Matt laughed. "I'm sure it didn't. You were right at home. Why bother with a little thing like the truth."
Trent dropped his head forward into his hands. "I know it looks bad but Avery is just a friend. One of my oldest friends. I grew up with the Maxwells. My older brother, James, my little sister, Sophia and I used to play with the two Maxwell kids, Avery and Preston, all the time. Our parents weren't exactly friends but we ran in the same social circles and went to the same private school so it was inevitable that we would see each other at times."
“If you're estranged from your family, then why have you been sneaking home to see them so much?" Mara truly wanted to understand. Because it was becoming more and more clear that Trent wasn't estranged from his family. He apparently just didn't want her to meet them.
"My nephew has been ill. He's the main reason I went back. He's just a kid and he doesn't understand why his father isn't around. My brother should have been there with his son while he was sick. Instead he ditched his responsibilities to go play in Miami."
"So that makes it okay for you to ditch my sister and go play house with this chick behind our backs?" Matt made a disgusted sound.
Trent squeezed his head between his hands. "I know this sounds bad but I swear it's not like that. Avery and Travis are family. She'd be my sister-in-law if my brother wasn't such a screw-up. I couldn't just leave her to deal with his medical issues on her own."
"I don't believe you," Matt stated.
Trent's lips quirked up into a half-smile. "See, that's one of the things I've always liked the best about you. You say what you think and you don't give a shit whether anyone else likes it. Most of the people that I meet who know about my family's wealth, they don't say stuff like that to me. They say what they think I want to hear. They flatter me, they say whatever they think will make me like them. Then the requests sta
rt. Can I borrow this? Or I'm a little short until payday, can you help me out?"
Mara came a little closer. "You didn't think we would do that, did you?"
He grabbed her hand, holding tight when she tried to tug it back. "I didn't think so but I really didn't want to take a chance and be wrong. Which has happened before. I've never been happier than I am in my life with you."
Matt shoved in between them. "Stay away from her. You've done enough damage as it is. I just brought her here so she could see that it was true. So she'd know for sure that you're a liar. Now it's time for you to go."
Trent's jaw tightened but he stood, holding up his hands in surrender. "I'll go. I know I screwed up and it'll take time but I just want you to know that I'm sorry. And that even if you don't understand my reasons, I don't regret anything. Knowing all of you for these past years has been the best part of my life."
Matt stood unmoved between, but Mara couldn't tear her eyes away from Trent. Even though his words were directed to all of them, she could feel that he was talking directly to her. Asking her to understand. Asking her to forgive.
Just before he reached the doorway to the kitchen, he turned back to her.
"I know I don't deserve your trust. Or you. But I love you and I am going to prove to you that I'm for real."
* * * * *
BUTTING OUT WASN'T an easy thing to do and Matt Simmons was discovering that it was even harder when a situation involved people you knew and loved.
Or people you thought you knew, anyway. He wasn't entirely sure he knew Trent at all. The thought made him feel both strangely hurt and murderously angry at the same time so he was trying not to think about it. His fingers tightened around the steering wheel as he drove away from his sister's townhouse. In the rearview mirror, he watched as the lights on the lower level went dark.
He turned to the man in the passenger seat of his truck, who sat looking out the window into the night. Eli Alexander was more than just his boss. He was a mentor and a friend. He was also a master at weeding through bullshit.
"Do you think he meant any of that? About being sorry or whatever?"
Eli glanced over at him. "It's hard to say. Liars tend to be convincing. And it's hard to believe any guy when he says the woman living in his house is 'just a friend'. If I had a sister, I wouldn't be thrilled about her dating this dude either."
"I want you to keep digging. There’s so little about him before the age of eighteen."
"Maybe he was a quiet kid," Eli suggested.
Matt considered the idea. But it just didn't wash with the Trent he'd come to know over the years. People could lie about their backgrounds but it was harder to fake a certain personality for years. Trent hadn't exactly been a choirboy throughout college. His personality type tended to have the kind of teenage years that parents feared.
"He's never been quiet. I'm thinking he wouldn't be this clean unless he'd intentionally buried something. And we know from experience that he has no problem hiding things when he wants to."
"Is any of that really necessary though? Your sister seemed really mad."
Matt scoffed. He wished it was that simple but when it came to Mara and her emotions, nothing was straightforward.
"Mara is a softie underneath it all. I knew the first day they met. Shit, I knew it was going to be a problem. After I got to know Trent, I was okay with it. But I shouldn’t have ignored that gut feeling I had in the beginning that he wasn’t right for her."
"Right? Like you didn't think he was a good guy?" Eli asked.