Page 67 of Duke, Actually

“I know! It doesn’t make sense! I just...” She pulled out her phone and opened the Notes app. She had never imagined showing anyone besides Leo the list. But it was as good a way as anything to explain since she couldn’t seem to do it. And this was Max. He knew everything anyway. She handed it over.

“‘Things I Will Never Again Do for a Man,’” Max said, because of course he was going to read it out loud. He paused a long moment before saying, “Ah, yes,” as if he recognized the list.

“Number one: ‘Be financially dependent.’ Good. Number two: ‘Pretend to like things I don’t or pretend not to like things I do.’ Ah, that’s the ballet bit, isn’t it?” He looked up, and she nodded.“Number three: ‘Work with him in such a way that his interests are advanced at the expense of my own.’” He snorted. “Fucking Picasso.”

See? Maxdidknow everything. Nothing on this list was going to surprise him.

‘Number four: ‘Move.’” He looked up at her questioningly. “I don’t understand that one. I thought you liked your apartment.”

“I do. I do now. But I had a great rent-controlled apartment before. It was closer to campus, too. I wanted Vince to move in with me, but he wasn’t into it. He said we needed to have a new place for our new life together.” She rolled her eyes. “I mean, I don’t regret it. I wouldn’t have ended up being neighbors with Leo otherwise, but the larger point stands.”

“Right.” He went back to the list. “Number five: ‘Be away from my family for the holidays.’ That makes sense. You have a great family. Number six: ‘Rearrange my schedule to indulge his whims.’ Number seven: ‘Clean up after him.’ Number eight: ‘Neglect my friends.’ And, finally, number nine: ‘Fake an orgasm.’” He chuckled. “Good for you.” He set the phone down and regarded her thoughtfully. “I can’t argue with any of this. I also don’t think it will do any good for me to suggest that having sex one time with one man isn’t going to magically make any of these things happen, because I think you know that in your mind.”

“I do.”

“But you don’t know it in your heart. You are afraid. Vince hurt you more than you like to admit, perhaps even to yourself.”

She nodded, still painfully embarrassed, but also relieved that Max had gotten to the truth without her having to say it.

“I feel as though this is the part where I’m supposed to makea speech about not closing your heart off to love, and yet I’m not the right person to make that speech.”

She smiled. “That is exactly why I like you.”

He smiled, too, but was there a touch of wistfulness in it? A hint of the sadness they’d talked about at the Four Seasons?

“It would seem you are at an impasse.”

Something was happening inside her body as he stared at her in that super-intense way that was becoming more common as of late.

It was the sex feelings. For Max.

Which was never going to happen. Max had a list of sorts, too, his so-called rules of engagement. And although she was on his turf anddefinitelywasn’t trying to entrap him into marriage, she was, technically, still married. Ha. As if that was the only reason it would be a bad idea to follow her loins in this case. She could make another list of those as long as the one he was perusing.

She shook her head and forced herself to smile. Deflection time.

Max was trying to play it cool, but what Dani had said shocked him. It shouldn’t have. It was obvious now thatof courseshe had been finding fault with all these men, Mr. Carnivore aside, because she was afraid of being hurt again.

It just didn’t match up with his image of her as fearless, take-no-prisoners Professor Martinez.

But it was also making him question his own judgment. Finding out he hadn’t been seeing, reallyseeing, his favorite person in the world properly was unsettling.

“Itwouldseem that I’m at an impasse,” she said, her eyes twinkling. She was back to her usual self. Or to who he used to thinkof as her usual self. “But I have another theory. Maybe it’snotso much that I’m afraid of getting hurt.”

It was. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name. Now that he saw it, he couldn’t unsee it.

“What if it’s not that complicated?” she went on. “What if I’m having some kind of subconscious block about still being married?”

That wasn’t it. She’d shared something uncomfortable and she was backpedaling, trying to find another, easier explanation for her behavior. She might not even be doing it consciously.

“Do you think that’s possible?” she asked when he was silent too long.

No.“You’re asking me?”

“You know me better than anyone.”

Well, damn, that was flattering. “Even Leo?”

“Don’t tell him, but yeah.”

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