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I bow my head and smile. “What rules, Daniel? Tell me what you did.”
When I look, the fingers on his left hand are drumming a beat on the steering wheel. He offers his right hand to me. “I’ll tell you. This is like boarding the subway for me, so hold my hand.”
I want to laugh, but I have no idea if he’s being serious or not, so I take his hand in mine.
He squeezes mine gently. “He was my client at the time.”
“What?” I can’t hide my surprise at that admission, so I don’t even try. “He was your client?”
He nods. “I terminated our contract as soon as I got back to my office the day we argued about him. When you told me you were falling hard and fast for McCabe, I knew I couldn’t sit idly by and watch that happen.”
I try to follow, but I’m lost. “Please explain more.”
His gaze darts from my face back to the road. “He was living on the fortune his parents gave him when he turned twenty-five, but he had blown through that. He spent most of it on luxury vacations and gifts for women.”
During our time together, Brogan gave me nothing, not even a single red rose. More often than not, when we went out for dinner, it was because I had signed a sponsorship deal with the establishment. Our meals and drinks were covered in addition to a healthy deposit in my bank account. In exchange, I had to post a picture or video to social media showing my boyfriend and I sitting at a table having a great time. Although, I often wished we were at my place eating food. Brogan cooked for me once, but there was never a repeat of that.
“When did he give women gifts?” I whisper.
Daniel’s hand tightens on mine. “The last one I’m aware of was a few days before you and I spoke about him. He had just returned to New York after spending a week in Paris with her.”
I try to tug my hand away, but he holds tightly to it.
“He told me the Paris trip was business,” I say as I glance at the back of the RV again. “I asked to go with him, but he said his dad was accompanying him, so it would be all business all the time.”
“His dad is terrified of flying. He’s never left New York City.”
My hand jumps to my mouth. “What? You’re serious?”
“Brogan McCabe has never worked a day in his life,” he starts before he takes a second to pause. “His parents gave him a monthly allowance. They set him up with me, but he kept spending, and they kept funding him. They were contemplating cutting him off after the Paris trip, so the well was about to run dry for him.”
“You said someone you knew told you he was bad news,” I repeat the words Daniel said to me the last time I saw him before he moved away. “There was no someone. It was you all along?”
He nods. “When I told you that he had a reputation for being an asshole and a lazy bastard, I wasn’t lying, but I didn’t come clean with everything I knew about him. I wanted to. I would have, Gina, but a few weeks later, Dominick mentioned you two had broken up.”
The gravity of that hits me. “You were trying to save me from making a huge mistake. He wanted us to move in together. If I had agreed to look for a place for us, I would have ended up supporting him financially.”
“I believe so, yes.”
“You took a big risk,” I say, even though he’s well aware of it. “You could have gotten into a lot of trouble. Brogan could have sued you for breach of contract, right? His parents, too.”
He glances at me again before dragging both of our hands to his lips to kiss my knuckles softly. “I’d do it all over again, Gina.”
I stare at his profile. “I had no idea.”
“It’s in the past.” He looks to the road ahead. “I realized that day that I needed to keep moving my life forward. I tried to do that in New York, but leaving for California was the clean break I needed.”
“I thought you left because the memories of your dad were too much.”
“They were.” He nods, keeping his gaze trained in front of him. “Everything felt like too much, so I left and never looked back until I landed in Las Vegas.”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE
Daniel
“At one time,all I wanted was to go to Yale,” Gina whispers. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
My gaze darts from her face to the building we are passing. It’s part of the campus of the Ivy League school. “You’re serious?”
