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.

She picked up her phone to text him.

Hi Senator—Thanks for the cake, it’s delicious. My schedule is pretty booked for the next few weeks, but

No, come on, that sounded laughable. He was a senator; his schedule was likely four times as packed as hers was.

Hi Senator—Thanks for the cake! But I’m not sure if

No, the exclamation point sent the wrong signal.

Hi Senator—The cake was very thoughtful, thank you. However

Should she call him Senator? Or Max? He’d signed the card Max, so it seemed overly formal to the point of rudeness to call him Senator after that.

Hi Max—Thanks for the cake, we all loved it. But I don’t know if

“Max” sounded too informal. He was a senator, after all, and she’d only really talked to him that one time. Better to not call him anything.

Hi, this is Olivia Monroe. Thanks for the cake, it was delicious. I hope all is well with you.

Well, that seemed perfectly appropriate and very cold. She didn’t feel that cold toward him.

She sighed. Fine. She’d call him.

Luckily, since it was just after six p.m., he was probably still in a meeting, or at a dinner, or with his staff or something—it would probably go to voice mail. If there was one thing that being a lawyer had taught her, it was how to leave a polite but firm voice mail. That was much easier than a text message.

She tapped out his number on her cell phone and waited for it to ring. She definitely wouldn’t have to talk to him; no senator would have his ringer on. And he definitely wouldn’t answer a number he didn’t know.

“Hello?”

Shit.

“Hello, Max?” Maybe it was a wrong number. It was probably a wrong number—she always did that when she actually had to type a number into her phone.

“Olivia?” His voice was warm, and slightly amused.

Nope. Not a wrong number.

“Um, yeah. Hi. How’d you know it was me?”

He laughed.

“Well, I only give this number out to a handful of people, and everyone else who has it is in my contacts. And you told me you were from Northern California, which made sense with your phone number—you never wanted a New York number?”