Once Upon a Marriage

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  It worked in Elliott’s favor to have Liam believe that.

  And to have Liam believe that his father—Elliott’s supposed employer—would be very displeased with Elliott if Liam fired him.

  The man was impressive. But not good.

  “So, what do you say? Dinner at seven?” Liam asked.

  Barbara would insist that he go.

  “I don’t know, Liam,” Gabrielle, who only spoke when she had something important to say, butted in.

  Elliott liked her more than ever.

  “Don’t you think we should ask Marie first?” she asked.

  Liam shrugged his expensively suited shoulder, opening the back door of the SUV. “It’s dinner,” he said, obviously done now. “The three of us are going to dinner with bodyguard protection at the table with us. If Elliott and Marie make it more than that, that’s up to them.”

  With a look of apology to Elliott, Gabrielle joined her husband outside the vehicle.

  And Elliott wished life were even half as simple as Liam Connelly wanted to believe it could be.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “ELLIOTT REALLY SAID he wanted to go to dinner with me?” Marie asked as Gabi, who’d come down to help her choose what to wear, twisted Marie’s blond hair up into a black-and-white-flowered clip and then curled the ends that floated down around her shoulders. In a black-and-white tweed and Lycra shift that hugged every curve, ending several inches above her knees, she felt as if she were getting ready for the prom.

  Except that she was a heck of a lot more nervous. She’d liked her prom date well enough, but wouldn’t have gone out with him if it hadn’t been for the prom. She hadn’t been the least bit interested in dating anyone seriously back then.

  Not that she was interested now. She just...really liked Elliott.

  “Liam didn’t give him a chance to say what he wanted,” Gabi said now. “He just told Elliott we were going and invited him to share our table with us if he was going to insist on protecting us. But Elliott’s a grown man. He could have refused.”

  “Not with his code of ethics, he couldn’t,” she said. “Walter Connelly wants him watching Liam, more now than ever, I’m sure, since Liam’s taking a much more active role in the company.”

  “True.”

  She could always count on Gabi to call it like it was. Which was one of the reasons Marie loved her best friend so much. One of the reasons why Gabi was her best friend...

  “You like him, though, don’t you?” Gabi’s question came just as she finished with Marie’s hair and set her free to fasten a black-and-white pearl-and-onyx-flowered earring in her bottom piercing. And pearl studs in the second one back.

  Marie didn’t know how to answer the question. Liking was not how she’d describe her feelings for the bodyguard. Not in the like-like sense Gabi seemed to mean. Yet she couldn’t deny, especially after the day she’d spent worrying about him, that she cared more than just friends.

  Still...

  “That’s why Liam set this up,” Gabi said. “The way you reacted today, being so beside yourself upset when you thought Elliott was in danger... Liam thinks you have a thing for Elliott. I just need you to know what he’s doing so that you don’t think I’m part of something behind your back.”

  Marie got hot from the inside out. Flushing from her head to her toes. And then cooled just as quickly. “Does Elliott know that?” she asked, afraid to look at Gabi. To see the truth in her friend’s eyes.

  She didn’t look at herself in the big bathroom mirror they were both standing in front of, either. She looked at Gabi’s short dark hair. At the diamond stud she was wearing in her right ear.

  “I don’t know.” Gabi’s finger gently pushed a tendril of Marie’s hair back behind her ear as her words washed softly over her. “Nothing was said. Not in the car. I just wanted you to know...”

  Marie nodded. Had no answer for the question lying there between them. Was she falling for Elliott Tanner?

  “He could have suggested that we eat at home and have a meal catered in,” Gabi offered after Marie just stood there, looking at herself in the mirror.

  Having the meal catered, at home, where they were safely guarded, sounded like something Elliott would certainly have preferred. “He didn’t suggest any alternatives?”

  “No.”

  Marie’s grin started with butterflies in her belly and blossomed. Until the butterfly crashed. “Do you think Elliott knows that I’ve...that I would go out with him if he asked? If he didn’t think asking would be a conflict of interest? If Liam said something...”

  “He didn’t,” Gabi quickly inserted. “At least, Liam didn’t say anything about you liking Elliott. But we both asked if he’d spoken to you,” she added. “When he picked us up from work. Just because you’d been so worried. But you always worry. He knows that...”

  Elliott knew that she always worried about Liam and Gabi. Not about him.

  “Don’t be mad at Liam,” Gabi said. Marie looked at her, saw the very real, very tender, concern in Gabi’s eyes and marveled again that her friend was so in love with the man who’d been best friend to both of them for more than a decade. She’d feared that Gabi, who deserved home and family and security more than anyone else she knew, would never give herself a chance to have it all.

  Marie was going to do some serious damage to Liam Connelly, business partner and best friend or not, if he ever did anything to take that soft look out of Gabi’s eyes...

  “He’s only trying to help,” Gabi continued. “You’re lonely with me moving out so suddenly. We all know that. And you know Liam. He sees a problem and thinks he has to fix it.”

  “I’m not mad at him,” she said now, not hiding the hint of peevishness in her tone. Wouldn’t have done any good anyway. This was Gabi. Gabi knew Marie better than Marie knew herself.

  “You like Elliott, don’t you?”

  Turning so she was facing Gabi, whose tall slender body looked model perfect in the short black dress she was wearing, Marie said, “I don’t know.”

  It was the truth.

  “I’ve...never...”

  “Tell me what you feel when you’re with him.”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t feel just one thing. It’s like...he walks into the shop and I feel him. Like he draws me. And it’s exciting. And dangerous. And yet the most compelling thing about him is that he makes me feel...safe.”

  Afraid, when she saw Gabi’s frown, Marie said, “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “You think he’s going to hurt me?”

  “I’m more afraid that you’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “How would I do that?” Marie was a pro at keeping herself, her heart, at arm’s length. She’d been protecting herself from getting hurt by the opposite sex since junior high. Or at least it seemed that long ago.

  “Because it sounds like you’re finally falling in love, and I’m afraid you won’t just go with it. Won’t just let it happen.”

  She was falling in love?

  She and Elliott were friends. And they were that much only because they’d spent a lot of hours chatting in the coffee shop over the past few months he’d been watching over Liam and the building.

  They were friends because of proximity. Nothing else.

  She didn’t want to fall in love.

  Ever.

  She’d promised herself she’d never be that vulnerable to any man.

  But Gabi knew her...

  “Don’t look so scared, Marie. See, that’s what I’m talking about. You get in your own way and...”

  “I’m...not convinced I’m falling in love.” She blurted the thought in her head. “Love is a roller coaster. It’s angst and exhilaration. I feel neithe
r of those things.”

  “Just promise me that if Elliott gives you any indication that he’s interested in you, really interested, you won’t run in the other direction? You’ll give him a chance?”

  Marie nodded. Because at the moment, the way she felt, there didn’t seem much point in not doing so. Gabi knew she wanted to go out with Elliott.

  “What if he doesn’t feel anything for me?”

  “The way he hangs around you so much when it’s Liam he’s working for? And Walter? Besides, Liam says he can tell by the way Elliott watches you when you don’t know he’s looking that he has a thing for you. Bad, Liam said. He’s got it bad.”

  Gabi fidgeted with Marie’s hair and then turned to readdress her own lipstick.

  “And it’s not like he’s working for me,” Marie reemphasized. “He’s working for Liam. And if Liam’s good with him going out with me, then he wouldn’t be breaking a code of ethics or having some conflict of interest.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Unless I distract him, he misses seeing something and Liam gets hurt.”

  “Elliott is too much a professional to miss any danger to anyone within a five-mile radius,” Gabi said dryly. Exaggerating, of course, but not as much as one might think.

  “He’s always so careful about not doing anything that could jeopardize his license or his reputation with his clients,” Marie said, thinking out loud about previous conversations with the bodyguard to expel some jitters. “I think it’s because his career is everything to him.”

  Which might not bode well for a long-term relationship. A sense of crushing disappointment assailed her. But it was quickly followed by a resurgence of her good mood. If he wasn’t an option for forever, it made him even more perfect for her.

  Because she wasn’t, either. Marie didn’t believe in happily ever after.

  As she applied her lipstick, something she’d been doing several times a day for years, Marie steadied herself.

  “I trust him with my life,” she said to Gabi, completely serious, as she straightened. For Marie, it was not only a first. It was a miracle.

  “You and all of his clients.” Gabi’s quip lightened the moment.

  And Marie smiled. Grabbed her black silk clutch with pearls. Slipped into three-inch heels. Nervous. Excited. And...

  “You really think I’m falling in love?” She glanced back at Gabi as they left the apartment. Liam was standing by the elevator, holding the door.

  “Just go with it,” Gabi whispered as they got on behind him.

  Marie nodded one more time.

  * * *

  FEELING LIKE A fraud in his dark suit, white shirt and black tie, Elliott headed out the door in his shined dress shoes, far more eager for the evening than he should have been. Adjusting the holster of his gun beneath the suit coat, he reminded himself that he was on the job.

  Working.

  He’d just gotten off the phone with Barbara Bustamante. He’d told her that he’d be sitting at the table as a guest, the fourth in a two-couple foursome, with her daughter and the newly married Liam and Gabrielle Connelly for dinner that night.

  She’d been glad to hear that he’d have an opportunity for an entire evening of eavesdropping, an entire evening to watch how Liam treated the two women.

  He’d warned that it was going to look as if he was Marie’s date.

  She’d warned him to watch himself.

  At which he’d suggested she find herself another bodyguard.

  She’d reminded him that no other guard, hired at this late stage of the game, would likely be able to convince Liam that he was there via his father, thus allowing him to protect Marie without her knowing that she was under protection.

  And then she’d apologized for her earlier implication.

  But her point had been taken.

  * * *

  IN BETWEEN THE time he’d dropped off Liam and Gabrielle after work and now, Elliott had familiarized himself with every aspect of the floor plan of their evening’s destination. Assuring himself that he was only working, that he would keep his feelings firmly in check all night, running restaurant security measures through his mind, considering options in the event someone attempted to approach Liam Connelly during dinner, he turned the last corner to approach the back lot of the Arapahoe for the second time that night—this time to pick up his charges for their evening out.

  And just missed being hit by the police car that pulled onto the lot ahead of him.

  What the...

  Barely getting the SUV out of the way and stopped, he was outside, running toward the guard gate where the police car had stopped.

  Two uniformed officers were on the blacktop, looking in the door of the small guard house.

  “I’m telling you I’m fine,” the man Elliott had waved goodbye to an hour and a half before was saying.

  “An ambulance is already on its way,” the female officer said.

  “What’s going on?” Elliott spoke calmly. Not the least bit out of breath for having run toward them. And hands in the air to show he wasn’t armed as the larger of the two officers, a man about Elliott’s age, reached for his gun. “Sorry, Officer,” he said. Cursing his unprofessionalism. “I’m Elliott Tanner, an armed and licensed bodyguard. If you’ll allow me to reach for my credentials?”

  With his gun trained on Elliott, the man nodded. And looked over the card Elliott showed him. After which Elliott and the two officers turned immediately toward the guard sitting on a stool at the small counter in the booth, facing them.

  In his forties, the man had obviously been in a fight. His cheek was swollen. His lip split.

  “He came out of nowhere,” the man said. “I heard a sound out by the cars and went to check it out. The guy came at me and got a couple of punches in before I knew what hit me. I fought back. Busted his nose. I heard it crack and felt it, too. He took off, but I wasn’t going to leave my post. For all I knew there were more, waiting for me to go so they could get inside. I came over here and called you.” He nodded toward the police.

  “What car was he by?” Elliott asked the question. But he knew.

  “Mr. Connelly’s, sir. He came out from between his car and that old white Buick parked beside it.”

  Grace’s Park Avenue.

  Before they could say anything more, another siren closed in on them and an ambulance pulled on the lot. The back door to the building flung open and Liam Connelly, visibly pushing two beautiful, poshly turned out women back into the building behind him, came outside.

  Elliott had to get all three of them out of there. Let the officers sort it all out. And then he’d figure out what to do.

  Handing the female officer his card while her partner tended to the security guard, Elliott waylaid Liam before he could make it around the ambulance and to the booth.

  “Let’s get the ladies and go,” he said, his hand on Liam’s arm.

  It spoke to Liam’s intelligence that he didn’t argue.

  * * *

  IT WASN’T A DATE. Liam and Elliott rode up front, the doing of both men as far as Marie could tell. She wasn’t all that sorry to be huddled with Gabi in the backseat.

  “So you think that guy was after Liam?” she asked, shivering in spite of the balmy weather outside and climate control in the car.

  “No.” Elliott’s tone bore no hesitation. “If anything he was after his car.”

  “To sabotage it?” Marie asked. She was thinking about bombs.

  “The back tire was slashed,” Elliott said. He’d gone back and spoken with the police for a few seconds after he got Liam and Gabi and Marie settled in his car.

  Always the professional.

  Liam swore. “My tires are slashed?”

  “Only one of them. Probably would have been all four if th
e guard hadn’t heard something.”

  “Thank God it was your car and not you.” Sitting directly behind Liam, Gabrielle leaned forward and ran her hand along the side of his neck, a tender move that belied her somewhat harsh tone.

  It wasn’t Liam who’d raised Gabi’s ire. Marie knew that much for sure. Pity the guy who was behind these threats against Liam. An attorney who didn’t take no for an answer, Gabi would see the sod prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law once he was caught.

  “You think it’s the same guy who spray-painted his car in the park?” Marie was looking at Elliott in the rearview mirror. Could see the serious expression on his face as he focused on the road. Dusk was quickly falling.

  “Could be. The police haven’t been able to link either the car or the letters to each other, let alone to an actual person,” he said.

  “But then with budget cuts it’s not like they can afford to put this at the top of their lists,” Gabi said. “Not when it’s just car vandals and anonymous notes without a threat to life.”

  “Striking a guard will up the offense,” Elliott said, to which Gabi nodded.

  “So you think a detective will give this more time now?” Marie asked. She wasn’t sure she liked that idea, either.

  It made the whole thing seem so much more ominous.

  “I think they’ll be looking harder for a connection between the incidents and, yes, probably assigning more hours to the task.”

  “So you think there’s more than one person behind all of it?” she asked. Because chattering was what she always did when she was upset. Or in a good mood. Or bored. Or interested in something. Or...

  “I hope to God not,” Liam said. “But you can’t blame people for being angry. George robbed them of their life savings, some of them. And though they’re going to get it back, some of them have already been foreclosed on. We can’t give them back their credit.”