The Wedding Party (The Wedding Date, #3)(23)

He sat down at his desk, still with the grin on his face that had been there since Sunday morning. He couldn’t quite believe his luck. He half expected that next time he’d see Maddie and suggest she come back to his place, she’d shudder and tell him that she’d been feverish or concussed or otherwise out of her mind when she’d agreed to their deal. He needed to find a way to see her as soon as possible, just to make sure this whole thing was real.

He spent the first hour at work cleaning out his email box and getting himself back down to inbox zero. He always felt off and disorganized if there were any emails in his inbox at all, and last Friday had been so busy that he’d left the office with twenty in there. He’d planned to deal with that on Sunday, but Maddie hadn’t left his house until midafternoon, and at that point, he’d been in no frame of mind to deal with work.

Alexa poked her head into his office and he jumped. Oh God, had thoughts of Maddie been on his face? She was usually so good at reading him; please let her not be able to see right through him right now.

“Morning,” she said. “Ready for the week? Boss in yet?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t think so. How are you? Have you recovered from your engagement party yet?”

He certainly hadn’t recovered from her engagement party; hopefully she wouldn’t figure that out, or else Maddie would kill him.

She grinned and held up her large thermos of coffee.

“Barely. Thank God you guys stayed to help clean up on Saturday night, because yesterday Drew and I basically spent all day on the couch eating leftovers and praying our hangovers would go away. Mine is gone now, but it still feels like it could come back at any second, so I got a large breakfast sandwich on my way in and am trying to drink as much water and coffee as humanly possible.”

He laughed. All he wanted was for her to not ask him too many questions about if he had fun at the party. Unfortunately, Alexa saw through him like almost no one else. When Maddie had said they had to keep this a secret from her, he thought it was no big deal—he’d kept the secret from her the other times, hadn’t he? But now he remembered that both other times he’d slept with Maddie, he and Alexa had had something else major to talk about the following Monday—both of which involved Drew showing up out of the blue, come to think of it. Now there weren’t any distractions on her side, she might see right through him and ask more questions about why he had this look on his face, and he might accidentally spill everything to her.

“I cracked up when I got your text yesterday,” he said.

She’d sent a text to him, Maddie, and Olivia the day before, with a picture of the recycling bin full of empty beer, champagne, and tequila bottles, captioned, “Sign of a good party, or sign of an enormous hangover?” He and Maddie had gotten it and laughed at it while she was still at his house. He had been very grateful to Alexa for that text: now he finally had Maddie’s number. The problem was, now he didn’t know when to use it.

“I still don’t quite know why we decided to open those last few bottles of champagne after midnight,” Alexa said.

“Go eat your breakfast and drink your coffee so you make it through today,” he said. Thank God she walked away without asking any difficult questions.

The mayor walked into their meeting a few hours later with a big grin on his face. Theo looked over at Alexa, who was looking back at him. They both knew this could either be great news, or “great” news that made their jobs nightmares for the next few days or weeks.

“Great news!” the mayor said. Theo looked down at his notepad so he wouldn’t look over at Alexa and laugh. “This isn’t public yet, but the ballot initiative for universal pre-K in California qualified for the November election!”

The whole room cheered. Okay, that was actual great news.

“And, since I’m one of the cosponsors of the initiative, I’ll be working a lot with the governor, a number of other mayors, and other elected officials around the state to get this passed. It’s going to be a tough road to November, but with a team like you working hard with me on this, we can do anything!”

Ah yes, the rare great news and “great” news, all in one.

The mayor beckoned Alexa and Theo to walk with him to his office after the meeting.

“I would have talked to you two about the initiative before the staff meeting, but the governor’s office called right before I walked in. But as you both know, this initiative is my baby.”

Theo and Alexa nodded. The mayor had been advocating for universal pre-K for years, and he’d worked closely with the organization that had drafted the measure for the ballot.

“Therefore, I want to be heavily involved in this campaign.” He turned to Theo. “The campaign itself will do the heavy lifting, but this still means a lot of extra work for you, because the goal is as much press—good press—as we can get. And obviously you’ll have to work a lot with the governor’s press office and all the other elected officials around the state.”

Theo nodded. Universal pre-K was an issue close to his heart, too. And a campaign like this would help both the mayor (who Theo knew had higher political ambitions) and Theo (who did, too) raise their profiles statewide. Especially if they managed to get the campaign to agree to have at least one major event here in Berkeley.

That is, it would help Theo raise his profile statewide if he did a good job. He knew that with one misstep, everything could come tumbling down.