“It’s a date.” He couldn’t think when he had looked forward to something more.

Nearly two hours later, Max led Dani into a clearing that took her breath away. It had stopped snowing and the sun had come out, bringing low light to a blue sky. Towering, dark-green coniferous trees iced with a thin layer of the morning’s snow surrounded a small spring lined with dark-gray stones. Wisps of steam floated up from the water’s surface. It was like a postcard that had been run through an “Alps” filter.

As they stood and contemplated the vista, something in Dani’s chest lurched and loosened. At the same time, which should have been impossible. But the idea of running away with Max—up a mountain, for heaven’s sake, and then to arrive here, in this impossible tableau felt like . . . Well, it felt like healing, as melodramatic as that sounded. “Are you kidding me with this place?”

Max chuckled. “It is lovely, isn’t it?” He smiled a little wistfully. “A nice reward for the strenuous hike up. Seb and I used to come up here all the time. This mountain continues to be one of the great compensations of life as the heir to the Duke of Aquilla.”

There was that word again: compensations. He’d used it at the Four Seasons, when she’d teased him about being rich enough to talk his way into the closed spa.

He dropped his backpack near the edge of the pool, shrugged out of his coat, and leaned down and unlaced his hiking boots. He straightened and peeled off his shirt. God. He looked like a model, the angles of his face complementing the mountains behind him and his eyes almost the same color as the sky. He looked like he should be in one of those expensive watch ads you saw in The New Yorker. Except maybe not, because he wasn’t wearing a watch. Or a shirt.

And here came the sex feelings. She felt a bit shaky, like a damsel in distress in need of a fainting couch, even as a kind of steady warmth bloomed inside her.

She took a deep breath to try to right herself. The air smelled piney. Like Max had the few times she’d gotten close enough to pick up his cologne. He smelled like his favorite place.

He had been wearing swim trunks under the pants he was shedding, and Dani was wearing her swimsuit under her clothes, so she took off her boots and struggled out of her clothing. “Oh, oh, it’s cold!” She hopped up and down on the freezing rock. At least the shock of cold jarred her out of her swoony weakness of a moment ago.

“Careful,” he warned. “The dusting of snow will have made it slippery.” He held out a hand, and before she could overthink it, she took it.