They spent the walk up the mountain talking, as was their way, about nothing and everything. It was snowing, but the trail was shaded so they didn’t have to tromp through much accumulation. Usually when Max went up the mountain, he could feel himself relaxing. It was probably a combination of the objectively calming effect of being in nature and a conditioned response from the days when he and Seb would literally escape up the slope, leaving the tension and dysfunction of the house behind for a while.
But add in the presence of Dani, and he was extra relaxed. Though perhaps relaxed was not the right word. All the banter and crackling of wits that occurred in Dani’s presence required him to be on his toes, necessitated a degree of concentration that should have been the opposite of relaxation but somehow was not. He felt as if he were in “the zone” that athletes sometimes talked about, that there was a flow and order to the universe he was tapped into, that perhaps his destiny wasn’t going to be as oppressive as he’d always thought.
An hour into their hike, Dani dropped a little bomb he hadn’t seen coming.
“Okay, I’m going to tell you something a little shocking.”
“I am bracing myself even as we speak,” he said to her butt. In his defense, they were walking up an incline, and she was ahead of him.
“It’s about the mystery project. I think I want to try to write a novel. That’s what I’ve been working on this fall—the research for it.”
“Yes.” Of course she should write a novel.
“Yes?” She laughed, stopped, and turned. “That’s all you have to say?”
“Well, obviously you’re going to be brilliant at it.” He tilted his head to look up at her—the slope was such that she was taller than he was. “What’s it going to be about?” He pointed up the path, signaling that they should keep going.
“Remember I told you about that Gertrude Stein–Pablo Picasso project I worked on with Vince?”
The notes for which she’d handed over as part of the divorce settlement. “I do indeed.” He refrained from growling, but it was difficult.
“While we were working on that project, I started thinking about Alice B. Toklas, who was Stein’s longtime partner. Stein willed her all this priceless art—she owned Picassos and Matisses and all that since she palled around with all those guys. But because her relationship with Toklas had no legal standing—it couldn’t have in that time, obviously—Stein’s relatives claimed the paintings. They stole them, basically, and Toklas struggled to make ends meet and later died in poverty. What must that have been like? To lose this great love but also these beautiful images she left you.” She shrugged. “I don’t know where I’m going with this. It’s just this idea that won’t let go of me. A lot of the themes of Toklas’s life overlap with what I’ve done academically. And she was a writer, too. So I could write a critical thing about her, but this feels like . . .”
“A novel,” Max finished.
“It really does. Actually, I owe you for getting me started thinking about fiction again. I’d idly thought, before, about doing something, but when you told me that wild Karina Klein story in the car on the way home from The Nutcracker, it was like something opened up in my brain.”
Well. Max very much hoped he was not blushing.
“When my lawyer floated giving up the Stein notes in exchange for Max Minimus, I thought well, I don’t have to give up what I learned doing that research. Sure, my name isn’t going to be on the book Vince writes, but no one can stop me from making up a story.”
“This is sounding better and better.” Not only did Max like the idea of all her work not being for naught, he really liked the notion of her writing a cooler, better, more popular book than Vince. He would cheerfully admit to being petty that way.
“You really think so? I admit I was feeling kind of weirdly embarrassed about telling you—which is why I haven’t. Vince thought it was a weak idea.”
“Well, Vince is a weak man,” he said dismissively.
“The problem is I have no idea how to write a novel. I write about literature; I don’t write literature.”
“Well, does anyone know how to do something until they do it?”
“No?”
“Don’t sound so confident.”
“I’m not confident.”
“Well, you should be.”
She stopped and turned again to look down at him. “I already wrote the first chapter. Will you read it?”
“I would love to.” He was flattered to be asked.
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
She smiled almost shyly, which was unlike her. “Okay. And then I want you to read me your grandmother’s letters so I can nag you about writing a book, too.”
“It’s a date.” He couldn’t think when he had looked forward to something more.
Nearly two hours later, Max led Dani into a clearing that took her breath away. It had stopped snowing and the sun had come out, bringing low light to a blue sky. Towering, dark-green coniferous trees iced with a thin layer of the morning’s snow surrounded a small spring lined with dark-gray stones. Wisps of steam floated up from the water’s surface. It was like a postcard that had been run through an “Alps” filter.
As they stood and contemplated the vista, something in Dani’s chest lurched and loosened. At the same time, which should have been impossible. But the idea of running away with Max—up a mountain, for heaven’s sake, and then to arrive here, in this impossible tableau felt like . . . Well, it felt like healing, as melodramatic as that sounded. “Are you kidding me with this place?”
Max chuckled. “It is lovely, isn’t it?” He smiled a little wistfully. “A nice reward for the strenuous hike up. Seb and I used to come up here all the time. This mountain continues to be one of the great compensations of life as the heir to the Duke of Aquilla.”
There was that word again: compensations. He’d used it at the Four Seasons, when she’d teased him about being rich enough to talk his way into the closed spa.
He dropped his backpack near the edge of the pool, shrugged out of his coat, and leaned down and unlaced his hiking boots. He straightened and peeled off his shirt. God. He looked like a model, the angles of his face complementing the mountains behind him and his eyes almost the same color as the sky. He looked like he should be in one of those expensive watch ads you saw in The New Yorker. Except maybe not, because he wasn’t wearing a watch. Or a shirt.
And here came the sex feelings. She felt a bit shaky, like a damsel in distress in need of a fainting couch, even as a kind of steady warmth bloomed inside her.
She took a deep breath to try to right herself. The air smelled piney. Like Max had the few times she’d gotten close enough to pick up his cologne. He smelled like his favorite place.
He had been wearing swim trunks under the pants he was shedding, and Dani was wearing her swimsuit under her clothes, so she took off her boots and struggled out of her clothing. “Oh, oh, it’s cold!” She hopped up and down on the freezing rock. At least the shock of cold jarred her out of her swoony weakness of a moment ago.
“Careful,” he warned. “The dusting of snow will have made it slippery.” He held out a hand, and before she could overthink it, she took it.