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.”