Chapter 40
As soon as he could, Christian drove away from Club Risqué, still in a bit of a daze.
He was, on the one hand, elated that all the shit with Bianca had been well and truly shovelled, without him having to fork over half his family fortune to see the back of her. Hell, he”d have been glad to see the back of her even if it had cost him a small fortune. On the other hand, he was subdued that he hadn”t managed to see Trinity because it had taken so long to deal with the situation.
Now, he was trying to weigh up whether or not it was too late to go to her and try to explain what had happened.
It was shortly after one o”clock in the morning. Not exactly the time of day people normally made social calls.
Of course, if Trinity had stayed at work, she probably wouldn”t have expected to return home until almost three am. But if she was upset enough about the things Bianca had told her to go home early, then she was likely upset enough that she wouldn”t want to see him, so maybe it would be best to leave things to calm down and tackle everything in the morning, after they had both had a decent night”s sleep.
Yet Christian knew there would be no sleep for him tonight. Not with the way he was stressing about the amount of damage Bianca had caused. Maybe Trinity would feel the same and not find sleep easily when she didn”t know what was going on.
He cursed himself for not telling Trinity about Bianca”s allegations and threats when she had made them at the charity ball, but at the time, he’d thought she was just trying to cause trouble and he hadn”t wanted Trinity anywhere near her.
And just look at how that had backfired on him, so perhaps he needed to go with his gut this time around.
His gut was telling him to get to Trinity as soon as humanly possible. His gut was telling him he needed to set her straight about Bianca”s lies and manipulations before she had too much time to decide that he was a bad bet all over again. He didn”t have the best track record after all.
Already, this clusterfuck had the potential to end him. End them.
Without making a conscious decision, Christian found himself parked outside her apartment block.
Looking up and trying to locate which windows were hers, he saw a dim light in the one he calculated was her living room.
That was enough for him. He took it as the sign he was looking for and hurried up to her door, taking the emergency stairs two at a time, for the entire three flights, because he was too impatient to wait for the elevator.
Standing outside, Christian took a breath to regain his equilibrium and resisted the urge to hammer on the door like some kind of crazy lunatic. Knocking softly but determinedly, instead, he prayed that he was doing the right thing.
The door opened just a crack, and a defeated looking Trinity peeked out at him.
Christian found himself placing a precautionary hand on the door to prevent her from closing it on him, even though she had yet to speak.
”Trinity,” he implored. ”Please let me in. I need to speak to you.”
She looked at him with the saddest eyes, which held a telltale sheen, and shook her head slowly as if all her energy had been sucked out of her. ”I don”t think that”s a good idea right now, Christian,” she said quietly, politely. Too damn politely.
”I need to explain, Trinity. Please!”
”There”s no need, Christian. I don”t need excuses and justification. In fact, I”d prefer to avoid that kind of scenario altogether, thank you, so you”re off the hook. You can just finish your business here, and we can all move on with our lives; no harm, no foul.”
”Well, there is harm, and I do call foul,” he declared, crowding close to the door, and managing to wedge his foot into the opening but not daring to push any harder. ”She lied, sweetheart. You need to believe me. She lied to you, and to me, and to a whole host of other people,” he urged earnestly.
He felt Trinity”s weight lifting from the door rather than any other sign of acquiescence, but he was desperate enough to take any tiny crumb of hope she threw to him. He pushed the door gently and it opened up a little bit more, until Trinity took a step back and promptly burst into tears.
That was it. Christian pushed the door open wide enough to step through, then kicked it closed with his foot, his attention never leaving the distraught woman in front of him as he scooped her up in his arms and carried her into the living room.
Sitting down carefully in the corner of the sofa, Chrstian settled Trinity onto his lap, pulling her in close and banding his arms tightly around her as if she might run away at the slightest provocation. He stroked and soothed as she buried her head into his neck, her chest heaving with the noisy sobs that soaked his shirt.
”Shh, it”s okay, I”m here. Let it all out, baby. We”ve got all the time in the world, and I”m not going anywhere,” he crooned as he rocked her backward and forward on his knee, comforting them both.
When her sobs had eased into quiet hiccups, Christian relaxed back into the cushions, bringing her with him, and they both sat quietly until they had each regained their composure.
”Was it really a lie?” Trinity finally asked, ages later, a kind of muted hope distinct within her voice as if she so very much wanted to believe but didn”t quite dare to do so.
”She thought it was the truth,” Christian admitted and felt Trinity stiffen. He hurried to continue. ”She thought she”d blackmailed my lawyer into not filing the decree absolute, but he did it without her knowledge. The bit about a reconciliation is pure fabrication, designed to put me in an awkward position.”
Trinity just sat with her head bowed, shaking it as if she couldn”t quite understand why anybody would go to those kinds of lengths to trick another person.
”But why? I thought the divorce was her idea. Did she want you back?”
Christian hugged her close. ”Oh, sweetheart, you are so sweet and unspoiled, the deviousness of others just never occurs to you. Bianca realised that she had only missed out on my fortune by a matter of months. If she”d been aware of the terms of my trust fund while we were together, then she would, undoubtedly, have stuck around and tried to play nice for a little longer. But those details didn”t emerge until the divorce proceedings were underway, so she dreamed up a scheme that would prolong our marriage for as long as she needed, in order to get the biggest possible payout. Either by way of finalising the original proceedings with a new settlement or by twisting my arm into paying her off. What she hadn”t bargained for was the fact that the lawyer had a crisis of conscience and went ahead and did the right thing without telling her. Now, instead of a nice, juicy payout, Bianca is looking at several counts of blackmail and extortion, thanks to Logan.”
Trinity stayed cuddled up on his knee while she absorbed everything he was saying.
”I kept telling myself that you had never lied to me,” she whispered, almost as if she was talking to herself. ”I wanted so much to believe, but I was scared to hope and to have it ripped away from me all over again.”
”I”ve been such a fool, Trinity. You were the best thing that ever happened in my life, and instead of worshipping you, I let you slip away. I can”t ever change that, and I can never make up for the disservice I did you. You deserved so much more. You still do.”
Trinity reached up and took his stubbled face in her hands. ”No, I deserved what I wanted, and what I wanted was you. And for a little while, I had you. Maybe not all of you but enough to lull myself into a false sense of security. We both made mistakes, Christian. You never took anything from me that I didn”t wholeheartedly give, and I loved you enough that I wanted you to be happy, even if that happiness wasn”t with me. What broke me was when you denied me your friendship.”
”You do believe it wasn”t me who sent that message don”t you?” he asked with a frown. ”I meant it when I said you were special and that you”d always be my friend. It was Bianca who couldn”t deal with that reality. She was scared of the way I felt about you, and saw it as something that might undermine her plans. That may well have been the case, if she hadn”t sent that message to you from my phone, pretending it was from me and then deleting your number so I couldn”t get back in touch.”
Christian sighed heavily. “She ripped up your wedding invitation, too. Maybe if you”d been there, I would have come to my senses and not gone through with it. God, I wish!”
He laughed humourlessly. ”I should have just come to find you, like my gut kept telling me to.”
”Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, Christian. There are a lot of things I wish I”d done differently, too… but I still wouldn”t have come to your wedding, even if I”d received the invitation. I”m not that much of a masochist.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of Trinity’s head. ”Sorry doesn”t seem to be enough sometimes, but I truly am sorry…for so many things.”
”Let it go, Christian. Most of what you”re apologising for wasn”t even your fault. You can”t hold yourself responsible for somebody else”s actions, especially when those are deliberately malicious. What”s important is that she didn”t succeed.”
”I would have happily paid her off if it meant that I”d have saved you from even a moment of her malevolence!”
”Well, I”m glad you didn”t. People like that shouldn”t be rewarded for their wrongdoing. I”d rather field a few blows than see you give her anything that she didn”t damn well earn.”
”She upset you?—”
”Yes, she did,” Trinity interrupted. ”I won”t deny that. But she didn”t chase me off. I just needed a little while to get over the shock and regain my equilibrium, but I”m not stupid, Christian. I know I don”t have any hold over you. I didn”t want to stand in your way if what she said was true, so I just needed to back off and take stock of the situation.”
Christian raised her chin with his finger and looked down at her earnestly. ”That”s not true, you know. You do have a hold over me, Trinity.”
Her lip quivered at his words, and he brushed his thumb across, pressing gently to still it. ”I might need to bang my head against a brick wall sometimes to knock some sense into it, but I do try to learn from my mistakes. As soon as I found you here, I knew I didn”t want to let you go again. And when I realised what Bianca had done and how she”d involved you, those feelings of dread and the fear that ripped through me at the thought of losing you…” he trailed off as if he couldn”t bear the thought. ”Well, let”s just say I finally came to my senses and saw everything clearly for the first time.”
He dragged in an unsteady breath. ”I was so damn terrified that it was too late, that she”d managed to destroy the one thing that meant the most to me in the world. I could almost thank her for that epiphany, because she made me realise exactly what was important in my life… and that is you!”
He pulled her around so she was straddling his knee and took her face in both hands. ”I love you, Taryn Tanita Trent,” he whispered. ”You, Taryn,” he stressed. ”Not some persona you concocted to hide behind and keep people at a distance. Not some stereotype I made you into to suit my own needs. Just you. And I don”t want to spend another moment of my life without you.”
The tear that had been trembling on the edge of her lashes overflowed and trickled down her cheek. Christian brushed it away and pressed a kiss to her upturned mouth.
”I love you so much, Christian,” she whispered against his lips. ”I”ve wished so many times to hear you say those words, that now, it seems like a dream that I”m going to wake up from at any second.”
Christian grinned a wicked grin and stood up, lifting her effortlessly as he did so. Trinity wrapped her legs around him, and he grasped her buttocks to steady her as he strode meaningfully towards her bedroom.
”Oh, this is definitely no dream, sweetness, and I”m going to prove that to you right now. You”re mine, and I”m never going to let you forget it.”
He stalked over to the bed and lay her on it, following her down and caging her within his arms before kissing her soundly then feathering his lips around her neck to her ear and nipping the lobe before he whispered, ”Starting right now!”