“But what if I wanted to write a novel?” She hadn’t touched the Gertrude Stein book since Riems. It hurt too much. It was so tied up with Max. Max, who, when she’d said, “I think I want to try to write a novel,” had said, simply, “Yes.”

“Then you write a novel?” Sinéad said. “Which, for the record, is an entirely unremarkable thing for an English professor to do.” When Dani only nodded, Sinéad said, “Any more questions?”

“What do you call it when you go on vacation and have a lot of sex and then you come home and you don’t know how to feel?”

Aww, crap. That had just come out.

“I think you call that a fling,” Sinéad said.

Right. “And what do you call it when you have a fling with a friend?”

“I think you call that a mistake.”

Yep.

“Unless . . .” Sinéad raised her eyebrows.

“What?” Dani asked, sorry she’d started this conversation.

“Unless you’re mischaracterizing your relationship with that person.”

“No, we’re definitely friends. Or we were.”

“But is that all you are?”

And there it was.

“We’re talking about the duke, aren’t we?” Sinéad pressed.

“Baron, actually.” Sinéad raised her eyebrows even higher, and Dani sighed and said, “Yes.”

“Do you love him?”

“Does it matter?” It didn’t matter if she loved Max. He didn’t love her. Max didn’t lie. And Dani would die before she would repeat her past mistakes for another man who didn’t love her. She was never going to quit her job and move to Eldovia. Well, she was never going to move to Eldovia. She was, however, thinking about quitting her job. But not really. Just idly. Because quitting a tenure-track job was insane.

Sinéad shrugged. “I personally can’t think of anything that matters more, but okay. You do you.”

Maybe this “hang out more with local friends” plan had been a bad idea. Dani needed Leo. Her friendship with Leo had always been refreshingly free of analysis. They were the same that way. They didn’t have to—or want to—talk about everything.

She missed him. He had been trying to reach her since he got home from his honeymoon yesterday, but she’d been dodging his calls. It had been shitty of her, and she resolved to call him when she got home.

“Well, hello,” Leo said when he picked up the phone. “How great of you to finally make time in your busy schedule to call me back, no matter that it is in fact one a.m. here. Allow me to get straight to the point: Max is devastated.”

She winced at the one a.m. part. She’d gotten so used to calling Max whenever. “I’m sorry. I’ll call you tomorrow.”