“Neither of them have any inner life to speak of, so nah.” She flashed him a little smile. It was pleasingly conspiratorial. “I’m sure you—” Her speech came to an abrupt halt as he rose from her guest chair. She froze with one arm in her coat and the other out. No part of her moved except her eyes, which traveled rapidly up and down his body.
He looked down at himself. “What? Not suitably dukeish casual?” The New York trip was a short one, so he only had the one suit with him. He’d almost worn it without a tie, but in the end he hadn’t been able to make himself do it. If a man was wearing a suit, he should wear a suit—all its pieces, not some haphazard, choose-your-own-adventure version of it.
“It was a pun on business casual,” she said.
“I understood that. Is this not business casual? You Americans with your dress codes. You put words together that either don’t mean anything or contradict each other and call it a dress code. I could have worn my frock coat complete with ceremonial sword.”
She cracked a grin, a full, unreserved one, and he was unbecomingly thrilled to have been its source.
“You look fine,” she said. “Let’s go.”
All eyes were on Dani as she entered the party, but for once it wasn’t because of her status as the jilted wife of the inexplicably popular Professor Vincent Ricci, who had left her for a twenty-year-old named Berkeley.
Or it wasn’t only because of that. To be fair, it probably started because of that. Vince and Berkeley coming out as a couple a hot minute after Berkeley dropped out of school was the biggest news to hit the department since the dean’s office repossessed the humanities’ faculty lounge and gave it to the economists for an econometrics lab. Somehow, even though Vince had undergone an ethics investigation because of concerns he’d broken the rule about, oh, not dating students—and had been cleared because there was no proof he and Berkeley had gotten together until after Berkeley dropped out—Dani seemed to be the subject of most of the departmental gossip. Poor, discarded Dani, replaced by a younger, tauter model.
And now Vince and Berkeley were back from their Spanish adventure for a couple of weeks. What would Dani do? What would she say? How would she act?
But it only took a second, once everyone got a load of Max, for the narrative to shift.
Because Max, in his dukeish casual, looked a lot more than “fine,” especially in contrast to the men in this crowd, who were “dressed up” in their Dockers and no-iron shirts that actually needed ironing. Max’s tallness and slimness was accentuated by the tailored blue suit he was wearing like a second skin. Like it was casual. With his icy-blue eyes, his dirty-blond hair styled almost in a pompadour, and his angular face, he looked like that Swedish actor from that vampire show, all sharp edges and cool cobalt.
He must have noticed everyone’s attention—it was hard not to, as this group was not subtle. He laid his palm on her lower back. He didn’t press or push, just stood serenely while everyone gaped at them. In any other circumstance, she would have shaken him off, but she performed a quick mental cost-benefit analysis and decided that having a baron get a little handsy wasn’t the worst look right now. After a few beats of silence, of posing, really, while everyone stared, he said, “Shall we go to the bar?”
Dani made eye contact with Sinéad, her closest friend in the department. Sinéad and Dani had been hired a year apart and had leaned on each other a lot in the early going, forming a kind of battlefield bond that had never gone away even as they’d found their stride and gotten busy with research and relationships.
So busy, apparently, that Dani hadn’t laid eyes on Sinéad all semester outside of departmental meetings. How had that happened? Dani had been working a lot lately, but still. They used to go for drinks almost weekly. Before Vince.
Dani thought back to the list she kept on her phone, which she’d reviewed earlier, in her office, in preparation for having to see Vince. Things I Will Never Again Do for a Man. Not that there was any danger of falling back in with Vince. Dani was done with Vince. Or would be once she finally managed to divorce his ass. But she believed in owning her mistakes, confronting her lapses in judgment. That was the only way to make sure they never happened again. Hence the list. She’d made it the day after Vince’s affair with Berkeley came to light. In the beginning, she’d looked at it every day. Now it was more about future-proofing herself. It reminded her, in stark black and white, what her priorities were going to be in the post-Vince world.
As it related to Sinéad, the relevant list item was #8: Neglect my friends.
Sinéad raised her eyebrows in a way that was meant to communicate Holy shit, girl.
Dani raised hers back and hitched her head slightly to send a return message: Meet us at the bar. Here was the perfect opportunity to work on that number.
Max’s hand stayed resting lightly on Dani’s back as they made their way through the crowded room. Dani nodded and said a few hellos to colleagues as they passed but didn’t stop. Better to let them wonder.
At the bar, she ordered a Diet Coke, and Max tried to order a negroni. When the bartender looked at him blankly, he shifted gears effortlessly. “On second thought, I think I’d prefer a glass of red wine.”
“Hel-lo.” Sinéad sidled up to the bar, let her gaze roam Dani, and pressed a hand to her heart. “Don’t you look smashing?”
“You, too.” She really did. She was wearing a blue suit—like Max, except hers was tailored to hug her curves and she wore it with an open-necked white silk blouse and red stilettos.
Dani kept the introductions brief. “Max, Sinéad. Sinéad, Max.” She was probably supposed to introduce Max as “His Honorable Lord Baron McSnootypants” or something, but she was not going to do that.
After Sinéad ordered a Guinness, she flicked Max’s blue-black-and-red-checked tie. “Burberry?”
Max raised an eyebrow. He probably wasn’t used to people touching his clothes. Or commenting on labels. Both were no doubt exceedingly low-class. “Indeed.” He reached over and flicked the cross-body briefcase Sinéad wore. “Vuitton?”
Dani chuckled. These two dandies were perfect for each other.
“Knockoff,” Sinéad said cheerfully. “I’ll be paying off my student loans until I die.”
“Ah, yes, the puzzling American tradition of bankrupting its young people before they even begin their careers.”
“Hang on.” Sinéad pointed at Max. “You’re the duke. The Depraved Duke.”
“Baron, actually,” Max said. Dani noticed he didn’t dispute the “depraved” part.
“Whatever,” Sinéad said. “You’re the guy who was engaged to the princess that Vince Ricci’s cousin is marrying.”
“I . . . might be?” Max looked genuinely confused.
“Vince Ricci being Dani’s ex-husband,” Sinéad added.
“Not until he signs the papers,” Dani said with exaggeratedly artificial cheeriness. She turned to Max, who didn’t know the whole story. “You probably didn’t know that my husband is Leo’s second cousin.”
“I had no idea.”