Page 49 of Friends with Benefits (Club Risqué)

Hitting upon another idea, he scrolled through his contacts with renewed hope. Maybe his friend, Logan Thornton, could help. True, he wasn't a personal lawyer but a corporate one, but he'd had to train for every eventuality before he specialised. Surely, he'd at least be able to point him in the right direction. There must be some kind of central register, some way of checking the authenticity of Bianca's outrageous claims. Although knowing the woman as well as he did, Christian wasn't naïve enough to put anything past her.

Goddamn it all! His anger swelled as the memory of what she'd told him earlier this evening threatened to erupt all over again.

He'd never felt violent toward a woman in his entire life, and he wasn't proud to admit that if the conniving bitch was in the room with him right now, he'd have a hard time not clamping his hands around her neck and squeezing until she ceased to be a thorn in his side. The vividly gruesome and rather bloodthirsty pictures running on a loop, like a film reel, in his head brought him up short.

Shit! What the hell was he thinking? He wasn't this person. He just needed to calm the fuck down and start thinking logically.

This wasn't the end of the world. It was just the shock and the threats that had him on edge; had his temper spiking precariously, causing him to behave like a bloody uncivilised caveman.

But, Jesus, surely, anyone would have the same kind of reaction to that kind of immoral and malevolent provocation.

Sucking in another steadying breath, he tapped the screen to call Logan with shaking fingers and rubbed a sweaty hand across his mouth. He needed to get his shit together, so he didn't babble like a madman when Logan answered.

Christian couldn't help the groan of relief when the call connected.

"Hey, man, are you okay?" came the disembodied voice at the other end of the line.

"Hell, no!" Christian replied honestly, forgetting even the courtesy of a greeting in his current turmoil. "I really need some help!"

"No offence, but you sound like shit, buddy," Logan returned seriously. "What's going on?"

"It's Bianca," Christian told his friend in a strained voice. "She turned up at the charity gig I took Trinity to this evening."

"Damn, they didn't get into it, did they? Is Trinity all right? She doesn't deserve that kind of crap from your ex. How did Bianca even know you'd be there?"

Christian shook his head at the deluge of questions. "I don't know, and I don't care, right now. I have bigger issues to worry about."

"Lay it on me then, and I'll do what I can to help," Logan offered with genuine generosity.

Christian finally dropped the bombshell, his voice strained, as if saying the words out loud had the ability to confirm the awful truth… Hell, they might already be true, but speaking them just brought it all into glaring reality.

"She claims we're still married. She says the decree absolute was never filed."

ChapterThirty-Six

Trinity sat in her office trying to keep her mind on the payroll and the spreadsheets she was supposed to be dealing with, but after spotting her fourth mistake, she closed the programme down, before she ended up making some colossal error in somebody's paycheck.

She hadn't seen Christian since the night of the fundraiser, and apart from one terse message the following day, to say he'd been caught up in something unexpected and would be in touch when it was resolved, she hadn't heard from him, either.

That had been four days ago, and Trinity still didn't know quite how to take his untimely withdrawal. She only knew that with each passing day, she lost a little bit more hope, and the burgeoning optimism, which had been sprouting and flowering under the heat of his presence, shrivelled and died a little bit more with every passing hour of no communication. The recent buoyancy she’d been feeling, shuffling back inside the shell where it had lain for so many years until Trinity was, once again, a pale shadow of the woman she might have been.

She felt like she'd been eviscerated all over again. Jeez! Why did she lay herself open to this kind of hurt?

Because you're foolish enough to love someone who never loved you the way you loved him and never will, the vicious little devil on her shoulder whispered obnoxiously in her ear.

"Shut up!" she shouted out loud, trying to quell the malignant taunts that urged her to turn her back on Christian; to give up on him before he had a chance to defend himself.

Or before he has a chance to break your heart all over again. You should call it off now, take control and end things on your own terms, before he humiliates you like he did the last time.

"No! There's probably a perfectly good explanation. I don't have any reason to doubt him. He's never lied to me—that has got to count for something!"

Trinity denied the cynical inner voice out loud, refusing to give in to her fears until she had a justifiable cause.

Jesus Christ! Now she was talking to herself.

The woman turnedup thirty minutes before the club was due to open.

Later, Trinity would wonder if that had been a deliberate attempt to catch them when they were preoccupied with checking that everything was ready. It was always a bit of a circus trying to have everything up and running smoothly before the doors opened—checking all the staff had turned up, making certain there were enough Dungeon Monitors, since many of those positions were filled voluntarily by members who wanted to offset their fees.

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