Party of Two (The Wedding Date #5)(46)

His ball went flying down the lane, and it knocked down about half the pins. Olivia nodded slowly.

“Good job, look, you got—what, five of the little sticks down.”

He laughed.

“Pins, and I’m kind of rusty, but thanks. I also haven’t done this for a while, though for me it was less than two years ago. Right after I got elected, actually. We had a little bowling alley victory party for the campaign staff. Though that night I drank a lot more beer and hugged a lot more people than pins I knocked down. Here, I get one more try before it’s your turn.”

He picked up his ball again and threw it down the lane; three pins fell that time.

“I used to be better at this, I promise,” he said as he walked back to join Olivia.

She stood up and patted him on the shoulder.

“You seem pretty good at it to me.” She picked up her sparkly bowling ball and walked toward the lane. Max stood to the side to watch her with a smile on his face.

“You do it like this, right?” She took a few quick steps forward, swung her arm back, and released her ball straight down the middle of the lane. It flew all the way down and, SMACK, knocked all ten pins over in seconds. Max’s mouth dropped open.

Olivia threw her arms in the air.

“I’ve still got it!”

She turned to Max with a cocky grin and saw realization dawn over his face.

“You . . . you were conning me!” he said. “With that whole ‘oh, big, strong man, how do you hold a bowling ball’ act. Weren’t you?”

Her grin got bigger.

“I couldn’t help myself! Plus, I haven’t gone bowling in years, so I wasn’t sure if I’d still be good at it, but turns out I am.”

He stared at her without saying anything.

She sighed inwardly. She knew this was how he’d react. That’s why she’d done it.

She hadn’t initially meant to pretend to Max that she didn’t know much about bowling. It wasn’t like she’d been testing him—well, not exactly. But she knew all too well that men didn’t like it when you beat them at something. She learned that at a very young age when she beat Chris Riley in the spelling bee in third grade and he didn’t want to be her friend anymore. For a long time after that, she’d lost to boys on purpose, until one time when she lost a prize she really wanted to win, to a boy who didn’t even like her in the first place. Since then she’d played to win in everything she did, which, yes, had made her lose out on a few relationships, but at least she’d never lost her self-respect.

So when Max suggested bowling, she’d known she might beat him. And despite how great he was last week, despite how much he said he liked her and respected her, she knew that with men, like and respect only went so far. And so for the first time in a very long time, she’d thought about finding a way to back out of playing a game with a man so she wouldn’t have to face losing Max. But she knew she’d always wonder how Max would react if she beat him. So instead, she challenged herself to play to win, and to win big, to win with swagger, just so she’d know, once and for all, that Max Powell was just like all of the other guys.

“Are you mad about this?” she asked. “Because, oh man, if you can’t handle— ”

“I’m falling in love with you,” he cut in. “I was trying not to even admit it to myself, much less to you, but I can’t help it. I know it’s too soon, I shouldn’t have said this, but you can’t kick my ass at bowling like that and do a touchdown dance with that look on your face and expect me not to fall in love with you on the spot.”

Now it was her turn to stare at him, speechless.

He was falling in love with her? Not despite her ambition, but because of it? It was the triumphant, victorious look on her face when she’d beat him in bowling that made him realize it?

“I— ” she said, and then stopped. She hated how Max’s face lit up and then fell when she didn’t finish the sentence, but she had no idea what to say.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to say something back,” he said. “I didn’t mean to say all of that just now, obviously. Or maybe not obviously, I don’t know, we still don’t know each other all that well, which might make everything I just said sound ridiculous, but— ”

“It didn’t sound ridiculous,” she said in a quiet voice.

His eyes drilled into hers, and a smile slowly dawned over his face.

“Good,” he said. “Now, let’s talk about something else. Um, how’s the firm going? Unless you don’t want to talk about that, that might still be stressful, um, how’s the food pantry, did you go there this week?”

She took a sip of beer and tried to pull her mind away from what Max had just said.

“The firm is going . . . okay. Ellie and I are both working every avenue to get business, which is all we can do, and the handful of clients we have seem to like our work a lot, which is key. We’ve gotten a few small projects lately, and that’s promising. I’m still anxious about it, though. I just wish we had one more big client; then maybe I could take a deep breath.” She picked up a nacho. “And yeah, I did go to the food pantry this week. I’m really glad I started going there—I think Jamila, the woman who runs it, and I are becoming actual friends, which is great. I told you about her; she’s the one who helped me get the car. And she had this really great idea for getting teens more involved with their work.”