“I do.”
“But you don’t know it in your heart. You are afraid. Vince hurt you more than you like to admit, perhaps even to yourself.”
She nodded, still painfully embarrassed, but also relieved that Max had gotten to the truth without her having to say it.
“I feel as though this is the part where I’m supposed to make a speech about not closing your heart off to love, and yet I’m not the right person to make that speech.”
She smiled. “That is exactly why I like you.”
He smiled, too, but was there a touch of wistfulness in it? A hint of the sadness they’d talked about at the Four Seasons?
“It would seem you are at an impasse.”
Something was happening inside her body as he stared at her in that super-intense way that was becoming more common as of late.
It was the sex feelings. For Max.
Which was never going to happen. Max had a list of sorts, too, his so-called rules of engagement. And although she was on his turf and definitely wasn’t trying to entrap him into marriage, she was, technically, still married. Ha. As if that was the only reason it would be a bad idea to follow her loins in this case. She could make another list of those as long as the one he was perusing.
She shook her head and forced herself to smile. Deflection time.
Max was trying to play it cool, but what Dani had said shocked him. It shouldn’t have. It was obvious now that of course she had been finding fault with all these men, Mr. Carnivore aside, because she was afraid of being hurt again.
It just didn’t match up with his image of her as fearless, take-no-prisoners Professor Martinez.
But it was also making him question his own judgment. Finding out he hadn’t been seeing, really seeing, his favorite person in the world properly was unsettling.
“It would seem that I’m at an impasse,” she said, her eyes twinkling. She was back to her usual self. Or to who he used to think of as her usual self. “But I have another theory. Maybe it’s not so much that I’m afraid of getting hurt.”
It was. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name. Now that he saw it, he couldn’t unsee it.
“What if it’s not that complicated?” she went on. “What if I’m having some kind of subconscious block about still being married?”
That wasn’t it. She’d shared something uncomfortable and she was backpedaling, trying to find another, easier explanation for her behavior. She might not even be doing it consciously.
“Do you think that’s possible?” she asked when he was silent too long.
No. “You’re asking me?”
“You know me better than anyone.”
Well, damn, that was flattering. “Even Leo?”
“Don’t tell him, but yeah.”
Extremely flattering. It felt like an accomplishment, being the person who knew Dani Martinez best.
He didn’t want to abuse that position, and he wasn’t about to tell her how she felt, but he was certain her take was incorrect. He supposed she could be protecting her heart and have a subconscious block about still being married, but he truly didn’t think so. He settled for saying, “I suppose the only way to test your theory is to wait for your divorce judgment and see how you feel. If you find yourself spontaneously wanting to jump comedic baristas, you’ll know you were hung up on the legalities of still being married.”
She smiled. “I think that’s it.”
It wasn’t, but all right.
“I swear to god, the moment the divorce is final, I’m going to do it with the first moderately attractive man I lay eyes on.”
He laughed. “So you’re just going to grab the nearest man and proposition him?”
“Watch me. I will.”
He knew she was jesting, but he very much did not want to watch her do that. “Perhaps a more considered approach would be better.”
“Oh, shut up. You don’t know what this kind of dry spell is like.”
“I do actually. I’m in a bit of one myself. Since New Year’s Eve, in fact.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m not sure. I think perhaps I’m a tad thrown off by my own marriage problem. I’d been slutting around in anticipation of my own impending nuptials. One would think, once they were canceled, that I would have accelerated my slutting around rather than tapered it off.” He shrugged, unable to explain his own behavior. Or lack of behavior.
“Well aren’t we a pair?”
He was tempted to suggest that they join forces, so to speak—that was the logical, bantery comeback—but for some reason he could no longer joke with her about that. “I have a plan for today that will distract us from our mysteriously enduring celibacy. How do you feel about a hike up the mountain? It’s my favorite place in the world, and I’d very much like to show it to you. I’ve spoken to the kitchen, and they can pull together food for us, and there’s the hot spring as an inducement. We can practice our Dirty Dancing lift.
“If you want to,” he added, studying her face, which suddenly seemed to contain a great deal of emotion he could not identify. “We can also just stay here so you can work.”
“No,” she croaked. Something strange was happening. Her voice sounded almost pained. “I want to.”
“Max Minimus can accompany us, if you like.” He patted the little imp, who responded by licking him, which should have been off-putting but somehow was not. “It is a fairly steep hike, though, so we could leave him with the gardener, who’s a lovely old chap and a bit of a pied piper for the animals on the estate. He has his own dog, and there are some resident stray cats that hiss at everyone else but follow him around like he hung the moon. It’s up to you.”
“Let’s leave him. He’s not really an athlete.” She sounded herself again.
“Grand.” He got back up and refilled her coffee. “Drink up.”
An hour later, caffeinated and breakfasted, they strolled off the manicured part of the property and Dani said, “Well, clearly my dog is going to hold a grudge against me for the rest of my life once he’s back in New York.” They had left Max Minimus rapturously cavorting in the snow with Lorena, the gardener’s Sennenhund, who was four times his size. “Playing all day after slinking off to sleep with a baron last night.” She shook her head and mock-scowled. “The traitor.”
Max had been in bed last night doing his usual insomnia thing when something vaguely wet nudged his shoulder. “Something vaguely wet” had turned out to be Max Minimus’s nose, so he’d lifted the covers, and after a moment of shuffling to get comfortable, his namesake had fallen asleep nestled in his armpit.
Oddly, Max had fallen asleep, too, and wakened refreshed several hours later. That was unusual.
“Like, seriously,” Dani said. “I haven’t woken up without Max Minimus for years. Even when Vince was still in the bed, Max slept on my side.”
Max wanted to tell her to come sleep in his bed with them, that they could have a big slumber party, but of course he didn’t. But damn. He wanted to . . . cuddle her. Her dog, too, fine, but mostly her. It wasn’t a sexual thing. Well, that wasn’t true. But it wasn’t only a sexual thing. He couldn’t turn off the constant simmering awareness of her. She was gorgeous. Her face and her brain and her everything. But he accepted that the feeling wasn’t mutual. He accepted that the feeling was profoundly ill-advised. So, in the spirit of taking what he could get, he was happy to carve out the garret of her dreams and just . . . be near her.