“Plenty of time.”

She closed her eyes as his hands roamed over her body.

“Oh thank God.”

Forty minutes later, they got out of Max’s big shower, and she pulled her shower cap off.

“Okay, but really—what’s tonight going to be like?” she asked.

He rubbed a towel over his hair.

“Did your old law firm used to have holiday parties?”

She opened the drawer where she kept all of her toiletries.

“Yeah—lots of standing around, holding a drink in one hand and a plate in the other, and trying somehow to shake hands with people. Occasionally someone would get too drunk and make a fool out of themselves, a few boring speeches, frequent low-level sexual harassment, the usual.”

Max nodded.

“It’ll be a lot like that, hopefully without that last thing. Though—incredibly—the egos will all be bigger.” He combed a dollop of gel through his hair with his fingers. “The good thing, though, is that I always get to arrive late and leave after exactly an hour. It’s amazing what you can get away with as a senator, I’m telling you.”

He gave her that cocky grin, and she couldn’t help but grin back at him. Damn, she loved this man.

As soon as they walked into the party, though, all of her fears and what-ifs from earlier in the day came back to her with the first words out of their host’s mouth.

“Senator Powell! This must be Olivia! Shouldn’t your woman be in blue, not red?”

No So nice to meet you, no Hi, Olivia, my name is Asshole, not even a Would you like something to drink? before he was calling her Max’s woman and assuming Max had decision-making power over her wardrobe.

Max ignored the last sentence, and put his hand on her back.

“Olivia, this is a very old friend of mine, Cary Thompson. Cary, this is my girlfriend, Olivia Monroe.”

Olivia forced her face into a smile and reached out to shake Cary’s hand.

“Hi, Cary, thanks for having me.” Was it petty that she refused to say Nice to meet you? Maybe, but did she care? No.

She kept the fake smile on her face as she and Max and Cary walked outside to Cary’s enormous multilevel deck.

“Jerry! Hey, great to see you, happy Fourth!” Max said to someone who came up to them. “I’d like to introduce you to my girlfriend, Olivia Monroe.”

Then it hit her. Max was introducing her to everyone tonight as his girlfriend. He’d never done that before.

She liked it.

Jerry nodded to her and shook her hand.

“Olivia, it’s lovely to meet you. You’re a lawyer, I hear? Tell me about the kind of work you do.”

What a relief that not everyone here would just see her as a Max appendage.

Cary brought her a glass of wine—at least he was good for something—and Max a beer, and they each stood there nursing their drinks for thirty minutes while they chatted with an endless number of people. Most of them were perfectly nice and friendly to her, though obviously very curious. Max stayed glued to her side the whole time, which she found both unnecessary and completely charming—she’d been to lots of cocktail parties, she knew how to play this game, but it was lovely of him to want to protect her.

After a while, Max’s staffer Andy came up and nodded to him. Olivia hadn’t even realized Andy was at the party. Max turned to wink at her, then walked over to Cary’s side.

“If you’ll all indulge me for a moment,” he said into a microphone that seemed to magically appear in his hand, “I’d like to thank you all for being here, and wish you all a happy Fourth of July!”

The whole party cheered, Olivia among them. Max kept talking—just your standard politician patriotic speech, but somehow, it sounded great coming from him. Olivia felt a swell of pride for Max and what a good man and politician and public servant he was, and that she was here with him. To be here, by his side, with his eyes on her, and that special smile just for her—that felt incredible. Suddenly the publicity and the reporters and the photographers and the constant smiling and the people who looked at her strangely and talked down to her didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was Max, who was both a senator and a man she loved very much. And he mattered more than anything else.

As soon as his speech was over, Andy was at her elbow.

“Ms. Monroe, the senator would like you to meet him at the front door as soon as you’re able to do so.”

She glanced at her watch. It had been exactly an hour since they’d arrived. Max hadn’t been kidding.

“Will do. Thanks, Andy.”

Granted, it took Max fifteen more minutes to actually get out of the event, but at least he’d made the effort.

“I’m impressed by that exit,” she said as they got in his car. “It’s getting dark—I assumed we’d stay for the fireworks.”

He turned to grin at her as he turned on the car.

“I have another plan for the fireworks.”

He drove them up into the hills, where they joined a bunch of other cars at a lookout point. Before they got out of the car, he pulled a hoodie over his button-down and put his old UCLA hat on. She took the sweatshirt he tossed her, and pulled it on over her dress. They sat on the trunk of his car, and he wrapped his arm around her.

“We made it just in time,” he said.

There were crackles in the sky, and they both looked up to see the first explosion of white stars over their heads. She laughed and clapped.

“I love fireworks so much,” she said.

He kissed her cheek.

“So do I.”

They watched the bursts and shooting stars light up the sky, her head on his shoulder, their fingers intertwined. After a while she looked up at him and saw the red and white lights of the fireworks dance across his face.

“I’m really happy,” she said.

He looked at her for a long moment.

“I am, too. It was really good to have you with me tonight, you know.” He brushed an invisible hair off her face. “We make a good team.”

She looked into his eyes and smiled.

“We sure do,” she said. “And speaking of that: I thought we were going to eat at that party, but all I had was two glasses of wine, and I’m starving. Can we get burgers on the way home?”

He laughed.

“Absolutely.”

Chapter Seventeen

Two weeks later, Max was in his office in DC, reading briefing materials for his afternoon committee meeting, when Kara walked into his office with barely a knock and shut the door.

“Excuse me, Senator? We have a situation.”

He dropped his papers on his desk. Whenever Kara used those words and that tone, it wasn’t good.

“What’s up?”

Her mouth was in a tight line.

“I just got a call from someone at Politico, wanting to know if we had a comment about the story they’re going to run about Olivia Monroe’s arrest as a teenager.”

He made a fist and then forced himself to flex his hand. Shit. This was bad. He had to call Olivia.

“What did you tell them?”

Kara narrowed her eyes at him.

“I told him I would get back to him in ten minutes. Before I can do that, I have two questions for you. The first is, did you know about this before I walked into your office just now?”