Friends with Benefits (Club Risque Book 5)

by Poppy Flynn

  Trust. When it came right down to it, she might still love him; the jury was still out on that one, but she simply didn't trust him anymore. For all she knew, he might have done exactly the same thing to his wife, and that was why he was no longer married.

  She didn't really believe that, of course. Christian had never been that impulsive that he would have gone so far as to marry, just to change his mind a few months later, but it helped her resolve to keep up a sense of righteous indignation.

  When he finally lifted his head, tasting her tears on his tongue, he stroked them away with his thumbs and asked, "Why are you crying, Trinity?"

  "Damn you, Christian!" she choked out on a whisper. "I gave you more than just a chance, all those years ago. I gave you everything that I had, and you just threw it back in my face. Why the hell do you think you deserve another one?"

  Christian closed his eyes, resting his forehead against her own. He didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say. What was there he could say, when she was right?

  There weren't enough words in the world to excuse what had happened between them.

  Chapter 10

  "I'm sorry," he whispered into Trinity's hair as he continued to hold her close, despite her obvious reluctance. "You'll never know how much I regret the way things played out."

  "And yet you did nothing to change that." She laughed bitterly.

  "It wasn't entirely my fault," he excused, desperately.

  "Of course, it wasn't," Trinity replied sarcastically, pushing away from him. "I bet it was probably mine, wasn't it?"

  "No," Christian said quietly. "None of it was your fault at all."

  He stood so quiet and solemn that Trinity's yielding nature wanted to jump into his arms again and forgive him anything without a single word of explanation.

  Nope! Not happening, she told her errant self-control.

  "I admit, I handled things badly and took advantage of what you were willing to give," Christian said sadly, crossing the room to sit on one of the armchairs set up in the corner of her generous office, hoping she would follow and at least hear him out.

  "I knew you had deeper feelings for me, even if I did think you were too young to know what you were doing, and I was fond of you, too."

  "Oh, please!" Trinity exclaimed, stalking across the room after him. "Don't damn well patronise me, Christian," she spat defensively while his words lodged like barbs in her chest. Jesus, he'd be patting her on the head next and telling her to be a good girl.

  The thought backfired and the tears welled up again. It wasn't like she wanted to hear those words from him, which had such a completely different connotation in the lifestyle. It wasn't!

  She wrapped her anger around her like it was a cloak that could deflect the fonder feelings she had for him. She didn't want to be exposed and vulnerable to Christian again. She had put her life back together, piece by piece, when she had left the east coast five years ago. She had rebuilt it, brick by painstaking brick—smoothing things out with her parents after she had let them down so badly, mending fences with her siblings, whom she had neglected during the years she had spent giving everything she had to Christian and his family instead of her own. Finding herself a new home, because she didn't feel like she had the right to go back to the one her parents had offered. Finding a shitty, minimum wage job so support herself with, since she'd forfeited her education when she'd had the opportunity and, finally, working her butt off to get herself through night school, so she could try to redeem some small amount of pride, from both her parents and in herself. And all because she had wasted years of her life doting on a man who had thrown her over without so much as a second thought.

  Trinity didn't even realise that she had spewed the entire tirade out loud while shaking and sobbing, until Christian, his face horrified and drained of colour, jumped up out of the chair, once her diatribe had subsided, and halted her jerky pacing. Leading her back to the seating arrangement, he pulled her down onto his knee, on the couch, hushing and shushing and rocking her in the way someone might try and soothe a distraught child.

  "Damn it all, Trinity, why didn't you ever tell me any of this at the time? Why am I only now finding out that you gave up your education to nursemaid my mother, and that you allowed yourself to become distanced from your own family while you took care of mine?"

  "It wasn't planned; it just happened," Trinity defended heatedly. "I was upset when your father—when Ian—died." She just couldn't think of him in such distant terms, no matter what had transpired since his death. "And Krista needed so much care. She was so clingy, and I was just trying to make things a little easier for you, because I knew you had so much else going on, as well as your own grief."

  "What? And you didn't think to talk any of this over with me? To let me do what I could have done to help you out in return?" He sounded angry and indignant now, himself. "I could at least have funded your education since you gave it up for my benefit. You could have allowed me to ensure that you weren't at a disadvantage because of everything you had done for us!"

  He glowered, his beautiful face set in rock hard lines, even while he held her on his knee, not allowing her to wriggle free.

  They were having this out once and for all, and once they'd cleared the air, then perhaps they could both see where they stood and if there was anything to salvage.

  "You had enough on your plate without me adding to them," she replied primly.

  "Yeah? Well, guess what, Trinity, friendship is a two-way street which is supposed to flow both ways, but it sounds like you were just too busy wallowing in your own self-sacrifice to remember that, and now you're dumping me with a boat load of guilt for something I knew nothing about, but which I could very easily have fixed."

  That last retort, delivered with a perfectly justifiable anger, took the wind right out of Trinity's sails and her shoulders slumped as she acknowledged the truth of his words.

  "Would you have, though?" she asked quietly, dejectedly. "Or would that have just been one more thing that was taken away when you decided you didn't want anything to do with me anymore?"

  Christian exhaled noisily and slumped back in the seat, taking Trinity with him, his own anger dissolving under the sheer waste and futility of the situation.

  "I wouldn't have done that," Christian sighed, and there was such an aura of defeat about him that this time Trinity didn't argue. "I've been trying to get you to listen, so I could tell you that I didn't send that message." Heartened by her silence, he carried on, "Bianca did that, and then she deleted your number from my phone so I couldn't contact you again."

  "And what about Krista? She would have given you my number. Could have done that a number of times over the years." It was said without heat or recrimination.

  "My mother and I are…estranged…"

  "What? No!" Trinity pushed herself upright on his knee and swivelled to face him in sheer disbelief. "You were all she had left; she was terrified of losing you. How could that have even happened?"

  Christian leaned his head against the back of the chair and stared sightlessly up at the ceiling, his eyes blank but his voice betraying a boat load of hurt.

  "Just another little piece of the havoc Bianca managed to wreak during her short run of interference in my life," he muttered with unrestrained bitterness. "I suppose I should be thankful she didn't stick around longer."

  "What happened?" Trinity whispered hesitantly, wondering if she really wanted to know or not, thinking back to that day when Krista had revealed Bianca's threat to keep Christian away from his mother if she continued their friendship.

  It was so long before Christian replied that she almost gave up any hope that he was going to tell her.

  "That can't have been my fault, Christian," she whispered around the ache in her throat. I packed up and left as soon as your mother told me about Bianca's threats to stop you from seeing her."

  Then, just when she'd decided to bring things to a close, herself, he started talking again. T
his time, his voice was oddly devoid of any emotion and the lack of it made Trinity shiver. He looked straight ahead, gazing at nothing or maybe looking back on his past.

  "Turns out, it was all just a con," he said matter of factly, as if he was doing nothing more than reciting a shopping list, but Trinity knew him well enough to understand that this was his way of keeping the hurt locked up tight.

  "Her interest in the lifestyle dried up within weeks of our wedding…"

  Trinity tried to defend herself against the hurt to her heart as her mind insisted on putting her through the agony of picturing him being intimate with another woman, but the wounds were inevitable, so instead, she just accepted them and stayed silent while she waited for him to continue.

  "I guess that should have set off my suspicions straight away, but she made excuses and blamed the fact that I was always busy when she wanted to play or that I was more interested in pandering to my mother than I was to her."

  He paused again for a little while, gathering his thoughts and thinking about what to say. "I guess you know how she caused trouble with my mother, saying that her relationship with you made her insecure and undermined our marriage. She told Mum that I wanted her to put a stop to the friendship you shared, but that I was too soft to ask her for myself." Christian laughed bitterly, and it was a horrible sound.

  "You would have thought that she would know me better, but apparently not. She fell for it, and obviously, so did you." His voice broke tellingly on that last observation, but he steeled himself with determination and carried on.

  "But she was a pretty good actress, and if all else failed, she turned to plain old threats and told mother in no uncertain terms that if you were going to be present in her life, then she, and therefore I, was not."

  Trinity relaxed onto his chest, pressing her cheek against the hard planes and offering what little comfort she could. He sat there as still as stone but her heart was heavy with sadness at his plight.

  "You know how Krista was; the anxiety was just too much for her, so at first, she caved to Bianca's demands. She never really told me what was said between the two of you before you went back to the south coast."

  Trinity swallowed. "We can talk about that another time," she decided, sensing that, right now, Christian needed to offload and get everything out and she just needed to listen.

  "Of course, that wasn't enough for Bianca. She didn't like the amount of time I spent with Mother or how clingy Krista was. She saw that as a very serious threat…or maybe she was just scared that anyone close would see her for what she really was, a manipulative, calculating gold digger."

  Trinity couldn't help the shocked breath she sucked in or the way her body stiffened at Christian's implication, but she kept her questions to herself for now.

  Christian, however, felt the tension vibrating through her body, and it brought him out of the nightmare of his past enough to allow himself to pull her close and stroke a soothing hand up and down her back. The action soothed them both, and Christian couldn't quite believe the calming sense of peace that engulfed him at the simple action.

  "I've missed you so damn much," he whispered forlornly, burying his head in the crook of her neck.

  Trinity ignored that, too. She couldn't deal with that kind of distraction right now, however harsh it seemed.

  Christian dragged in a noisy breath and huffed it out again, accurately reading her reticence. There were limits now, he realised sadly. Limits that his own stupid actions had invoked. There would never be any going back to the way things had been in the past. The thought had him tightening his hold on her in something akin to desperation, as if he could bind her to him forever. Even though he'd only just found her again and had no idea who she was nowadays, or the submissive she'd become. He only knew that the idea intrigued him, and he desperately wanted to explore it. But that was for later. They still had to get through this minefield first.

  Collecting his thoughts, he continued where he had left off. "Looking back, I don't even know why I couldn't see that it was all about the money. Maybe because I was too busy tripping over myself trying to keep her happy. Of course, nothing was ever good enough for Bianca and all she did was criticise; I should have spent more time or money, we should have gone away for longer, I didn't take her to nice enough places, the jewels I bought her weren't elaborate enough, the apartment we lived in wasn't fancy enough or in a good enough area. The car I gave her wasn't expensive enough. Every moment I spent with Mother, no matter how brief, was time I wasn't spending on her. Not that I was that interested in spending time with her any more, but I can say that I was guilty of trying to hold my marriage together, no matter how acrimonious it seemed to have become, so I tried to run interference between Krista and Bianca. I felt like my entire life had become one careful balancing act, trying to keep them both happy. God, it exhausted me! Every minute of the day was all about her, but whatever I did for her, it was never good enough." He laughed bitterly. "God, what must that sound like after everything you sacrificed to do things for me. Maybe this was karma's way of kicking me up the butt for taking you for granted and making our relationship all about me," he scoffed.

  "There's a difference, Christian," Trinity said honestly. "Everything I did for you, I did because it made me happy to serve you. I got my own reward from being able to give you that."

  Christian clasped her face in both hands and placed a tender kiss on her quivering lips. It was brief, but it still stirred up a whole host of conflicting, confusing feelings inside her.

  She shook them off by directing him back to his confession. "So, what happened in the end?"

  Christian sat back again and went on, but this time, he seemed more resentful than sad. "Bianca was one of those women who could see an opportunity in anything. Eleven months in and she decided she'd put in enough hard work to be able to fleece me, and Krista had unwittingly given her the perfect opportunity to claim a divorce. She cited that I neglected her by spending too much time with my mother, even though my relationship with Mum was all but broken, since I'd pulled away so much trying to keep Bianca happy."

  Trinity found herself leaning into Christian and petting him like she would a wounded animal, with empathy, but also a healthy dose of caution in case it turned around and bit.

  "Of course, it came as rather a shock to her, when she laid claim to half my wealth, that all the luxuries she had enjoyed, the cars, the apartment, were leased by the company. The several holiday homes I took her to, while family places, still belonged to my mother, so she had no claim on any of them, and while I could claim against my trust fund for individual purchases which had to be agreed by the trust managers, the trust, itself, didn't mature until I turned thirty. In the end, all she got to claim against was the few thousand I had saved from my salary within the company, and since she had such expensive tastes, most of it had already been spent on her. She managed to get her hands on a whole five grand and most of that got blown on the expensive divorce lawyer she hired to screw me over."

  Trinity snuggled closer, aching for the man who had been so abused by the wife who was supposed to have loved him. What was wrong with the woman? Christian was beautiful and thoughtful and hot! Trinity would have given her soul to have had just a little bit of what Christian had given Bianca. Not the material stuff, she had ever been interested in that, but the love and the commitment…and the time. She couldn't help but wonder just how heartbroken Christian had been at being deceived so badly by the woman he had made his wife. And as for the tear in the relationship between Krista and Christian…well, it didn't bear thinking about.

  Krista had never mentioned any of it, Trinity realised. But then that was probably her own fault. She had made it quite clear that the subject of Christian was off limits. Still, she was surprised that the woman hadn't accidentally let it slip over the years.

  Then another dreadful thought occurred to her. "Christian, when you said you and Krista were estranged, what exactly does that mean?"


  Christian swallowed and his face contorted. "It means I haven't spoken to her in over four years."

  Trinity gasped. "How can that have happened? Why didn't you sort this out?"

  He blinked his eyes, and Trinity swore they glistened a little more than was normal before he pulled himself back together. "Mother made it clear that she didn't want anything to do with Bianca. It was a difficult time and I was trying to keep them both happy but ended up keeping neither of them happy.

  When Bianca dropped the bombshell about the divorce, I was actually relieved. I thought if I could just get things tied up, get Bianca out of the way, then I could patch things up with Mum and give her the good news. In the meantime, I decided it was probably best to give her a little space, so she could calm down. I didn't want to risk doing anything to damage what was already a rocky relationship. I thought if I just left it until everything was settled, then we could start with a new slate without that shit storm hanging over us."

  Burying his head in her neck once more, Trinity had to strain to hear his muffled voice. "That was a mistake. By the time Bianca had finished dragging everything through the mud and I had surfaced for long enough to pull my head back together and start moving forward, Mother was gone."

  "Gone?" Trinity reiterated, thinking she must have misheard. How could she be gone?

  "I couldn't get hold of her on the phone," Christian said tonelessly. "It was clear that she'd blocked my personal number, but the landline kept coming up as unobtainable, so I went out to the house to see her. Imagine my surprise when I found a new family living there. She'd sold the estate, the one that had been in our family for generations. The place I imagined I would live some day and bring up a family of my own. If there was ever anything that brought home the fact that she was done with me, that was it."

  "I can't believe she did that!" Trinity was beyond shocked. The estate and the grand house that went with it was Christian's birth right. Krista had loved that place; it had been her late husband's heritage. What state of mind must she have been in to go and sell it? It just didn't make sense.