The Wife He Asked to Keep Smiling (The Wives Behind the Applause #1)

Smile for the Camera

Chapter One

A campaign aide met Adrienne in the service corridor with a garment bag, a paper cup of coffee, and no greeting.

“Mrs. Kincaid, we need you dressed in eight minutes.”

Adrienne glanced at the garment bag. “Then you need someone who hasn’t been awake for twenty hours.”

The young man laughed too quickly, as though someone had trained him to treat every remark from the candidate’s wife as charming. His laminated credential identified him as BENJI, ADVANCE. “Wardrobe said the blue one. They’ll do your hair upstairs.”

“I can dress myself.”

“Yes, ma’am. Of course.”

He continued holding out the bag.

Behind him, carts loaded with cables and bottled water crowded the concrete passage beneath the Denver convention center.

Security officers stood at each junction.

Staff members hurried past with phones pressed to their ears, speaking in fragments about surrogates, spin rooms, and audience holds.

Somewhere above them, music struck the same triumphant phrase again and again while the production crew tested the sound system for the final gubernatorial debate.

Adrienne accepted the bag because arguing would cost more time than surrendering.

The coffee stayed in Benji’s other hand.

She had left the hospital eleven minutes after pronouncing a thirty-four-year-old man dead. His wife had been driving down from Fort Collins when the final round of epinephrine failed. Adrienne had washed her hands twice, but the skin across her knuckles still felt tight from hospital soap.

Now strangers wanted to put a curling iron near her face.

Benji led her into an elevator, studying his phone during the ascent. “Governor Nolan’s team has been pushing the freight-contract story all afternoon. If it comes up, your expression should stay neutral.”

“Is there a different expression scheduled for the rest of the debate?”

His gaze jerked up. “Laurel will walk you through everything.”

Of course she would.

The elevator opened onto a carpeted corridor that smelled of hot lights and industrial coffee. A temporary sign pointed left for DEBATE STAGE and right for KINCAID HOLDING. Benji steered her right.

Two women from wardrobe took possession of her before she reached the door. One unzipped the garment bag to reveal a fitted navy dress Adrienne had never seen. The other removed Adrienne’s hospital badge from the pocket of her scrub jacket.

“Please don’t lose that,” Adrienne said.

“We’ll put everything in your personal case.”

“I don’t have a personal case.”

The woman indicated a white box labeled MRS. KINCAID in gold vinyl.

Adrienne took her badge back and slipped it into the pocket of her scrub jacket.

She changed behind a folding screen while staff members moved through the room discussing her as if fabric made her unable to hear. The neckline photographed well. The hem needed another half inch. Her own pumps were apparently too severe. Someone had brought softer ones.

When she emerged, Laurel Shaw stood near the monitor wall with a headset around her neck and a legal pad tucked against her ribs.

Laurel wore charcoal trousers and a cream silk shirt with the sleeves folded once, precisely, below her elbows.

Nothing about her suggested haste, although twenty people in the room appeared to be waiting for her decisions.

Her dark hair rested at her jaw in a clean line.

She checked Adrienne from collarbone to shoes without pretending otherwise.

“The dress works,” she said. “Lose the necklace.”

Adrienne touched the fine chain at her throat. Wes had given it to her after she completed her residency. “No.”

Laurel’s eyes paused on her hand. “All right. We’ll compensate for the reflection.”

There was no irritation in her voice. Laurel simply revised reality as it arrived.

She turned and pointed toward two taped marks on the carpet. “After closing statements, spouses come in from stage right. Wes will be here. You’ll stop at his left, angled slightly toward the moderator’s desk.”

“I’ve stood beside my husband before.”

“Tonight, half the state will be deciding what they think of him while they’re looking at you.”

Laurel said it without mockery. That made the sentence harder to dismiss.

A makeup artist guided Adrienne into a chair. As powder swept across her forehead, Laurel flipped a page on the legal pad.

“If Nolan attacks the company sale, don’t react. If he mentions the warehouse layoffs, look at Wes, not the audience. You may hear some booing. It’ll be split, and the mics will make it sound worse than it is.”

“What should I do if I agree with Nolan?”

The makeup brush stopped near Adrienne’s cheek.

Laurel considered the question. “Tonight?”

“Yes. That’s generally when I’ll be here.”

“Keep listening.”

A capable answer, carefully stripped of anything Adrienne could object to.

Laurel’s phone vibrated. She read the message and said, “They’re ready for the family walk-through.”

“Family?”

“You.”

The makeup artist pressed color onto Adrienne’s mouth before she could answer.

Wes was on the empty debate stage when she arrived, listening to an audio technician explain how far he could move before leaving the light.

He wore a white shirt with no jacket, his tie hanging loose around his neck.

From the audience, the stage would appear polished and permanent.

Up close, Adrienne could see tape on the floor, scratches in the black paint, and a nest of electrical cords hidden behind the moderator’s desk.

Wes found her at the edge of the lights. Fatigue showed around his eyes, but the sight of her eased something in his posture.

“You made it.”

“I said I would.”

He crossed to her and placed his hands lightly on her upper arms. The contact was warm and familiar, though he didn’t kiss her. Staff surrounded them, and Wes had grown economical with affection anywhere a camera might catch the wrong angle.

“How was the shift?” he asked.

“We lost a patient.”

His thumbs stopped against her sleeves. “I’m sorry.”

The answer came promptly, with the proper weight. He had always been good at finding the right words under observation.

“We need the candidate for mic check,” Laurel called from the floor.

Wes looked toward her.

Adrienne watched the turn of his head, the immediate attention. He released his wife and walked back to his lectern.

A technician clipped the microphone inside Wes’s shirt. The wire tugged his tie off center.

“Half an inch left,” Laurel said.

Wes corrected the knot without looking down. He glanced at her, and she answered with a small nod.

Adrienne had fixed that knot hundreds of times. Wes preferred a half-Windsor because anything fuller made him feel as if he were wearing his father’s clothes. Now Laurel could direct the movement in three words.

Wes looked toward Adrienne. “You okay?”

She couldn’t tell whether he meant the patient, the schedule, or the fact that another woman could straighten his tie without touching him.

“I need food.”

Laurel stepped closer to the stage. “There’s soup in the holding room.”

“She won’t eat soup before an event,” Wes said.

Adrienne hated the quick flare of relief she felt when he remembered.

Then Laurel said, “Turkey sandwich, no mustard. It’s in the small refrigerator.”

Wes nodded. “Thanks.”

Neither of them looked at Adrienne.

She told herself Laurel knew everyone’s preferences.

That was her job. An effective campaign strategist collected details and prevented surprises.

She probably knew which donors drank bourbon, which county chairs wanted handwritten thank-you notes, and which reporters needed to be called before a story was published.

Knowing a candidate’s wife hated mustard required no particular intimacy.

The stage manager walked Adrienne through her entrance. She practiced once, stopping on the taped mark beside Wes. Laurel came up behind her and moved her two inches to the right with one finger against her elbow.

“Here,” Laurel said. “His left shoulder drops when he’s tired, so the tighter angle reads better.”

Adrienne shifted back to the original position. “His shoulder drops because of an old rotator cuff injury.”

Laurel glanced at Wes. “Does it hurt?”

“It’s fine.”

“He says that when it hurts,” Adrienne said.

Wes exhaled through his nose. “Can we not hold a medical conference onstage?”

The stage manager lowered his clipboard. One of the lighting technicians studied the ceiling.

Adrienne kept her voice even. “She asked.”

“And you answered,” Wes said. “Thank you. We have six days left. Could we get through one rehearsal without turning every detail into a fight?”

Heat rose beneath the makeup layered over her face. “I didn’t know we were fighting.”

“We’re not.” He softened his tone, which somehow left her holding the sharp part of the exchange alone. “I’m asking for an easy night.”

From the floor, Laurel said, “Let’s reset the entrance.”

No one had to be told which moment she meant to erase.

Adrienne returned to stage right. This time she stopped where Laurel had placed her. Wes touched the center of her back, and they faced the empty auditorium while the lighting crew adjusted the spot above them.

“Good,” Laurel said. “Adrienne, bring your chin a little left. When he thanks you, look at him before you acknowledge the audience.”

“Will he know when he’s thanking me?”

Wes’s hand pressed slightly harder against her back. “Adrienne.”

“What? I’d hate to miss my cue.”

Laurel watched them from below, her expression composed. “He’ll know.”

The certainty in those two words made Adrienne look at her.

A production assistant announced ten minutes until doors opened.

The rehearsal dissolved into purposeful motion.

Wes was pulled toward the greenroom for briefing.

Adrienne bent to change into the approved shoes, telling herself the ache in her chest came from exhaustion and forty minutes spent leading a team that could not restart a stranger’s heart.

When she straightened, Wes stood with one palm braced on the edge of the moderator’s desk.

He blinked hard.

Adrienne knew the signs. The fluorescent lights at the hospital would have triggered the same migraine within minutes. She started toward him, but Laurel was already opening the black leather folio that held his briefing materials.

She removed a flat silver packet and a bottle of water.

Wes took both without asking what she had given him.

“You have time for the dissolvable one,” Laurel said. “If the visual aura starts, tell me before you go on.”

Adrienne stopped several feet away.

Wes hated the dissolvable medication. It left a metallic taste that lasted for hours. He carried tablets when he traveled and kept the faster prescription only for nights when he couldn’t risk waiting.

Laurel reached into the side pocket of his folio and produced two peppermints.

“Take these after,” she said.

“Where did you find them?”

“I moved them from the blue kit. You kept leaving it in the motorcade.”

Wes gave a tired grunt of acknowledgment and put the medication on his tongue.

Adrienne had spent three days looking for that blue kit after the primary debate in June. Wes had told her one of the drivers must have misplaced it.

Laurel turned and noticed her. Her composure slipped for a fraction of a second before she held out the water bottle.

“Do you want to stay with him while it takes effect?”

The offer sounded courteous. It also made Adrienne a guest in a routine already underway.

“No,” Adrienne said. “You seem to have it handled.”

Wes swallowed and frowned at her. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing you have time for.”

“We have three minutes,” Laurel said.

Wes looked up at the stage clock before answering his wife. “Then we’ll talk at home.”

In July, she had called his late-night contact with Laurel intimate; Wes had answered with a county schedule and a reminder that campaigns ran after dark.

It was the same clean postponement he had used for months—after the town hall, the donor call, and the polling memo.

At home, he arrived with one eye on his phone and a mind full of decisions already made elsewhere.

A staff member brought his jacket and routed the microphone wire beneath the collar. Adrienne stood on the mark chosen for her while Laurel waited at Wes’s shoulder.

The auditorium doors opened. Voices filled the seats in rising waves.

Laurel checked the stage clock, then leaned close enough that Wes alone could hear her clearly. “If he brings up Pueblo, remember the chair was already broken.”

Wes looked at her, startled, and laughed.

It was unguarded and low, a private laugh that changed his whole face. Laurel’s mouth curved in answer before she stepped away to summon the rest of the team.

Adrienne watched her husband follow Laurel with his eyes. Lately, she heard that laugh only through the closed door of his office.