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My father has to shuffle off this mortal coil before I attain dukedom, and I can report that he is in fine health.
With the streetlights glinting off him, he looked like an ice prince. If she called him that, he’d probably say, “Ice baron, actually.”
“At some point this evening you stopped trying to get into my pants. Why?” “Because you clearly don’t want me there.” “So you’re a man-whore with morals?” “While I’m happy to take credit for being morally upstanding in my slutting around, I don’t think it’s actually that high-minded—or that complicated.”
“We all make errors of judgment when it comes to matters of the heart.”
“Keep your legs spread. Yes. A particular motto of mine.” “Oh, shut up. No off-color jokes allowed during snow-angel-ing.”
“Size isn’t everything. I thought smart women such as yourself were supposed to know that.”
“Whoever came up with the notion that one should feel guilty about things that bring one pleasure should be shot.”
“Eventually, the bitterness will fade, and you’ll be able to look back with equanimity. He’ll be a colleague for whom you have some fondness, or at least a colleague for whom you hold no rancor. It will just take a little time.”
As long as you agree to gossip with me in the evenings.
“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.”
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’t only a sexual thing. He couldn’t turn off the constant simmering awareness of her. She was gorgeous. Her face and her brain and her everything. 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
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He plopped onto his bed, which was unmade but piled with the same posh-looking linens and duvets as upstairs, extended his legs, and patted the mattress next to them. She snorted—slumber party with the baron—but stretched out next to him. Max Minimus jumped on the bed, too, and Max shifted to accommodate him as if this was a thing the two Maxes did. Wait. Had Max been patting the bed to signal her or her dog?
“There are many things I want, darling, but we can’t always get what we want, can we?”
“She seems too young for you.” “She’s only four years younger than I am.” “Right.” “You’re four years older than I am,” he said. “Well, I’m not going to marry you.”
He tracked Marie’s progress down the aisle, staying with his strategy of not looking at Dani. He needed to not miss his best friend’s wedding. And he needed to stop staring at what he could never have.
“Do you want to dance later?” “No.” “No?” she echoed laughingly. “I can’t dance with you,” he scoffed. “Why not?” “I can’t touch you. God. I can’t even look at you.” “But you’re going to do a lot more than—” He held up a hand. “Later. That’s later. I’ll see you later.” “Are you going to go back to ignoring me until then?” “Yes. Yes, I am.”
“All I can say,” Seb said, “is if I were you, I would do whatever I could to hold on to her.”
“What do you call it when you go on vacation and have a lot of sex and then you come home and you don’t know how to feel?” Aww, crap. That had just come out. “I think you call that a fling,” Sinéad said. Right. “And what do you call it when you have a fling with a friend?” “I think you call that a mistake.” Yep.
Well, hello,” Leo said when he picked up the phone. “How great of you to finally make time in your busy schedule to call me back, no matter that it is in fact one a.m. here. Allow me to get straight to the point: Max is devastated.”
Dani had told Sinéad it didn’t matter if she loved Max, but that wasn’t true. It did matter. Hugh Grant was right. Love always mattered, even if it hurt. And it did hurt.
“We’ve learned that love is more important than duty, you numbskull.”
She had learned from Max that sometimes you had to let yourself feel what you felt, even if what you felt went against all reason. Sometimes you had to let yourself change course. Sometimes you had to let yourself love people, even if they had the power to hurt you.
