“Tell him that I called you. Tell him you know where I am but that you’ll only tell him if he meets with you. That’ll give me time to go back to the penthouse and retrieve my stuff. Then I’ll be out of your hair for good.”
The thought made her want to start sobbing again so she focused on the mechanics. The only way she could go through with this was if she thought of it like a mental checklist. Bullet points that would carry her from point A to point B.
“Mara?”
“Yes?”
“I wish you all the best, I really do.”
“Thank you, Sophia. I really hope that this is for the best. For all of us.”
Chapter Nineteen
AFTER JAMES LEFT, Trent finally got up. He’d been sitting in the same chair, in the same clothes for almost twelve hours straight. He called his parents and then checked in with Dax, who still had no idea where Mara was. After a brief moment of hesitation, he called him off.
Mara was safe and didn’t want to be found. If he found her and tried to see her against her will, then it would just be one more time that he’d ignored her wishes. She would think that he was still pursuing her for the wrong reasons and that was a major point of contention between them.
She didn’t believe that he’d really fallen in love with her.
He stripped, leaving his tuxedo in the middle of the floor. In the bathroom, he scrubbed his skin roughly, anxious to get dressed and start figuring out a plan. He had to convince Mara to talk to him and then maybe they might have a chance to work things out. The longer he left her alone, the longer she’d persist in her thoughts that he didn’t really care about her. He had to explain everything.
He could not lose her over this. Not when they’d come this far.
When he stepped out of the shower, his phone was ringing. Sophia’s picture flashed across the screen. His first instinct was to ignore it. He could check in with his sister after he’d fixed things with Mara. But when she called back again, he answered. It wasn’t like Sophia to call more than once.
“Sophia, I really can’t talk right now.”
“You’ll want to talk to me. I know where Mara is.”
Trent paused in the act of pulling on a pair of jeans. “What? How do you know that? Where is she?”
“She called me. She told me what happened and asked me to let you know that she’s okay. She’s thinking about everything.”
“Where is she?” he repeated.
Sophia sighed. “I can’t tell you that. Come meet me for lunch. I need to see that you’re okay with my own eyes.”
“I don’t have time to play games, Soph. This is too important. Tell me where she is.”
“No. I need to know that you’re okay. If blackmailing you to get you here is the only way to do that, then that’s what I’ll do.”
“Fuck!” He yanked a shirt over his head and then stuck his feet in the first pair of shoes he saw. “Tell me where to meet you.”
“Just come to my place. I’ll see you soon.”
It was just like Sophia to put him through some kind of test before she’d give up the information. He grabbed his wallet off the kitchen counter and stuffed it in his back pocket. As he was leaving, he nodded at Ernesto. The older man gave him a sad smile.
Great. Now he was an object of pity to everyone, from his family members to his doorman.
He hung his head and headed east toward the condo Sophia shared with her husband and two children. Like his parents, they maintained two residences, one in the city and the other in the Hamptons. He realized with a start that he didn’t even remember what Sophia’s place looked like. For so long he’d been ignoring invitations and taking every opportunity to avoid his family t
hat he had missed out on so many things.
He hadn’t gotten far when he bumped into someone. He started to move around them when a hand clamped on his forearm. He looked up in surprise.
“Avery? What are you doing here?” It seemed strange that she would just happen to run into him on the street. “Are you following me?”
“Trent. Please don’t walk away.”