“A text from Vince.” She read it aloud as she tried and failed to get her dog to come back to her bed. “‘I’ve signed the papers. I’m on my way to your place to drop them off. I’d like to see you in person.’”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Max said, scratching Max Minimus’s head. “Perhaps that party was more effective than we knew.”

“I have to get there.” She threw back her covers and hopped out of bed.

“I don’t know why he can’t courier them.” Max sounded peeved.

“Or give them to his lawyer, which is what he was supposed to do, but probably he has to have the last word or make me jump through one last hoop.” Dani dug in her overnight bag as Max Minimus finally left Max Maximus’s side and yipped around her heels. “Which is fine. I don’t care anymore. I’m getting my divorce and my dog, so he can make whatever little speech he wants if it makes him feel better.”

Max got out of bed. “I’m coming with you.”

“Do you have enough time before your flight?”

“Yes. I don’t fly private, but I’m not above playing the baron card in order to cut the security and customs lines.”

“Okay,” she agreed, pausing to smile at his bewildered expression. He had probably expected her to object. Historically, that was what she had done whenever he’d offered her something. Not today. If he could bare his soul to her, she could accept his help without arguing. In fact . . . “Any chance you can order up your magical Mercedes?”

“I can indeed.”

She clapped her hands. “Okay, come on, Maxes. I’m getting divorced!”

“The awkward part is that the mime is still in my apartment,” Dani said laughingly as they got out of the car at her building. “I’m going to have to receive my divorce papers out here.” A waist-high ledge separated the sidewalk from the building’s property, and she boosted herself up and sat on it.

Max peered up at where he thought Dani’s windows were. It bothered him, the idea of her having to clear out of her place to make room for strangers. While he understood intellectually that rents were high in New York, it still rankled.

But not as much as the sight of Vince strolling up did. He wanted to fucking punch the man, an impulse he checked both because he was not the kind of person who went around punching people, even people who deserved it, but also because the rational part of his brain knew that punching Vince was not the way to get Dani the divorce he wanted.

She wanted. The divorce she wanted.