Party of Two (The Wedding Date #5)(76)

They still took precautions—Olivia had swapped cars with different friends to make it harder to follow her; she and Ellie had hired a temp for a few weeks to answer their phones; and Max had stopped going to her house, for fear the press would discover where she lived. But other than all of that, life had mostly returned to normal.

Max looked over at her, in her spot in the corner of his couch, and smiled. That line of tension that had been there on her forehead for the past month had faded. But . . . her shoulders still looked too tense as she hunched over her phone.

What she needed was a vacation.

Wait. Yes. What they both needed was a vacation! Max pulled up his calendar on his phone and smiled.

“What are you doing next weekend?” he asked.

Olivia sat up and narrowed her eyes at him.

“I sort of assumed I’d be here—why, are you gone then? I thought your town halls didn’t start until the second week of August.”

His staff had built in a few days of break for him, which he hadn’t had time to think about until just this moment.

“This last month has been so hard, and I think we deserve an actual vacation,” he said.

A smile spread across Olivia’s face.

“What do you have in mind?”

Max grinned at her.

“Hawaii.”

Olivia’s mouth dropped open.

“Hawaii? For just the weekend?”

Max shook his head.

“For, let’s say . . . five days, if you can manage it? I get back here from DC on Thursday night, God willing—we can leave Friday morning, and come back, like . . . Tuesday night. I know the office has been pretty busy lately—can you take a few days off?”

He’d fallen in love with this idea in the last two minutes. Now he just had to convince Olivia.

“Ellie was lecturing me the other day to take a few days off,” she said. “But Hawaii? You know, I’ve actually never been. It was always too expensive for us to go there on vacations when I was growing up, and then I’ve been on the East Coast for so long and Hawaii is so far from there I didn’t even really think about it. Isn’t that kind of far for a five-day trip, though? And isn’t this kind of last-minute?”

Max ignored that last question.

“It’s a shorter flight from L.A. to Hawaii than it is from L.A. to DC—okay, barely, but it is shorter—and the amazing thing about flying to Hawaii is that, because of the time difference, you can take a nine a.m. flight from LAX and be on the beach by noon.”

Well, that was a slight exaggeration, but it was worth it. He could already see the glimmer in her eye.

“I like the sound of that. Go on.”

Shit, that had been his main selling point; he hadn’t had to sell anyone on Hawaii in a while. What to say?

“Second, I know a great hotel there—we won’t have to deal with press or anyone who gives a shit about either one of us. We’ll just lie by the beach or snorkel around and look at sea turtles, or lie by the pool drinking mai tais and eating poke, and it’ll be perfect.”

She pressed her lips together, in that way he knew she did when she was fighting back a smile.

“Beach, turtles, mai tais, poke . . . I love all of those things. But . . .” She stopped and looked at him. He tried to make his eyes extra pleading, and she laughed out loud.

“If you think those puppy dog eyes are going to win me over . . . well, you’re correct, but to be fair, I was mostly already won over by all of that other stuff. Are you sure we can get a room in your dream of a hotel at this late date, though? It’s summer vacation, isn’t everyone in Hawaii?”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket.

“Let me make a call.”

Five minutes later he hung up the phone with a grin on his face.

“We have a room at the hotel from Friday until Tuesday. Are you in?”

With a smile on her face, Olivia looked up from her phone.

“I just double-checked with Ellie to make sure there’s nothing crucial, and she told me she’d fire me if I don’t take this trip, so . . . I guess I’m in.”

Which is how they ended up in two first-class seats from LAX to Oahu that Friday morning. She fell asleep on his shoulder as soon as they took off, but he nudged her awake about an hour before they landed.

“I don’t want you to miss your first descent into Hawaii,” he said.

She smiled sleepily at him and turned to look out the window. For a while, nothing disturbed the endless blue of the ocean. And then, suddenly . . .

“Is that it?” she asked.

He peered over her shoulder and nodded.

“That’s it. I can’t wait for you to see it.”

They landed during a soft, warm rain. At first Max was disappointed that Olivia’s first views of Hawaii would be in the rain, until she pointed.

“A rainbow!”

She had a look of pure awe on her face. Max could have watched Olivia look at that rainbow for hours.

The rainbow wavered in front of them as they drove away from the airport, but finally the sun came all the way out, and the rainbow disappeared, just as they made the turn toward their hotel.

“Now,” Max said. “Let’s see just how fast we can plant our asses in lounge chairs by the pool.”

They checked into their hotel in a flash, and raced, giggling, into their room to change. Olivia threw off her clothes almost before Max had his suitcase open, and before he could pounce on her, she’d pulled a bright red bikini on and slipped on flip-flops. He reassured himself that he’d have plenty of opportunities to pounce on her this weekend.