Page 45 of Duke, Actually
“Are you telling me to have sex with someone I don’t want to have sex with? Are you telling me I should have had sex with Mr. Meat?” He had been semi-teasing, but her voice had gone defensive and shrill.
“No!God.Of course not.” Honestly, he was always a little relieved when she called him with a strikeout. It wasn’t that he was jealous. He just didn’t think any of these men were worthy of her. The one before this had been a professionalFortniteplayer, for god’s sake. But at the same time, looking at the situation objectively, if she wasn’t looking for Mr. Forever, but Mr. Right Now, she could stand to lower her standards.
Not that he thought she should have to.
He was overthinking this. There was one other logical explanation for her reticence. Normally, he wouldn’t be so pushy as to bring it up, but he and Dani had become genuinely close over the last several months. “Is it possible your problem is that you’re worried—consciously or subconsciously—about getting your heart broken again?”
“No, no,” she said quickly. “I’m post-love.”
“So you’ve said. I was just checking, but ‘post-love.’ I get it.”
“You too?”
“Yes. Well, that’s not right. ‘Post’ implies you’ve been in love.”
She snorted. “So you’re pre-love?”
“No. I don’t think so, at least.”
“Anti-love?” She laughed.
“I’m notagainstlove. It’s more that I’m indifferent to it. I don’t think it works on me.”
“Is that why you agreed to marry Marie even though you weren’t in love with her?” Well. Here he’d thought they were talking about her. “Sorry,” she added quickly. “None of my business.”
“No, it’s fine. With you, I’m an open book.”
“Explain it to me, then—how you were going to marry Marie. I know the backstory. Uniting the houses and all that. But how did you square it in your mind?”
“I don’t know, really. It didn’t seem like such a bad scenario. I love Marie in a platonic way. She’s a cross between a sister and a best friend. She’s my only...” He’d been going to say she was his only confidant, but that wasn’t true anymore, was it? Max and Marie didn’t even talk that much these days, which he would have put down to her having Leo and being swept up in her new UN gig and in wedding preparations, but actually,heowedhera call. “It never felt like I was settling, because I’ve never found anyone I actively wanted to marry.”
“Because you’ve never been in love.”
“Correct. Marie and I had agreed we would do our duty with the old turkey baster—or with discreet medical intervention, if needed—but then we’d be free to live our lives.”
“Because you need an heir.”
“I don’tneedone, and now I won’t have one. But that would have been the expected path, yes.”
She huffed an incredulous laugh. “I swear, half the time I forget who you are. I mean, not whoyouare, but that you’re a member of the aristocracy.”
He felt himself flush.Thatwas exactly why he liked her so much. Her declaration felt like a compliment, though she probably hadn’t meant it that way. It was rare that someone saw him as a person first and a baron second.
“It sounds like a business arrangement,” she said.
“It was, in a way, but remember, IlikeMarie. That’s why I went along with it. There’s no one I’d rather read the newspaper with every morning or gossip with every evening, or...”
That was another thing that wasn’t true anymore. He and Dani gossiped several evenings a week. Or at random times of the day or night, such as when she was fleeing a date. They also talked about more serious matters. It was amazing—and exhilarating—how easily they could toggle between the two.
“But you were content to step aside when she met Leo,” Dani said, filling in the sentence he’d trailed off.
“Well, I stepped aside.”
“But not contentedly?”
“I was happy for her. Iamhappy for her.” He was aware that he was prevaricating. And also that Dani, she of the sharp mind and the sharp tongue, probably would not stand for it.
“But?” she prompted, and he chuckled. He knew her too well.