“So now you ask my permission?”
“Easier to ask forgiveness.”
“So you’re sorry?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Emilie is certain now that she did indeed muss his hair a moment ago. Because it’s between her hands again and this time she notices how smoothly it slides between her fingers.
“Mein Gott, that feels good,” he mutters against her lips. “Don’t stop.”
Max lays his palm against her neck. His hand is soft and warm, and she shivers just a bit as he slides it downward. It stops at the base of her throat when his fingers meet the chain that she wears around her neck. He pulls away to look at her and then at the chain. Max tucks one finger under the edge of her robe so that he can lift the chain out.
“A key?”
Slowly, slowly she realizes what is puddled in the palm of his hand and she jerks back, taking the necklace with her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“My husband gave it to me,” she says. “On our wedding night.”
Max knows she is widowed. Everyone knows this. But the words have a corrosive effect nonetheless. The heat that charged the air only seconds ago vanishes completely, and they are left sitting on the bed staring at one another in silence.
After a few seconds he manages to speak. “And you still carry it?”
“It’s all I have left of him.”
“What was his name?” Max whispers.
“Hans.”
“And you miss him?”
“Every day.”
“You love him still?”
“I will always love him.” The ferocity of this statement startles Emilie. The key is gripped so tightly in her hand that it cuts into the tender skin of her palm.
“How did he die?”
“He drowned.” It’s her polite way of saying that Hans drove off a bridge and dropped sixty feet into the Main River. But she doesn’t tell him this. She doesn’t like to think of that long, horrifying fall or the churning water that waited for her husband at the bottom.
Max does not ask for these details. He merely sits there, hands folded in his lap, thinking.
Emilie wants to apologize for her reaction. She wants to explain everything. But she cannot find the words. It’s just a key, she tells herself; it can’t bring Hans back. But she holds it anyway.
Max nods at her fist. “What is it to?”
“The front door of the inn we owned. It was a dream. A wedding gift. And when he died I lost it. I lost everything.”
“Except the key?”
She nods. “I took it with me when I went to work on the Columbus. I lied to the people who bought the inn. I told them I’d lost the key. I couldn’t bear for them to have it.”
Emile can see Max connecting the dots in his mind. A young widow forced to sell everything she owns. Forced to take a job serving wealthy passengers on an ocean liner. Ten years of drifting, never having a home, never working with anyone long enough to call them friend. She erupts in sudden fury at the sympathy she sees written across his face. “I don’t want your pity!”
“I wasn’t offering it.”
“Then why are you here, Herr Zabel?”
“No.” He catches her face in his hands again. Firm. But gentle. “You don’t get to call me that anymore. Not after the way you just kissed me.”
She tries to speak, but her voice cracks. Emilie clears her throat and tries again, but she manages little more than a whisper. “Why are you here?”
“To offer myself as a very willing and very eager substitute for the man you’ve lost.”
“He can’t be replaced.”
Max takes her clenched fist in his palm. He pries her fingers open, pulls the key from her grasp. He dangles it six inches from her nose. “You don’t have to torture yourself with this memory.”
She owes him an answer. That’s why he came here tonight. And he has forced her hand. Quite literally.
“Max…”
He lowers his head and brushes the corner of his mouth against hers. “That’s much better.”
This time when the knock sounds at the door it is hard and urgent and official.
Max doesn’t speak aloud, but she can read his lips, and she is quite surprised at his creativity. She has never seen those words used in that particular combination before.
“Yes?” she calls, turning toward the door. Her voice sounds a bit too strangled for her liking, but it’s the best response she can muster under the circumstances.
“You have been paged, Frau Imhof.” The dry, impatient voice is that of Heinrich Kubis. “Margaret Mather requires your assistance.”
Emilie mentally repeats the name in several languages until the face of the American heiress drifts into her mind.
“I will be right there.”