Once Upon a Marriage

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Liam’s ready grin finally surfaced as he cocked his head and said, “Must not be that bad at it if a week and a day later you’re taking her to the altar. Maybe I’m in the wrong business...”

  Elliott might have been subjected to more of Liam’s cockiness if the minister hadn’t come in through a secret door behind the altar, his hair somewhat mussed, in full robed garb.

  “Who’s getting married?” he asked.

  “He is.”

  “I am.”

  Elliott and Liam spoke simultaneously.

  “Who has the ring?”

  Elliott looked at Liam. Who was looking at him.

  “Where’s the closest jeweler that would be open all night?” Liam spoke first.

  “Right here,” the minister said. “We have a decent selection of rings. If you’d like to follow me?”

  Elliott was in over his head. He knew it. And he still didn’t care. He was a man who’d learned long ago to live by his instincts. And they were telling him that marrying Marie was the right thing to do.

  He turned to Liam.

  “I’ll wait here for the girls,” the financier said. “And, by the way, Marie likes white gold.”

  Good to know.

  Elliott nodded. And followed the minister out of the room.

  * * *

  “YOU THINK I’M CRAZY, don’t you?” Marie moved closer to Gabi as they exited the elevator they’d been riding on alone, making room for the group of people who’d been waiting on the main floor to go upstairs to their rooms.

  In their black dresses, the two stepped onto the carpeted hallway that led to the casino floor and throughout the resort.

  Gabi took her hand, squeezed it, while the two moved as quickly as they could in their high-heeled shoes. “Believe it or not, I think that you’re doing absolutely the right thing.” She ran a finger through Marie’s hair. It was curled a bit at the ends from the updo she’d worn that morning. Gabi had been ready to pin it back up, but for once in her life, Marie wanted it down. Loose and free.

  She stopped in the middle of an aisle to stare at Gabi now, though, completely frozen with fear. Even at just past two in the morning, machines rang out bonuses as players sat pushing buttons again and again.

  “Elliott might very well be the only guy who will ever slip past that iron gate you’ve got around your heart,” Gabi said, pulling Marie closer to her and out of the way as a couple—obviously a little worse for the alcohol they’d consumed—teetered past them. “And I know you, Marie. If you don’t do this quickly, you’ll talk yourself out of it. I think you know that, too, which is why you’re doing what you have to do. You’re pulling one over on yourself.”

  “You make me sound crazy.”

  “I think you’re careful. And paranoid where men are concerned. Not that that’s your fault. But you love Elliott, don’t you?”

  “I haven’t told him so.” And she should, shouldn’t she? Before she told someone else? Before she married him?

  “And he loves you.”

  “He hasn’t said so, either.”

  “Then I guess we have some business to take care of, don’t we?” Always the practical one, Gabi led them around a corner, down another hall, up an escalator and to the second-floor chapel where their day had begun.

  Marie stopped her just before she pulled open the door to head inside. Where Elliott would be waiting. She couldn’t do it. She was in Vegas, but would be going home in the morning. And if she got married, what happened in Vegas definitely would not just stay in Vegas.

  “Just...let it happen, okay?” Gabi whispered.

  “What if I can’t trust him, Gabi?” Marie asked, stilling Gabi’s reach for the door handle.

  “You don’t trust Elliott? Has he done something to make you doubt him?”

  “No.” She shook her head. Feeling the little curls around her temples bounce. “I feel like I trust him completely. But that’s kind of weird for me to say, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve never trusted men. What if, after we’re married, I can’t trust him? Not because he isn’t trustworthy, but because of me? Because I can’t? What if I ruin things?”

  “You need to tell him about your issues with men. And why you have them.”

  “He knows.”

  Gabi’s eyes widened. “You told him about...everything?”

  “And everyone.” Marie was completely serious now. Needing her friend to show her the parts of herself that she couldn’t find on her own.

  “Wow.” Gabi smiled. “I was beginning to fear there’d never be an Elliott Tanner in your life...”

  “Yeah, I think I was, too. But...”

  Gabi’s finger touched her lips. “No buts. He knows how hard it is for you to trust and still wants to marry you. He knows what he’s getting into. Now trust him to be up to the challenge.”

  Tears sprang to Marie’s eyes. They were going to ruin her makeup. “Thank you.”

  Nodding, Gabi squeezed her hand again. And said, “You’re absolutely sure this is what you want to do?”

  Pausing, Marie made herself slow down. It wasn’t as if there was another wedding pressing down upon them. She could take all night if she wanted to.

  Or not get married at all.

  Thoughts of Elliott’s arms around her at the salsa club sprang to mind. Swinging her around. Pulling her in. Throwing her out. Bringing her back against his warm body. Catching her. Always catching her. She hadn’t been afraid, even for a second.

  “I’ll be your groom.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I am, too,” she’d said. Or something like that. Maybe she’d just said okay again. The next thing she knew they’d been standing, holding hands and going to tell Liam and Gabi that they had to break up their card game for a wedding.

  “Marie?” Gabi’s voice was soft. Serious. And not the least bit threatening. She was there for her. Her support. No matter what she decided.

  It had always been that way.

  Always would be that way.

  She wasn’t alone. No matter how she’d been feeling over the past weeks, she wasn’t ever going to be alone. Liam and Gabi and her...they’d been three misfits in college. Liam with his screwed-up dad. Gabi with her family who leaned on her but didn’t understand the world she lived in, and her, with parents who didn’t know how to love each other or to let each other go. Somehow three eighteen-year-old kids who’d needed family had found each other.

  And formed a family of their own.

  “I love you,” she said to Gabi now.

  “I love you, too. You want me to go tell them the wedding’s off?” Gabi didn’t seem disappointed in her. Or happy, either.

  “No,” Marie felt like the Mona Lisa when she smiled. As though she now knew the secrets. “Mom told me last night that when he’s the right man, you’ll need to marry him more than you fear being hurt. And...well... I need to marry him.”

  Gabi’s silent smile, her tight hug, said everything else Marie needed to hear.

  The door to the chapel burst open—and would have hit them if they hadn’t both jumped back. “Oh, there you are,” Liam said, sounding as though he’d just gotten out of bed and hadn’t been up close to twenty-four hours. “I’m going to walk you down the aisle,” he said to Marie. “I believe it’s fitting that I give you away.”

  Marie laughed out loud. And nodded.

  “But first, I must escort this lovely lady to the altar, so she is there, standing by you. Now and always,” he said softly, offering his arm to his wife.

  And revealing the flowers he’d been holding behind his back in the process. “Oh,” he said. “Here are your flowers.” He handed a small bouquet of white roses to Gabi.

  “And yours.” Marie got an identical, but much larger,
bouquet.

  “Are we ready?” he asked, looking at the two of them.

  “Yes,” Marie said, but stepped forward when he offered Gabi his arm a second time. She was on his left. Marie hooked her arm through his right one. “We’re ready,” she said.

  Together, at three o’clock that Saturday morning, the members of Threefold walked up the chapel aisle.

  And with Liam and Gabi holding hands beside her, Marie Bustamante agreed to be Elliott Tanner’s wife.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE PRACTICAL THING would have been to take a nap.

  He noticed Marie looking at the shiny new ring on her finger as she walked beside him, holding his hand—the hand with the shiny new ring. He wasn’t a jewelry kind of guy.

  They were on their way to a wedding breakfast before going up to their rooms to change, pack and head to the airport. If there was time, they were going to stop at a jeweler’s and buy Marie a diamond to go with her new band.

  His wedding gift to his wife.

  His wife.

  He was married. Had the signed and witnessed certificate in the inside pocket of his jacket. His mind wasn’t wrapping around the idea. But he was happy.

  Maybe stupidly so. Because now that he’d come down off his high, he knew that his happiness was built on sinking ground. He’d married Marie under false pretenses. She had his heart, but she didn’t know his truth.

  He’d just sentenced himself to a life of hiding. And of constantly being aware that at any moment his happiness—and Marie’s—could be snatched from them. If she ever found out that her mother had hired him...

  Liam and Gabrielle walked a few feet in front of them. Breakfast was their treat, and Liam was looking for a place he considered worthy of the occasion.

  Because, in Vegas, there were choices, even at three in the morning.

  Elliott was more interested in setting up a home with Marie. Making a concrete life before the sand shifted.

  “I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I’m assuming that you’ll want to stay at the Arapahoe,” he said when what he should have been doing was telling Marie how happy she’d just made him.

  Marie stumbled. Her head bumping him halfway between his shoulder and his elbow. And he was reminded of how small she was. How easily she could be hurt.

  He was reminded that he’d just promised to protect her for the rest of his life.

  The thought of anything happening to her scared him in a way he hadn’t been scared since he’d been a little kid.

  Elementally. To the bone.

  And if she found out he’d lied to her about who he was? Even if only by omission? If she ever found out that her mother had hired him to watch over her, he’d lose her.

  “I’d like to stay there,” she said now. “I mean, if you want to move, I’ll still be able to be there every day. I’ve got my shop. But...”

  “I live in a one-bedroom apartment that’s less than nine hundred square feet,” he said.

  “I have a three-bedroom apartment that is slightly more vacant than it was because my roommate just got married and moved out.” She was grinning up at him.

  “Good.”

  “It is good, isn’t it?” Marie’s big brown eyes seemed to see right to his heart, and it was as though they were in Denver. In her shop. Alone in the world.

  “Everything with you and me, it just clicks,” she said when Elliott couldn’t find the right words to tell her all the things he was thinking. “You showing up right when I needed to find you. Us being in Vegas at the time that we’re both finally acknowledging that we’ve found the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with. Our living arrangements gelling at just the right time...”

  They’d left the hotel carpet for marble floor—were walking down a wide hallway filled with high-end shops on each side. The ceiling above looked like blue sky with clouds.

  A sky that promised either sunshine or rain. Or neither.

  She hadn’t said she loved him.

  They were married and he hadn’t told her he loved her, either.

  She thought they’d found each other by a quirk of fate. That they were simpatico. He wanted her to keep thinking that forever.

  “I love you, Marie,” he said as he walked by her side down that long hallway. “No matter what happens in our lives, I want you to know how much I love you.”

  She turned, looked up at him, and the smile she’d been wearing all day and throughout the night slid away. “That sounds ominous.”

  He stopped walking. Held both of her arms as he looked her right in the eye. “It’s not.” He swore it wouldn’t be. Ever. Not because of him. Not if he had the power to prevent it. “I’m just that serious about this. I’m not declaring some note of passion in a moment of anything goes. I’m telling you, no matter where we are, no matter what we’re doing, I love you.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. And she stood on tiptoe to bring her lips to his. “I love you, too, Elliott Tanner. So much.” She kissed him then. It was the third time her lips had touched his. The brief caress outside her office. The more thorough but completely unsatisfying kiss with the minister and Liam and Gabrielle cheering them on. And now.

  Elliott took her lips with his, sealing them together, a silent vow that nothing would ever split them apart.

  And knew, even as he did so, that his word was worth nothing unless he told her the truth.

  * * *

  MARIE’S FIRST DAY married wasn’t anything like she’d ever imagined it might be. There was another threat waiting for them when they got back to the Arapahoe. Of sorts. A package had come in the mail. It contained a bottle of the sports drink Liam drank. On the label in stick-on letters it read How Does It Feel?

  She’d thought that was the threat. The idea that whoever was stalking him knew what kind of sports drink he preferred. As if he was being watched that closely.

  Elliott told all three of them differently. He’d noticed that the cap wasn’t sealed on the bottle and had immediately grabbed a towel, taken the bottle from Liam, placed it back in the box and backed up.

  They’d been home less than an hour. Marie had been downstairs in her office, taking care of the weekend’s receipts and deposits while Eva and Sam ran the shop, when Elliott called, asking her to come up.

  No one knew they were married yet. Other than Liam and Gabi, of course. They’d all been up more than twenty-four hours. And she’d wanted a night to get used to the idea of actually being part of a couple before the residents, and her staff, converged upon her.

  “No one touch that box,” Elliott said. He’d already called the police. Before calling Marie upstairs.

  “What do you think is in there?”

  He was frowning. Moving around the apartment. “I have no idea. There’s no liquid explosive I know of that would detonate by itself, but it could be laced with something. Cyanide, maybe.”

  Gabi’s intake of breath filled the room. “He’s trying to kill Liam?”

  “I doubt that he expected Liam to drink it. He would have noticed the broken seal. And it bore a threatening note. I think this is more warning. Playing with him. Letting him know how easy it would be to hurt him. And showing, at the same time, that whoever is doing this means business.”

  “You think he’s going to hurt him?” Marie asked. Life was as they’d left it. Someone was out there threatening Liam. And Elliott was working. It was as though the marriage that had happened in Vegas had stayed in Vegas.

  Except that she had a shiny new wedding ring in her pocket. Matching the one Elliott had slid in his own. At her request. Just until they’d had some rest—and a night to get used to the magnanimous change that had just taken place.

  “I have no idea what he’s going to do,” Elliott said. “But I know that only a mentally disturbed pers
on continues on like this for months. And there’s no telling what a mentally disturbed person is capable of doing.”

  Before he could say more, the police arrived. They asked their usual questions. Wanted assurances that nothing had been disturbed in Liam’s apartment while they were gone. Elliott checked Marie’s, as well. They talked to the security guards. And to Sam and Eva downstairs in the shop. No one noticed anything out of the ordinary.

  When they were done, they took their notes, the box that had come in the mail and left. All Marie wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for a week.

  It wasn’t even six o’clock yet.

  Elliott looked from her to Liam and Gabi. “I guess I’ll get my things,” he said.

  And Marie felt that peculiar piece of joy start to unfurl inside her again.

  She might be home again. Back to work.

  But she was married.

  To the man she loved.

  And he was moving in.

  * * *

  THE FIRST WEEK of marriage turned out to be less...all encompassing...than Elliott had thought it would be. Sharing his nights with Marie was fantastic. Better than fantastic. When he was in her arms, he was willing to die there.

  And when he woke up every morning, the sick feeling hit his gut. Toward the end of the first week, he could hardly stand to look at himself in the mirror of their bathroom as he shaved. On Thursday, still in her robe after a shower, she came up behind him just as he’d smeared his face with cream, slid her arms around his towel-wrapped middle and hugged him tight.

  He wanted to turn in her arms and lose himself in everything good about her.

  “I wish we could get out of the party tonight,” she said. “I’ve always loved having people around, having parties, but now...”

  Her body slid upward against his—standing on tiptoe—and she kissed him. “I don’t want to share you,” she said. “And I don’t want to give up our alone time.”

  Other than work, they hadn’t left the apartment all week. Had turned down two invitations to dinner with Liam and Gabrielle.

  But everyone at the Arapahoe knew they were married and wanted to celebrate. After the first day, Marie hadn’t been able to bear being without her ring. And Grace, with Gabrielle’s help, had organized a reception for them.