“Hope springs eternal.”
Her colleagues must hate the intrusion, Sam thought, not that most of them would ever say so. A few would, but most wouldn’t even if they thought it. “Gotta go to work. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Chapter Three
Nick ended the call with Sam and dwelled for a second on the tension he felt coming from her as they continued to adjust to the massive changes in their lives since he’d suddenly ascended to the presidency. He looked around the Oval Office, still amazed that he got to work in the most famous office on earth, that his family lived upstairs in the residence and people called him Mr. President.
Terry knocked on the door and stuck his head in. “Are you free, Mr. President?”
“I am,” Nick said. “Come in.” He brought his briefing book with him to the collection of chairs and sofas in the middle of the room and settled in his usual chair. When had he decided what his “usual chair” in the Oval Office was going to be? The thought amused him, as many things did in this new surreal existence.
Terry, Trevor and Christina took seats on the sofas as one of the butlers brought in afternoon refreshments, which were one of the best perks of his new job.
“Help yourselves, friends,” Nick said, gesturing to the tray of cookies, coffee and tea.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Terry said, taking a cookie and pouring himself a coffee.
Nick tried to eat only one of the delicious cookies per day, and he’d already had his allotment in the morning meeting with his cabinet. “What’s on the docket?”
“Brandon Halliwell called,” Terry said, referring to the chair of the Democratic National Committee. “He wants to discuss your choice for vice president before you announce anything. He said he has some thoughts about how Senator Sanford could be better used as the new secretary of State.”
“She’s my top choice to be vice president.”
“He’s aware of that and is asking you to reconsider. He and others believe she’d be better suited to the secretary of State role and that she’d be more interested in that. They want Henderson for VP.”
Nick held back a groan. “You gotta be kidding me. After everything we went through to narrow the field, he’s throwing this at me?”
“He is, and I have to say, sir, I tend to agree that Sanford would be a better fit for State,” Terry said.
“Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“Yours, sir. Always. But Sanford has deep diplomatic experience on the Foreign Relations Committee, and you do, in fact, need a new secretary of State.”
Since he’d fired the other guy, that was. He had zero regrets about that decision, even if Ruskin was trashing him all over town. “I guess we need to bring Gretchen Henderson back in, then,” Nick said with a twinge of unease. Sam had had one of her “feelings” about Henderson, and he’d learned to take those things seriously, but with the DNC pushing for Henderson, he was running up against a strong headwind. “Who else is there besides her?”
“You’re set on appointing a woman, right?” Christina asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Then I’d say she’s the best you’re going to get. We’ve done the vetting on every other high-profile female in the national spotlight and we’re down to her.”
“How’s that possible?” Nick asked.
Christina gave him a lengthy rundown of the top female operatives, all of whom had declined to be considered for a wide variety of reasons ranging from family concerns that required their involvement to vital committee assignments or governorships that would be useful in other ways.
“In short,” Christina concluded, “Henderson is the one the DNC wants. They like the idea of a young, dynamic pair as the face of the party going forward. Henderson has made a lot of friends with her get-out-the-vote efforts on behalf of candidates around the country. She has a ton of support at the grass-roots level.”
Nick debated whether he should mention that Sam had gotten an unsettling vibe from Gretchen, but she’d had only a passing encounter with the woman as Sam was leaving and Gretchen was arriving. Even though he’d learned to trust his wife’s gut feelings, it’d be foolish to make a decision of this magnitude based on a thirty-second interaction. “Have her come back in for another meeting. I want to talk to her again before I decide for sure.”
“Will do,” Christina said.
“Speaking of Ruskin,” Trevor said, “we’re getting bombed with requests for details about why he was fired and whether it was related to what happened in Iran. We’ve got multiple networks and news outlets threatening to file Freedom of Information requests if we don’t come clean.”
“Well, I did promise that we’d tell the people what happened once we reviewed the events in Tehran. What do you guys recommend?”
Terry spoke up first. “I say you tell your side of the story—that he was less than forthcoming about the events in Iran, and you no longer have confidence in his abilities to represent the United States on the world stage. You could say that you need to feel you can trust the people working within your administration, and while many of your cabinet secretaries are holdovers from the Nelson administration, you value trust and loyalty above all other things. And you could add that former secretary Ruskin knows exactly why his tenure was terminated.”
Trevor had been taking frantic notes the entire time Terry was speaking.
“Did you get that?” Nick asked him.
Trevor nodded.
“Let’s release that as a statement—exactly what Terry said.” He glanced at Christina. “Do you approve?”
“My only worry is that you’ll further infuriate Ruskin with the statement, which will add fuel to his fire.”
“I honestly don’t care what he says about me,” Nick said. “I know the truth, and so does he. I’m comfortable with the statement. Go ahead and release it at the daily briefing, Christina.”
Nick checked the silver TAG Heuer watch Sam had given him. He had twenty minutes until a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of Defense about some issues in the South China Sea that had been mentioned in the morning briefing documents over the last couple of days.
The meetings never ended and ran the gamut from deadly boring to truly terrifying, with almost nothing in the middle. Not to mention the decisions he was forced to make on a daily basis—everything from sending troops into a hot spot in the Middle East to proposed cuts to programs that benefited the country’s neediest citizens to conversations with world leaders about issues such as climate change, immigration and cyberattacks.
There was no shortage of problems, needs and ideas, but at the end of every meeting, everyone in the room looked to him because his take was the only one that mattered.
If he allowed himself to think too much about the responsibility that sat on his shoulders, he might buckle under the weight of it. Since buckling wasn’t an option, he tried to take things one minute—and one meeting—at a time, while still trying to determine who among Nelson’s secretaries he could trust and who he couldn’t.
A knock on the door of the Oval Office interrupted his musings and the conversation that had gone on without him among his top aides. “Come in,” Nick called.