“Mistakes have been made,” Vince said as he took a step toward Dani. Max took another one, too, from the other direction, though he was cognizant of not wanting to turn this into some kind of duel. “I’m willing to admit that mistakes have been made.”

“Vince, you remember when you taught freshman comp?” Dani said suddenly. “That first year I arrived, you were stuck with two sections of it?” She looked over her shoulder at Max, as if including him in the conversation, and added, “He hated it.”

She turned back to Vince. “Remember the thing about avoiding passive language where possible? ‘Mistakes have been made’ is some top-notch passive language. You want to talk? Let’s talk about those mistakes. Let’s do me first. What mistakes have I made?”

“You really don’t think we have anything worth saving here, Dani?” Vince said, sidestepping her question entirely. “All our time together, just down the toilet?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. As if it wasn’t Vince himself who had done the flushing. Max clenched his jaw and exhaled, but the air through his teeth came out as a sort of whistle-growl, which drew both Vince’s and Dani’s attention—Dani looked over her shoulder briefly at Max before turning back to Vince.

“You know what?” Dani said. “I’m sorry I said that. There’s no point in talking about it. Why don’t you give me the papers, and—”

“Oh, you’re fucking a duke now, so you’re too good for me?”

“Baron, actually,” Dani said, and Max chuckled as he waited for her to correct the actual substance of the allegation.

She did not.

Max found he enjoyed being thought of as the kind of man Dani would choose as . . . what? Someone to sleep with? Someone to be with? Well, either or both. He would take whatever fake status she was conferring. He puffed up his chest, aware that while he might have avoided a duel, he was now acting as if he were in a nature documentary. He wouldn’t be surprised to suddenly hear David Attenborough’s voice narrating. Notice how the European male stakes his claim by straightening his spine and throwing his shoulders back.

Dani, back to being preternaturally calm, was staring at Vince with her eyebrows raised. Vince looked at Max, who smiled and pulled Max Minimus’s leash in a little. Yeah, asshole, I got the girl and the dog.

Of course, he actually had neither, but again, he was enjoying the fiction a great deal.