Page 51 of Duke, Actually

“Have another, Max.” Dani’s mom pushed a plate of brownies toward him.

“I can’t. I’m positively stuffed. But thank you.” They were in the backyard of Dani’s parents’ house, where they had feasted on clams Dani’s dad had caught—collected? Max didn’t know the correct verb—and grilled, locally raised Atlantic salmon, potato and green salads, and gooey chocolate brownies. “Everything was so delicious.” It might even have been the best meal he’d ever had, but that was probably as much to do with the company as with the food. He already knew Dani’s mom was a delight, but her dad was great, too, regaling Max with tales of clamming adventures and life at the UN. Max even got to practice his Spanish a bit, which wasn’t as good as his French, but Mr. Martinez, who had insisted on being called Carlos, was patient.

“What about Italian?” he asked. “I’m slightly better at Italian than Spanish.”

Carlos answered him effortlessly in Italian, and Max whistled. “Exactly how many languages do you speak?”

“My parents bought a little hotel on the beach before I was born,” he said. “They worked on it gradually over the years and eventually it became kind of fancy—almost by accident. It drew people from all over. I was always interested in the languages everyone spoke, and I turned out to be pretty good at picking up bits of them. That’s why I applied to the Model UN program. And the rest”—he gestured at Val—“Is history.”

“My sister and I only speak English and Spanish,” Dani said, “so my parents used to speak French when they wanted to talk about us without doing us the courtesy of leaving the room.” She stuck her tongue out at them. “They still do.”

Everyone was so at ease with each other. It wasn’t that Maxdidn’t understand, intellectually, that families like this existed. Marie and her mother had been this way. It was just so strange to have crash-landed in the middle of one. Unsettling at first, but then utterly relaxing. It felt as if someone had dispensed a narcotic as he listened to them talk and tease one another. Soon all the relaxation had him yawning. “I beg your pardon. I’m afraid all the food and the sun have done me in. I should be going.” Darkness had begun to descend, and he couldn’t stay forever, though he wanted to do exactly that. “Thank you for a wonderful evening.” He looked at Dani. “And day.” As lovely as Val and Carlos were, the dinner had been merely the icing on top of his beach day with Dani.

When had he last been that carefree?Trulycarefree, not tabloid-headline carefree?

“You’re not staying over?” Dani’s mom said to him with seemingly genuine confusion.

It took a moment for her question to penetrate his brain, so fixated had he been on Dani. “Oh, no, I have a hotel room in Manhattan.”

“Nonsense!” Valerie said. “You’ll stay, and you kids can hit the beach again tomorrow. If you want to, of course. We only have a sofa bed. You probably don’t want to.”

He did want to. He wanted to more than anything. He looked at Dani, who said, “I don’t know, man, suite at the Four Seasons or the awful sofa bed here?” She performed an exaggerated shrug but mouthed, “Stay,” as she did so.

Which was how Max found himself tucked into a lumpy sofa bed in the living room of a bungalow in a town on Long Island. Astired as he’d been earlier, once he was stretched out in the dark in a pair of Carlos’s sweatpants, he didn’t sleep. It wasn’t his usual brand of frustrating, involuntary insomnia, though.

Max had gone to bed in lots of different places. Suites in the world’s most exclusive hotels. Yachts—though not the infamous one. Even, once, a hammock under the stars on Ibiza. But never had he felt the bone-deep contentment this place inspired. The windows were open, and the steady chanting of crickets outside was melding with the reassuring tick-tocking of a grandfather clock in the otherwise silent house. His body was pleasantly spent from the swimming and the ridiculousDirty Dancinglifts, and the sheets were crisp and cool in the warm night. Dani was tucked into a guest bedroom down the hall that she’d tried and failed to make him take. Knowing she was near was strangely comforting.

He didn’twantto sleep now, as tired as he was. He wanted to lie here all night, letting himself be eased, allowing the pure pleasure of being here diffuse through his veins.

Chapter Ten

Max was adorable when he was asleep. He looked younger when his expressive face was at rest, when he was taking a break from dipping into his endless arsenal of wit. He looked innocent, almost, which Dani knew, objectively, was the last word anyone could use to describe Maximillian von Hansburg, the (Not So) Depraved Duke.

She hated to wake him... but not really. “Max,” she whispered, turning on her phone flashlight but taking care not to shine it in his face. She got her face right close to his. “Max.”

His eyes opened, and he let loose a slow, lethal smile. She’d been prepared for him to be confused about where he was waking up, or to be annoyed that it was so early, or to be startled such that he made a ruckus and ruined their escape. But he just looked at her like it was normal to wake up with her face a few inches from his. Like he washappyabout it.

She placed a finger to her lips and used her other hand to beckon him. He sat up and pulled on his T-shirt—he had been sleeping shirtless. Max was not a big, beefy guy, but he was wellproportioned, his long, lean muscles complementing his smooth persona. He looked like he spent a lot of time swimming in his stupid freezing Alpine lake. She felt something stirring in her. Why couldn’t she feel like this with one of her Tinder dudes? Why couldn’t she summon a simple, uncomplicated lust that was strong enough to overcome her fears with someone like HarlemHipster?

She grabbed her mom’s keys and, once they were safely out in the dark driveway, whispered, “Good morning.”

“Are we sneaking out like teenagers so we don’t wake your parents?”

“We’re sneaking out like teenagers so we don’t wake mydog.” She got in the car and turned to him as he settled himself into the passenger seat. The dim overhead light bathed his already golden features in a warm glow. His hair was disheveled and somehow all the more appealing for it. He looked ridiculous in his shoes, which she would call “fancy European man-sandals” paired with her father’s sweatpants. “Are you up for a minor adventure?”

“Always,” he said, vehemently and immediately. His voice was low and sleep-scratchy.

“Don’t get too excited. ‘Adventure’ might actually be overstating it. First stop is McDonald’s.”

“You know, I’ve never had McDonald’s.”

“Really?Well, I was going to feel bad about feeding you McDonald’s, but we’re in a hurry and it’s the only place around here that’s open this early. But now I feel it’s my duty to take you down a few pegs and feed you the fast food of the masses.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were eating McMuffins on a beach on the eastern edge of a spit of land that extended out into LongIsland Sound, which her dad had said would give them a prime view of the sunrise. It was that time just before dawn when the sun was not yet up, but the sky had lightened enough to look more blue than black, like a harbinger of good things to come.

“Oh my god,” Max said after his first bite of McMuffin. “Where has this been all my life?”

“Yeah, I know New Yorkers are supposed to be all about bodega egg-and-cheese sandwiches, but I’ve always found McMuffins to be a guilty pleasure.”

---