When she got back from the bakery the next morning, a ham-and-cheese croissant in her hand, and a chocolate croissant in her purse for later, there was a vase full of bright spring flowers on her doorstep. She picked them up and stared at them, and then plucked off the note taped to the side of the vase.

Sorry I had to run last night—can I get a do-over? I leave for DC this afternoon, but maybe we can see each other again next weekend? I had a great time last night—hope you have a good week.

Max

Well. Maybe she’d been wrong about that “emergency” after all.

Chapter Four

Max sank down on the couch as soon as he let himself into his DC apartment on Monday night. He was starving, but too tired to search through their fridge for food. Congress had started back up again with a vengeance after their week of recess—he’d been racing from place to place all day, with four overlapping committee meetings, a meeting with some lobbyists, and then all the usual business on the Senate floor he half paid attention to. It must have been equally as busy over on the House side; his roommate and friend, freshman representative Wesley Crawford, wasn’t even home yet.

He and Wes had been friends since college. They’d been an unexpected pair, he the rich white kid from Beverly Hills, Wes the Black athlete from the Central Valley, but somehow their friendship had stuck ever since. They’d taken very different paths to get here—Max had gone straight to law school and become a prosecutor, then the L.A. district attorney; Wes had become a teacher, then moved to the school board, and then ran for the open House of Representatives seat in his hometown two years before.

Max had been stunned when Wes suggested they share this apartment, after their disastrous stint as roommates in college. “You’re neater now though, right? It’s been twenty years,” immaculately tidy Wes had said. Max was not neater now, but he promptly hired a cleaning service to come to their apartment once a week to preserve their friendship. Thank goodness for Wes; these past sixteen months in the Senate had been stressful and lonely as it was; it would have been so much worse if he’d come back to this bland, generic, furnished apartment alone every night. At least now he had Wes to vent with whenever either of them needed it.