stands.” She looks at me again. “He owns the heart of every American simply because we all watched him lose his father the way he did, keep his mother on her feet, and remain pretty down-to-earth and humble despite him being one of the most famous men in the world. Any dirt the parties want to dig up on him, there’s nothing Carlisle hasn’t studied and can easily counterattack.”
My eyes widen. “You’re not implying . . .”
“Charlotte, I’m fifty-five, married twice, with three children,” she says, smiling a bit like my mother did when Matt and his father, the president, came over for dinner and she told me Matt was handsome. “If you believe in him being the solution we’re looking for—”
“I do!” I say vehemently, dragging the schedule over to my side and frowning down at it, trying hard to concentrate on it again.
“Then keep it professional. You’ll be spending a lot of time together.”
I think of the things I think about when I curl up alone in my apartment and a warmth of guilt creeps up my cheeks, but I stare down at the schedule and try to regain my focus.
Once Rhonda and I finally wrap up the beginning campaign schedule, she claps her hands.
“Guess we’re done here. You’ll make sure he gets a copy?”
“Of course.”
She dons her coat and we say goodbye as she heads to her new office and I head out of mine and toward Matt’s.
As I approach, I hear the whispers of Carlisle telling Matt, “We should be unearthing the dirt on Jacobs . . . He made many mistakes during his administration . . . and don’t get me started on Gordon.”
“We’re running a clean campaign—and we’re playing defense. No attacks unless we’re personally attacked—we counterattack. Then and only then.”
“Matt, these two are specialists at attacking. That’s the way elections are won. You make people afraid, and then you shine the light and don the hat of their savior. Personally, I think Jacobs has let the economy go to shit just so he can come up with a shining plan to save it. As for Gordon—hell, he will throw out everything wrong with you, starting with the fact that you didn’t serve in the military.”
“Neither did he.”
“But he’ll be the one to say it.”
“And make it easier to point out that I was doing other things that my father, the president, had asked me to. He wanted me to learn to be a leader—hell, Benton, it bugs the shit out of me he didn’t let me serve and you know it.”
“Gordon will rub it in. Jacobs will keep on the First Lady issue . . .”
“Really, if that’s what we have to be afraid of . . .” Matt lets out a low, self-assured chuckle.
Carlisle sighs. “You have a bit of a sense of humor, which makes you approachable but, god, your stubbornness, Matt.”
I knock on the door.
Matt lifts his head, waves me in, and suddenly he is watching every step I take into the room.
I set the folder on his desk and as I slowly leave the room, I hear Carlisle insist, “We need more slogans, Matt. People need to know what you bring to the table.”
“I bring me.”
Carlisle sighs.
“Carlisle. For years the public has come to believe every promise made by every candidate has been pure bullshit. Nobody believes in them anymore. Politics have been totally tainted by propaganda. It wasn’t like this in the beginning, Carlisle. There weren’t slogan campaigns; hell, until Andrew Jackson, not even slandering campaigns. I serve my country.”
“Speaking of. Our opponents are barely underway with primaries and they’re already attacking the streets with propaganda.”
Matt listens attentively, then says, “We’re in modern times, Carlisle. The internet works. Hamilton is tree-friendly.” He angles his head. “Charlotte.” Matt raises his voice as he calls my name when I step outside.
I peer back in.
“You can save more trees as the president,” Carlisle mumbles as Matt waves me forward. I’m tempted to tell Carlisle that I do like Matt’s different approaches.
Political figures are loved and hated across the world. They’ve come to be seen as necessary evils. But it wasn’t that way with Washington. He’s the only president who received every single vote—he was a champion, a leader, not a “necessary evil.” There was no propaganda, no marketing campaign, no bullshit slogans. Matt is not a politician, and I think it makes a difference. He gives no practiced speeches. He doesn’t even look 100 percent polished. He prefers sweaters and slacks and button-down shirts when he goes out in public. He looks steady, which is what the country wants, a little bit rebellious, which is what the country needs, and different, the embodiment of the change we crave.
But I keep my thoughts to myself.
Carlisle exits and Matt steeples his fingers, nodding in the direction of the now empty doorway. “What do you think?”
“I . . . about what Carlisle says?”
He nods, that infuriatingly adorable dancing sparkle appearing in his eyes.
I smile privately. “I do think you’re stubborn,” I admit, scrunching my nose playfully at him.
“Is that all?”
I shrug mysteriously.
But no, that’s not all at all!
He has good judgment, drive, and discipline.
When the character debates come up later in the game, Gordon has had four wives, President Jacobs lets his wife rule the country for him, and Matt, on the other hand, is a very balanced man. He listens to opinions of people he respects and whose intelligence matches his own, but ultimately he makes his own choice.
We’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars for his campaign, most of the funds coming from small donations from average Americans ready for a change. The technological infrastructure we’ve set up at headquarters in order to reach the three-hundred-plus million Americans through the net is unprecedented until this election. But people’s interests have never been harder to pique than in the days that we live in now.
“I think going heavy on the internet can get you a lot of traction with the young voters,” I finally say, “and if you can figure out a way to get them interested in your most exciting plans with each alphabet letter, it could really stick.”
He rubs his chin with the tips of his two index fingers, makes a hmm sound, and frowns thoughtfully. “C is for Charlotte.”
“J is for junk food in cafeterias, which must be stopped at once.”
He laughs.
I signal at his schedule. “Here’s the schedule for the months of April, and May. Since things get very heavy in late April, I thought I might include a free weekend for you to recharge.”
“That’s thoughtful of you.” He slips on his glasses and scans it.
“Yeah, well, I’m a thoughtful gal,” I say.
I turn away and glance out the window, because something about the times he slips on his glasses always gets to me.
“A thoughtful gal who somehow manages to make me think of her a lot.” I turn my attention back to him in surprise as he looks up at me over the rims.
My heart thuds.
He sets the schedule down and pries the glasses off, folding them and setting them over the schedule, his eyes fixed on me.
A silence settles in the room, making me aware of how disquieted I am on the inside.
“Why did you want me to be your new scheduler?” I ask quietly.
He leans back with a sardonic smile that quickly turns admiring. “Because I believe you have a good head on your shoulders, you’re dedicated and smart, and anyway”—he grins even wider—“I thought you were a tad too soft to keep answering those phone calls and letters.”
“I am so not soft!”
“P is for pudding.”
“So not pudding, Matt!” I narrow my eyes and lean one hand on his desk. “You wanted me to keep an eye out for letters like that one little Matt sent.”
“And I know you still are.”
I scowl. “How do you know me so well? Hmm?”
He spreads out his arms and crosses them behind his head. “Some say I’m a perceptive man.”
“I disagree. You failed to see how stone-hearted I am, able to read your letters, day after day. How hard I can be. H is for heart of stone.”
He laughs. It’s so nice to hear him laugh. “No, Charlotte, it’s optimally just one word per letter, so that’d make you just all heart.”
I shake my head, frowning. “I can show you my hard-heartedness in your next schedule I draft.”
“Be my guest—I thrive under pressure.”
“Good for you, ’cause I’m bringing it.”
“You always do.”
His gaze slides past my shoulder at the sound of a soft knock. Alison is at the door, watching us, narrowed-eyed. “Matt, the pictures you asked for.”
She walks in as I excuse myself and leave, but soon Alison catches up with me. “Were you just flirting with Matt?”
“What? No! We were having a discussion.”
“You were discussing with Matt?”
“I . . . no!” I flush and head to my desk, sit down, and lift my head to glance past his office window, where he’s wearing those sexy glasses of his, reading, a hand over his mouth as if to cover his smile.