“Yes! This is exactly what I’m talking about—dessert menus should have ice-cream sandwiches with cookies like this, and cakes, and pies, instead of this pistachio tart nonsense.”

Max laughed.

“I’ll add that to my platform,” he said.

Olivia took the last sip of her drink and pushed the glass toward Krystal.

“You joke, but I think someone needs to start a movement here.”

That had been a close one. Max added cream to his coffee and mentally kicked himself for his stupid “platform” comment. This woman obviously didn’t know who he was; why would he say something to help her figure it out?

Granted, most people didn’t recognize him when he wasn’t in uniform as Maxwell Stewart Powell III, junior United States Senator from California, at least not immediately, and that’s the way he liked it. Sometimes it dawned on them after a while, though, especially if he’d been on TV recently, and he’d been on TV a lot these days.

But Olivia obviously had no idea who he was—that had been clear from her withering “even this guy agrees with me” comment when he’d joined her conversation. No one had talked down to him like that in years.

Why did he like it so much?

He had no idea, but he knew he didn’t want this woman to figure out who he was and laugh at all of his stupid jokes like everyone else did these days. She barely even smiled at him, and the one time she had, he felt like he’d won a prize. It was weirdly nice to have to fight for a smile for the first time in a long time.

“So, Olivia, where did you move from? To move to L.A., I mean.”

She pushed some of her curly hair back into her bun and gave him that half-suspicious look again.

“New York. But I’m a native Californian—I grew up in the Bay Area.”

He lifted his coffee cup to toast to her.

“Well, welcome home.”

She touched her cup to his.

“Thanks. It’s good to be back. Even though L.A. is a lot different from the Bay Area, it still feels like coming home. But I’ve realized I only know L.A. from the perspective of a visitor, not a resident, so I have a lot to figure out. I haven’t even bought a car yet.”

He shook his head.

“You let yourself get too New York when you moved away. Soon you’re going to start lamenting the state of the bagels and pizza in California, and insisting you really can get good tacos in New York if you know where to look.”

Olivia burst out laughing.

He’d made her laugh. What a victory. Now all he wanted was to do it again.