Capitol Promises (The Presidential Promises Duet )

by Rebecca Gallo

  “Speaking of our agreement,” I said, reaching into my bag and pulling out a magazine with my top choice for Secretary of Education, Maxwell Edison, front and center on the cover. “You should read this.”

  Jameson took the magazine from me and studied the cover before flipping to the article. He made a “hmm” noise as he skimmed the article, his brows scrunched together with concentration. “Education wunderkind? Is this who you want to nominate?”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding my head excitedly. “What he’s done in California is so amazing. It’s revolutionary. I’ve been following his career for a while.”

  He closed the magazine and studied the cover. “Are you sure he’s not just another pretty face with deep pockets?”

  Maxwell Edison was quite handsome, with sandy brown hair, sky blue eyes, and a Cheshire cat smile that filled his entire face. In another lifetime, a man of his caliber might have sparked my interest, but all I had to do was look over at the man next to me to realize there wasn’t anyone else but Jameson. He was made for me.

  Before I had the chance to respond, Jameson’s phone interrupted us. I rolled my eyes and turned away; the closer we got to Election Day, the more his phone rang. This was his job, though; he couldn’t just turn it off, and I understood that well enough. And once he was president, it would ring damn near every hour of every day.

  “I’ll read this on the plane.” Jameson’s voice caught me off guard, and I quickly turned back to look at him. I hadn’t realized that his call ended. He held up the magazine, and I nodded.

  “Well, while you’re reading that…” I let my voice trail off as I dug into my bag for the folder that I started with copies of articles on Maxwell Edison. “Here are a few more that you should read.”

  “You’ve been doing your homework, haven’t you?”

  “I get one pick, Jameson. I can’t screw it up.” He laughed lightly and held firmly to the folder I gave him with one hand while holding my hand tightly with the other. This was how we were now, always connected. He never let go, and truthfully, I didn’t think I wanted him to.

  I slept on the flight to Minnesota because I knew that as soon as we landed, we would immediately head to a campaign rally. As we deplaned, Jameson handed me back my folder and said, “I took notes and wrote down a couple of questions. He’s a possibility, but I want you to pick a Candidate B.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said with a firm nod.

  When we arrived at the location of the rally, a high school football stadium, it was cold, but I was happy to see Avon and DeWayne. The crowd was huge and roared loudly, filling my ears with an almost inhuman sound. My skin prickled with a thousand emotions at the welcome we received.

  As we approached the stage, the music changed and Eric Clapton’s “Lay Down Sally” began playing.

  “This is my favorite song,” Jameson practically shouted before taking me in his arms and twirling me across the stage. His smile and energy were contagious, and before I knew what was happening, we were having an impromptu dance in front of thousands of people gathered to hear him speak. But the crowd loved it. From the corner of my eye, I saw DeWayne spinning Avon in a similar fashion.

  “What’s gotten into you,” I murmured, snuggling closer to Jameson as we rocked and swayed with the music.

  “Nothing but a fighting spirit.”

  Jameson

  “Welcome to debate night in America. Tonight, we bring you a very unusual moment in our country’s political history. Two presidential candidates are debating with just four days until the general election. It is also worth mentioning that the Republican candidate, Senator Elias Garcia, only received his party’s nomination a week ago. This election season has certainly been unprecedented.”

  I growled underneath my breath at that word. Unprecedented. I wondered if the president had the ability to ban a word. If so, then on my first day in office, I was going to officially ban the word “unprecedented.”

  Tonight’s debate turned me into a nervous wreck. Everything felt off. The lights felt too hot. My suit felt too tight. Sweat slicked my palms, making them slippery. I resisted the urge to rub them on the trousers of my suit. Instead, I wiped them multiple times with a red and white striped handkerchief that Georgie had presented me with that evening. “For luck,” she’d said, smiling.

  My hands shook as I reached for the bottle of water on top of my podium. I tuned out the moderator as he continued his speech and went over the “rules.” Instead, I studied my notes for the millionth time. Elias Garcia was a worthy adversary, but he was still my opponent. Civility only got me so far; at some point, I’d have to go for the proverbial jugular.

  The moderator asked us to begin, and we each made opening statements. We were in Cleveland, Ohio—a location of great importance in the election because Ohio was considered a swing state. The debate was America’s first in-depth look at Senator Garcia’s platform too.

  “Recently, Senator Garcia said that he would consider expanding funding to voucher programs that allow students to enroll in private, religious schools as well as charter schools. Senator Martin, you were very critical of this position. Why is this the wrong strategy for America’s failing public schools?”

  Silently, I cheered my good fortune at being engaged to Georgie.

  “Very simply, it takes money away from public schools. If a child uses a voucher to attend a private school or even a charter school, the money goes with the child. How are public schools supposed to compete when they’re losing money? Let’s make it harder for parents to decide between public and private or public and charter, not easier. And that’s what these expanded programs do; they make it easy for the parent to pull their child out of one school in favor of a school they perceive is better. We need to do better for all our students. We can do better, and Senator Garcia’s proposal is just more of the same.”

  “Senator Garcia, do you have a response?”

  “Yes, I do. It’s easy to create a policy like that when you’re engaged to a teacher. This is clearly an example of the senator’s fiancée exerting her influence. Senator Martin is right about one thing. We need to do better for our students, and we will do better by expanding these programs.”

  Before the moderator could move on to the next topic, I cut him off.

  “If I may respond to that. My position on this matter is not an example of the influence of my fiancée. Frankly, I am disappointed in Senator Garcia because he didn’t do his homework thoroughly. This has been my policy since the launch of my campaign. In fact, it was my policy in the Senate, too. I have fought against the expansion of these programs in the Senate because they do not make fiscal sense. Senator Garcia should know that because we co-sponsored a few important education bills together.”

  I wanted to launch into a full-on tirade about these programs, which would have definitely been an example of Georgie’s influence, but I controlled myself. It made me angry, though, that Elias Garcia would say something like that. Glancing next to me, I took note of Elias. He seemed just as nervous and uncomfortable. And maybe that’s why he suddenly forgot his own voting record, or the fact that we worked together to craft more than one education bill. All I could think about was how I wanted to debate Elias and not the damn Republican agenda. His acquiescence was a slap in the face.

  He must have had a similar breakthrough because during the next question, he slammed me, and I knew that the answer he gave was his own. I smiled inwardly. Game on.

  The rest of the debate was actually enjoyable. Finally, America got a real debate. Elias and I weren’t afraid to acknowledge our similarities, and we were more than willing to point out our differences. He was a formidable candidate, but there were moments when he let the influence of party officials creep into his answers. They had clearly fed him some talking points; areas where they wanted to try to catch me in something. And he fell back on those when he had nothing else to hit me with. None of it worked. In fact, it pissed me off. Mentally, I kept track of any time he sou
nded like a Republican puppet rather than the man I admired. I was saving all those moments for my closing remarks.

  “There are so many similarities between the two of you that it’s sometimes hard to distinguish your differences. Senator Martin, can you identify one area where you and Senator Garcia differ greatly?” The moderator was wise to keep bringing the debate back to our differences, and immediately, I thought about an arms deal where we were on opposite sides.

  “Certainly. There are areas of foreign policy where we differ immensely. One instance that comes to mind is an arms deal that President Arden recently agreed to with a group of rebels in the Middle East. We are both on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, so we were privy to the classified information that was being provided to the president. Senator Garcia was in favor of this deal and supported the president, while I thought that the deal wasn’t right, and when I am elected president, I will back out of the agreement.”

  “Senator Garcia, your rebuttal.”

  Elias shifted uncomfortably behind the podium. Deep down, he knew the deal was bad, but he agreed to it anyway because he wanted to be in the favor of President Arden and other influential Republicans.

  “I agreed to the deal because I felt like it was the right thing to do. These rebel groups are our allies in the Middle East. They are fighting the same extremist groups we are, and I believe that it is essential to work with them, not against them. They need our assistance, and President Arden wanted to provide support in exchange for some very crucial and valuable intelligence.”

  When the moderator allowed me the opportunity for rebuttal, I pounced. “I agree that working with the rebel groups is essential to maintaining stability in the region, but I don’t think we needed to arm them to the teeth. We could have provided very limited support to these groups; we could have sent a small contingent of troops over to train them in advanced combat maneuvers. Instead, we agreed to provide them with a full arsenal of weaponry. I don’t want those weapons to come back and bite us in the ass.”

  All eyes on me widened at the same time, and there was an audible gasp. The audience started to chatter; their soft murmurings were suddenly deafening. The moderator cleared his throat, trying to call the audience back to order. This was going to cost me; it was an epic screw-up on my part, and the only way out of it was to beg for forgiveness. “I apologize for that bit of profanity. My thoughts ran away with me for a moment.”

  “Accepted, Senator, but let’s not have it happen again.” I nodded because it wouldn’t.

  “Senators, thank you both for your candidness tonight. The American people are grateful for your honesty on very serious subjects. You will now each have two minutes for closing remarks. Senator Garcia, you may begin first.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Holbrook. And thank you, Cleveland, for hosting this event on such short notice. I want to go back to something that was pointed out tonight, and that is, despite our similarities, Senator Martin and I have very distinct differences. The biggest difference is that, in order to become president, I don’t need to resort to reality television tactics, like hiring a fiancée. It makes me wonder about who Senator Martin truly is and what kind of man would employ a woman to fake an engagement. I’ll tell you what kind of man he is; he is a desperate man. Jameson Martin was so scared of losing this race that he decided to create an entire relationship out of nothing. He didn’t have faith in the American people that he, as a single man, would be elected president. Do you really want a president who built his entire campaign around lies? What more could he possibly be hiding? It’s not fair, and it’s not right to elect Jameson Martin president until you know the truth. And it seems that he is unwilling to provide it.”

  I sneered at Elias Garcia. This was so beneath him that it literally made me sick. I crumpled the sheet with my closing remarks and held it firmly in my fist while I spoke. “I’d prepared a closing statement for tonight, but I’m not going to use it. Elias Garcia is a man who I admire greatly. He has been my partner on the other side of the aisle on more than one occasion. But tonight, I barely recognize him. What I see is a puppet, someone who is being controlled by the Republican establishment. So, Senator Garcia, if you want to discuss lying to America, then I think you need to look in the mirror. You refused to run. When your colleagues in the Senate and the House begged you to enter the race, you turned them down. You were adamant that you did not want to be president. Senator, what changed? Why do you suddenly want to be president with only a few days before the election when, a year ago, you wouldn’t enter the primaries. Whose message are you spreading tonight? Your own or the Party’s? If you want to point fingers, Senator, and accuse me of desperation, then I hope you’re willing to point the finger back at yourself, because the only thing fake on this stage is not my engagement, but your campaign.”

  The debate ended, and we approached each other. I accepted his outstretched hand, but before I let go, I whispered in his ear, “I want to run against you, Elias. Not the assholes who tried to ruin this race.”

  Elias smiled tightly and nodded but didn’t say anything except, “I want to meet her.”

  We walked over to the side of the stage, where Georgie stood waiting expectantly. She looked beautifully prim in a black dress with a stark white collar. Next to her stood Elias’ wife, Esme. Esme was an amazing woman, and I had no doubt she would serve our country well alongside her husband. But Elias had his chance and passed it up. This last-ditch effort was nothing more than a bandage on a heavily bleeding wound within the Republican Party.

  “Esme, it’s good to see you,” I said, greeting her warmly with a kiss on the cheek. “I see you’ve met my fiancée.”

  “Yes. She’s a wonderful woman, Jameson.”

  “Thank you. Elias, this is my Georgie.”

  Elias reached out and grasped Georgie’s hand in his. “You’ve made a difference in him, you know that, right?”

  Georgie sucked in a sharp breath, and I looked at Elias through a lens of confusion.

  “Thank you, Senator Garcia. I hope that’s true.” She smiled graciously and patted the back of his hand with hers.

  “You’re going to make a wonderful first lady.”

  Georgie laughed nervously. “Oh. Well, the election isn’t over yet.”

  “So it would seem.” Elias slipped his hand from Georgie’s and then reached out for Esme. “Jameson, thank you for keeping me honest tonight.”

  “It’s my job, Elias.” He patted me on the arm and then walked away.

  “That was weird,” I whispered.

  “Did it seem like he just admitted to possibly throwing the election?” Georgie asked, her question echoing my thoughts.

  “Yeah. It did.”

  Georgie grabbed my hand and led me off the stage, over toward my parents, who were speaking with DeWayne and Avon. It was a good night to have everyone here with me.

  “Let’s get back on the road,” I announced. And then I looked down at Georgie and purred. “And let’s go celebrate.”

  I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively. She knew what I was expecting, and it was completely her fault.

  Georgie rolled her eyes and groaned. “I’ve created a monster.”

  I snaked my hands around her waist and pulled her back flush against me. “Yes, you did,” I whispered into her ear. “So now you must tame him.”

  Georgie—Election Day

  “How long has he been gone?” I asked Sean, who seemed comfortable at our kitchen table, reading through the daily newspapers spread out before him. As if today wasn’t Election Day, but just any other random, ordinary day.

  “He ran to the precinct,” Sean answered, barely even looking at me.

  “Are you kidding me?” I pictured what would be splashed all over the media—Jameson, in his stupid running gear, stepping out of his voting booth. Hopefully, he had enough sense not to wear his beanie. No candidate had ever run to their precinct to vote. I’d wanted to go together, but I was still registered in New Hampshire, so I wa
s driven an hour and a half to go vote in my hometown. That was a fucking nightmare.

  As soon as I arrived in Exeter, I was mobbed by the press. They were there, hounding me with question after question. I kept my head down and pushed my way through; a wall of Secret Service agents formed a protective barrier around me and assisted me in getting inside the town hall.

  The reception that I received from the election officials was anything but welcoming. The sneers directed toward me told me they thought of me as a nuisance. That meant getting in and out as quickly as possible. There was no time to linger and talk to people who I had known my entire life.

  The sound of the front doors slamming open propelled me from the kitchen and toward the foyer, where Jameson stood, breathing heavily, in his ugly navy blue compression tights underneath bright red running shorts. I couldn’t help but laugh. He looked like a patriotic hot mess.

  “Too anxious this morning to put on a suit and tie?” I chided him.

  Jameson tugged his earbuds out and smirked as he started to peel the layers of clothing from his body. My nipples perked up at the glimpse of his skin beneath the cold-weather gear he wore. Easy girl, I scolded myself silently.

  “How long until we leave for the hotel?” Jameson asked, after he was properly and comfortably undressed.

  “Still a few hours. Do you want to take a nap? Or … something else?” I tried to make my voice sound sultry and seductive, hoping to entice him upstairs with me for an hour or two of distraction.

  After the third and final debate, the final days of the campaign were nonstop for us. From sunrise to sunset, it was go, go, go. As soon as we left Cleveland, we were in a race against time, trying to hit five different states in one day. When we returned to our hotel room each night, Jameson and I were exhausted, the type of exhaustion that you felt deep in your bones. There was barely enough time to get our clothes off before our eyes closed and we fell asleep. We were inseparable, and that made our bond stronger.