The Wedding Party (The Wedding Date, #3)(62)

The lights were bright on the bridge, bright enough for her to see the genuine smile on his face.

“You? A woo girl? I can’t picture that.”

She put a look of mock outrage on her face.

“Hey, I can woo with the best of them!”

He laughed.

“Yeah,” he said. “Come to the rally. Cheer us on and be a woo girl. I can’t wait to see this.”

She put her hand on top of his and squeezed.





Chapter Fifteen




BY SEVEN A.M. ON THE DAY OF THE RALLY, THEO WAS IN THE OFFICE, dressed in his favorite gray suit and pin-striped shirt, and with an enormous cup of coffee. The governor, five mayors, and seven state representatives would be there today, all with their accompanying staffs and newspapers from their various cities and constituencies. All he wanted for the day was good press for the campaign and good press for his boss. Maybe not in that order.

He was really glad Maddie was coming today, even though she’d be there to see what a stress case he was on days like this. He’d worked so hard on this, and she’d listened to him talk about it for months; it would be great to have her there to see it all happen.

He’d just gotten off the phone with Sybil for the second time that morning when Alexa stopped by his office.

“How’s it going? Are you sure you don’t need me to come to the rally? I’m on my way to the bakery around the corner. Do you need anything? Other than more coffee, obviously.”

He picked up his cup to see how much was there. Yes, he absolutely needed more coffee.

“You’re an angel, thank you. One of their chocolate chip cookies—you know I love those. And no, you don’t have to come. I think it’s all under control, but thank you for the offer. I’m sure I’ll send you many frantic texts later this afternoon.”

She grinned.

“I’ll be happy to answer them, just like you always answer mine. I can’t wait to hear how it all goes.”

Alexa would hold down the fort in the office, while Theo, the mayor, and a handful of other staffers would be at the rally. Theo wondered if Maddie knew Alexa wouldn’t be at the rally when she’d said she’d come. He had no idea. He wished he did.

Maddie kept saying Alexa would flip out and get too excited and want them to live happily ever after, and be super upset when they ended things, but Alexa had dealt with it fine when he and Maddie had quietly hated each other for years; she’d deal with it fine when they stopped sleeping together after the wedding and—most likely—went back to avoiding each other.

He stared at his email box without seeing it. Maddie had somehow become one of the people he went to first about things he was struggling with, or happy about, or just needed to vent about. He didn’t want that to end.

And she’d certainly reached out to him for advice a lot recently, and had seemed to value what he said. She’d seemed to value him. Were they really going to go back to being two people who occasionally saw each other at Alexa’s parties and nothing else?

Apparently, that’s what she wanted.

His phone rang again and he snapped back to reality. Why was he thinking about Maddie right now? His kickoff was in four hours and counting.

Two hours later, he was at the school, helping the campaign staff set up. It was too early for any of the elected officials or other speakers to arrive, and none of the press would likely be here for at least another hour at the earliest, so he was trying to use up his nervous energy. Thank God for the interns—they’d managed to deal with the overly complicated mechanisms to hang up the banners with ease, so he and the other more senior staff were left to do the important tasks of setting folding chairs in a row and testing the microphones.

Finally, people started arriving: his assistant delivered the mayor, reporters trickled in and set up all their equipment, and all the parents who were speaking arrived within minutes of one another, thankfully. As he was checking in with one of the fathers who had seemed the most nervous about today, he saw a familiar movement out of the corner of his eye and turned.

Maddie was here early. Yep, there was that hair toss of hers again. For so long he’d thought that hair toss was so affected, until he realized how much she hated her hair in her face. She pushed her hair back even when it was just the two of them on his couch watching TV, whenever a breeze from the window drifted through the room. Why she almost never just put it up in a ponytail he had no idea.

He wanted to go over to Maddie right away, but he saw the reporter from the L.A. Times arrive. She was one of the best political reporters out there, so it was both great and terrifying that she was at the rally today. Great because it seemed like the L.A. Times was really paying attention to this, and terrifying because he knew that meant everything had to run like clockwork.

“Hi, Theo,” she said. “Looking like you’ll get a good turnout today. I heard that there might be some protests during the event; how worried are you about that?”

Good thing he’d already been on guard before he even said hi.

“Hi, Mallory, glad to see you here. We welcome lively political debate, and we’re glad that there’s going to be a great turnout of Californians to find out more about the issue of universal pre-K. As with any major political issue, we imagine there will be protestors, but this is Berkeley: we have a long, proud history of protest here. We just hope that the press will be sure to cover the issues as well as the protest.”