Party of Two Page 3

  “Ms. Monroe, it’s so nice to meet you. What law firm are you with?”

  Her smile turned wry for just a split second. Ah yes, she remembered that she’d told him she was an accountant.

  “My own,” she said. He saw the pride in her eyes. “Monroe and Spencer. A friend and I started it last month.”

  Well, she had moved to L.A. for work; that part had been true.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “And welcome to Los Angeles.”

  Olivia smiled at him, then glanced over at the executive director.

  “Thank you. It’s very exciting but also very busy. Which is why, as I told Bruce here, I might be too swamped to join the board for a while, but I’ll be thrilled to be involved in any way I can.”

  Bruce shook his head.

  “I was hoping the senator here would be able to convince you to join the board, but I understand.”

  She looked back at Max. She had on a gray pantsuit with a blue blouse and black high heels—the kind of standard outfit he was used to seeing women in. So why did it look so special on her? Why was that row of buttons on her blouse—buttoned high enough so they almost, but didn’t, show more of her curves underneath—so enticing?

  “I was excited to hear about all of your programs with teenagers,” she said. “And, Senator, I’m thrilled about your bill to demolish the school-to-prison pipeline.”

  Yes, yes, right, he was here to talk about his criminal justice reform bill, the entire reason he’d run for the Senate in the first place.

  “I’m so glad to hear that,” he said. “It’s by far my biggest priority in Washington.”

  Bruce beamed at Max.

  “We’re thrilled about your bill as well, Senator.” He glanced around the room and jumped. “Oh! Gloria is here, wonderful! Let me bring her over to meet you, just stay right here!”

  He scurried away, and Max and Olivia were finally left alone.

  “So you’re an accountant, huh?” he said under his breath.

  She shook her head, but with a smile on her face.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you about that. But my God, the things people say when you tell them you’re a lawyer! Sometimes I can’t deal with one more stupid lawyer joke.”

  He’d been thinking about this woman for weeks; he couldn’t believe he’d actually found her again. And that she was just as gorgeous and funny as he’d remembered.

  “Well, I certainly understand that.”

  She laughed. He liked how he could tell that was a real laugh, not an “I’m talking to a senator, better make him feel good about himself” kind of laugh.

  At least, he hoped so. He thought he was still able to distinguish between the two.

  “A while ago I started coming up with different jobs to tell cabdrivers, bartenders, and . . .” She glanced up at him with that grin again. “Friendly strangers sitting next to you at bars. Accountant is a good one, because no one ever asks questions.” She shook her head. “Well, except for you. But then, I didn’t realize at the time that I was lying to my senator.”

  He laughed.

  “Sorry for ruining it for you. I can’t help it if my job makes me have questions about things most people don’t care about.” He lowered his voice. “Accountant or attorney, I’m glad we ran into each other again. I wondered . . .”

  “Senator.” Andy was by his side again. “Apologies for the interruption, but we’re already running late to the event with Congresswoman Watson.”

  He held in a sigh. Andy was going to swoop him off to the next event, and he absolutely wouldn’t get another second to talk to Olivia Monroe without at least three people surrounding them. Oh great, now there were four. Honestly, it was a miracle they’d gotten about sixty seconds alone; he had to be grateful for that.

  “Yes, of course. Ms. Monroe, it was a pleasure to meet you today.”

  Her bland professional smile matched his.

  “Likewise, Senator.”

  They shook hands. He wished he could hold on to her hand longer, but he forced himself to let go.

  He turned to leave, just as Bruce raced over with someone else to introduce him to. Yes, he was very thankful he’d had that brief time alone with Olivia Monroe. Especially because now he knew not only her name but where she worked.

  * * *

  * * *

  Olivia turned back to her table to grab her purse with a smile still on her face. When she’d seen that senator Max Powell was going to be the keynote speaker for this luncheon, she wondered if he would remember her; that was, if he even noticed her in the crowd. And then, in the middle of his speech, he’d looked straight at her, and she could tell from his very unpolitician-like grin that he’d recognized her.

  If he were a normal person, and not a senator, she would have thought he was flirting with her when he smiled at her like that, and also when he talked to her just now. But politicians were charmers in that way—everyone must think Max Powell flirted with them. That was probably how he’d managed to win the Senate seat in the first place.

  She tried to put Max Powell out of her mind and made her slow way out of the ballroom. She hated that she couldn’t accept Bruce’s invitation to be on the board; it was exactly the kind of thing she’d love to do, and would be a great way to get to know her new city. But nonprofit board seats meant hefty donations, and she had to be careful with money right now. She wasn’t in a position to give any more than a nominal amount until she and Ellie truly got this firm off the ground. However, luncheons like this were prime networking opportunities—before she left the ballroom, she’d given out over twenty business cards to other lawyers and made coffee dates with three people she hadn’t seen in years. You never knew which connections could bring some sorely needed business to Monroe & Spencer.

  She got back to the office to find Ellie in the middle of hanging up artwork on the walls. Olivia looked around at the frames on the floor, the tools on the bookshelf, and the glee on Ellie’s face as she banged hooks into the wall with a hammer.

  “Having fun?”

  Ellie paused, hammer in the air.

  “Absolutely.” She brushed her immaculate hair back. “I love a chance to use a hammer in the middle of the workday. I’m going to have to keep this and a piece of wood and a pile of nails in my office, just to work off my rage for those times opposing counsel tries to talk down to me.”

  Olivia laughed.

  “‘Tries’ is the operative word there, Ellie. I don’t think anyone has actually gotten away with that in years.”

  Ellie lifted a painting and hung it carefully.

  “Oh, I know, but I still have to be diplomatic and all honey voiced as I hand their asses to them. Sometimes I just wish I could tell them to go fuck themselves—when those impulses come over me, I’ll just look at this hammer and feel better.”

  Ellie looked like the gentle, blond, polite, perfectly coiffed Southern girl that she was. Which is why it was all the more fun when people underestimated her.

  She and Olivia made an excellent team.

  Olivia sat down at her desk and spent the next few hours jumping back and forth between emails and phone calls with potential and existing clients, tinkering with their brand-new internal filing system, updating their website, and jumping on a quick call with their accountant. Back when she was a big-firm lawyer, she’d have only done the client work and nothing else; all of her administrative work was done for her like magic by her secretary and the firm. But she and Ellie had decided not to have any support staff, at least at the beginning, so they were learning how to do all of this themselves . . . some of it better than others.

  Just before five, Ellie knocked at her open office door with a twinkle in her eye.

  “Delivery for you, and it looks fun.”

  Olivia looked away from her computer screen for the first time in over an hour and blinked.
/>
  “Ooh, is it the pens I ordered?” It made her feel very boring to be so excited, but she really had been looking forward to those pens.

  Ellie shook her head.

  “Nope.” She held up a big white handled bag. “Looks like something from a bakery.”

  Olivia stood up from her desk and frowned.

  “I didn’t order anything from a bakery. It must be some mistake.”

  Ellie held up the delivery slip.

  “It says Olivia Monroe, Monroe and Spencer, and our address, right here.”

  Olivia took the bag from her and set it on her desk.

  “That’s weird. Maybe my sister sent me something?”

  Ellie’s phone rang, and she rushed to pick it up.

  “I’m coming back to see what that is!” she shouted on her way into her office.

  Olivia took the bakery box out of the bag. There was an envelope taped to the top, and she pulled it open with a smile on her face. What a nice thing for Alexa to do.

  To Olivia Monroe—just in case you’re still in search of some excellent cake. Good seeing you today. Maybe we can do it on purpose next time?

  Max

  213-555-4857

  No.

  This could not be.

  This was her sister playing a trick on her, right?

  She flipped open the box. Inside was a big layer cake, covered in chocolate frosting, with “Welcome to California” written on it in blue.

  She looked from the cake, to the note in her hand, back to the cake.

  This must be her sister. Except her sister didn’t know she’d seen Max today. No one did, as a matter of fact, except for the people who’d seen them talking for about forty-five seconds in the ballroom after the luncheon. And none of those people knew they’d met before. Or what they’d talked about.

  Olivia walked back around her desk and sat down, still staring at the note clutched in her hand.

  Had United States senator Max Powell really sent her a cake?

  And, in his note along with the cake . . .

  He couldn’t be asking her out, right?

  Yes, when she’d walked out of that elevator, she sort of thought that the hot white dude in the baseball cap she’d been flirting with for the past hour or so had been about to ask her out, sure. But that’s when she didn’t know the hot white dude in the baseball cap was Max Powell, hotshot junior senator from California.

  Was he really asking her out? From anyone else, this note would mean an unequivocal yes, but he was a senator!

  Was he some sort of scumbag who went around doing this all the time? It had only been—she looked at her watch—four hours from when she’d seen him at the luncheon and when the cake had arrived at her office. Only someone who was really practiced in this kind of thing would work that fast.

  Okay, maybe, but he’d obviously remembered their conversation at the bar three weeks ago—did scumbags do that? And if he was a scumbag, why hadn’t he pounced on her at the bar, anyway? She’d had enough experience with men to usually identify the creepy ones right off the bat—she wouldn’t have spent that long talking to him at the bar, gin or no gin, if he’d given her bad vibes.

  And yes, fine, she had spent more than a few moments in the last few weeks fantasizing about what could have happened if he’d invited her up to his room. And she had to admit he’d been pretty hot in his very-well-tailored suit and tie. Apparently she found both senator Max Powell and Max in the baseball cap equally attractive. A fling with him could definitely be fun . . . Wait. Was she actually considering this?

  Who was this guy even? All she knew about him was from the times she’d seen him on MSNBC, where he’d been appropriately respectful to Rachel Maddow and dodged questions about his presidential aspirations, but she needed to find out more. About both his politics and his personal life.

  But before she did any of that, she needed to eat a piece of this cake.

  Olivia found a knife and cut a fat slice of the cake. Three layers. Had she mentioned to Max that she loved a three-layer cake the best? She couldn’t remember.

  She took a bite, and closed her eyes in a silent celebration. This was exactly what she’d been craving that night—rich, tender, chocolaty cake, between layers of dark chocolate frosting. It was perfect.

  Now, to see if the man measured up to the cake.

  Unlikely.

  She turned to her computer.

  Senator Max Powell girlfriend was her first Google search. There she discovered that he’d had a serious girlfriend when he was DA here in L.A., but they’d broken up before he started his bid for the Senate, so almost three years ago. She couldn’t find any evidence of his dating someone since then. Okay, so—if he was indeed asking her out—he obviously just wanted something casual. Which was fine with her.

  Hmmm, what about Senator Max Powell scandal?

  There were a bunch of hits for that, and she was seconds from knocking the cake on the floor, until she realized they were all about his comments about a sexual harassment scandal in the Senate last year.

  I firmly and vigorously denounce the behavior of my colleague, and I insist that this chamber put into place a better procedure for reporting sexual harassment for employees.

  Okay. Well, that was an excellent statement. She’d read a lot of statements like this over the past few years, ones by a guy getting asked questions about another guy they worked with, and she wasn’t sure if she’d seen a better one. The cake was safe, thank God.

  Now to see how she felt about his policies.

  She knew instead of googling this she could just pick up the phone and call her sister, who had a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of every California politician, and Alexa would tell her everything she needed to know. But she wasn’t quite ready to tell Alexa about the cake from Senator Powell, and especially not the note along with the cake. She’d told her about the night at the bar, because it was funny, and she knew Alexa would appreciate it more than anyone else in her life. But that she was considering going out with him? Not yet. At a minimum, not until she’d at least made up her mind about that.

  However . . . she needed to find out how this man felt about a few key issues.

  “Oh my God, who sent you that cake?”

  Olivia looked up from her Senator Max Powell Black Lives Matter search to see Ellie standing at her office door.

  “Do you want some? It’s really good. We need to remember the name of this bakery.”

  Ellie had already picked up the knife and sliced herself a perfect wedge of cake.

  “Did it say ‘Welcome to California’? How sweet—was this your sister?” She tipped the slice onto a napkin and dropped into the seat across from Olivia.

  Olivia shook her head.

  “No, that’s what I initially thought, too, but . . .” She shook her head and then looked at Ellie with a grin on her face. “Okay, I have a story for you. A few weeks ago, before I’d moved into my place, I went to grab dinner at my hotel bar after work. And, well . . .”

  Ellie’s eyes got bigger and bigger as Olivia went on. When she finally got to the cake, Ellie snatched the note right out of her hand.

  “Max Powell sent you this cake? People call him the hot senator.”

  Olivia grinned.

  “Yes, my Google searches have taught me that. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize him at the bar.”

  Ellie popped the last bite of cake into her mouth.

  “I can’t believe the hot senator sent you this cake!” She waved the note in the air. “With this note on it!”

  She propped the note up against the cake box.

  “What did he say when you called him? When are you going to see him again? Where does a senator take a woman out on a date, anyway?”

  Olivia pursed her lips.

  “I haven’t . . . exactl
y . . . called him yet. I’m still deciding if I’m going to do that.”

  Ellie frowned at her. Olivia almost laughed—when Ellie, the woman with a perpetual smile on her face, tried to frown, she looked like a little kid playing with facial expressions.

  “When you say, ‘I’m still deciding if I’m going to do that,’ do you mean you’re deciding if you’re going to call him versus text him, or do you mean you’re still deciding if you’re going to get in touch with him at all?”

  Olivia cut herself another piece of cake.

  “The latter. I don’t have time for men right now, Ellie! Especially not . . . complicated men.”

  Ellie dropped her napkin onto the desk.

  “Oh, come on. Call the man! Or text him, whatever. This is a really good cake!”

  Olivia laughed at that. It was just like Ellie to have her priorities straight.

  “It is a really good cake, but what if he sends cakes like this to every woman he has the slightest interest in? I don’t want to be just one of Max Powell’s conquests.”

  Ellie picked her cake up again.

  “That’s an excellent point, and all the more reason to find out. Call him, see if he’s trying to woo just some random woman he met at a bar, or if he’s trying to woo you, specifically.”

  Ellie stood up and went to the door.

  “But before you do any of that, respond to that email Daphne sent us, would you? She likes you better than me.”

  Olivia minimized her many tabs open to stories about senator Max Powell and clicked over to her email. Daphne had sent this forty-five minutes ago; she couldn’t believe she’d wasted all that time researching a man instead of responding to a potential client.

  See, she didn’t have time for men. She was here in L.A. to concentrate on work, not to get “wooed” by anyone. Ellie knew that, what was she even talking about?

  But she couldn’t just leave senator Max Powell hanging after he’d sent her a cake. He’d been perfectly friendly and not at all creepy; she would be rude to just ignore this gift. Plus, who knows, she might run into him again, and she didn’t want to seem like the asshole here.