Page 106 of Too Good to Be True

Good God.

Daniel was thirty-five years old.

Not good.

He rounded my legs with one arm while he turned to me and rested into an elbow on the back of the lounge, giving me his undivided attention.

Not that I didn’t have it before, but he was definitely settling in to share.

So I relaxed with him and settled in to listen.

“I’ve not been a choir boy,” he confessed. “And when I end things with a woman, and there have been many…”

He paused to watch my response.

But since I already knew about the many women from my Google search, I didn’t have one, so he carried on.

“I cannot tell you they were all in agreement that our relationship had run its course. But I learned to be careful about leading a woman on. I had a girlfriend when I was eighteen and I was not serious, but I liked her. Our relationship was intimate, and it was the first time I had that with a longtime partner. I liked getting it, so I wasn’t as careful with her emotions as I should have been when I put in the work to keep her. This meant, when it was over for me, she was blindsided. It might have been over, but I cared about her still, and I felt like an ass. To this day, if we’re ever in the same space, she avoids me. And to this day, I still care about her and I’m aware I hurt her so much, it still stings, twenty years later. And that, my darling, doesn’t feel very nice.”

I hated he hurt her, even inadvertently.

And I hated they both still suffered for it.

But I loved that he got why that was.

“I bet not,” I said, because he’d stopped talking and I needed to say something.

“So I take pains not to do that again. It isn’t to say a woman hasn’t been ugly because she’s not getting what she wants from me. But I always know I gave her no indication I intended to give it. If she misread things, that’s one thing. The other side of the coin…” He gave my legs a squeeze. “We’ll just say, I’m careful to make sure the other side of the coin never happens.”

“I like your honesty, Lord Alcott.”

“Eyes open, love,” he reiterated his earlier warning.

I nodded.

He kept speaking.

“To finish, I would hope you’d understand that if I’m with a woman, she means something to me, during and after. So when Danny would swoop in and toy with someone who used to be mine…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what word to use to express it. But it isn’t fun to know my brother shits on any woman, but one who means something to me is far less fun.”

I could see how it would be, and I was reading between the lines his words were a vast understatement.

“I’m sure,” I said softly.

“I sense we’ll soon find out where he’s at with Portia, but from what I saw earlier, I’m not sure, at this juncture, who’s shitting on who. But it looks like a watershed moment happened in the Sherry Room. I just hope we don’t get caught in the spillage.”

“Mm.” I hummed. After I did, Ian studied me for so long, I asked, “What?”

“Ask it.”

“Ask what?”

“Ask about what you’ve been noticing, but I can’t ask about it, because if I do, I’ll sound like an arrogant prick.”

Well, damn.

“It’s not a question,” I said.

“It’s an observation, so say it.”

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