Madame President - Tara Sue Me Page 0,50

I try not to worry about his frown or the way he has his arms crossed.

Across from me, Anna stands and takes a step back, smoothing her skirt, even though it’s already straight. She looks at me, calm once more. “I have a meeting with the governor.”

“Of course,” I say, having stood when she did, and hold out my hand. “Thank you, Madame President, for taking the time to speak with me.”

“My pleasure.” She shakes my hand, but doesn’t look me in the eye. “I’ll see you back in DC.”

Before I’m able to reply, she turns, nods at George, and disappears down the hallway with agents following close behind. I suddenly feel as if I’ve completed a marathon and resist the overwhelming urge to sit back down. Interviews usually don’t leave me feeling so exhausted, but that one with Anna surely did.

George is making his way to me, and he’s still wearing a frown. That alone gives me even more reason to remain standing because I don’t understand why he’s unhappy. The interview went amazing as far as I can tell, and since I was the one closest to the interviewee, I should know.

“What the hell was that?” he asks, coming closer.

“What was what?” He’s clearly upset about something, it wasn’t only in my imagination.

“That so called interview.” He doesn’t stop when he gets near me, but keeps walking until he reaches the production control room, where he waves for me to join him.

So called interview? He has to mean the one with Anna, but for the life of me, I can’t think of one thing that went wrong. I consider it a win based on the fact we didn’t end up in an argument. Going in, that was really my only goal, and in my opinion, we blew it out of the water.

“We’ll watch it back,” George says, shooing everyone out, so it’s only the two of us. “Maybe I’m making more out of it than I should.”

I still don’t have any inclination of what he’s talking about, so I turn to watch the screen he’s pulling the video feed up on.

The playback starts, and it looks great, even better than I’d pictured. Anna is wearing a tailored burgundy suit. When I first saw it this morning, the color reminded me of the gown she wore in London. I’m wearing a dark gray suit, with an even darker tie. We don’t clash, of course, because the network would never go for that, and we don’t match. Yet, somehow, we compliment each other.

The audio starts, and George and I are both quiet as we watch and listen. I spend most of the playback focused on Anna. However, by the time the interview ends, I have an idea about why George is upset.

“I hope to God you don’t do something stupid and make the network look bad. I went to bat for you with Rainer. I’m not going to regret that, am I?” he asks.

“No,” I say quickly.

“Fortunately, the lighting and camera angles hide what I was most worried about.” He points to the image of Anna and myself, just after she answered my last question. “But you do see what I see don’t you?”

“I won’t deny there’s a chemistry between us,” I say. “But give me some credit, she’s the President of the United States, and I’m a news reporter. There is a less than zero percent chance of anything happening between us. Not only because I’m not stupid, but because she really doesn’t like me.”

“That would certainly explain how she was almost sitting in your lap by the time the interview ended. Because she doesn’t like you.”

I can’t deny what the camera shows, and it’s obvious we started out sitting further apart than we ended up. I don’t remember consciously moving closer to her, but I did. Several times. Though to be fair, she moved a few times as well.

“Like I said,” I repeat. “We have a chemistry between us. I can’t deny that, I wouldn’t even try. But she truly doesn’t like me. She’s said so herself.”

George has a look on his face I’ve never seen before. I don’t know what it means, but I don’t like it all.

“And you?” George says. “How do you feel about her?”

“She’s competent. Intelligent. Sarcastic.” I have to chuckle at that one. “She has this... essence or something about her.” And she’s compassionate and amazingly beautiful, but I keep that to myself.

“Essence, huh?”

I realize I’ve been staring off over his shoulder at