“Don’t,” she says quietly, holding my stare.

She shakes her head, glancing down at the itinerary, slashing a big red line over one event and adding a big red arrow for us to move it to the next day.

“Matt is unshakable right now where he stands.” She looks at me again. “He owns the heart of every American simply because we all watched him lose his father the way he did, keep his mother on her feet, and remain pretty down-to-earth and humble despite him being one of the most famous men in the world. Any dirt the parties want to dig up on him, there’s nothing Carlisle hasn’t studied and can easily counterattack.”

My eyes widen. “You’re not implying . . .”

“Charlotte, I’m fifty-five, married twice, with three children,” she says, smiling a bit like my mother did when Matt and his father, the president, came over for dinner and she told me Matt was handsome. “If you believe in him being the solution we’re looking for—”

“I do!” I say vehemently, dragging the schedule over to my side and frowning down at it, trying hard to concentrate on it again.

“Then keep it professional. You’ll be spending a lot of time together.”

I think of the things I think about when I curl up alone in my apartment and a warmth of guilt creeps up my cheeks, but I stare down at the schedule and try to regain my focus.

Once Rhonda and I finally wrap up the beginning campaign schedule, she claps her hands.

“Guess we’re done here. You’ll make sure he gets a copy?”

“Of course.”

She dons her coat and we say goodbye as she heads to her new office and I head out of mine and toward Matt’s.

As I approach, I hear the whispers of Carlisle telling Matt, “We should be unearthing the dirt on Jacobs . . . He made many mistakes during his administration . . . and don’t get me started on Gordon.”

“We’re running a clean campaign—and we’re playing defense. No attacks unless we’re personally attacked—we counterattack. Then and only then.”

“Matt, these two are specialists at attacking. That’s the way elections are won. You make people afraid, and then you shine the light and don the hat of their savior. Personally, I think Jacobs has let the economy go to shit just so he can come up with a shining plan to save it. As for Gordon—hell, he will throw out everything wrong with you, starting with the fact that you didn’t serve in the military.”

“Neither did he.”

“But he’ll be the one to say it.”

“And make it easier to point out that I was doing other things that my father, the president, had asked me to. He wanted me to learn to be a leader—hell, Benton, it bugs the shit out of me he didn’t let me serve and you know it.”

“Gordon will rub it in. Jacobs will keep on the First Lady issue . . .”

“Really, if that’s what we have to be afraid of . . .” Matt lets out a low, self-assured chuckle.

Carlisle sighs. “You have a bit of a sense of humor, which makes you approachable but, god, your stubbornness, Matt.”

I knock on the door.

Matt lifts his head, waves me in, and suddenly he is watching every step I take into the room.

I set the folder on his desk and as I slowly leave the room, I hear Carlisle insist, “We need more slogans, Matt. People need to know what you bring to the table.”

“I bring me.”

Carlisle sighs.

“Carlisle. For years the public has come to believe every promise made by every candidate has been pure bullshit. Nobody believes in them anymore. Politics have been totally tainted by propaganda. It wasn’t like this in the beginning, Carlisle. There weren’t slogan campaigns; hell, until Andrew Jackson, not even slandering campaigns. I serve my country.”

“Speaking of. Our opponents are barely underway with primaries and they’re already attacking the streets with propaganda.”

Matt listens attentively, then says, “We’re in modern times, Carlisle. The internet works. Hamilton is tree-friendly.” He angles his head. “Charlotte.” Matt raises his voice as he calls my name when I step outside.

I peer back in.

“You can save more trees as the president,” Carlisle mumbles as Matt waves me forward. I’m tempted to tell Carlisle that I do like Matt’s different approaches.

Political figures are loved and hated across the world. They’ve come to be seen as necessary evils. But it wasn’t that way with Washington. He’s the only president who received every single vote—he was a champion, a leader, not a “necessary evil.” There was no propaganda, no marketing campaign, no bullshit slogans. Matt is not a politician, and I think it makes a difference. He gives no practiced speeches. He doesn’t even look 100 percent polished. He prefers sweaters and slacks and button-down shirts when he goes out in public. He looks steady, which is what the country wants, a little bit rebellious, which is what the country needs, and different, the embodiment of the change we crave.

But I keep my thoughts to myself.

Carlisle exits and Matt steeples his fingers, nodding in the direction of the now empty doorway. “What do you think?”

“I . . . about what Carlisle says?”

He nods, that infuriatingly adorable dancing sparkle appearing in his eyes.

I smile privately. “I do think you’re stubborn,” I admit, scrunching my nose playfully at him.

“Is that all?”

I shrug mysteriously.

But no, that’s not all at all!

He has good judgment, drive, and discipline.

When the character debates come up later in the game, Gordon has had four wives, President Jacobs lets his wife rule the country for him, and Matt, on the other hand, is a very balanced man. He listens to opinions of people he respects and whose intelligence matches his own, but ultimately he makes his own choice.

We’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars for his campaign, most of the funds coming from small donations from average Americans ready for a change. The technological infrastructure we’ve set up at headquarters in order to reach the three-hundred-plus million Americans through the net is unprecedented until this election. But people’s interests have never been harder to pique than in the days that we live in now.

“I think going heavy on the internet can get you a lot of traction with the young voters,” I finally say, “and if you can figure out a way to get them interested in your most exciting plans with each alphabet letter, it could really stick.”