Page 28 of Duke, Actually

She paused. If he didn’t have any advice for her regarding apps suitable for commoners, why would they keep texting? She couldn’t help but be curious about his use of the termtorture, though. It didn’t sound like he had the best relationship with his family. Her fingers, poised over her phone, twitched. Damn it, she was going to do it.

Dani:Lunch with just your family?

Max:Yes. We spend Christmas at the palace, but my father always insists on a family Christmas Eve lunch, and they give us a private room. Which I very much do not want to return to.

Dani:Okay, tell me about one time you used your rich-person app successfully. Maybe I can translate your technique into a proletariat app.

Her phone rang. He was calling her. She shouldn’t have gone along with the chatty texting-for-no-reason thing. “Hello?”

“I would never tell you not to get on Tinder or any other app, but please be careful.”

His voice was a shock, which made no sense. She had heard a great deal of it not two weeks ago. But over the phone it felt more intimate somehow, which also made no sense. There was an ocean between them. “What do you mean?”

“Do all the things you’re supposed to do. Tell someone where you are and send them the man’s name and photo. Meet in public—all those precautions.”

“That seems like a lot of work in order to have sex.”

“Just text someone the details. Text me the details.”

“Text you, halfway across the world when it’s the middle of the night your time, the details about the hookup I’m about to have?”

“Yes. I don’t sleep that much anyway, and I’m profoundly nonjudgmental. Send me his picture and the address where you are and check in when you’re done. I promise I won’t be a jerk about it.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. She understood the logic behind what he was suggesting, but something about sending all that stuff toMaxfelt weird.

When the silence between them started to stretch out a tad too much, he said, “Or, you know thereisanother option.”

She snorted. “Let me take a wild guess. You, in the spirt of charity, are prepared to fly across the ocean and help me out with this.”

“Well, don’t sell yourself short; I would hardly call itcharity.”

She laughed. It was actually tempting. Or it would be if he was here. And not her best friend’s fiancée’s best friend.

He laughed, too. Because of course he had been joking. “When are you going to your parents’ house? How do you get there? How is the fruitcake?”

“That’s a lot of questions. Let’s see.” She looked at her watch. “I’ll leave in about three hours. It’s not as long a journey as you might think. I take a bus to a station in Queens where I catch the Long Island Railroad, and my dad picks me up on the other end. And the fruitcake seems fine tome—I’ve been dousing it in extra booze—but my mom will be able to tell.”

“I have a feeling you might be able to fool her.”

“Your feeling is incorrect.”

“Truly. When she and I were speaking after the ballet, we were talking about how I don’t like Christmas. She wasn’t having it. She was listing all the things there are to love about Christmas, and one of them was fruitcake. I said, oh yes, I’d seen yours, that you’d been so hard at work on it for weeks.”

“You told my mother you’d seen my fruitcake?”

“What’s wrong with that? Is that an American idiom for something untoward?”

She laughed. “No. I’m just thinking about how my mom is going to get on my case about you knowing such intimate details about my life.”

“Intimate details about your fruitcake? Are yousurethat isn’t American slang of some sort?”

She couldn’t help but laugh again. “You know what I mean. Vince left a year and a half ago, and she’s so angry at him. She wants me to move on. Well, she’d probably prefer if I actually got divorced first, but that’s taking long enough that I think she’s over it.”

“Whyisthat taking so long?”

“We’re fighting about Max.”

“Well, Ihavebeen called a homewrecker on more than one occasion.”