Page 76 of Duke, Actually

“Yes,” she said vehemently. “You know.”

“I do indeed.”

“I thought, well, perhaps you wouldn’t be the worst option, given my circumstances.” She winced. “That sounds terrible. I’m sorry. I’m not good at this. I’m socially awkward.”

“On the contrary, you were very kind at dinner. There’s no need to apologize. I know exactly what you mean.”

“I had no idea you were attached. The last thing I’d ever want to do is come between you and your girlfriend.”

“Daniela is not my girlfriend,” he said reflexively.

She looked at him for a long time. “But you wish she was, yes?”

He was all geared up to deny. Deflect.I am not the girlfriend type.

But it wasn’t true. It used to be. It used to be so true, it had felt like an immutable part of him.

If the past week, with all its talking and cavorting, felt like amovie montage, he knew what kind of movie it was. A romance. Or, worse, one of those dreadful Hallmark movies Americans seemed to love where they just made up a fake European country so they could have a fairy tale free from the inconvenient constraints of reality.

Given his aversion to self-deception, Max had to face the truth. He might not be the girlfriend type, but he was, it seemed the Daniela Martinez type.

He had a full-on crush on Dani. He eyed Lavinia. How had he ever thought she was naive?

She flashed him another of her sad smiles. “It’s complicated for people like us, isn’t it?”

“It is,” he agreed.

The smile turned warmer. “But Daniela is rather wonderful, isn’t she?”

What could he do but agree again? “She is.”

“Max,” Lavinia said, “I have an idea. For how we could help each other.”

Dani was sitting at her desk in the attic when Max arrived back at the cottage. “Knock, knock,” he said from the bottom of the stairs.

“Come on up.”

She turned in her chair as he appeared through the trapdoor, illuminated from below by light from the kitchen. He paused, and they looked at each other for a long moment. He was so dear to her, this man who saw her like no one else ever had.

“I’m sorry,” they said in unison, and it had the effect of breaking the aura of heaviness surrounding them.

“Why on earth areyousorry?” He crossed to the bed and flopped on it backward, his head at the bottom and his stockinged feet up by the headboard, like he was too tired to lay down the right way, forget walking the extra ten steps to the sitting area.

She got up and joined him, but she sat with her back to the headboard. “Because your parents are horrible.” She winced. “I’m sorry.” She winced again. “I already said that. I’m sorry your parents are horrible, but I’m also sorry Isaidthey were horrible.”

“Theyarehorrible.” He shrugged like that was the normal way of things, which she supposed it was. “It’s just that their horribleness is usually aimed at me, not at innocent bystanders,” he said to the ceiling. “And believe it or not, it’s usually much worse. That was them tempering themselves because they had an audience.”

“I guess they didn’t want to make a bad impression on the people they hope will be future in-laws.”

“Mmm.”

She’d expected a more dramatic reaction, for him to shudder and fall back on his usual refrain about how he was never going to marry. “Lavinia doesn’t seem so bad?” she ventured, though she had no idea why.

He looked up sharply—he had still been staring at the ceiling. “Not bad as in I should marry her or not bad as in she’s a decent human being?”

“I don’t know,” she said, though in her mind she was strongly going for option B. “She seems too young for you.”

“She’s only four years younger than I am.”

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