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be that he says what he means?” I suggested. “Maybe this really is just brotherly concern. I mean, it’s not like he reacted like that to any of the other men I dated.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“He didn’t know any of those men,” Gregory explained. “He couldn’t vouch for them one way or the other. And the fact that you never dated the same man twice might have made him complacent. It shows that you were never serious about anyone. But I think he sees you differently now.”
I frowned. “I don’t know about that.”
“Trust me,” Gregory assured me. “He realizes… He’s just stubborn. He doesn’t want to give in to his feelings for you because he’s convinced himself that it would only lead to disaster.”
I sighed. “I don’t know why I’m continuing with this plan of Alani’s,” I said. “What does it serve? I’ve been thinking about the possibility of Tristan and me for a while now and…”
“And?”
“It’s very possible that it would end badly,” I admitted. “We’re so different.”
“Maybe that’s why it’ll work out between you,” he said. “My wife and I were polar opposites, too.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You’re married?”
“Was,” he corrected quickly. “I was married. We’re divorced now.”
“Oh.”
“We got married really young,” he explained. “We were both still in college, and we eloped in Vegas one day on a whim. It was the most spontaneous thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. We were as different as night and day, but that was made the relationship interesting. All the differences between us is what created the passion and the fire that made our lives fun.”
I raised my eyebrows. “But you got divorced,” I pointed out gently.
He smiled. “Because we let the little things get to us,” he said. “Because we were too young. And too immature to realize what it took to make a marriage work. We started to get on each other’s nerves. We decided to quit instead of fight, and in the end… We ended things prematurely. I was only twenty-two when the divorce was finalized.”
“It sounds like you regret the decision,” I pointed out.
“I do sometimes,” he nodded. “In a way, my way of escaping the pain of the divorce was to bury myself in work. Which is probably the reason I became so successful. But sometimes I can’t keep thinking that if I’d chosen differently, I’d be living a quiet life in the suburbs with my wife, a couple of kids, and a minivan parked in the drive.”
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“My ex-wife?”
“Yes.”
“She moved to Switzerland shortly after we got divorced,” Gregory replied. “She married some Swiss guy a couple of years later, and she’s got a son now.”
I looked at his face and could see the regret there. “Do you still keep in touch with her?”
“I did for a while,” he nodded. “But it was too hard to see her in her new life. It’s been a few years since we last spoke.”
I nodded. “Is that why you’re helping me?”
“I like you, Molly,” he said. “You’re a great girl, but up until last night, I didn’t know you. I know Tristan, though, and he reminds me a lot of myself. Why should he repeat the same mistakes I made?”
“That’s very noble of you.”
Gregory smiled. “I’m getting soft in my old age.”
I laughed. “I wasn’t aware that thirties were considered old.”
“Working this hard ages you,” he said. “You forget to live; you forget to enjoy your life. This vacation is the first one I’ve been on in four years.”
