Page 56 of Friends with Benefits (Club Risqué)

"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 isyou!"

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!"

Epilogue

So many wasted years. So much unnecessary heartache.

Christian stared down at his father’s grave and wondered how different things could have been, if only…

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