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

by Jasmine Guillory

Had he really just . . . . You know what, nope, she was just going to ignore that.

  She joined in the smiles and handshakes and jokes as the five of them stood up and she and Ellie got ready to leave.

  “Oh, and another thing,” Brad said to her by the conference room door. “Tell that boyfriend of yours I like him a lot, but that he should lighten up on all of the talk about taxes, will you? We have high enough taxes, living in California, I’m sure you agree!” He would have patted her on the shoulder, but Olivia stepped backward, so his hand just swatted through the air.

  “You should give his office a call and let him know your thoughts. The number is on his website,” Olivia said. Her face was devoid of the politician smile or, indeed, any smile at all.

  Had this man really just given her a message to pass along to her boyfriend, the senator? And then tried to pat her on the shoulder? Was that why he’d hired her? Not for her experience, or her accomplishments, or her preparation, but because he thought he would have a direct line to a senator with her as his lawyer?

  “Gentlemen, we should be clear,” Ellie said. “If you’re hiring Monroe and Spencer, you’re hiring the two of us. And that’s all. I hope no one has a problem with that?”

  All three men shook their heads.

  “I was at that Dolly Parton concert at the Hollywood Bowl, too, wasn’t it great?” one of the men behind Brad blurted out.

  Olivia tried to remember how to smile.

  “Indeed. It was my first time at the Hollywood Bowl, actually.”

  All of the men exclaimed at this, and spent a few minutes relating their favorite trips to the Hollywood Bowl as they ushered Olivia and Ellie out of the conference room and waved good-bye.

  Ellie smiled brightly at Olivia as they walked out of the building and toward her car.

  “We’ll talk about it when we get into the car,” Ellie said between her gleaming white teeth. “You never know who is listening around these tech companies.”

  They got in the car, and Ellie gunned the motor.

  “We’re getting the hell out of this parking lot before we talk about anything,” she said. They drove a mile down the road without speaking, a Beyoncé song from Olivia’s power playlist the only thing breaking the silence in the car. Ellie pulled into a fast-food parking lot and threw the car into park. Olivia started talking before the car was off.

  “Ellie, what the HELL just happened back there?” She stopped herself. “I’m sorry, I’m not yelling at you, I’m yelling with you, you know that, right? I just have to yell right now.”

  Ellie slipped out of her blazer and folded it on her lap.

  “Yell as much as you want. Yell for the rest of the day, at minimum, as far as I’m concerned. I can’t believe he did that.”

  Olivia shook her fists in the air.

  “I can’t believe he did that! ‘Tell your boyfriend’—what the fuck? In what world is that ever appropriate? But it’s especially inappropriate when my boyfriend is a fucking senator! I let that comment about getting in trouble with the law go, even though it annoyed me; I’m sure his experiences getting into trouble as a privileged white dude were a lot different than mine. But ‘Tell your boyfriend’ was my limit, Ellie!”

  Ellie pulled out her phone.

  “Say the word and I’ll email that asshole and tell him we don’t want his business.”

  Olivia pulled her blazer off and tossed it into the back seat.

  “Let me think about that. I can’t decide which one would be better: a cold refusal to do business with them or charging them a great deal of money for our work.”

  Ellie grinned.

  “Either one would be satisfying, but you’re the one to make this call.”

  Olivia put her hand on Ellie’s arm.

  “Thanks. I really appreciate that. And I’m sorry, again, that all of this drama has had an impact on our firm. That’s the last thing I ever wanted.”

  Ellie patted her on the cheek.

  “You don’t have to apologize for that, either. We’re in this together, remember?”

  Olivia smiled at her.

  “I remember.” Ellie started the car and rounded the parking lot to pull into the drive-through. “Two large fries, one regular Coke, one diet,” she said into the speaker.

  Ellie took the cash Olivia handed her and pulled forward.

  “And, Olivia Grace, you hear me, you’re not going back to the office, you’re going straight home. I can tell you didn’t get a wink of sleep last night, and I need you to rest. I’d take your phone away from you for the night if I didn’t think you’d kill me for it.”

  Olivia took the bag of food from Ellie and pulled out a fry.

  “I know when I get Olivia Grace’d I’d better do what you say.”

  Olivia fell asleep about five minutes after she walked into her house. She woke up in a panic to the sound of a door opening and closing. Had someone just broken into her house?

  Before she could react, Max appeared at the door of her bedroom, suit on, briefcase over his shoulder, hair in full Senator Shellac.

  “Max?” She sat bolt upright. What was he doing here? It was still Wednesday, wasn’t it? She hadn’t somehow slept for two days straight?

  He smiled and dropped his briefcase on the floor.

  “There you are. I didn’t expect you to be home this early, but then I saw your car outside.”

  She rubbed her eyes.

  “I . . . what are you doing here? Aren’t you in DC? I mean . . . you know what I mean.”

  He sat at the foot of her bed.

  “I fly back tonight on a red-eye. I had to see you. These past few days, those stories . . . I’m so sorry, Olivia. I didn’t realize how bad this would be. I couldn’t wait until Friday. I hope you meant it when you said you wished I was here.”

  She stared at him. Was this a dream? Had he really flown across the country just to see her for a few hours, because of an idle wish on her part? Her lingering anger at Max faded away.

  “I’m so glad you came.” She blinked away the tears that had sprung to her eyes. “It’s really good to see you.”

  He pulled her into his arms.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see someone,” he said in her ear. “I’m so sorry. I should have done something to prevent this.”

  They sat like that for what felt like hours, just holding each other.

  Finally, she kissed his cheek and pulled back, but kept her hand in his.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I needed that.”

  He kissed her softly.

  “I did, too. Badly. How did the pitch go?”

  She laughed.

  “At first really well. I was worried they’d say something shitty to me, especially after those stories over the past few days, but . . . well, they sort of did, but they also offered us the job. In part, it seems, because of you.” She held up her hand at the look on Max’s face. “I know, I know, I was pissed, too, and so was Ellie. We’re still figuring out whether we’re going to take it.”

  “I’m not sure whether to congratulate you or commiserate with you,” Max said.

  Olivia leaned her head against his chest.

  “Both sound great right now.”

  Max kissed her again, then pulled his phone out of his pocket.

  “Speaking of those stories. Kara didn’t want me to read them, but I did, and on the plane I drafted this press release telling them all to stop being so racist and also to fuck off.” He shrugged. “Not quite in those terms, but close. I sent it to Kara on my way here so it could go out first thing in the morning, but she suggested I show it to you first.”

  Olivia’s eyes widened as she scanned the draft on his phone. She quietly sent up a thank-you for the existence of Kara.

  “Max, this is one of the most romantic things anyone has ever done for me, so thank you, and also, I’ll murder you if you send this.” She paused, and then raised her voice. “Wait, I won’t actually murder you, sorry about that; this is not a
threat to a member of Congress, if you’re listening, FBI, that was a figure of speech. What I meant by that was, I’m thrilled by your vigorous defense of me, your ability to recognize racism, loud and subtle, and especially your recognition of your own privilege, but no, absolutely don’t send out this press release. We want these headlines about us to die down, not flame back up, remember? This is like pouring oil on the embers; it’ll start another round of articles and summaries and phone calls to my parents and sister, and I want all of that to stop.”

  He sat back.

  “You didn’t tell me they’d called your parents and your sister.”

  Damn it. She hadn’t told him that on purpose; she knew he’d lose it.

  “Of course they have; come on, you knew they would. But what I’m saying is, they’ll stop after a while, once we get boring to them. Please let us get boring to them, okay?”

  He slid his phone back into his pocket.

  “Okay. Even though I really want to tell those assholes off, okay.”

  She stood up, and pulled him with her.

  “Good, now that’s settled. Hopefully, in a few months, this will be nothing more than a lovely story someone tells a kid in trouble about rising from adversity. ‘If Olivia Monroe could get arrested as a teenager and later be the founding partner at one of the top law firms in Los Angeles, you can, too!’ they’ll say.”

  Max followed her into the kitchen.

  “One of the top law firms in Los Angeles, huh?” he said.

  She took leftover pizza out of the refrigerator.

  “People always told me to dream big, you know.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Max was home for the weekend a week later—the last weekend before August recess—and he had to admit Olivia had been right. Maybe because they’d been boring, or maybe because much bigger news had knocked them out of the headlines, but the stories about them had almost completely died down. Random pictures of Olivia still popped up from time to time—once heading into the community center, another time walking into the gym—but even the paparazzi didn’t care about them anymore after those first few awful days.

  They still took precautions—Olivia had swapped cars with different friends to make it harder to follow her; she and Ellie had hired a temp for a few weeks to answer their phones; and Max had stopped going to her house, for fear the press would discover where she lived. But other than all of that, life had mostly returned to normal.

  Max looked over at her, in her spot in the corner of his couch, and smiled. That line of tension that had been there on her forehead for the past month had faded. But . . . her shoulders still looked too tense as she hunched over her phone.

  What she needed was a vacation.

  Wait. Yes. What they both needed was a vacation! Max pulled up his calendar on his phone and smiled.

  “What are you doing next weekend?” he asked.

  Olivia sat up and narrowed her eyes at him.

  “I sort of assumed I’d be here—why, are you gone then? I thought your town halls didn’t start until the second week of August.”

  His staff had built in a few days of break for him, which he hadn’t had time to think about until just this moment.

  “This last month has been so hard, and I think we deserve an actual vacation,” he said.

  A smile spread across Olivia’s face.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  Max grinned at her.

  “Hawaii.”

  Olivia’s mouth dropped open.

  “Hawaii? For just the weekend?”

  Max shook his head.

  “For, let’s say . . . five days, if you can manage it? I get back here from DC on Thursday night, God willing—we can leave Friday morning, and come back, like . . . Tuesday night. I know the office has been pretty busy lately—can you take a few days off?”

  He’d fallen in love with this idea in the last two minutes. Now he just had to convince Olivia.

  “Ellie was lecturing me the other day to take a few days off,” she said. “But Hawaii? You know, I’ve actually never been. It was always too expensive for us to go there on vacations when I was growing up, and then I’ve been on the East Coast for so long and Hawaii is so far from there I didn’t even really think about it. Isn’t that kind of far for a five-day trip, though? And isn’t this kind of last-minute?”

  Max ignored that last question.

  “It’s a shorter flight from L.A. to Hawaii than it is from L.A. to DC—okay, barely, but it is shorter—and the amazing thing about flying to Hawaii is that, because of the time difference, you can take a nine a.m. flight from LAX and be on the beach by noon.”

  Well, that was a slight exaggeration, but it was worth it. He could already see the glimmer in her eye.

  “I like the sound of that. Go on.”

  Shit, that had been his main selling point; he hadn’t had to sell anyone on Hawaii in a while. What to say?

  “Second, I know a great hotel there—we won’t have to deal with press or anyone who gives a shit about either one of us. We’ll just lie by the beach or snorkel around and look at sea turtles, or lie by the pool drinking mai tais and eating poke, and it’ll be perfect.”

  She pressed her lips together, in that way he knew she did when she was fighting back a smile.

  “Beach, turtles, mai tais, poke . . . I love all of those things. But . . .” She stopped and looked at him. He tried to make his eyes extra pleading, and she laughed out loud.

  “If you think those puppy dog eyes are going to win me over . . . well, you’re correct, but to be fair, I was mostly already won over by all of that other stuff. Are you sure we can get a room in your dream of a hotel at this late date, though? It’s summer vacation, isn’t everyone in Hawaii?”

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket.

  “Let me make a call.”

  Five minutes later he hung up the phone with a grin on his face.

  “We have a room at the hotel from Friday until Tuesday. Are you in?”

  With a smile on her face, Olivia looked up from her phone.

  “I just double-checked with Ellie to make sure there’s nothing crucial, and she told me she’d fire me if I don’t take this trip, so . . . I guess I’m in.”

  Which is how they ended up in two first-class seats from LAX to Oahu that Friday morning. She fell asleep on his shoulder as soon as they took off, but he nudged her awake about an hour before they landed.

  “I don’t want you to miss your first descent into Hawaii,” he said.

  She smiled sleepily at him and turned to look out the window. For a while, nothing disturbed the endless blue of the ocean. And then, suddenly . . .

  “Is that it?” she asked.

  He peered over her shoulder and nodded.

  “That’s it. I can’t wait for you to see it.”

  They landed during a soft, warm rain. At first Max was disappointed that Olivia’s first views of Hawaii would be in the rain, until she pointed.

  “A rainbow!”

  She had a look of pure awe on her face. Max could have watched Olivia look at that rainbow for hours.

  The rainbow wavered in front of them as they drove away from the airport, but finally the sun came all the way out, and the rainbow disappeared, just as they made the turn toward their hotel.

  “Now,” Max said. “Let’s see just how fast we can plant our asses in lounge chairs by the pool.”

  They checked into their hotel in a flash, and raced, giggling, into their room to change. Olivia threw off her clothes almost before Max had his suitcase open, and before he could pounce on her, she’d pulled a bright red bikini on and slipped on flip-flops. He reassured himself that he’d have plenty of opportunities to pounce on her this weekend.

  “What’s taking you so long? I thought this was a race.” Olivia grinned at him, her hat in one hand and a bottle of sunscreen in the other. “Get my back, will you?”

  She handed him the sunscreen and turned her back to him. And then she g
asped and walked toward the window.

  “What is it?” He dropped the sunscreen on the bed and followed her.

  “This view. Holy shit.” She stared outside at the golden beach, bright blue water, and choppy white waves, then turned back around to him. “Why do you still have pants on? Let’s go!”

  But Olivia didn’t let him stop at the lounge chairs by the pool. Instead, they went straight to the beach. She dropped her beach bag in the sand, and they ran into the water holding hands. They both recoiled at the impact of the freezing cold Pacific Ocean, then grinned at each other and went in deeper.

  “You’re right,” Olivia said to him, once they’d both treaded water in silence for a few minutes. “Hawaii is perfect.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her. She tasted like salt water and lip balm and happiness.

  “Now Hawaii is perfect,” he said.

  Later that afternoon, Olivia pushed back her wide-brimmed straw hat and smiled up at the sky, and at Max, in the lounge chair next to hers. She’d been more stressed about this last-minute vacation than she’d let on to Max. She’d had to get a ton of work done, bring Ellie up to speed on her clients in case she had to cover something while Olivia was gone, and find a swimsuit that not only fit her boobs and ass, but one that actually looked good on her, and all in less than a week. But it had all been worth it. The sun felt so good on her skin. She’d spent so much time this year inside her office building or her house—or Max’s house—she’d barely taken advantage of the L.A. weather. She hadn’t even been to the beach since she’d moved back! Sure, the beach was all the way on the Westside, but that was still closer than Hawaii. She made a pledge to herself to get to the beach more often.

  She kept her sunglasses on as she looked around the pool; after the past few weeks in L.A., she constantly felt like she was being watched, which was only partly paranoia, after that one really bad week. She still felt smug about one of the paparazzi pictures, though—someone had taken it as she’d walked toward her gym, brand-new athleisure on and yoga mat in hand. She’d looked sporty and friendly, and like she had no idea anyone was taking her picture. As soon as she walked into the gym, the employees had smuggled her out the back door. When that picture had popped up online, she cheered.