“That’s too young to get married! Take it from an expert. From the ripe old age of thirty-two, I can say with authority that twenty-eight is not old.”

“It is when you’re in line to inherit a dukedom and everything you do is—”

“What?”

“Nothing. I should get back.”

“Tell me what you were going to say.” When he still didn’t speak, she added, “Come on. I’ve told you all the gory details of my humiliation at Vince’s hands.”

“I was going to say ‘wrong.’” His voice had gone quiet, shed of its usual bon vivant qualities. “When everything you do is wrong.”

Dani was glad, suddenly, that their texting had escalated to a phone call. While she considered what to say, she heard someone else through Max’s phone. “It’s Christmas Eve, darling.” It was a feminine voice, so it must have been his mother. The way she said darling was interesting. Somehow, she made it sound like the opposite of an endearment. “What can possibly be so important?”

“I’ll be right there, Mother.”

“Max, I—” Dani didn’t know what to say. When he’d talked about wanting to avoid his family, she’d classified that as the usual family junk. Or not even that. She’d thought of it as rich-person problems. “Have a negroni with lunch?” she finally finished weakly.

“I don’t drink around my family.”

“Oh, of course.” Why was she saying Of course? As if she knew anything about his family other than the handful of vague statements he’d made about them? She was starting to wonder if Max’s gentlemanly attentiveness wasn’t attentiveness per se so much as deflection.

“You weren’t humiliated at Vince’s hands, Dani.”

“What?”

“You said you’d been humiliated at Vince’s hands.”

Right. Case in point. She’d been trying to figure out the dynamic between him and his mother, and he was turning the conversation back to her.

“That is incorrect,” he went on. “He’s the one making a fool of himself.” He was still using the quiet, restrained voice from before. Together with the odd intimacy of the transatlantic phone call, it made what he was saying sound extra true, somehow. “And everyone knows it.”

She wondered if it was possible for both things about Max to be true: Could he be deflecting attention from himself and genuinely interested in her life? Regardless, she wasn’t sure how he could say that everyone knew. Max wasn’t part of her real life. He didn’t know the relevant “everyone.” But the quiet certainty with which he’d delivered his pronouncement was gratifying. So she just said, “Thanks.”

“I have to go. Merry Christmas, Dani.”

She smiled. “Merry Christmas, Max.”