The Wedding Party (The Wedding Date, #3)(75)

This must have been deadly to the campaign. This was definitely deadly to Theo’s hopes of moving up the political ladder.

He couldn’t concentrate very well on the screen; he hated that he couldn’t think clearly. He gave up and forwarded any email that seemed important to his assistant. He switched over to his bulging text messages. He opened the series of texts from his mom, one of which read in part “If you EVER do this to me again . . .” when he heard Maddie’s footsteps and looked up.

“Oh thank God, coffee,” he said.

She looked down at the phone in his hands.

“WHAT do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

He looked back down at the phone.

“Looking at my mom’s texts. She seems like she’s ready to kill me, but I get the impression that Ben managed to talk her down some.”

Maddie set the coffee down on the table and snatched the phone out of his hands.

“You’re not supposed to be looking at your phone! Did you not remember what I said about no screens?”

He actually hadn’t remembered that part.

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“No screens? What do you mean, ‘screens’?” He reached for his phone, but she stepped out of the way.

“No phone. No computer and no TV, either. No screens and no reading.”

He picked up the coffee and took a sip. He needed some caffeine to help him deal with this.

“You’re serious? But how am I supposed to do my job? Aside from everything else, I need to know, on a scale from one to one hundred, just how much I ruined things for my boss, the children of California, and also me, Theo Stephens.” He thought for a second. “Maybe not in that order.”

She sat down next to him.

“You can’t look any of those things up, and I hate to break it to you, but you won’t be doing your job at all for a week or so. Maybe two.”

He dropped his head into his hands.

“A week? Two? But I have to fix this. Or at least, do what I can to fix it. I want to go back in time and hit myself on the head for not preparing for something like this. I was so obsessed with making everything perfect, I didn’t think about the things I couldn’t control. If I had, I would have planned for them!”

Maddie took a sip from her own cup of coffee and kept his phone firmly in her grasp.

“They kept going with the rally afterward. Alexa said everything stayed mostly on track.”

Now that she said that, he had a vague memory of someone telling him that in the hospital.

“Okay.” He tried to think about what that would be like, how the rally would be after he’d been knocked to the ground, but somehow he couldn’t picture it. Why couldn’t he think? “Maybe if I just read one article? Or you could read them to me?”

Maddie shook her head.

“You can talk to Alexa. She’ll give you an update. You already look worse than you did when you woke up. I can’t imagine the news will make you feel better.”

He sighed.

“Okay, fine, I won’t look at it. Can you just let me charge it? I want to be able to answer when my mom calls, and I’m sure she will today. And I can’t talk to Alexa without a charged phone.”

She pursed her lips but handed the phone back to him. He stuck it in the charger and put it facedown on the end table.

“I made toast,” Maddie said. “Can I trust you in here while I go get it?”

She was right that he felt worse than he did when he woke up. Maybe some of that was from his phone.

Such betrayal from the device he’d loved so much.

“I promise. I won’t even touch it.”

When she came back a few minutes later with toast for both of them, he picked up a piece.

“Thank you for taking care of me,” he said.

She stared at him with a frozen look on her face.

“You’re welcome,” she said finally.

He ate two slices of toast and closed his eyes. Maybe he would just rest his eyes for a minute; it was so bright in here.

Maddie was only halfway through a piece of toast when she realized Theo was sound asleep on her shoulder.

Did he remember what he’d said? He must not remember.

Or maybe he was just pretending to not remember?

Why had he said that to her?

Why had she said that to him?

How the hell was she supposed to sit here with him all day and know that he’d said that to her and she’d said that to him and just pretend neither of them had said anything to each other?

He couldn’t have meant it. Just like she absolutely didn’t mean it. They’d agreed months ago—this thing was just up until the wedding, just to get it out of their systems, then they’d be done with each other. Sure, they’d grown to like each other, but not . . . that thing they’d said the night before.

She looked down at him. He was frowning in his sleep. She smoothed his brow, and he sighed and cuddled closer to her but didn’t wake up.

She turned away from him and picked up her phone. She needed to check her own texts and emails. She’d ignored everything in her life that didn’t have to do with Theo since she’d walked into the rally yesterday.

Thank goodness he was more lucid than the day before, but she was still worried about the effects of the concussion on his brain. The doctors had all seemed so relaxed about it, but a traumatic brain injury could affect him for years. She had to pay attention all day today to see if he slurred his words or seemed out of it. And he kept making light of the whole thing, which made her want to throttle him even more.