Page 35 of Duke, Actually

“Oh my god! Do you have a woman there?” She was exclaiming, but in a whisper, as if she, too, needed to keep her voice down.

“She wanted to paint me,” he said—as if he needed an excuse? “She’s an artist.”

There was a long pause, and Max started to fear he’d misstepped.

“So did she paint you?” Dani finally asked. “Was it any good?”

“Well, she drew me. We’re at my hotel, so she had to settle for a pen and hotel stationery.”

“Does she have a studio? Why didn’t you go there?”

Max hadn’t thought this through. Dani was the kind of person who noticed details. Details like whispering and background noise. And now they were going to have to talk about this.

He wasn’t sure why he was so reluctant. He’d called her because he’d been thinking how much he liked talking to her. This was as good a topic as any. “She suggested her studio, but I counterproposed my hotel. When I’m entertaining, I have certain guidelines for myself.”

“Like a list?” she said with a degree of excitement that perplexed him. He suddenly remembered her talking, when they were out for negronis, about how she should have put something on a list.

“I suppose it is a list of sorts. A mental one. I think of them more as rules of engagement.”

“So what are these ‘rules’?”

“One of them is to be, the, ah, host. Rather than the guest.”

“Why?”

“Because one never knows, when one departs from unfamiliar environs, what one is going to encounter.”

“What is one going to encounter?”

“Paparazzi, potentially. In Europe. That wouldn’t be a problem for me in America,” he rushed to add, but why? It wasn’t as if she was ever going to “host” him at her place.

“What other rules do you have?”

“Must we keep talking about this?”

“Yes. It’s good for me to hear. Not that I need to worry aboutpaparazzi, but I could definitely use a lesson in the ethics of hooking up.”

“I wish you would stop calling it ‘hooking up,’ Daniela.”

“What should I call it? Making love? Ha!” She laughed, as if the idea was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard.

“All right, but for the record, I don’t think you should be entertaining men at your apartment.”

“Double standard much?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry about it, but it’s the way of the world. You don’t want to end up with a creep who knows where you live.”

“Point taken.”

“All right, well, there are really only three other things. First, I want anyone I spend time with in that manner to be unattached. Not that I’m the morality police, but things have gotten ugly once or twice when I didn’t realize that my companion was otherwise committed.” He snorted. “In fact, I developed that rule at the same time I developed the one about not going to other people’s houses. Or boats.”

She laughed. She had a low, melodic laugh. “This is the Depraved Duke origin story, isn’t it?”

“Daniela, have you been googling me again?” He was actually strangely, sharply pleased by the idea.

“Come on. If you were a commoner who suddenly found yourself friends with European nobility, you would be doing some googling, too.”

He was also strangely, sharply pleased that she had called him her friend.