(Thanks everyone..so glad you like the new story. So I won't be around this weekend and probably won't be able to update so I thought I would go ahead and post Chapter 2. I hope you like it. I hope you will review and let me know your thoughts too. Have a great weekend.)

Dating Dilemma: He's Keeping Secrets

"Lexi has a boyfriend and I don't like him," Olivia told Abby as they grabbed coffee on their way in to the office.

"Why don't you like him?" Abby asked.

"I don't know, I just get a feeling in my gut that he is no good and he's older than her," Olivia put some money in the TIP jar and led Abby out of the coffee shop.

"How much older?"

"He's 30."

"So what? It's not like he's old enough to be her Daddy. Would you prefer that he was younger than her?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"I don't know. I can't put my finger on it yet. He's just not right for her."

"Man-hater," Abby accused.

"I'm not a man-hater Abby. I'm just protective of my little sister. Anyway, she was pretty upset that I wasn't very friendly to him so I promised to make it up to her by having him over for dinner in about a week."

"She is not a baby Liv, she is a 22 year old college graduate. She has a good head on her shoulders and she should be dating, like a normal person."

"I know I'm not normal," Olivia admitted with a sigh.

"No you are not. You haven't dated in 2 years. Men fall all over you everywhere you go and you don't give them a second look. You're not normal. I swear I don't know what you're looking for…Speaking of men, how was your first day working with Fitz? He's handsome isn't he? I bet he smells awesome." Abby was getting worked up just thinking about him.

"Abby calm down, whether or not he was gorgeous has no bearing on our working relationship?"

"Gorgeous huh….I said handsome, you graduated him up to gorgeous," Abby pointed out.

Olivia shook her head. "I said handsome too didn't I?….Oh well I meant to say that," she saw Abby eyeing her skeptically. "Stop it Abby, he's nice and a hard-worker. I am looking forward to working with him. And that's all."

"Sure OK….So anyway the guy in Marketing…his name is David Rosen. Saturday night was amazing Liv…A-ma-zing," Abby screamed, which caused a man on the street to turn around and look at her like she was crazy.

Olivia laughed, "Abby you're causing a scene….Spare me the details please."

"Sorry. But wait til you meet him… You're gonna love him Liv. I would say let's double date but I would need to find you a man first."

"Abby I don't need you to find me a man. I can find one on my own, IF I wanted to and right now I just don't want to," Olivia said but even she didn't believe it when she said it. Of course she wanted to be in a relationship but she wanted the right one. She wasn't into all the trial and error of dating this guy and the next. She just wanted to KNOW him when she saw him. She wanted him to be her best friend, the person she talked to when she went to bed at night and when she woke up in the morning. She wanted to skip past the awkward stage and fall straight into love.

"I'll start believing you when YOU start believing you," Abby said.

They got to the elevator and saw that Fitz was already standing there surrounded by a crowd of people ready to rush the elevator as soon as the doors opened. He looked like he just stepped out of a GQ magazine cover shoot. He was dressed in a collared shirt, slacks and a tailored jacket. He hid his face behind dark sunglasses. He sipped his coffee, oblivious to the two women in the crowd gawking at him; whispering and giggling. He paid them no attention. He's probably used to it, Olivia thought. She was surprised he wasn't conceited but then again she really didn't know. She had only spent a few minutes in his presence the other night.

Abby whispered to Olivia, "They guy doesn't even notice women lusting after him. Amazing."

They walked up to him and Olivia said, "Good Morning Fitz."

He looked down at her and took off his glasses, "Oh hey, Good Morning Liv," he instinctively hugged her to him and kissed her cheek. "Good Morning, its Abby right?" He shook her hand.

"Yes, Abby, Good Morning," Abby said as she watched their interchange, taking special note of Olivia's reaction to Fitz. She had never seen such a dreamy look in her friend's eyes. She would bet money that Olivia was falling for him; even if she would never admit it.

"How was your weekend?" he asked.

"Fine and yours?"

"Non eventful."

The elevator dinged and everyone piled in. It wouldn't take long for it to be filled to capacity. Olivia was so petite that often taller people looked over her. She was used to pushing her way into an elevator or she could be left behind. But this time Fitz put his hand at the small of her back and guided her inside. He stood at the very back of the elevator while she and Abby stood in front of him. It was a nice gesture and Olivia looked up at him over her shoulder and said, "Thank you". He bent down closer to her ear and said, "Anytime."

Abby smiled to herself. She had only observed them for a couple of minutes and could already see the desire they had for each other. It was palpable; it could start a forest fire. She kept her comments to herself. She was on the 5th floor and when her stop came she told Olivia she would call her later and wished Fitz a good day.

Fitz and Olivia continued to ride the elevator to their stop on the 21st floor. But in between, more and more people kept getting on the elevator until at one point Olivia found herself completely pushed up against Fitz with her back against his chest. She could feel the heat radiating from him and she had to resist the urge to lean against him and wait for his arms to encircle her. It was amazing how natural she felt with him; it was like they had been friends for years or known each other forever. She never felt like this with any man in her life and this one was already taken.

Fitz had spent the entire weekend trying to get Olivia off of his mind but no matter what he did, she kept invading his thoughts. He almost called her several times but couldn't think of a valid reason to do so. He kept himself busy with various activities and getting out with friends but at the oddest moments he would be reminded of her by a something someone said, a sweet fragrance that hit his nose or someone asking about her directly. He had been anticipating Monday morning when he would see her again. And now to have her standing this close to him was exactly what he had been waiting for. He allowed himself to indulge in the small infatuation knowing that logically it would soon blow over and he would be content to remain friends.

When they got off the elevator, they walked in silence to their respective offices which happened to be right next to each other. "Oh before I forgot, Cy wanted to see us both first thing," Fitz said.

"Ok let me just put my things down," Olivia said as she entered her office still filled with boxes waiting to be unpacked.

"Yeah me too," he said as he went to his office.

They walked together to Cyrus' office at the other end of the hall. He was there with Quinn, the department assistant. She immediately smiled at seeing Olivia.

"Olivia, it's nice to meet you. I'm Quinn, the department assistant. I sit right outside your office doors. Whatever you need let me know," she shook Olivia's hand.

Olivia immediately liked her. "Thanks Quinn. I appreciate that."

Cyrus was in a good mood, excited even. He took out a stack of letters from his top desk drawer. "These are letters…over 50 letters of people looking for you two to solve their dating problems. We haven't even published your first article yet. All we did was put in a little teaser in the last edition and invite people to write in and this is the response we got. Can you believe it?" Cyrus was so enthusiastic, he was practically salivating. "And Quinn how many emails did we get?"

"35, well we started with 65 but I filtered like Cy asked me to and weeded out the ridiculous requests and the extremely pornographic ones," she said happily.

Cyrus practically cut her off to continue talking, "Can you believe it? Did I not say that this was a gold mine, waiting to be discovered? No one is doing what you two are about to do. It's an untapped market. We just need to capitalize on it….So read through each one of them; narrow it down to the top 2-3 you want to address and give me your responses by tomorrow morning. Remember this is not a magazine article designed to make you both agree, in fact it is expected that most times you will not agree. It is meant to showcase the differences and similarities in the thinking of men and women in matters of love and sex. And I don't have to remind you that sex sells. So please don't take the safe, boring route…I'm not encouraging vulgarity but by all means make it entertaining, which I have every reason in the world to believe that both of you will. Ok that's it, copy on my desk by tomorrow morning. Alright, get out," he said dismissively.

As they started to leave, Cyrus said, "Oh Liv, hang back a moment."

When he and Olivia were alone, he said, "You might feel like a fish out of water but you need to know that everyone here respects you; everyone knows your talent and your skills. You don't need to prove yourself, just be you. He asked for you; he read your work and he wanted to work with you. So don't think anyone is doing you any favors."

Olivia was speechless. Cyrus was able to address all her fears with just a few words. She immediately relaxed. "Thanks Cy, I appreciate it."

"Yeah well, just get me something good. This is a new feature article in our magazine Liv; we need to sell it to the public. It has the potential to send you and Fitz public, take you national, if we do it right."

"Right, Cy."

XXXXXX

"You can't be serious; you really think that is the right way for him to go? That's the response you are going to go with?" Olivia asked completely baffled by his response.

"I am very serious….You don't have to agree with me, that's the whole point remember."

"Yeah but I'm just saying, your response, well….it's wrong," she said laughing.

"It's not," he countered. He could tell she wasn't seeing his side of the argument. "Ok listen to what he's saying Liv," Fitz said as he picked up the letter from her desk and was about to re-read it. They had narrowed the letters down to a final two. They had been discussing this letter for the past two hours. Quinn had brought them lunch since it was clear that they weren't going anywhere.

Fitz continued, "He says, 'there's a new girl at the office and we recently started dating. I haven't told her that I used to date and had sex with her co-worker. We had sort-of a bad breakup and I can't be sure that she won't confront the new girl about our previous relationship. I really like this new girl and I'm afraid our co-worker will sabotage the whole thing. Should I worry about it? Should I tell the new girl about it?...You really can't see why he should just keep his mouth shut?"

Their discussion was animated, passionate and sometimes heated. Their voices raised octaves and as a result, Quinn crept up and closed the door to the office to give them more privacy but also to prevent a disturbance to the entire floor. Fitz and Olivia took it all in stride. They each loved a good debate and enjoyed arguing their viewpoints, especially when it was clear that it wouldn't cause any hurt feelings.

"No Fitz, I really can't," she said smiling. She was genuinely interested in how his mind worked.

"They just started dating; they haven't even reached a level to talk about past relationships."

"And normally I would agree with you but the two women work together. The old girlfriend is bound to bring it up and then he's going to have a bigger problem on his hands, then he started off with. The new girlfriend is not going to trust him any longer and she's going to think he's still sleeping with the old girlfriend."

"But she's not his girlfriend. They only just started dating."

"To women it doesn't matter. If you don't tell us, it means you're keeping secrets. If you're keeping secrets then you have something to hide. If you have something to hide then you must be cheating."

"Oh my god….you really think like that?" he said with a look of shock on his face.

"Hey leave me out of it…I said women in general, not necessarily me," she clarified.

"OK then let's say for instance he tells her; he comes clean. Do you know what happens next? The new girl starts obsessing. Now she wants to know how long did they go out? Did they have sex? How many times? What positions? Was it good? Does he think she's prettier than her? Why did they break up? Does he still love her? Does he still think about her? She'll never let it go…It's all downhill from there."

"So if we were dating, you wouldn't want to know about the other guys here that I've dated until we were an official couple?"

"Of course I would! I would need to know right now," he said laughing, but he quickly sobered, "Wait, have you dated someone who works here?" he asked as he instantly became more serious.

She laughed at him. "Fitz you're hilarious; you're thinking and reasoning is flawed. You just switched sides when I put you and me in the same situation."

"I did and that was because it involved you. Normal dating standards no longer apply," he said and gave her that charming smile of his.

"You're incorrigible. Alright you write your side and I'll write mine. How long will it take you?"

He looked at his watch; it was already 4PM. "Ok let's get back together around 6PM, is that good?"

XXXXXX

By 8PM, they were finally close to a rough draft for Cyrus. Olivia needed to get to the gym desperately. Her muscles were getting stiff and she needed a good workout. That would be the only way to guarantee a good night's sleep. It was convenient that the building had a gym on the top floor that didn't close until 11PM. She stood and stretched, rubbing the back of her neck.

"Are you fading on me?" Fitz asked when he saw her trying to stretch her neck.

"No I'm still with you. I just need to get to the gym after this. A good swim will relax me. Then I can sleep like a baby."

"You want some company?" Fitz offered.

"Are you a swimmer?"

"Swimmer, runner…" he ended with a shrug. She smiled, unable to resist the urge of allowing her eyes to travel the full length of his body and admiring it. He was in great shape.

"Alright, I'll finish this last paragraph while you grab your gear so we can go," she said, suddenly excited to see him bare-chested.

When Olivia came out of the dressing room, Fitz was already in the pool. But his chest was still visible and it was just as she imagined – chiseled with a 6-pack. He was like a Greek god. She tried not to stare but it was almost impossible.

Fitz turned when he saw Olivia entering the pool. She looked absolutely perfect in her white bathing suit. She was beautiful in every way and he wanted desperately to touch her – gather her to his arms and caress her ass. They weren't completely alone; there were still a couple of employees lounging in the Jacuzzi. So he reminded himself to behave.

She eased her body in the pool and walked over next to him. "Can you handle 7 laps?" she asked.

Fitz laughed. "I think I will manage."

She beat him. He couldn't believe it but she beat him. He couldn't remember the last time a girl beat him at something. Well the last time was when he was 8 and Josie Smalls beat him in a neighborhood relay race but that was because he really liked her and he threw the race in the end hoping she would like him back, but she never did. Olivia, though, beat him because she was better.

He was quiet and she suspected that he was sulking. "Don't feel bad, I was on the swim team in college; the captain actually."

He gave her a sharp look, "Well you might have told me that before I agreed to race, don't you think?"

"I could have but that then I would have missed the look on your face right now," she said as she laughed and he laughed right with her.

He waited for her to get changed and come out of the dressing room. "Hey Harrison, how's it going?" Fitz said to Harrison Wright as he walked out of the changing room.

"I'm good. You waiting for someone?" they shook hands. Fitz liked Harrison although they rarely saw each other unless they had some type of pre-arranged outside arrangement. Harrison worked in the Marketing and Advertising Department.

"Yeah, my new partner, Olivia Pope," Fitz answered.

"Oh I heard about her coming aboard. How is it working with her?"

"She's amazing man…I'm glad she agreed to come work for CM."

"Cool. Well invite her to come to my place on Friday. I'd like to meet her…Look I gotta get home, early day tomorrow. But just so you know, we can't wait for that article to come out. We're rooting for your guys."

"Thanks, I'll talk to you later."

Minutes later, Olivia came out.

"Thanks for waiting."

"Of course no problem."

They walked to their cars and Fitz said, "You know the way I see it, you owe me big time. See, you just hustled me. You left out a crucial detail about your swimming skills and convinced me to race you knowing I would lose."

Olivia laughed.

"Alright you got me, what do you want?"

He stopped, looked her up and down and then said, "I'll let you know when I'm ready to collect."

XXXXXX

"You must be Olivia Pope," a voice said from behind her. Olivia had been talking with Harrison updating him on her work week and the warm welcome she had received from everyone at CM. She was especially grateful to be included in the invitation to his home. She had been looking forward to it all week. Abby couldn't come with her; she already scheduled a date with David. Olivia was fine coming alone but became even more relaxed when everyone appeared openly friendly and eager to talk to her.

She liked Harrison. He was a fast talker and could carry a conversation all by himself. She really didn't need to say a word. He made her laugh and teased her without being offensive. During their conversation, she found out that they had a lot of things in common. She enjoyed his company and hoped they would continue to hang out and remain friends.

Their conversation was interrupted by a woman's voice. Olivia turned to find a beautiful woman, dressed impeccably, flawless makeup, tightly coifed hair and a broad smile. The attractive appearance was meant to hide the coldness behind her eyes. Immediately Olivia guessed who it was: Mellie.

"I am and you are?" she said as stuck out her hand as a gesture in greeting. Mellie shook her hand and eyed her suspiciously, never breaking the smile.

"I'm Mellie," she said as she looked Olivia up and down – twice. It was an insult.

"I know…I'm not what you expected. I get that a lot…Can you believe that some people actually assume I'm Caucasian? Imagine that," both women gave a phony laugh as if on cue. "So you're Fitz' girlfriend." Olivia was not a catty woman but Mellie immediately rubbed her the wrong way. Mellie was insulting and condescending, so Olivia had no problem downgrading her relationship with Fitz to girlfriend status.

"Fiancée," Mellie corrected.

"Whatever," Olivia responded flippantly. It was clear the two women were not going to be friends. Harrison watched the exchanged closely. He was humored by the cold demeanor that they both tried to hide under the pretense of warmth and civility.

Mellie chuckled. "I thought it was time that we meet. It would only be right that we meet and get to know each other. I mean Fitz spends most of his time with you right."

"Yes he does. I'm kind of like his work-wife," Olivia said with a chuckle of her own. Harrison choked on his drink at the comment. He laughed and excused himself from their presence.

"Cute," Mellie said with irritation, smile never faltering. "Well, I'm sure you both will continue to work well with each other, at least for the next six months."

"Six months? What happens in six months?"

Mellie smiled brighter realizing this was the moment when she could wipe the smug look off of Olivia's face. It made her feel good to get the last jab in; she relished in the feeling of superiority. "Fitz didn't tell you?..."she carefully inserted the laugh again, "his contract with CM is up in 6 months and then he takes over his father's publishing company."

Olivia's looked around the room until her eyes found Fitz in the crowd. She gave him a cold look and quickly walked away; she felt like she was going to be sick.