he had the cup she sat down again quickly, before she made a complete fool of herself, and took a quick fortifying sip of her own cup of tea. He sat down too, and she was aware of his powerful body taking up a lot of space.
While Mr. Drew engaged Cruz De Carrillo in light conversation, before they started discussing the terms of Rio’s will, Trinity risked another glance at the man just a couple of feet to her left.
Short dark blond hair gave more than a hint of his supremely controlled nature. Controlled except for that momentary lapse...an undoubtedly rare moment of heated insanity with someone he’d seen as far beneath him.
Trinity crushed the spike of emotion. She couldn’t afford it.
Despite the urbane uniform of a three-piece suit, his impressive build was apparent. Muscles pushed at the fabric in a way that said he couldn’t be contained, no matter how civilised he might look.
His face was a stunning portrait of masculine beauty, all hard lines and an aquiline profile that spoke of a pure and powerful bloodline. He had deep-set eyes and a mouth that on anyone else would have looked ridiculously sensual. Right now though, it looked stern. Disapproving.
Trinity realised that she was staring at him, and when he turned to look at her she went puce. She quickly turned back to the solicitor, who had stopped talking and was now looking from her to Cruz nervously, as if he could sense the tension in the room.
He cleared his throat. ‘As you’re both here now, I see no reason not to start.’
‘If you would be so kind.’
Trinity shivered at the barely veiled impatience in Cruz’s voice. She could recall only too well how this man had reduced grown men and women to quivering wrecks with just a disdainful look from those glittering dark amber eyes.
The half-brothers hadn’t been very alike—where Rio had been dark, with obsidian eyes and dark hair, Cruz possessed a cold, tawny beauty that had always made Trinity think of dark ice over simmering heat. She shivered...she’d felt that heat.
‘Mrs De Carrillo...?’
Trinity blinked and flushed at being caught out again. The solicitor’s impatient expression came into focus. He was holding out a sheaf of papers and she reached for them.
‘I’m sorry.’ It still felt weird to be called Mrs De Carrillo—it wasn’t as if she’d ever really been Rio’s wife.
She quickly read the heading: Last will and testament of Rio De Carrillo. Her heart squeezed as she thought of the fact that Mateo and Sancho had now lost both their parents, too prematurely.
As bitter as her experience had been with Rio in the end, after Trinity had been sickened to realise just how manipulative he’d been, and how naive she’d been, she’d never in a million years have wished him gone.
She’d felt a level of grief that had surprised her, considering the fact that their marriage had been in name only—for the convenience of having a steady mother figure for the boys and because Rio had wanted to promote a more settled image to further his own ambitions.
Trinity had agreed to the union for those and myriad other reasons—the most compelling of which had to do with her bond with the twins, which had been forged almost as soon as she’d seen them. Two one-year-old cherubs, with dark hair, dark mischievous eyes and heart-stopping smiles.
Her heart had gone out to them because they were motherless, as she had been since she was a baby, and they’d latched on to her with a ferocity that she hadn’t been able to resist, even though she’d known it would be more professional to try and keep some distance.
She’d also agreed because Rio’s sad personal story—he had been all but abandoned by his own parents—had again chimed with echoes of her own. And because he’d agreed to help her fulfil her deepest ambitions—to go to university and get a degree, thereby putting her in a position to forge her own future, free of the stain of her ignominious past.
Rio hadn’t revealed the full extent of his ambitions until shortly before the accident—and that was when she’d realised why he’d taken such perverse pleasure in marrying her. It had had far more to do with his long-held simmering resentment towards his older half-brother than any real desire to forge a sense of security for his sons, or to shake off his playboy moniker...
The solicitor was speaking. ‘As you’ll see, it’s a relatively short document. There’s really no need to read through it all now. Suffice to say that Mr De Carrillo bequeathed everything to his sons, Mateo and Sancho, and he named you their legal guardian, Trinity.’
She looked up. She’d known that Rio had named her guardian. Any concerns she’d had at the time, contemplating such a huge responsibility had been eclipsed by the overwhelmingly protective instinct she’d felt for the twins. And in all honesty the prospect of one day becoming their guardian hadn’t felt remotely possible.
She realised that she hadn’t really considered what this meant for her own future now. It was something she’d been good at blocking out in the last three months, after the shock of the accident and Rio’s death, not to mention getting over her own injuries and caring for two highly precocious and energetic boys. It was as if she was afraid to let the enormity of it all sink in.
The solicitor looked at Cruz for a moment, and then he looked back to Trinity with something distinctly uncomfortable in his expression. She tensed.
‘I’m not sure how aware you are of the state of Mr De Carrillo’s finances when he died?’
Trinity immediately felt the scrutiny of the man to her left, as if his gaze was boring into her. His accusatory words came back to her: ‘You’ve single-handedly run through almost every cent my brother has to his name in a bid to satisfy your greedy nature. Now you’re realising Rio’s fortune isn’t a bottomless pit...’
She felt breathless, as if a vice was squeezing her chest. Until the evening of Cruz’s party she hadn’t been aware of any such financial difficulty. She’d only been aware that Rio was growing more and more irrational and erratic. When she’d confronted him about his behaviour, they’d had a huge argument, in which the truth of exactly why he’d married her had been made very apparent. Along with his real agenda.
That was why Trinity had wanted to talk to Cruz—to share her concerns. However, he’d comprehensively shut that down.
She said carefully now, ‘I was aware that things weren’t...good. But I didn’t know that it was linked to his financial situation.’
Mr. Drew looked grim. ‘Well, it most probably was. The truth is that Rio was bankrupt. In these last three months the sheer extent and scale of his financial collapse has become evident, and it’s comprehensive. I’m afraid that all he left behind him are debts. There is nothing to bequeath to his children. Or you.’
Trinity hadn’t married Rio for his money, so this news didn’t have any great impact on her. What did impact her, though, was the realisation that Cruz must have been putting money into the account that she used for day-to-day necessities for her and the boys and Mrs Jordan—the nanny Rio had hired once Trinity had married him, when her job had changed and she’d been expected to accompany him to social functions. Something she’d never felt comfortable doing...
The solicitor said, ‘I’m sorry to deliver this news, Mrs De Carrillo, but even the house will have to be sold to cover his debts.’
