She launched herself at him, and without missing a beat he picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist in a way that had become familiar. They did it almost of their own accord, simply because it was the next phase of the move.
Look at them. They had “moves.” All those Dirty Dancing lifts had actually been practice.
“Marie and Leo are going to be here any minute,” she mumbled against his mouth as she kissed him. “Marie is all hyper.”
“I know.” He moved his lips along the edge of her jaw and spoke against her skin. “I told her to take a rest, but she’s got a whole agenda for the afternoon.”
“Why isn’t her agenda going at it with her new husband?” She tilted her head back. She wanted him to pay some attention to her throat.
He did, letting his face slide down the side of her neck. Because he knew, somehow, what she wanted. “Damned if I know. If—”
A rap on his door startled them both. He grunted his displeasure and held onto her for a beat too long. She had to pull herself out of his grasp—which was actually flattering, but her heart kicked up several notches at the delay it caused. They could not be caught like this.
She fled to her room, and a few seconds later, she heard his door opening and him saying, “You don’t waste any time, do you?”
“I’m full of energy,” Marie said. “I’m giddy to be done with the wedding!” There was a pause. “No offense, Leo.”
“None taken,” came Leo’s voice. “You can’t be giddier than I am on that front.”
Dani stared at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were rosy. She looked rested—which she most decidedly was not. Maybe it was actually . . . happiness? She wasn’t sure she’d recognize that at first glance. It had been so long.
“Shall we go see the mine?” Marie asked.
“Are you sure you want to spend the first several hours of your honeymoon underground with me?” Max asked teasingly.
Leo snorted, but Marie said, “I’m sure. I’m so excited to see what you’ve been doing.”
Dani steeled herself, pasted on a smile, and went through the adjoining door. “I am, too.” It was true. She was proud of Max and couldn’t wait to see his project coming to life.
An hour later, clad in hard hats and steel-toed boots, they were listening to Max talk as he waved his arms around. “This will be a counter where people can get headphones for self-guided tours,” he explained. As he took them around what would become the aboveground part of the museum, he was animated in a way Dani hadn’t seen before. Previously, when they’d talked on the phone about this project, he’d used the phrase history come to life. She could see it, but she could also see Max come to life. This was exactly the kind of thing he would get excited about—historical and meaty. A great story that had meaning for how people lived today. The museum was going to be stylish and bold, but once you went underground, revelatory and maybe even transformative. Hmm. That sounded like someone she knew.
They took a work elevator down, and as Max narrated during the journey, explaining what the descent would be like, she could picture it perfectly.
Once down, he launched into a story about a local woman who organized meals for the men who shuttled weapons here. “We found all these plans she’d written down. She had a garden herself and had sources for some of the ingredients she lacked. A neighbor, for example, had a yard full of turnips. She would concoct meals from whatever people had.”
“But what is this?” Marie asked, veering over to a corner that looked like it was meant to display letters—she assumed including those from Karina Klein to Max’s grandmother. Marie was standing and reading, and she probably knew Max’s grandmother’s name, because it didn’t take her long to catch on.
“Oh my god! Max!”
He smiled and went to stand beside her but didn’t speak.
She kept reading. “Where did you find these?”
“Those are replicas, but the originals were under the floorboards in the attic at the cottage.”
She turned to him, her hands in front of her face with her fingers spread wide. “This was already amazing, but you know this is going to be a revolutionary piece of news, yes?”
“Indeed.”
“And your parents are going to act like they knew all along.”
“I can’t control what my parents do.”
“Marie is right,” Dani said to Max later when they’d broken off into pairs to explore the cavernous space. Leo and Marie were poking around at the far end, out of earshot. “This is amazing. And not just because of the family connection.”
“It’s mostly Seb,” Max said glibly.
Annoyance sparked in her chest. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Was this Seb’s idea? Is Seb a historian? Did Seb find the documents you’re using to bring this place to life?” She snorted. “You are so full of shit.”
He blinked, startled by her outburst, and, after a beat, laughed incredulously.
“What? Has no one ever told you you’re full of shit?”
“Certainly not someone who is going to—I hope—sleep with me later today.”
“Well, this place is yours. It’s just like you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s stylish and—”
“It’s not stylish. At the moment, it’s merely a bunch of rock.”
“But you can tell it’s going to be stylish.”
He shot her a self-satisfied smile. “Ah, yes. Do go on.”
“I was going to say it’s stylish and slyly smart—the smart part sneaks up on you, which is a pretty good way to organize a museum, it seems to me. But I don’t know. I might have to take it back. I don’t want you to get a big head.”
“Would this be an inopportune time for me to mention that I have procured some condoms? Two of them, to be precise.”
“Two of them?”
“You wanted more?”
“That seems like an oddly specific number. Do they usually come in twos in Europe?”
“They do when you’re begging for a handout from your younger brother, who is so busy banging the head of palace security, he isn’t sure how many he can spare.”
Good for Sebastien. “In this scenario, how does the head of palace security find time to, I don’t know, actually secure the palace?”
“Apparently even heads of palace security get holidays. They’re going to Athens for a week and then on to some remote Greek island I’ve never heard of for another.”
“So everyone is on a sex holiday.”
He burst out laughing. “I do intend to go to a store, mind you, and procure a proper box. I just haven’t had a moment yet, so I prevailed upon my brother before we left this morning.”
It was true. They’d left the palace at the crack of dawn and aside from their thirty-second make-out at the hotel, they hadn’t been alone since.
“What are we doing after this?” She looked around for Leo and Marie.
“Marie is suggesting lunch, then there’s this tower from the Middle Ages she wants to climb.”
“Is there any way we can . . . not do that?”