I SPENT MY morning off, nursing a hangover and dodging calls from both Gabe’s manager and Victor’s assistant. Around three o’clock, I got cozy on the sofa in my room, eating my cup of cereal and watching Peaky Blinders on Netflix. It was a perfect afternoon until the pounding on my door started. I closed my eyes, begging for Cillian Murphy to be the one on the other side of the door. Knowing I was about to be highly disappointed as soon as I stood to open it. I sighed, threw my blanket off, and unlocked the door. Gabe and his manager were standing on the opposite side. I closed my eyes and counted to three before opening them again. Darryl looked like someone’s dad, with his salt and pepper hair, thick glasses, and round belly. Someone’s dad or someone with an underage porn fetish. I was always crept out by him to the point that I may or may not have had him photoshopped from some of our wedding photos. But the guy could talk his way in and out of anything, and he was as ruthless as they came, which was a gift in this industry.
“I feel like I must have done something horribly wrong in my past life.”
“Nice to see you again too, Nicole,” Darryl said, flashing his megawatt fake-ass smile at me.
“What do you want?” I asked, looking at Gabe, who had his hands tucked into the front pockets of his jeans and his head down.
He looked like a sullen school boy, and the fact he looked that way and was standing beside his manager could only mean one thing. One really, really bad thing. My heart dropped.
“What?” I said, trying to ignore the way my heart spiked.
“We have a proposition for you. A very big one, one that will benefit you immensely if you agree to it,” Darryl said. Despite the mistrust I felt for him, I knew he always had his client’s interest at hand. My brows rose.
“Let’s hear it.”
We sat down at our long dining room table. The one we’d only used a handful of times to entertain guests on holidays or to talk about the laughable proposition, because that’s what it ended up being. Absolutely ridiculous and laughable. They basically wanted me to pretend that maybe, just maybe I wasn’t going to divorce Gabe after all.
“We haven’t been seen out together in almost a year,” I pointed out. “And in that time he has been seen with multiple women. All of whom weren’t me.”
“He’s been traveling for work. You’ve been busy with your own career. He’s back temporarily and is finally realizing how good he has it and he wants to save his marriage,” Darryl said.
My heart sunk again. Did he not realize how much this hurt? Listening to this with my estranged husband, whom I had longed to patch things up with, sitting across from me? Yes, I was over him. Yes, I wanted to move on, but his manager pointing out that Gabe would never feel the way he just described, still hurt. I swallowed my emotions and tilted my chin up.
“What I’m hearing is ‘Gabe wins again.’ I still haven’t heard the part where Nicole gets something out of this,” I said.
Gabe cleared his throat, clasping his hands in front of him. “Maybe it’s true. Maybe I want to try.”
My jaw dropped. I blinked, blinked, blinked. “You can’t be serious,” I said, once I finally found my voice. The way he said he wanted to try made me think of the time he took me to my favorite sushi restaurant because he wanted to do something nice for me, but instead we ended up in the ER because he was allergic to the crab he’d ordered. It was sweet when I told him we could never go back there again and he looked at me, big puffy red eyes and said, “Maybe I want to try again. For you.”
He shrugged those broad shoulders of his and I blinked out of my memory. “Why not?” he asked.
“What the . . .” I paused, trying to rein in my anger before it got the best of me. I took a deep breath in order to regroup. “Gabe. I just filed for divorce.”
“Forget about that,” Darryl said. “Let’s leave emotions out of this. We don’t need to complicate something simple. If you want to discuss your marriage, that’s fine, even though I think we can all agree it’s probably not working out for a reason.” He raised his dark eyebrows over the frames of his glasses and shot Gabe and me a knowing look.
“Bastard,” I said.
Gabe sighed.
Darryl shrugged. “The proposition is this. Go with him to the movie premiere this week, and give the media some comments about your relationship. Positive comments. Keep them guessing. Wear your wedding ring once in a while. Gabe will keep his on and just play the part.”