“Holy shit,” he said as he rolled to the side and pulled her against him.

“Mmmhmm,” was all she could respond. After a few seconds, she looked up at him.

“If all hikes end like that, I wish I’d gotten into hiking years ago,” she said.

He laughed and then gave her a look that made her dizzy.

“You make me so happy, Olivia Monroe,” he said, right before he kissed her again.

Chapter Ten

Max poked his head into Kara’s office when he got in on Monday morning.

“Hey, do you have a minute to chat? I want to talk to you about something.”

Kara followed him into his office.

“Anything wrong, sir?”

He flicked the lights on and sat down behind his desk, coffee in hand. After … everything that had happened between him and Olivia after the hike, he ended up never sending that text to Kara, so he’d decided to wait to talk to her in person.

“No, no, nothing’s wrong, the opposite. I had an idea over the weekend. Well, actually, it wasn’t my idea—I was talking to a friend about the criminal justice reform bill and it was their idea.”

Not for the first time, he wanted to tell Kara about Olivia. Partly so he’d be able to actually give her credit for this idea, but also because Olivia was becoming a bigger and bigger part of his life, and it felt absurd that Kara didn’t know about her. Kara had been by his side for three years now—he either saw or talked to her almost every day, and the days they didn’t talk, they texted or emailed. She knew everything about him, almost. Except for this.

But no, he couldn’t tell her yet. It would be completely inappropriate for him to tell someone who worked for him about his new relationship. Besides, it wasn’t like this was the kind of thing they talked about; all he knew about her personal life was that she’d once brought her girlfriend to the office holiday party. He hoped he’d get to tell Kara about Olivia eventually, but that would be when he and Olivia were ready to go public, and they weren’t there yet. No matter how great things had been over the weekend (and they’d been really, phenomenally great)—that wasn’t in the plan for the immediate future.

“What was the idea, sir?” Kara asked.

Right, the idea.