Party of Two: The brilliant opposites-attract rom-com from the author of The Proposal!

by Jasmine Guillory

  She hadn’t realized until right now how much she’d hated staying back in his hotel room while he was at the fundraiser. How much she’d wanted to be there with him, see him make his speech, introduce him to Alexa herself.

  “And the thing is . . .” Max looked straight into her eyes. “That thing Wes said, when I first told him about you, and he was skeptical, and he said to make sure it was something real before anyone found out about us, for your sake as well as mine—this feels real to me. Does it feel real to you?”

  She looked down at their joined hands.

  “Yes,” she said in a low voice. Sometimes it felt like she’d made this whole thing up, especially when she randomly turned on the TV or the radio and there was Max. But whenever she was with him, the connection between the two of them felt so real, so solid, it overwhelmed her.

  “Good,” he said. “Do you . . . What do you think?”

  Beeeep.

  They broke apart, startled. Then Max laughed and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

  “It’s the pie! I set my alarm for it. I’ll be right back.”

  Olivia stayed where she was as Max raced into the kitchen. She was grateful for the extra time to figure out how to answer his question. A few minutes later, he came out with a big grin on his face.

  “Well, the good news is that it looks like a pie, anyway. The bad news is we’re supposed to let it cool for a while, which I didn’t quite realize.”

  He sat back down on the couch and looked expectantly at her. She took a deep breath.

  “This does feel real to me,” she said. “And in a perfect world, we wouldn’t have worried about that reporter, and I’d be there with you at that fundraiser, and to meet my family, and all of that. But . . . how big a deal do you think this is going to be? I don’t really have any concept of how this will all work, or how many people will care.”

  He gripped her hand.

  “I really don’t think people will care all that much—maybe enough for a few news stories, if it’s slow, but I think that’ll be all.”

  She trusted him, but . . .

  “Some people might really care that you’re dating a Black woman,” she said.

  He pulled her close.

  “Some, definitely, but then, I couldn’t give a fuck what those people think anyway. But I completely understand if that makes you hesitant, especially in the current climate.”

  She thought about that for a moment.

  “It does make me hesitant, but I don’t want to give assholes like that power over my life.” She pulled back so she could see him. “You’re sure about doing this? Really sure? It feels like . . . a big step.”

  He looked her straight in the eye.

  “As sure as I was when I heard your laugh at the bar, and knew I couldn’t leave without talking to you. As sure as I was when I saw you across that luncheon and knew I couldn’t let you leave my life again. I’ve been sure about you since the moment I met you.”

  She could feel tears come to her eyes, and fought them back.

  “Damn it, Max! Whenever I try to get serious and cautious, you say things that go right to my heart and it always makes me want to throw caution to the wind. Please never ask me to jump out of an airplane; you’ll hypnotize me with that damn cupid’s arrow of yours, and before I know it I’ll be falling to my death.”

  He kissed her softly on the lips.

  “I promise I’ll never ask you to jump out of an airplane.”

  She smiled at him.

  “But . . . can you give me some time to think about this?”

  He nodded.

  “No rush. I’m just greedy—I want more time with you, and this feels like the best way to get it.” He kissed her on the lips again. “Now, I know it’s not cool enough to cut into it yet, but . . .” He beamed at her. “Want to come see my pie?”

  She jumped to her feet.

  “Absolutely.”

  Max checked his phone when he walked back into his office after a very frustrating judiciary subcommittee meeting Thursday morning. His heart jumped when he saw a text from Olivia, and then fell again when it was just a picture of the empty pie dish, with something about how she wished she had more pie. Yes, he was thrilled she’d liked his pie—even though they both agreed his crust needed a lot of work. But did she want to go public or not? It was already Thursday—he’d brought that up to her a whole six days ago! Sure, he’d told her that there was no rush, and technically that was true, but “no rush” clearly meant something very different to Olivia than it did to him.

  The thing was, he’d completely understand if she said no, she wasn’t ready, she didn’t want the attention yet. But he hated being in limbo; he just wanted a yes or no. And it didn’t look like she was going to give him one anytime soon.

  Would she not bring it up again for a month and then finally say no? If they were going to have a future, they’d have to do it eventually; couldn’t eventually just be now?

  He wished he’d said that to her last Friday night, but it felt too late to open that conversation back up again.

  He didn’t even respond to her text about the pie; he was too frustrated. Instead he threw himself into meetings with his staff to plan the town halls, meetings with other senators and their staffs to talk through strategy for the environmental bill they still had hope of passing before the end of the session, and then his prep for another hearing the next day. All that helped occupy him enough so that by the time he went back to his office at seven, he’d almost forgotten why he’d been in a bad mood that day.

  He pulled out the briefing book Lisa had made for his committee hearing the next day. The witnesses were all going to be heavy on the science, and he needed to be prepared with questions that didn’t make him look brainless.

  He only got halfway in before he glanced at his phone again. And was rewarded.

  In the car for the next hour or so, depending on LA traffic—give me a call if you’re not too busy.

  Now he felt bad for not answering her text from earlier that day. He knew Olivia took time to make decisions; he didn’t need to be petulant and not respond to her.

  He picked up the phone.

  “Hey, I just saw your text,” he said when she answered the phone. “Perfect timing, I needed a break. How’s your day? Where are you off to?”

  “Hey,” she said. “I’m actually almost there, so I can’t talk for long, but . . . I’ve been thinking. About what you said last weekend about going public.”

  He was suddenly completely alert.

  “Yeah? Are you . . . What have you been thinking about it?”

  Why did it suddenly feel like his whole world depended on her answer?

  “I’ve been really on the fence,” she said. “I just didn’t know how it would all work, or if it would make everything too difficult, and . . . I don’t know, I’ve just been scared about it.”

  “Okay,” he said. He felt like she was leading somewhere, and he had no idea if it was somewhere good or bad.

  “But then, last night, I went to grab food with Jamila, and she asked me how things were going with that guy I’d told her about, and I hated that I had to talk around everything when I answered her. I wanted to tell her all about you, and I couldn’t, and it made me feel like I was lying to her.”

  Max felt hope start to rise inside of him.

  “Uh-huh?”

  Olivia went on.

  “And then she said I should bring him to the food pantry some night. And I realized I really wanted to; I’d love to bring you there and introduce you to some of the other volunteers to see the great work they do, and the incredible community they’ve built, and everything we’re working on for the future. But there’s no way we could do that the way everything is right now—we might be able to go on a hike together without people figuring out who you are, but not something like that.”

  Max let himself smile.

  “Uh-huh,” he said again.

  “So,” she said. “Okay. We should do
this.”

  Max stood up and danced around his office. Thank God Olivia couldn’t see him; she might break up with him then and there.

  “Fantastic,” he said. “Here’s a thought: I have season tickets to the Hollywood Bowl, and Dolly Parton is playing on Saturday night. That seems like a perfect time to do something low-key, but still public. What do you think?”

  Olivia was quiet for a second.

  “This Saturday? That soon? I figured it would take some time to . . . I don’t know, for me to talk to your staff, or do a background check and get everything ready.”

  Max laughed.

  “You don’t need a background check, and you don’t need to talk to my staff, I can handle that. I don’t think either of us wants this to be a big, complicated rollout, do you?”

  He respected his staff a lot, but the less they had to do with this, the better, as far as he was concerned.

  “Definitely not,” she said. There was silence on the line for a few moments. “Okay. Saturday night, Dolly Parton. That sounds good.”

  He couldn’t wait.

  “Fantastic. And see you tomorrow night. Want to meet me at my place? I shouldn’t be home too late. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”

  He hung up the phone and immediately picked up his office line to buzz Kara.

  “Can you come into my office for a minute?”

  She was there within seconds.

  “What’s up, sir?” she asked.

  He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face.

  “I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a while, but I had to wait until it was okay with her. I’ve been dating someone. She’s a lawyer in L.A.; you’d love her. We’ve been trying to keep it quiet, but we’re ready to be less quiet about it.”

  Kara grinned back at him.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me this, sir. Congratulations. You seem very happy.”

  He sat back and stared at her.

  “You knew? How did you know?”

  She laughed.

  “I already suspected, but if you thought you didn’t make everything clear when you told me about your ‘friend’ who had the great idea for the town halls . . . well, we need to work on your poker face. It also helped explain why you’ve been in such a great mood lately. So after we had that conversation, I came up with a plan. I drafted a press release, you can look at it shortly, but first, we can— ”

  He held his hand up to stop her.

  “I appreciate that so much, but I think we both want this to be pretty low-key. No plans, no briefing, no press releases—we’re just going to go to the Hollywood Bowl together this weekend without me in any baseball cap or glasses or anything like that. We’ll just take it from there.”

  Kara sat down across from him.

  “That’s lovely, sir, it really is, but this weekend? Can you at least hold off another week? Maybe I could just have a call with her, to talk about . . .”

  He shook his head.

  “Thank you, Kara, I really am grateful you think about all of these things for me, but I don’t want to make a whole thing about this. I don’t think people will care all that much about my personal life. Plus, she’s nervous about this, understandably, so I don’t want to make this more stressful for her.”

  He wanted to ease into this—do something fun with Olivia this weekend, and then maybe by the end of the summer she’d be able to come with him to all sorts of events and it wouldn’t be a big deal.

  “I understand that, sir, but I’m pretty sure people will definitely care about this. You were on those most-eligible-bachelor lists in both DC and L.A., remember?”

  He brushed that off.

  “Those were both last August in very slow news weeks, but the news has been more of an onslaught these days; I don’t think we have to worry about all of that.”

  Kara folded her hands together.

  “Can I convince you to let me make sure there’s a friendly photographer around? There will be a ton of people there—someone is likely to take a picture of you, and it’ll get out, I promise. Think about this from her point of view—you may not care if the pictures are unflattering, but she likely will.”

  This was yet another reason why he was glad he had Kara.

  “Good idea, please do that.”

  Kara stopped, right before she opened his office door.

  “And, may I ask—what’s her name?”

  He smiled.

  “Olivia Monroe.”

  Kara smiled back at him.

  “Congratulations again, sir. And good luck this weekend.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Olivia took longer to get ready for her date with Max that Saturday night than she had for any other date in her life. She’d been a little taken aback when Max told her his chief of staff had arranged for a friendly photographer to take photos of them on their way into the Hollywood Bowl. That seemed so . . . intentional. But she agreed that she’d rather have good photos out there of her than bad ones, so “friendly” photographer it was. Friendly photographer or not, though, she had to look perfect. She’d searched Instagram for pictures of people at the Hollywood Bowl to see what they wore to concerts there; she’d washed, moisturized, and twisted her hair the night before so it would be perfect and bouncy today; and she’d spent an entire hour doing her makeup, when she usually spent no more than five minutes.

  She was a little surprised she hadn’t had to talk to Max’s staff before this, but she was relieved, too. That probably would have stressed her out even more. She still didn’t quite know why she was doing this, but that was the story of her entire relationship with Max. Why had she talked to him at the bar? Why had she gone out with him in the first place? Why had she started dating him? Why had she told him she loved him, no matter how true it was? There was just something about Max—the way he smiled at her, the way he looked at her, the way he loved her—that made her feel as if he saw her, all of her, and loved every single thing about her. And against all odds, she felt the same about him.

  Finally, she was ready, thirty minutes before Max was due to pick her up. She took a picture of herself and her outfit in her full-length mirror (long, flowy blue sundress, jean jacket, gold wedge sandals) and a close-up selfie to get her jewelry and makeup (dangly gold earrings, tortoiseshell sunglasses, pink lip gloss, and just a hint of highlighter) and texted both pictures to Alexa and Ellie.

  Okay, we’re really doing this. How do I look? I’m going for woke up like this

  Ellie immediately responded.

  You look fantastic!

  That was all well and good, but this was a time she actually wanted some constructive criticism on her outfit. She would have trusted Ellie better if she’d told her to change her lipstick or to wear the yellow dress or the gold hoops instead. It was like how she always trusted a proofreader better as soon as they found a typo.

  I’m with Maddie and she says you look excellent but that you need a bracelet—don’t you have a gold one? Oh, and roll up the sleeves

  Thank God for little sisters and their best friends for giving her the notes she’d been looking for. She grabbed her gold bangles out of her top drawer and slid them on her left wrist, and rolled up the sleeves of the jean jacket. She snapped a new picture and sent it to Alexa.

  How’s this?

  The text came back in seconds.

  PERFECT

  “You ready to go?” Max appeared in the doorway of her bedroom. “Oh wow, you look amazing.”

  She tucked her phone into her pocket and picked up her bag. Shit, she hadn’t consulted with her fashion advisers about the bag, but she thought it worked—a big caramel leather tote she’d bought a few weeks ago. Well, if it didn’t work, it was too late now.

  “Thanks.” She smiled at him. He looked great, too, in jeans, sneakers, and a blue-striped button-down. But tonight, he had no fake glasses, no wig, and no baseball cap. And instead of the tousled hair he usual
ly had when he was off duty, his Ken doll hair was in all of its shellacked glory. That told her more than anything that tonight was going to be different.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” he asked.

  She definitely was not.

  “Thank you for giving me room to back out, but let’s do this.”

  He smiled and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  He touched her knee on the car drive over.

  “Nervous?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “It’s just a concert, right? I’m fine.”

  That wasn’t exactly true, but maybe if she said it enough, she’d feel fine.

  “You talked to your staff about me, right? Did you tell them— ”

  Max slid his hand in hers.

  “Don’t worry. They’re very happy for us, and my chief of staff completely embarrassed me by saying she already knew I was dating someone because I seemed so happy.”

  She shot her head in his direction.

  “Really?”

  He laughed.

  “Really. Also, Kara says there might be a flurry of stories about us for a day or so and then people will get bored and move onto something else in the news cycle.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m really glad we’re doing this.”

  She nodded again, and tried to ignore that What have you gotten yourself into? rattling around in her head.