“I’m not going to marry Lavinia,” he said carefully, trying to sound as though he meant it, because he did, but trying not to be so vehement that he sounded angry. “I was never going to marry Lavinia.” He found himself in uncharted territory, wanting to reassure a woman that he only wanted her. But leave it to him to find the only woman in the world for whom such a declaration would be a death knell. Even though she apparently didn’t want him to want Lavinia? He was confused. He didn’t like being confused.

“I should go,” Dani said suddenly.

Ah. He had not said the right thing. He should have continued to laugh off her questions about Lavinia.

“It’s late,” she said, “and we have to leave early.”

“All right,” Max said, and it was all he could do not to grab her hand, to say, Stay. But he knew enough not to do that.

When she left, he lay back down. That feeling of being perfectly balanced in his own body and mind was gone.

Chapter Twenty-One

When Dani saw Max the next morning, the weirdness that had characterized the end of their time together last night had, thankfully, evaporated. He winked at her as she strode across the foyer to join him where he was standing with Marie and Leo. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, trying to inject into her words a breeziness she did not feel.

“Overslept?” Max inquired mildly, but with a twinkle in his eye that told her everything was fine between them.

She sent him a private eye roll, but she was hugely relieved, so she couldn’t help sending mixed messages by pairing the eye roll with a smile. She was embarrassed by how she’d overreacted to his having a laugh with Lavinia. But it was okay. Max understood her. He had seen her fears and witnessed her less flattering moments, and it hadn’t changed anything between them.

Well, it had changed the fact that her ever-simmering attraction to him could now be acted on. That wasn’t “normal,” but it was pretty awesome. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be acted on now, but a person couldn’t have everything.

“Last night was rather exhausting, wasn’t it?” Marie said.

Max cleared his throat obnoxiously.

“I was trying to find my dog to say goodbye,” Dani said, shooting Max a look. Max Minimus was staying at the palace while Dani and Max toured Austria. “Gabby came to get him earlier this morning and spirited him off. This place is so big, it took me a while to find them.”

A few hours later, they checked into their hotel rooms in Innsbruck. Marie and Leo had a honeymoon suite on the top floor and Dani and Max had adjoining rooms the next floor down.