Page 48 of Duke, Actually

Oh, Max. Max was such a genuinely good person underneath his breezy exterior. Underneath the European tabloid, Depraved Duke persona. He had come here purely to keep her company at the party she was so dreading. It made her throat catch. Shethought of the Christmas party, how perfectly pitched all his interventions had been—the hand at her back, the stories he’d told to paint her in a flattering light. As unlikely as it was, Max von Hansburg, Baron of Laudon, had become one of her closest friends. She might even saybestfriend, except that to do so felt disloyal to Leo somehow.

“Or,” he amended, when she still didn’t speak, “I wanted to see you, and this seemed like as good an excuse as any?”

Her throat tightened even more as he did his signature “I like you, I really like you” thing. She couldn’t figure it out. She knew her friends liked her. She didn’t need them to tell her repeatedly. But then came Max, all “I think you’re cool,” and she got all emotional.

“Where are you?” he asked.

She ordered herself to snap out of her uncharacteristically schmoopy moment. “I’m at my parents’ house on Long Island. I have a renter at my place.”

“What do you mean you have a renter?”

“I rent my place out on Airbnb sometimes.”

“Youdo?”

“I can’t really afford the apartment on my own, but it’s a great deal for what it is and I don’t want to give it up. I rented it out almost every other week this summer.”

“Youdid?”

She wasn’t sure why he was so astonished. Except that of course he had no idea what it was like to pinch pennies.

“And now,” she went on, “not only do I have the normal budget crunch, but my very effective divorce lawyer is also very expensive. I thought about getting a roommate, but,ugh. I ran thenumbers, and I figured out if I Airbnb-ed my place periodically, I could make as much money as I would with a full-time roommate. And this fall . . .”

She’d been going to add that since she had the teaching leave upcoming, she had more plans to rent the place out, but Max did not need a monologue about her balance sheet. As cool as Max was turning out to be, it was a little awkward that he was a literal aristocrat and she was having trouble making rent. Well, awkward on her end, anyway. He never seemed to notice, much less mind, the vast economic gulf between them.

“All right, so, I think this is the part where you invite me to Long Island?” Max said cheerfully.

“Really?” She wanted him to come to her, suddenly, so much. She’d been planning to pack up and head into the city to meet him, but it was hot and sunny, a perfect end-of-summer beach day.

“Well, what are you doing out there?” he asked. “Having a party I can’t crash? Wait! Are you finally going to have sex?”

“No! I’m setting up for a day at the beach right now—alone. Though maybe Ishouldget on Tinder and try to scare up some local matches. Maybe I’ll have more luck here than I’ve had in the city.”

“Grand. Send me the name of the beach, and I’ll be off. I’ll advise on the Tindering, too.”

She laughed. Max washere! “You might want to buy bathing trunks.” She imagined him in his sleek blue suit, striding up the beach. It was a pleasant image. But still, it was an extremely hot day.

“I have mine with me. I always stay at the Four Seasons because it has a sauna I’m partial to.”

“Of course you do.”

“Marie likes the Plaza, but there’s no opportunity to shed one’s clothing and get sweaty at the Plaza.”

“You can’t see, but I’m rolling my eyes. Anyway, I thought you were an expert at making your own opportunities to shed clothing and get sweaty.”

She was teasing him about his so-called man-whorish ways, but she’d learned he was, for lack of a better phrase, an ethical man-whore. He liked sex, and he apparently had a lot of it, but he tried to make sure that everyone had a good time and understood his “rules of engagement.”

She wanted to be like that. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t get her act together. She took his point that her last prospect, HarlemHipster, had been fine. So he was allergic to dogs. As Max had said, she wasn’t going to marry him.

She realized that Max hadn’t responded to her teasing about him making his own opportunities to get hot and sweaty. She’d expected a sharp comeback, but he’d gone uncharacteristically silent. “Anyway, definitely come on out.”

And there he was, ninety minutes later, striding across the sand to the agreed-upon meeting place, where she’d set up her umbrella. Talk about dukeish casual. He wore blue gingham swim trunks, a white T-shirt, and a pair of tortoise-shell Ray-Bans. She could justseehim on the Mediterranean yacht that had made him into the Depraved Duke. She scrambled to her feet, suddenly—weirdly—shy. She wasn’t sure how to greet him, which was dumb because they talked on the phone all the time. She thought back to the couple of times on his first trip to New York when she’d surprised herself by blurting out something really personal andended up exposing too much of herself, making herself too vulnerable. She felt that way now, except literally. Physically. She should have put a cover-up on. She should have—

He scooped her into his arms, engulfing her in a great big hug. Apparently he wasn’t feeling any of the awkwardness she was. Which was good. She hugged him back, and he picked her up so that her feet rose a few inches from the sand. He still had that spicy pine smell, as he had last Christmas. She tried not to inhale too overtly.

“You are a sight for sore eyes,” he declared, and with a final, extra-hard squeeze, he plopped down on her beach blanket, laid on one side facing her with his head propped on his hand, and said, “Tell me everything.”

“I just talked to you yesterday.”

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