Page 94 of Duke, Actually

When Dani saw Max the next morning, the weirdness that had characterized the end of their time together last night had, thankfully, evaporated. He winked at her as she strode across the foyer to join him where he was standing with Marie and Leo. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, trying to inject into her words a breeziness she did not feel.

“Overslept?” Max inquired mildly, but with a twinkle in his eye that told her everything was fine between them.

She sent him a private eye roll, but she was hugely relieved, so she couldn’t help sending mixed messages by pairing the eye roll with a smile. She was embarrassed by how she’d overreacted to his having a laugh with Lavinia. But it was okay. Max understood her. He had seen her fears and witnessed her less flattering moments, and it hadn’t changed anything between them.

Well, ithadchanged the fact that her ever-simmering attraction to him could now be acted on. That wasn’t “normal,” but it was pretty awesome. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be acted onnow, but a person couldn’t have everything.

“Last night was rather exhausting, wasn’t it?” Marie said.

Max cleared his throat obnoxiously.

“I was trying to find my dog to say goodbye,” Dani said, shooting Max a look. Max Minimus was staying at the palace while Dani and Max toured Austria. “Gabby came to get him earlier this morning and spirited him off. This place is so big, it took me a while to find them.”

A few hours later, they checked into their hotel rooms in Innsbruck. Marie and Leo had a honeymoon suite on the top floor and Dani and Max had adjoining rooms the next floor down.

She wondered how things were going to go. Were they going to have sex again? She hoped so, and they’d joked about needing more condoms, but that was before things had gotten a little awkward. As Dani and Max opened the doors to their rooms, he winked at her, and, okay,yes, they were going to have sex again. She dropped her suitcase inside her door and without turning on any lights went straight to the adjoining door and yanked it open.

He had done the same with his door but was slightly ahead of her so he was already waiting for her.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he echoed, as he had done last night. Max never used the wordhiin real life. He was too posh for that. He always said the fullhello.

She launched herself at him, and without missing a beat he picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist in a way that had become familiar. They did it almost of their own accord, simply because it was the next phase of the move.

Look at them. They had “moves.” All thoseDirty Dancinglifts had actually been practice.

“Marie and Leo are going to be here any minute,” she mumbled against his mouth as she kissed him. “Marie is all hyper.”

“I know.” He moved his lips along the edge of her jaw and spoke against her skin. “I told her to take a rest, but she’s got a whole agenda for the afternoon.”

“Why isn’t her agenda going at it with her new husband?” She tilted her head back. She wanted him to pay some attention to her throat.

He did, letting his face slide down the side of her neck. Because he knew, somehow, what she wanted. “Damned if I know. If—”

A rap on his door startled them both. He grunted his displeasure and held onto her for a beat too long. She had to pull herself out of his grasp—which was actually flattering, but her heart kicked up several notches at the delay it caused. They could not be caught like this.

She fled to her room, and a few seconds later, she heard his door opening and him saying, “You don’t waste any time, do you?”

“I’m full of energy,” Marie said. “I’m giddy to be done with the wedding!” There was a pause. “No offense, Leo.”

“None taken,” came Leo’s voice. “You can’t be giddier than I am on that front.”

Dani stared at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were rosy. She looked rested—which she most decidedly was not. Maybe it was actually... happiness? She wasn’t sure she’d recognize that at first glance. It had been so long.

“Shall we go see the mine?” Marie asked.

“Are you sure you want to spend the first several hours of your honeymoon underground with me?” Max asked teasingly.

Leo snorted, but Marie said, “I’m sure. I’m so excited to see what you’ve been doing.”

Dani steeled herself, pasted on a smile, and went through the adjoining door. “I am, too.” It was true. She was proud of Max and couldn’t wait to see his project coming to life.

An hour later, clad in hard hats and steel-toed boots, they were listening to Max talk as he waved his arms around. “This will be a counter where people can get headphones for self-guided tours,” he explained. As he took them around what would become the aboveground part of the museum, he was animated in a way Dani hadn’t seen before. Previously, when they’d talked on the phone about this project, he’d used the phrasehistory come to life. She could see it, but she could also seeMaxcome to life. This was exactly the kind of thing he would get excited about—historical and meaty. A great story that had meaning for how people lived today. The museum was going to be stylish and bold, but once you went underground, revelatory and maybe even transformative. Hmm. That sounded like someone she knew.

They took a work elevator down, and as Max narrated during the journey, explaining what the descent would be like, she could picture it perfectly.

Once down, he launched into a story about a local woman who organized meals for the men who shuttled weapons here. “We found all these plans she’d written down. She had a garden herself and had sources for some of the ingredients she lacked. A neighbor, for example, had a yard full of turnips. She would concoct meals from whatever people had.”

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