Olivia made a face.

“The opposite. It was from a reporter. I texted Max, but during the day he’s usually so busy I don’t hear back from him for hours. I don’t . . .” She picked up her coffee, then put it down. “What am I supposed to do? They didn’t prepare me for this.”

Ellie sat down.

“What did you say?”

Olivia stared at her phone, willing Max to respond.

“ ‘No comment,’ which made me feel like I was on TV or something. Is that what people actually say?”

Ellie got up.

“Yes, that’s what people actually say. Just keep saying that until you hear back.” She came around Olivia’s desk and leaned in for a hug. “You knew this was going to happen, right? This will be fine.”

Olivia nodded slowly.

“I mean, I guess I knew it would happen eventually, but this was all so fast. I guess I just wasn’t ready.”

The phone rang again, and she and Ellie looked at each other. Olivia took a deep breath and picked it up.

“Olivia Monroe.” She paused for a second, and locked eyes with Ellie. “No comment.”

“I guess that’s what today is going to be like,” she said when she put the phone down.

“Olivia Monroe,” she said yet again, thirty minutes and ten phone calls later. She’d started answering the phone like that, instead of “Monroe and Spencer” like she had before, just to make these interactions move along faster.

“Ms. Monroe, this is Kara Ruiz from Senator Powell’s office.” Oh thank God. “I owe you an apology—I started getting calls from reporters about you about an hour ago, but I was outside of the office at a meeting where I couldn’t have my phone. I assume you’ve gotten some calls to this number?”

Olivia had assumed she’d like Kara, just from the way Max talked about her. But the competent, brisk, warm tone to her voice immediately made her feel better.

“Kara, it’s good to talk to you, I’ve heard a lot about you. And yes, there have been many calls to this number over the past hour or so. I’ve just said ‘no comment’ to all of them—was that right?”

This was definitely one of those rare times where she couldn’t wait for someone else to tell her what to do.

“Yes, that was right, just keep saying that. I’ll ask them not to call you again, and many of them will respond to that, but not all, I’m sorry to say. It’ll probably be best if you have your secretary answer this line, at least for the next few days. You’re pretty easy to find; this is the number on your website.”

Easy to find: great for business, bad for when you were trying to dodge the press.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have a secretary; it’s just me and my business partner. If it gets bad, she might step in, though.”

Ellie had offered to take over and blow off all the reporters for her, but she’d felt like at least one of them should be able to get work done today.

“That might be a good idea, at least for a little while. It’s a rare slow news day, which must be why everyone’s running with this. And again, I’m so sorry we haven’t spoken before. I should have insisted on speaking to you last week, but this all moved so fast. That’s no excuse, though.”

Olivia brushed that off.

“Please don’t apologize. I should have expected this to happen this morning; I was naive not to. Can you tell me . . .” She didn’t even know how to phrase this. “How bad will it get?”

She didn’t know why she was asking this of Kara, a woman she’d never met, or even talked to before, and not Max, her boyfriend. But then, maybe it was because she already got the sense that Kara might know the truth more than Max would.

Kara’s voice softened.

“I don’t think it’ll be that bad—probably a flurry of phone calls over the next day or so, and then there will be another big story of the day, and people will lose interest. There might be some racial elements to some of the stories, though—I just want to prepare you for that.”

Yeah, she’d expected that.

“I figured there would be. I just didn’t know if the calls and stuff would go on for, like, days, or weeks or months.”

If it went on for months . . .

“Don’t worry, it shouldn’t last that long. Though . . .” Kara paused. “There might be a rush to get more pictures of the two of you together. You can do it whatever way you want; it could be easier to just get that over with early on, but I understand if you may not want to do that.”

Olivia tried to imagine that. Her and Max, out to dinner, and then walking out of the restaurant to an army of paparazzi. That sounded like a nightmare.

“I’ll . . . I’ll think about that.” The phone rang again, and she heard Ellie pick it up in her office. “I should go; I think that was another reporter calling for me. Not that I want to talk to them, but . . .”

Kara laughed.

“I understand. And hopefully the calls will quiet down soon. I’ll make a number of calls as soon as I hang up. Also, Ms. Monroe— ”

Olivia broke in.

“Olivia, please.”

Kara laughed.

“As the senator will tell you, I tend to stick with formality. But I’m going to make sure the senator gives you my contact information; I’m often more reachable than he is, so please feel free to contact me at any time if there’s an issue, okay?”

Did that mean Kara expected there to be an issue? No, don’t think that way, Olivia. She was probably just planning for all contingencies; she seemed like that kind of person.

“Okay, will do. And thank you. Thanks very much.”

Seconds after she hung up the phone, Ellie ran into her office, a broad grin on her face.

“Oh no,” Olivia said. “What did you say to those reporters?”

Ellie laughed.

“Nothing, nothing, I just told them all you were unavailable in my most Southern accent. They almost purred at me. Men are so easy that way. No, it’s something else: that was Clementine calling—they want us to pitch them for some of their IP work!”

Olivia jumped up from her desk, and she and Ellie threw their arms around each other.

“When?” Olivia asked, when they finished jumping up and down.

“Not for a few weeks, their general counsel is going on vacation, so we have some time. They’re emailing us the details now.”

Olivia sat down at her desk and rubbed her hands together. This was the big chance they’d been waiting for. Who cared about a handful of phone calls from reporters now?

But . . .

“Ellie, I know we talked about this when I was deciding whether to go public with Max, but . . . what if this whole thing affects our firm? What if people think I’m not serious about my job, or that my focus is on my relationship, not my career, and don’t want to hire us?” She put her head in her hands. “I made that decision too fast; I shouldn’t have done it.”

Ellie dropped into the chair across from her.

“Liv, honey. Part of the reason we started this firm in the first place was that we were tired of caring what a bunch of assholes think about us, remember? The assholes will think what they think, but we don’t want to work for assholes anyway—better to have something like this to show us who they are. And plus . . .” Ellie winked at her. “Did you ever think this might be excellent publicity for us?”