Page 68 of Duke, Actually

Extremelyflattering. It felt like an accomplishment, being the person who knew Dani Martinez best.

He didn’t want to abuse that position, and he wasn’t about to tell her how she felt, but he was certain her take was incorrect. He supposed she could be protecting her heartandhave a subconscious block about still being married, but he truly didn’t think so. He settled for saying, “I suppose the only way to test your theory is to wait for your divorce judgment and see how you feel. If you find yourself spontaneously wanting to jump comedic baristas, you’ll know youwerehung up on the legalities of still being married.”

She smiled. “I think that’s it.”

It wasn’t, but all right.

“I swear to god, the moment the divorce is final, I’m going to do it with the first moderately attractive man I lay eyes on.”

He laughed. “So you’re just going to grab the nearest man and proposition him?”

“Watch me. I will.”

He knew she was jesting, but he very much did not want to watch her do that. “Perhaps a more considered approach would be better.”

“Oh, shut up. You don’t know what this kind of dry spell is like.”

“I do actually. I’m in a bit of one myself. Since New Year’s Eve, in fact.”

“What?Why?”

“I’m not sure. I think perhaps I’m a tad thrown off by my own marriage problem. I’d been slutting around in anticipation of my own impending nuptials. One would think, once they were canceled, that I would have accelerated my slutting around rather than tapered it off.” He shrugged, unable to explain his own behavior. Or lack of behavior.

“Well aren’t we a pair?”

He was tempted to suggest that they join forces, so to speak—that was the logical, bantery comeback—but for some reason he could no longer joke with her about that. “I have a plan for today that will distract us from our mysteriously enduring celibacy. How do you feel about a hike up the mountain? It’s my favorite place in the world, and I’d very much like to show it to you. I’ve spoken to the kitchen, and they can pull together food for us, and there’s the hot spring as an inducement. We can practice ourDirty Dancinglift.

“If you want to,” he added, studying her face, which suddenly seemed to contain a great deal of emotion he could not identify. “We can also just stay here so you can work.”

“No,” she croaked. Something strange was happening. Her voice sounded almost pained. “I want to.”

“Max Minimus can accompany us, if you like.” He patted the little imp, who responded by licking him, which should have been off-putting but somehow was not. “It is a fairly steep hike, though, so we could leave him with the gardener, who’s a lovely old chap and a bit of a pied piper for the animals on the estate. He has his own dog, and there are some resident stray cats that hiss at everyone else but follow him around like he hung the moon. It’s up to you.”

“Let’s leave him. He’s not really an athlete.” She sounded herself again.

“Grand.” He got back up and refilled her coffee. “Drink up.”

An hour later, caffeinated and breakfasted, they strolled off the manicured part of the property and Dani said, “Well, clearly my dog is going to hold a grudge against me for the rest of my life once he’s back in New York.” They had left Max Minimus rapturously cavorting in the snow with Lorena, the gardener’s Sennenhund, who was four times his size. “Playing all day after slinking off to sleep with a baron last night.” She shook her head and mock-scowled. “The traitor.”

Max had been in bed last night doing his usual insomnia thing when something vaguely wet nudged his shoulder. “Something vaguely wet” had turned out to be Max Minimus’s nose, so he’d lifted the covers, and after a moment of shuffling to get comfortable, his namesake had fallen asleep nestled in his armpit.

Oddly, Max had fallen asleep, too, and wakened refreshed several hours later. That was unusual.

“Like, seriously,” Dani said. “I haven’t woken up without Max Minimus for years. Even when Vince was still in the bed, Max slept onmyside.”

Max wanted to tell her to come sleep in his bed with them, that they could have a big slumber party, but of course he didn’t. But damn. He wanted to... cuddle her. Her dog, too, fine, but mostly her. It wasn’t a sexual thing. Well, that wasn’t true. But it wasn’tonlya sexual thing. He couldn’t turn off the constant simmeringawarenessof her. She was gorgeous. Her face and her brain and hereverything. But he accepted that the feeling wasn’t mutual. He accepted that the feeling was profoundly ill-advised. So, in the spirit of taking what he could get, he was happy to carve out the garret of her dreams and just... be near her.

They spent the walk up the mountain talking, as was their way, about nothing and everything. It was snowing, but the trail was shaded so they didn’t have to tromp through much accumulation. Usually when Max went up the mountain, he could feel himself relaxing. It was probably a combination of the objectively calming effect of being in nature and a conditioned response from the days when he and Seb would literally escape up the slope, leaving the tension and dysfunction of the house behind for a while.

But add in the presence of Dani, and he was extra relaxed. Though perhapsrelaxedwas not the right word. All the banter and crackling of wits that occurred in Dani’s presence required him to be on his toes, necessitated a degree of concentration that should have been the opposite of relaxation but somehow was not. He felt as if he were in “the zone” that athletes sometimes talkedabout, that there was a flow and order to the universe he was tapped into, that perhaps his destiny wasn’t going to be as oppressive as he’d always thought.

An hour into their hike, Dani dropped a little bomb he hadn’t seen coming.

“Okay, I’m going to tell you something a little shocking.”

“I am bracing myself even as we speak,” he said to her butt. In his defense, they were walking up an incline, and she was ahead of him.

“It’s about the mystery project. I think I want to try to write a novel. That’s what I’ve been working on this fall—the research for it.”

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