Well. Apparently he was going to New York.
Dani turned on her phone when the plane touched down in Zurich, expecting a text from Leo, who was picking her up. There was none, so she typed one to him, telling him she’d arrived, as she made her way off the plane.
The passengers were disgorged into a glassed-off area in the terminal and directed by signage toward customs. Dani stretched and yawned as she shuffled along. She hadn’t really thought through what was going to happen once she arrived. It was close to one a.m., December 11. The first day of Christmas. Too bad it was too late to go to Max.
Though, maybe it wasn’t? When one was planning a wild, dramatic declaration of love, did it matter if one arrived at a socially acceptable hour? Besides, even if he didn’t love her back, Max would need her. His father was dead, and he had ascended to the role he had never wanted. It was settled; she was going to ask Leo to take her directly to—
A sharp rapping on the glass wall next to her startled her. She turned and— “Oh my god!”
It was Max. Here, in the airport. In the waiting area to board the plane she’d just gotten off, which was scheduled to return to New York.
She was stunned into immobility, frozen in place even as he started gesturing frantically. His hair was wild, and so were his eyes. He had one arm in his coat and one arm out.
“What are you doing here?” she finally said dumbly. He couldn’t hear her, of course. But she couldn’t make any sense of his waving of arms, nor could she read his rapidly moving lips.
He stopped all of a sudden, went quiet, and held up his index finger. He was asking her to wait. She nodded. He turned away for what felt like ages, doing something she couldn’t see on one of the chairs in the waiting area.
Her heart started thundering in her ears as she watched the people around him start lining up to get on the plane she’d come off. Oh god, she was going to pass out right here in the arrivals area of the Zurich airport.
When Max finished with whatever he’d been doing, he came back to the glass, and he was smiling. Flashing her one of his cat-that-ate-the-canary Max grins. She felt a little more grounded. Whatever was going to happen, that smile told her that she hadn’t lost her friend.
He slapped a ripped piece of paper against the glass. It looked like part of a printed boarding pass that had been ripped off. He’d written in the margin, in his heavy, angular handwriting.
I’m sorry.
Before she could react, he replaced it with another scrap of boarding pass.
I love you.
She gasped. Tears appeared from nowhere, and she had to wipe them away to make sure she didn’t miss anything he’d written on a series of scraps he was holding up to the glass in quick succession.
I was coming to New York to tell you that.
Because at Christmas you tell the truth, and the truth is that I’m in love with you.
I’m sorry I proposed to you.
Well, I’m not sorry, but you know what I mean.
I hope you don’t think this is creepy like in the movie.
She burst out crying.
His face fell. Shit. She was crying because she was so overwhelmed. So relieved. She dropped her bag and dug in her purse for something she could use to write on. Nothing. Well, screw it. She opened the book she’d been too anxious to read on the plane.
When she was done, she held the title page up to the glass. I’m sorry, too.
She flipped to page one, where she’d written in the margin. I love you, too.
And on page two: I’m going to stop now because writing in this book is killing me and I think if I don’t go through customs, eventually someone will object.
He was standing there with his jaw hanging open, looking as stunned as she’d felt a moment ago. She pointed urgently down the hallway she was supposed to be traversing. He nodded, shaking himself out of his stupor, and walked in parallel with her for as long as he could. They walked and looked at each other and grinned like fools. When she had to leave him to enter the customs hall, he pressed his hands over his heart and pointed, she thought to indicate that he would be waiting for her on the other end.
When the customs agent asked her the purpose of her visit she said, “I’m visiting . . . my boyfriend.” Then she laughed. And when she burst out the other end, there he was. Max. She had no idea how everything was going to play out. Where they were going to live, if they were even going to live together, what she was going to do about work.
But none of it mattered when he stopped walking about twenty feet from her and made a “come here” gesture with his fingers. He moved his hands around so that he was ready to catch her Dirty Dancing style.
She burst out laughing and called across the space between them, “Are you kidding?”
“Would I kid about something like this?”
“I suppose not.”
“We have practiced it in the water twice.”
“We’re going to look like fools.”
“That’s true,” he said cheerfully.
Oh how she loved him. Her funny, kind, beautiful Max. “Well, all right, then,” she said, and she took off running.
After a tearful—and heated—reunion at the cottage in Riems, Max tried to propose again.
“Look,” he said, as they lolled around in the bed in the attic. “I want it noted for the record that I mucked it all up in Innsbruck. I got my argument mixed up.”
“What do you mean, ‘your argument’?”
“You’re the English professor. You know. You’re supposed to open your essay with a topic sentence that’s your argument.” He grabbed her palm, opened it, and pretended to write on it. “Then give supporting statements.” He mimed writing lower on her palm. “I skipped the topic sentence. I confused you.”
She laughed. “So what was the topic sentence supposed to be?”
He closed his hand over hers and squeezed. “I love you, and therefore I want to marry you.”
“And then you get into the crown jewels and the solid gold dog tags and all that.”
“Exactly.”
“What about your rules?”
“Oh, fuck my rules.”
Dani was a little startled. Max had an endearingly formal way of speaking, and though he let loose the occasional damn, she rarely heard anything stronger than that. She leaned down and kissed him. Grabbed his cheeks and planted one on him, both of them grinning.
“So what about it?” he said when she pulled back. “Will you marry me?”
“Not yet.”
He clutched his heart and fell back onto the bed.
“Max. It’s too soon. Think of all the upheaval we’ve both experienced. Think of all the upheaval that’s to come.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, rolling his eyes like he knew she was right but didn’t care. “We should wait a bit.” He turned serious as he stared at her for several moments. “What about now? Will you marry me now?”
“Still no.”
“I’m not going to stop asking, you know. I’m going to ask you every single day.”
She smiled. “I look forward to it.”
The next week and a half was a whirlwind. Dani tried to help Max and Sebastien as much as she could, but mostly that meant staying out of the way as they worked through stuff with the guy who was in charge of the estate and with the CEO of the mining company. She had one fraught encounter with their mother when they randomly encountered each other in a corridor and Dani tried to express her condolences, but other than that, the widowed duchess—was she still even a duchess? Dani didn’t know—kept to herself.