She thought about agreeing. Yes, I am so devoted to my dog I canceled my New Year’s Eve plans to tend to him. She looked over to where Dog Max was snort-snoring. “I could leave him alone—he’s fine. Honestly, he’s my excuse. The truth is, I’m committed to staying home in my pajamas and watching cheesy Christmas movies.”

She almost told him the rest, which was that she was sitting and staring at her computer, thinking about writing something. Something different from usual. And that it was his doing. His wild story about Karina Klein had ignited—reignited—the idea. But it was only a formless blob in her mind. It would probably go nowhere.

And she couldn’t shake the memory of last time she’d told someone about this idea. It had not gone well.

She rose from her desk and made her way to the couch to stretch out—she’d been hunched over for too long. “Where are you?” There was background noise on his end. “Are you at a party?”

“Paris, and I am. Or I was.”

“What do you mean was?”

“I am at a party, I suppose, but I came outside to get some air.”

“So what am I hearing?”

“I’m on a terrace, and the doors to the main room are open because it’s hot in there. There’s a band as well as a more generalized din.”

“What kind of party is it? Minor European royalty? Are you still wife-scouting?”

“Ha-ha. I wasn’t wife-scouting in New York, nor am I this evening. A friend of mine was having a New Year’s Eve party, and I wanted to . . . Well, frankly, I wanted to escape my family, so I jetted over.”

“Ah, took the private jet to the party in Paris.” She was teasing, because she didn’t quite know what to make of the baron who wanted to escape his family so he “jetted over” to Paris.

“I’ll have you know I flew commercial. I always fly commercial.”

“You flew commercial when you came here?”

“I did.”

“Huh.”

“That doesn’t conform to your image of me as a profligate wastrel?”

Tabloids aside, Max cultivated a certain image of a carefree-bordering-on-careless playboy. That person would charter a private jet. But as Dani had just been thinking, it didn’t seem like he was that person. But why pretend to be a less good person than you actually were? “Why did you want to escape your family?” He had dodged that question when they’d spoken on Christmas Eve.

“Why does anyone want to escape their families?”

By which she supposed he meant it was a long story, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to accept the deflection. She genuinely wanted to solve the puzzle that was Human Max. “I don’t know. Why do you?”