“That all sounds wonderful.” Damn, she was proud of him. “Hey, when I’m there for the wedding, could we go check it out? How far is it?”
“There’s nothing to see yet. We’re at least two years from opening.”
“Yeah, but the wedding is still nine months off. Anyway, I don’t care if there’s nothing to see. What if I want to see nothing and listen to you tell me stories about what happened there and nag you to write a book about it? What if I want to escape all the royal pomp? What if my jaded, shriveled soul can’t take all the gooey happily-ever-after junk?”
“Then your wish is my command.”
She smiled. “Max, it sort of sounds like you got yourself a job.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” He cleared his throat. “I guess you’d better hurry up and get yourself a divorce, then, so I don’t trounce you on the resolution front.”
“I’m working on it. It can’t come soon enough.”
To Max’s amusement, as spring turned into summer, Dani couldn’t seem to pull the trigger on her sex resolution. She would arrange dates but somehow never ended up doing the deed. While he would grant that his experience wasn’t representative, he was certain that with sufficient motivation, it wasn’t that difficult to find a decent enough man whose breath didn’t smell like hamburger with whom to do the deed.
Dani was the full package. Beautiful, funny, smart—not that smart necessarily mattered in these kinds of encounters. It did irritate him to think of her innate intelligence and wit being squandered on some Neanderthal who thought she was merely a pretty face and a nice body. But the point was, it wasn’t that hard.
“Well, hello,” he said, picking up her call late one August night in a hotel in Innsbruck. He and Seb were in town to meet with representatives from the museum design firm they’d hired. “What was wrong with HarlemHipster?” he asked, referencing her latest failed match.
“How do you know there was something wrong with him?”
“Because you only left an hour ago and you were supposed to have drinks first. Unless you did it in the bathroom at the bar, I am left to conclude it was a bust.”
“It was a bust. HarlemHipster was allergic to dogs.”
He stepped out onto his balcony. “Well you’re not going to marry him.”
“I can’t marry him. I’m still married to someone else,” she deadpanned.
“Yes, how is that going?”
“It was a joke.”
“I got that. I just didn’t laugh. I’m too focused on trying to fix your sex problems.”
“My sex problems? You sound like Dr. Ruth.”
“Well, my friend, here’s some tough love: You are failing on the whole resolution front. HarlemHipster is the eighth man you’ve met up with and rejected in six months. What’s the common denominator in all these encounters?”
“Are you telling me to have sex with someone I don’t want to have sex with? Are you telling me I should have had sex with Mr. Meat?” He had been semi-teasing, but her voice had gone defensive and shrill.
“No! God. Of course not.” Honestly, he was always a little relieved when she called him with a strikeout. It wasn’t that he was jealous. He just didn’t think any of these men were worthy of her. The one before this had been a professional Fortnite player, for god’s sake. But at the same time, looking at the situation objectively, if she wasn’t looking for Mr. Forever, but Mr. Right Now, she could stand to lower her standards.
Not that he thought she should have to.
He was overthinking this. There was one other logical explanation for her reticence. Normally, he wouldn’t be so pushy as to bring it up, but he and Dani had become genuinely close over the last several months. “Is it possible your problem is that you’re worried—consciously or subconsciously—about getting your heart broken again?”
“No, no,” she said quickly. “I’m post-love.”
“So you’ve said. I was just checking, but ‘post-love.’ I get it.”
“You too?”
“Yes. Well, that’s not right. ‘Post’ implies you’ve been in love.”
She snorted. “So you’re pre-love?”
“No. I don’t think so, at least.”
“Anti-love?” She laughed.
“I’m not against love. It’s more that I’m indifferent to it. I don’t think it works on me.”
“Is that why you agreed to marry Marie even though you weren’t in love with her?” Well. Here he’d thought they were talking about her. “Sorry,” she added quickly. “None of my business.”
“No, it’s fine. With you, I’m an open book.”
“Explain it to me, then—how you were going to marry Marie. I know the backstory. Uniting the houses and all that. But how did you square it in your mind?”
“I don’t know, really. It didn’t seem like such a bad scenario. I love Marie in a platonic way. She’s a cross between a sister and a best friend. She’s my only . . .” He’d been going to say she was his only confidant, but that wasn’t true anymore, was it? Max and Marie didn’t even talk that much these days, which he would have put down to her having Leo and being swept up in her new UN gig and in wedding preparations, but actually, he owed her a call. “It never felt like I was settling, because I’ve never found anyone I actively wanted to marry.”
“Because you’ve never been in love.”
“Correct. Marie and I had agreed we would do our duty with the old turkey baster—or with discreet medical intervention, if needed—but then we’d be free to live our lives.”
“Because you need an heir.”
“I don’t need one, and now I won’t have one. But that would have been the expected path, yes.”
She huffed an incredulous laugh. “I swear, half the time I forget who you are. I mean, not who you are, but that you’re a member of the aristocracy.”
He felt himself flush. That was exactly why he liked her so much. Her declaration felt like a compliment, though she probably hadn’t meant it that way. It was rare that someone saw him as a person first and a baron second.
“It sounds like a business arrangement,” she said.
“It was, in a way, but remember, I like Marie. That’s why I went along with it. There’s no one I’d rather read the newspaper with every morning or gossip with every evening, or . . .”
That was another thing that wasn’t true anymore. He and Dani gossiped several evenings a week. Or at random times of the day or night, such as when she was fleeing a date. They also talked about more serious matters. It was amazing—and exhilarating—how easily they could toggle between the two.
“But you were content to step aside when she met Leo,” Dani said, filling in the sentence he’d trailed off.
“Well, I stepped aside.”
“But not contentedly?”
“I was happy for her. I am happy for her.” He was aware that he was prevaricating. And also that Dani, she of the sharp mind and the sharp tongue, probably would not stand for it.