“Yeah, I . . .” None of this was his fault, meat mouth aside, so she lied. “I’m coming off a breakup, and I thought I was ready, but . . .”

She was ready, was the thing. Or she had been, a day ago.

Logan was surprisingly good-natured about her abrupt about-face, especially when she insisted on picking up the tab—all that meat did not come cheap.

On the way to the subway, she checked her phone, which she’d silenced for brunch.

Max: I heard you’re on a date.

Max: Or should I say “date”?

Max: Let me know how it goes.

Max: And also that you didn’t get axe-murdered.

She pulled over to the edge of the sidewalk.

Dani: How do you know I was on a date?

Max: It’s over already? Wow. Slam, bam . . .

Dani: I couldn’t go through with it.

Her phone rang. “How did you know I was on a date?” she asked when she picked it up.

“I thought you were going to meet in public first,” he said, ignoring her question again. He sounded peeved.

“How did you know I was on a date?” she repeated.

“I’m at the palace. Leo and Marie and I were at the pub in the village while you were talking to Leo.”

She harrumphed. She’d never told Leo it was a secret, but still.

“Dani, you can’t just go home with someone without—”

“I didn’t. I bailed from brunch,” she said, answering his question now that he’d finally answered hers, though his relentless focus on the logistics of her date was getting annoying.

“Oh,” he said. “I misunderstood.”

“All right, then.” She let her irritation evaporate. He meant well.

“Why did you change your mind?”

She told him about the meat thing, spinning it into an entertaining story that had him cracking up. “I told him I was too fresh off a breakup. Anyway, if at first you don’t succeed, swipe, swipe again.”

“Let me know next time you’re going out, okay?”

“I told Leo. Why are you being so persistent about this?”

“Because I don’t want you to get axe murdered. I like you.”

She flushed. That Max-style honesty continued to be such an odd mix of flattering and awkward. “You keep saying that.”

“It keeps being true.”

“But no one talks like that, except maybe first graders. How come you didn’t get socialized out of such earnest declarations of friendship like the rest of us did?”

“Probably because I never went to school, so I didn’t get socialized at all. I had a private tutor until I left for Cambridge.”

“What? What about boarding school?”

“My brother went to boarding school. I didn’t.”