Page 107 of Duke, Actually

“I assumed. I’ve been helping Sebastien with a mining reclamation project. It’s an immersive museum of sorts, and the design firm we’ve employed has offices in New York. I’m going to dosome consulting work for them.” He left unspoken the implication:I don’t need your money.

He also skipped over Oma’s ties to the project. He wanted to protect that knowledge, to make sure his parents didn’t find a way to twist it or to profit from it. They could find out about it when everyone else did.

“Oh, darling,” Mother said, “they’re using you because they think you’ll get them clients. It’s like when Liesel Schrodinger fancied herself an interior designer.” She laughed cruelly.

She might have been correct, but Max didn’t care. It was a start. An actual job that wasn’t tied to his family. Max and one of the firm’s partners had been working so well together on the Innsbruck project that he didn’t think the offer was only about his wealth and connections. Regardless, he intended to prove himself worthy.

Everyone looked at Father. Father was sweating heavily. Perhaps he was just getting warmed up. Perhaps they were in for the biggest eruption they’d ever seen. “Is that all?” he finally bit out.

It was.

Well, it wasn’t. There was still the little—massive—issue of Daniela Martinez. But Max had declared his independence in matters financial and geographical, and that was what was relevant here. “Yes.”

Father spoke with an aura of eerie calm. “Then you are no son of mine.” He then turned to Sebastien, as if anointing him heir right then and there.

Max and Sebastien had spent yesterday planning, and had agreed that Max would drop his bomb this evening and that they’d let it settle and see what the outcome was before regrouping and making a plan for Seb to drop his. It was a coordinated, two-stage campaign.

Seb must have decided a change in strategy was in order. With all three of them looking at him, Max’s quiet, unassuming,braveyounger brother smiled cheerily and said, “Mother. Father. I’m gay. And I’m in love with Torkel Renner. He’s my boyfriend.”

Max had his eyes on his father, whose affect remained strangely flat, but his mother’s sharp intake of breath drew his attention. “Torkel Renner?” Her brow knit, as if she knew but could not quite place the name and wasn’t sure how she wanted to react until she did.

“He’s the head of palace security.” Seb, cool as a cucumber, picked up his heretofore untouched kirsch, took a sip, set it down, and added with the merest hint of a shrug, “I thought you should know, before you decide to disown the heir, what you’re getting from the spare.”

A loudthunkfrom the head of the table drew everyone’s attention. That was more like it. Father was having a delayed reaction, but his fist pounding the table was merely the open volley of all he would want to communicate. It was a gavel presaging his judgment. They would hear from him now.

But, it turned out, they wouldn’t. That noise had not come from his fist. It had come from his head hitting the table.

The next afternoon, Dani cued upLove Actually. She hadn’t seen it since last summer when Max had talked her into an out-of-season viewing. It was still technically out of season, today being only December 9 but close enough. Sometimes, when your life was falling apart, you needed a Christmas movie.

As she watched the opening sequence from the kitchen, where she was making a grilled-cheese sandwich, just like she and Max had done last year after the holiday party, something lurched inside her. She stumbled into the living room and sat down next to Max Minimus on the couch.

The opening scene was a series of people greeting each other at an airport—couples and family and friends embracing and crying and reuniting while Hugh Grant, in a voiceover, talked about love. She looked at it with new eyes as she thought about when she’d come off the plane before the wedding and her heart had leapt to see Max. Or when he’d surprised her on the beach, dispensing what remained the most satisfying hug of her life and saying, “Tell me everything.”

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 itdidhurt.

She loved Max, and he didn’t love her back. But Max wasn’t Vince. Max had never lied to her. And he did love her in some fashion, of that she was sure. He was her friend. He had made a mistake in asking her to move in with him—or to marry him, for god’s sake. He had hurt her deeply when it seemed like he was disregarding everything heknewwas important to her.

That stupid list. She had to face the fact that her list had not protected her like it was supposed to. “So much for my list, Max.” Max Minimus barked as if in agreement.

The ironic part was that when she examined her heart, Daniwaswilling to sacrifice what she’d thought she wanted for “something bigger,” to use Leo’s phrase. But as much fun as she andMax had, as much as he got her in a way no one else did, she couldn’t be with someone who didn’t love her.

What had she told Max about this movie? It seemed like a rom-com, but really it was a romantic tragedy. But as Hugh Grant said, love was still all around.

All right, then. She was sad—gutted, really—but it was a relief to have thought things through.

The question was: What happened next? She was still angry at Max for thinking she would upend her life to indulge his whims. But was she going to throw out their entire relationship because he had made an error of judgment? No, she was going to tell him he’d hurt her feelings, apologize for running away, and make things right with her friend. She would keep her true feelings to herself. She would live through her own personal romantic tragedy. She had done it before, and she could do it again. The heartbreak would fade—eventually—and she’d still have Max.

Assuming she got off her ass and called him.

Her phone rang before she could pick it up. She harbored a momentary hope that it would be him, but she knew even before the call display showed Leo’s name that it wouldn’t. She had told him not to contact her, and Maxlistened.

Well, Leo would do. She needed to apologize to him, too. She hadn’t been very reasonable last night.

“Leo. I’m—”

“Max’s father died this evening.”

She gasped. Max Minimus started whining, as if he knew somehow. “What happened?”