Once Upon a Marriage

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “No.” He’d just heard from the detective that evening. “But I believe, as do my contacts in the Denver Police Department, that once Costas pleads guilty, this guy’s either going to back off completely, go after Costas or show himself again.”

  Marie nodded. Her brown eyes shadowed as she looked at him. Was she having trouble sleeping? Or was she just tired from a long day?

  “Anyway,” he said, feeling an uncharacteristic need to lighten the moment, “it’s not like having me around is a death sentence or anything.”

  Was he actually asking for reassurance? From her?

  Elliott sipped again. Things were getting out of hand. At least inside him they were.

  “It’s not like it used to be,” Marie said, no hint of a smile on her face.

  “What does that mean?” He’d only known her three months. Maybe if he reminded himself of that fact often enough, it would lessen the effect she had on him.

  “We used to talk. All the time. You’re the first man I’ve ever known, other than Liam, who I could talk to without measuring my words. I could just be myself with you...” Her voice faded and he wanted to know what she was thinking. Wanted to know everything that was in that fascinating and completely unpredictable mind of hers.

  “I’m hard to talk to now?” Elliott groped for ways to extricate himself. They weren’t immediately obvious to him.

  “I don’t know, anytime I’m free, you’re escorting me upstairs and are gone.”

  “I’m working.” Completely true.

  “Yeah, that’s what I told myself. But the shop’s closed now. The doors are locked. The blinds are shut. Liam and Gabi are safe upstairs.”

  He acknowledged the statements with a drop of his chin. “So talk.” Her mother wanted him to keep her from getting hurt. If something was bothering her, he should know about it.

  What if Threefold was having financial trouble?

  There’d been no indication. And no indication, either, that Liam Connelly was foolish or frivolous with his money.

  Or his father’s company, either.

  So what was bothering her?

  “I just...you know how my mom sends me all those studies to read, and...” She broke off again. Shook her head. “This has nothing to do with any of my mom’s studies. The truth is, I rarely read them anymore. Most of what I know is stuff she repeats to me ad nauseam when she calls.”

  “How often do you talk to her?” He’d wondered. Several times. He’d asked Barbara and she’d just said that she and Marie spoke regularly, in a way that let Elliott know that she didn’t consider the information pertinent to the job he was doing.

  “Used to be a couple of times a week. Lately it’s more like every couple of weeks. Ever since the last time my father wanted to get back with her and I wouldn’t get involved—maybe three or four months ago—she calls less and less.”

  Since Elliott had been on her payroll and had been giving her regular reports.

  “Anyway, the thing is, you know so much about me...everything, really. You probably even know what kind of toilet paper I buy.” Not that he accompanied her inside the store all the time, as he had the one time they went together. She and Gabi had gone to the grocery together that week, with Elliott waiting right outside.

  “It’s only for a little while, Marie,” he said, leaning forward. “It’s common for someone who’s not used to being protected to get a bit of cabin fever. You’re used to your freedom.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not that. Though probably with Liam it is. But...”

  He waited. Withstood the long look she gave him. And wasn’t at all as prepared as he’d planned to be when she suddenly blurted, “What do you want out of life?”

  “What?”

  “What do you want? What are your goals? Do you ever want to get married? Have kids? You know everything about me, and I know nothing about you.”

  She could have whacked him over the head with a baseball bat and he’d have been happier. And better equipped to deal with her, too.

  His immediate reaction was to shut her down with a single word. No.

  But those big brown eyes bored into him. Trusting him to tell her the truth. He, who was bound by ethics to lie to her. “You know I have no siblings and that my parents were killed in a small plane crash when I was two.”

  He’d given her his life story late one night. Before he’d realized how dangerous sharing would be.

  How the compassion she’d shown him, a grown man trained to protect, had touched him.

  “And you have an aunt and cousin in California. Yes, I know. But that doesn’t tell me a thing about you. About your life. Or your goals or...”

  It shouldn’t matter. He was a bodyguard. On the job.

  “Why does it matter?”

  She blinked. Sat back.

  He was being paid not to hurt her...

  And he knew that last thought was pure bunk. Justification for reaching out for her hand to hold her in her seat.

  “I grew up on the outside looking in.” He heard himself telling her something he’d never shared aloud before. “My aunt was great. She loved me and always made me welcome. But she was grieving, too. My mom was her older sister. Their parents divorced when they were little. Their dad remarried and their mom later died of heart failure. She, my aunt, looked at me and missed my mom. It was like I was always the cross on my mother’s grave, never just a part of the family. Or even a full member of the family. I was the outsider—there because of a great tragedy.”

  When he started to feel like a sap, Elliott shut up.

  “And later?” Marie asked, knocking him for a loop with the look in her eyes. No woman had ever looked at him quite like that. As though she could protect him.

  And he couldn’t pretend any longer that he didn’t want her. All to himself.

  * * *

  “LATER I GREW UP.”

  Elliott answered Marie’s question so long after she’d asked it, she had to think a minute about what he was saying and why.

  “Of course you grew up,” she said, recognizing that he was trying to wrap up their talk. But she wasn’t done yet. Couldn’t be until she had a clear understanding that there was nothing between them but her own imaginings, conjured up out of her own loneliness, the danger surrounding her friends and forced proximity to the bodyguard. She was driving herself nuts. “And when you grew up, did you ever think about having a family of your own?”

  His gaze was piercing as he studied her. She had no idea why. And then he said, “Do you have any idea how it feels to be a foot taller than every other kid in school? To have to duck to enter your high school classroom?”

  Marie was shorter than Gabi. Who was only five foot six. “Obviously not.” But she remembered the stares he’d received, they’d received, when they’d been in the warehouse store together, and added, “You were on the outside looking in then, too, weren’t you?”

  She knew that kids weren’t generally nice to anyone who was different.

  He responded with that half nod of his.

  “Surely you dated,” Marie said next. “I mean, you’re tall, probably the tallest man I’ve ever met, but you’re gorgeous, Elliott. You’re never going to convince me you didn’t have girls falling all over you.”

  He grinned. And she heard what she’d said. She’d told him she thought he was gorgeous. Her face flamed. But...it wasn’t as if it would be news to him. Presumably he looked in the mirror every morning. He was clean shaven, and that didn’t usually happen all by itself.

  “I like women,” he finally said.

  And it dawned on her what he was saying.

  “You’ve dated a lot.”

  “Not until I was out of high school and had grown more comfortable with my size. But yes, I’ve had my fair share of wo
men in my life.”

  “You dating anyone now?” She’d asked once before, the first month she’d known him, and the answer had been no. But that could have changed.

  “No.”

  “Neither am I.” He knew that. Idiot. She’d just been dumped by Burton—a guy who’d been too boring for words. “So, do you want a family?”

  “Are you offering to be a part of it?”

  Marie blinked. Held her breath. And then started to feel dizzy. Was he flirting with her?

  “Sorry,” Elliott said before she’d found her senses. “I just... That was inappropriate. We should be getting upstairs.”

  “What if I was offering?”

  “Why all the sudden questions?”

  “Because you said you like me too much.” She’d made no conscious decision to put that right out there. She’d just been following Gabi’s suggestion that she ask him what he wanted out of life. Because at the moment, she trusted her best friend’s judgment more than she trusted her own.

  “Yeah.” He glanced down.

  “Yeah.”

  He fiddled with his napkin.

  “Because I think I might like you too much, too,” she said. He looked up then. And his gaze told her what his words didn’t.

  She might be in deep.

  But he was, too.

  * * *

  HE COULDN’T DO THIS. Couldn’t let her confess feelings for him when he couldn’t be honest with her about why he was there. He couldn’t let her think that her feelings were unreturned, either.

  “I think we should go on up,” Elliott said when the silence between him and Marie begged him to do something about it.

  Like call Barbara Bustamante and quit this job.

  “Liam has a sunrise breakfast, and we still need to go over last-minute protocol.” Which he could do in the morning, but it was the best he could come up with...

  Elliott saw the shadow a split second before he heard the sound of crashing glass. But it was enough time to dive for Marie and have her on the floor beneath him before things shattered around them. With his gun in his hand, he stayed over her, holding himself up enough not to crush her and waited.

  Thirty long seconds.

  Silent seconds.

  Every instinct in his body screamed. Go after the guy before he got away. Never let Marie out of his sight again.

  And he remembered the security guard out front. He’d be handling the situation outside. Unless he was hurt...

  “Elliott?”

  “You okay?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t want to move. And had to move quickly. Lifting himself away from her, Elliott shielded Marie while he took stock of her shop. The front window glass had a gaping hole. Glass shards stuck out all over. It was the kind of break that happened when someone threw something from a distance. Far enough that he could get away with it with a security guard manning the block. Not the kind you crawled through.

  They were alone in the shop. He couldn’t tell what was going on outside. But no one had tried the door.

  With his cell phone at his ear, he waited for James Wilson, the Denver cop assigned to Liam’s case, to pick up. “I don’t think he knew we were in here,” he told Marie. “The shop’s been closed more than an hour, and the overhead lights are off. He’s not looking to hurt you.” That was his immediate professional assessment.

  He hoped to God he was right.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A COMMON FIREPLACE brick had been thrown through her front window. The guard out front had chased a hooded man he’d seen across the street right as soon as he’d seen the brick go through the window. He’d been several yards away from the shop’s window and lost the guy before he got a good look at him. He’d called the cops next. And had been shocked to find out that Elliott and Marie had been inside.

  There’d been a note attached to the brick—addressed to Liam on plain copy paper that could have come from any ink-jet printer in the city.

  It asked one question.

  Do you feel me yet?

  If Elliott hadn’t acted as swiftly as he had, Marie would most likely have been struck in the head.

  She could have been killed.

  But it was pretty obvious that the perpetrator hadn’t meant to commit bodily harm.

  Not yet, at least.

  It was clear now, to the police and to Elliott, that someone was toying with Liam. Someone who wanted to make him squirm. See him hurt. Someone who probably was not going to stop until Liam had suffered.

  As with any “game,” the guy would continue to taunt Liam with proof that he could get to him. When issuing mere reminders of this fact failed to satisfy him, he would up his ante.

  Everyone involved agreed on that point.

  It was anyone’s guess what upping the ante would mean to the guy.

  But Elliott seemed to think that, based on the fact that every single act had been aimed at Liam—Marie’s shop being the only public access the guy had to Liam—the escalated attempts would be aimed at him, as well.

  While Marie didn’t like any of this, she accepted the theory that she wasn’t in immediate physical danger and so, when her mother called the next day, didn’t mention the brick in her shopwindow. Her mother had always had an edge where Liam was concerned. No point in rocking that boat.

  Elliott had had the window boarded up before the police left the night before. Between him and Gabi and Liam, her shop had been clean and ready for business before they all retired for the night. Liam had had a company there first thing that morning replacing the window. The full-time security that had been placed out front as well as in the back, not just when the shop was open, but twenty-four hours a day—at Liam’s insistence and expense—was now of the gun-carrying variety.

  There’d been no opportunity for her and Elliott to finish their personal conversation of the night before. Liam and Gabi had been with him when he checked her apartment as he’d dropped her off and then the three of them had gone on upstairs together.

  He’d been downstairs that morning before she had, but before she could even greet him, Grace had walked off the elevator. Then he’d been busy reassuring the older woman—who’d seen the broken window—that everyone was safe.

  Marie was open for business right on time, and life went on.

  But he hadn’t denied that he liked her too much. And now he knew she returned his feelings.

  Barbara’s call had come when Marie was upstairs, taking a break, just after lunch. She hadn’t had much sleep. And had taken half an hour to sit on her couch alone with a glass of herbal tea.

  “I have some news for you, sweetie.” Barbara’s voice practically bubbled over the line. But it was the hesitancy that also filtered through that had Marie opening her eyes and sitting up straight.

  “What?” she asked. If her mother and father were reuniting for the third time, she couldn’t pretend to be happy. Her mother was just going to be heartbroken again. And sooner or later, the woman would be unable to put herself back together.

  Marie knew. She’d watched the decline over the years. She’d seen a strong confident woman lose all faith in herself until she’d become a paranoid fragile shadow of what she could have been.

  “I’m getting married!”

  She heard the excitement in her mother’s voice. Knew Barbara wanted her to share in it. And she just couldn’t.

  Not again. She didn’t say the words that sprang to mind first. Instead, she managed, “I just talked to Daddy last week and he didn’t say anything...”

  “He doesn’t know yet.” And there was the hesitancy again. “I thought it was best if you knew first because he’s probably going to call you. I’m sorry, honey. You shouldn’t have to deal with that, and I’ll tell him to leave you out of it, bu
t you know your father...”

  Wait. Marie slumped back on the couch, her hand to her head. She shook her head. And sat up again. “You’re getting married, but not to Daddy?”

  “That’s right.”

  Wow. But how... “Who are you marrying?” Had her mother gone completely mad?

  “Bruce.”

  “I don’t know a Bruce, do I? The only Bruce I’ve ever heard you mention is your therapist...”

  “He’s a psychiatrist, and yes, that’s him. Dr. Bruce Mendholson. He’s going to be here in a few minutes, but I told him I wanted to tell you about us myself.”

  “You’re marrying your shrink?”

  “Marie!” The sharpness of the tone surprised her. But made Marie feel good, too, in a little-girl kind of way. It was a remnant of the mother she’d known. The one who’d disciplined her. Set boundaries. And been an example to her.

  “Don’t be disrespectful, sweetie, please.” Barbara’s tone softened. “I know this is sudden. I knew you’d be shocked. Which was why I wanted to tell you first and by myself. It’s just... For so long I thought what I was feeling for Bruce was transference—it’s not uncommon, you know, for clients to think they’re falling for their therapists...”

  Marie thought that was exactly what was happening.

  “But after this last time with your father... I didn’t hurt, Marie. I felt sorry for him. But I was fine. I realized I didn’t need therapy anymore...”

  “You quit therapy completely?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about your medication?”

  Barbara had been on one form or another of antianxiety and antidepressant medication since Marie was in high school.

  “I’ve been off it for almost a year...”

  “What?” Marie jumped up. Walked to the wide window in her living room, looking down at the street below. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I wanted to make certain I was ready, that I could make it without help, before I told you about it. My biggest regret is what my unstable relationship with your father did to you, Marie...”

  “You’ve been medication free for almost a year.” She had to get this straight. Barbara had been needy for so long...