Once Upon A Marriage

“I’m available to see Gabrielle to work every morning and home again in the evening if you so desire.” The protocol Liam had insisted upon when he first took Elliott on.

Gabrielle looked at Marie. “Did you get another letter? We should have been here. I’m so sorry...”

Marie shook her head. “No,” she said, glancing toward Elliott with concern written all over her face. And then, with her expression softening, turned back to Gabrielle. “And you have no reason to be sorry. It isn’t every day that Liam’s father invites you two to accompany him, and brunch at the governor’s mansion is an honor. A sign of his growing acceptance and respect.”

Elliott had known Walter was in town for the weekend to take care of some business. He hadn’t been told exactly what the business was.

“I’m assuming your father’s on his way back to Florida?” he asked Liam, just to make certain that there hadn’t been a change of plans.

“Yes. Tamara’s got a softball game tomorrow night. They’re in the play-offs.”

Tamara Bolin, the fourteen-year-old half sister Liam had just found out about during the initial investigation of his father’s company. She lived with her mother, Missy, in a beach cottage Walter Connelly had purchased for them years before. Walter and Missy were married now and Walter, having given Liam a lot more control in the business he’d almost lost, was spending a good bit of his time in Florida. Working from his home office. With trips up to Denver to meet face-to-face with the powerful and moneyed clientele he’d taken on over the years.

Most of whom were still with them.

“So what’s going on?” Gabrielle sat forward, her expression stoic but focused. She reminded Elliott most of himself.

A woman who kept her heart under lock and key.

Except when it came to Marie and Liam.

He envied her them. Or would, if he allowed himself foolish luxuries.

“I’ve noticed a car parked down the street on several occasions lately. The driver is always inside, slumped down wearing a baseball cap. Today, when I approached, he—or she—pretended not to see me motion him to roll down the window and drove off. I ran the plate on the car. It was stolen.”

Marie sat up straight on the edge of her seat. “Someone in a stolen car’s been watching us?”

“I’m not saying that.” He enunciated this carefully. “And no, I’m not saying the car is stolen. The plate was stolen. It came back as belonging to an ’82 Ford Granada belonging to a woman who died six months ago. The Granada has been parked in an alley behind a garage at her grandson’s house while they waited for the estate to settle. No one noticed the plate missing.”

“You’re sure they were watching this place?” Liam asked. Elliott had labeled him the Pollyanna of the group.

“No, I’m not.” He had to be honest. “But with everything else that’s gone on, we’d be remiss not to treat it like it was.”

Marie looked at Gabrielle and the two women exchanged glances with Liam, who slid his hands into his pockets.

“Fine,” Gabrielle said. Marie nodded.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d see my wife to work every morning,” Liam said. “I can have the company car pick me up.”

“Not a good idea,” Elliott said. “A stretch limo parked out back would be salt in a wound around here.”

“I agree with him, Liam,” Gabrielle said. “I can get myself to work. You’re the target. Elliott should go with you.”

Pulling his hands out of his pockets, Liam faced Elliott. “You go with her.” He nodded toward his wife. “I’ll work from home for the next couple of days. Let’s reassess later in the week.”

One by one, Elliott looked at his three charges. One by one they nodded.

And he turned, wanting only to get out of there.

* * *

MARIE SAW ELLIOTT ready to leave, and her heart dropped.

What was the matter with her? It had no business dropping because the giant her friend had hired was going home.

Without giving her a chance to set things straight between them.

No wonder he was so eager to leave. He probably thought she’d been hitting him up for information on his client. Trying to coax him into breaking his code of ethics, or client/investigator privilege or something.

The elevator door opened before Elliott made it out to the hallway.

“Oh! Good! You’re all here!” Eighty-one-year-old that day Susan Gruber, slender and statuesque in a flowered housedress and black shoes with inch-thick soles, blocked Elliott’s departure. Dale, right behind her, stood there grinning.

“I just had to thank you,” she said. “Dale told me you all helped him plan my little party and gift, and I just don’t know when he’s made me so happy.” She told them, in second-to-second detail, how he came in the door with the cake and presented her with the envelope. She talked about the last time she went to the theater—thirty years before—and remembered exactly what she saw.

Marie, who ordinarily would have wanted to take the couple out to the coffee shop and sit with them through every detail, watched Elliott. Afraid he was going to slip out.

Instead, it was Liam and Gabi who did so. They had another couple upstairs in their huge, luxuriously remodeled apartment, someone Gabi had met at the governor’s mansion that day who could help her get more funding for indigent legal services, and the four of them had just been sitting down to a glass of wine when Elliott contacted them.

And by the time Susan and Dale left, she could see from the hallway that the coffee shop had closed and Eva was gone, too. Expecting Elliott to head straight out, she stopped just as they reached the shop.

“Can I make you a cup of coffee? Dark roast with a shot of espresso, black?” She knew what he liked. Just as she knew a good many of her clients’ preferences.

Expecting him to refuse, she was ready to talk him into at least taking it to go—which would give her time to apologize for her behavior the day before. She was shocked when he said instead, “Have you got a piece of that double-fudge cake to go with it?”

Which reminded her she had to bake another cake for the next day. Grace baked cakes twice a week. Tuesdays and Saturdays. She’d used up Monday’s double-fudge allotment with Dale.

“One piece,” she said, hoping that Eva hadn’t sold Sunday’s last piece of cake during the time she was in the back office.

Her chances of getting him to stay while another cake baked were pretty slim.

As she walked with him into the shop, moved the remaining piece of cake from the serving dish to a plate and started his coffee, Marie considered the ironies of life. Her life with men usually consisted of her thinking of ways to get rid of them.

Not to get them to stay.

Standing at the high-top table closest to the coffee counter, Elliott didn’t wait for his coffee before starting in on the cake. Marie grabbed a bottle of water for herself and took his drink over to him as she slid up onto one of the two stools at the tall round table. Even then, she was shorter than him by a good six inches.

Standing, it was more like a foot and a half. Which could be why she felt so safe with him.

Elliott was like a big umbrella, sheltering her from the storm that was threatening their lives.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted as she opened her water.

“For what? This is great.” He didn’t even look up from the cake he was devouring.

“For yesterday. Saying those things about Liam. I’m not as crazy as I sounded, and I know Liam would rather die than hurt Gabi.”

But then, her father had felt the same way about her mother. The reminder from the previous night’s conversation with her father popped unwanted into her head.

He nodded. Which meant what? That he forgave her? That she had sounded crazy? That Liam wouldn’t hurt Gabi?

Or just that the cake was good?

“It’s just...it’s not just what my father did that makes me paranoid,” she heard herself saying. Justifying. As if the only thing that mattered was that he understand her.

Or maybe it was just that sometime over the past three months, she’d fallen into the habit of confiding in him.

Because he was safe. He was licensed to keep people safe.

Chewing, he glanced at her. Took a sip of his coffee.

Elliott was a man of few words. She knew that about him.

Luckily she’d always had an overabundance of them. “I dated a guy almost my entire freshman year of college,” she said. If he knew the whole truth, he’d understand. “Mark Yarnell. He was from Arizona, too. I thought we’d see each other over the summer, said something to him about it, and that’s when I found out that he had a fiancée back home in Phoenix. He wasn’t in love with her and had thought that maybe he’d break up with her and ask me to marry him. But she was a member of his church and he said it was the right thing to do to marry her.”

“Were you in love with him?”

“I don’t know. I know I liked him more than any other guy I’d ever dated.” She’d gone to church with him, too.

“Then there was Jimmy Jones,” she said, taking a sip from her water bottle and glancing up at him at the same time. His body blocked the overhead light, putting a shadow on the table. Shoulders that big, all in black the way they always were, should be somewhat intimidating. But they weren’t.

Nor was the serious look in those dark eyes. The cake was gone. His coffee almost was, too.

“Jimmy Jones?” He asked, his brow raised.

“Gabi and I met him at a rodeo our junior year. He played us against each other. Telling her she was the one he really liked and telling me the same thing. Luckily for us we tell each other everything.”

“And I’m guessing he lived to regret what he’d done,” Elliott said, a grin teasing the corners of his mouth.

“Let’s just say he’ll probably always cringe a bit when a loudspeaker comes on before a show.”

“You got someone to put a message out over the loudspeaker at a rodeo?”

“We did better than that. The reason we were at the rodeo was that the father of a friend of ours owned a team. Jimmy rode for an opposing team. We recorded him talking to me on the phone. And then making similar promises and proclamations to Gabi. We both got him to play it up big. And then we turned the tape over to our friend. It was her father’s idea to play it in public.”

“What did he do?”

“I have no idea. We opted not to be present.” Because they weren’t mean-spirited. But had been young enough to think they could make a difference. Teach him a lesson. Prevent other women from being hurt...

“And then there was the medical resident my senior year,” she said. “I was probably in love with him. Until I caught him with a girl I worked with at the coffee shop. She’d asked me to take her shift at the shop, and I’d agreed because he was going to be studying. When I got off early I made him his favorite coffee and stopped by to surprise him. I was the one who got the surprise.”

There. He knew her history. The facts. She wasn’t crazy. She had good reason not to trust men.

Elliott didn’t seem moved by anything she’d said—other than the stuff about Jimmy Jones. But then he hadn’t seemed all that put off by her words the day before, either.

So why was she feeling so defensive?

“A study was done recently at Rutgers University,” she blurted when she’d just told herself not to say any more. “And other places, too. By renowned psychiatrists and relationship specialists. At least one said that seventy percent of married men cheat on their wives, and some even go so far as to state that a relationship that lasts a lifetime is a rarity these days.”

His eyes narrowed. “You looked up statistics?”

“No.” She wanted to smile, but couldn’t quite. “My mother did. Many times over the years. She was looking for validation, needed to know that she wasn’t the only woman who’d been duped. And also wanting to know that a lot of women took their husbands back after an affair. Depended on where she was in her life, but she’d always quote the statistics to me when she wanted me to accept whatever she was feeling.”

“But you said the Rutgers study was recent.”

“My father was trying to talk her into another chance. He tried to get me involved, to get my approval, and that’s when she called me with the seventy-percent study. She got that one from some website about cheating husbands.”

“You were siding with your father?”

“No! He’d just told her he talked to me. I’d already chosen not to get involved.”

“Would you have supported them trying again?” It wasn’t a bodyguard question. But then, their conversations over the past weeks hadn’t contained much about Liam or the issues that had brought Elliott to them.

“In my head, yes. It’s their life, you know? But in my heart?” She shook her head. “I think they truly love each other. But my father’s a cheater. And Mom’s a woman who gives her all and needs all in.”

He studied her for a moment. Nodded. Looked as though he had more to say.

And then turned away. “How much longer until you’re ready to go up?” he asked, pushing a couple of chairs back in under tables. Something that was part of closing procedures. Something Eva should have done.

The girl wasn’t the best worker she’d ever had. But she was all heart. And great with customers. Marie liked the way the place felt when Eva was around.

“I can go now,” she said, guessing that he wasn’t going to leave her down there alone, and sensing that he wanted out. “I finished my ordering earlier today.”

He knew her routine. Sunday night was order night.

He didn’t have to know that she’d just decided to get up at three in the morning to get the cake baked before Grace came to work.

Elliott rinsed his cup and put it in the commercial-size dishwasher. Eva hadn’t started it, so she did. And then led him down the hall to the elevator, noticing how he turned off lights as they went. Leaving on the ones she always left on.

One thing was for sure, investigative bodyguards were observant.

She’d have said so. Said thank you. Good night. Anything. If his phone hadn’t just rung. Motioning for her to get on the opened elevator, he took the call. She stepped on and tried not to take it personally when Elliott didn’t return her wave as the doors closed in front of her.

CHAPTER FOUR

HE’D KNOWN WHEN he made his mind up to give the Connelly situation a month to calm down that there was reason to believe the danger wasn’t over. He’d already seen the old blue car lurking across the street on two separate occasions. Perhaps that car had been part of the reason he’d allowed himself to be talked into staying on the case.

He wasn’t going to leave Marie or her friends in any kind of danger.

He wasn’t worried about himself actually acting out of turn, as much as he hated the subterfuge. Elliott was nothing if not in complete control of himself at all times. And it wasn’t as if he’d already fallen for Marie Bustamante. He just found her...interesting.

To the point of taking a vision of her, taking the memory of her words, with him everywhere he went. And he went a lot over the next few days. Escorting Gabrielle to and from work. Picking up a British client who was in Denver for a brief lunch stop on Tuesday, standing guard just feet behind him during the two-hour lunch and then delivering him back to the airport in time to get Gabrielle. The rest of the hours, in between watching the Arapahoe Coffee Shop and conferring with the private security at the residence entrance of the Arapahoe, he canvassed the area, looking for anyone who’d seen the old blue car with the stolen license plate. The Denver police had made a cursory round, but a stolen license plate was hardly worthy of their stretched-thin time.

On Wednesday he knocked on doors and talked to residents in the neighborhood where the plate had been stolen.

No one had seen anything in either area. And because he had nothing else to go on, he ended up at the coffee shop that afternoon after dropping Gabrielle off at the resident entrance in the back.

Eva was there, behind the counter. There was no sign of Marie. He ordered a dark roast minus the espresso. Had a seat in the corner. And sipped.

He really needed to speak with Marie. It was important to check in with his charges on a regular basis. You never knew when they might have seen something, witnessed something, that was harmless in and of itself, but that could spell potential danger to one who was trained to see such things.

While he’d seen her at a distance every day, they hadn’t spoken since Sunday. Barbara Bustamante was paying him to do better than that.

Twenty minutes passed with no sign of Marie. She took time off. But not often. And not usually with only one person behind the counter. Most specifically not with just Eva downstairs—though the girl was handling the small rush of late-afternoon customers with aplomb.

And shouldn’t have been alone in the shop. That was the rule he’d thought he’d established.

He waited until everyone had been served and then approached the counter. He’d just asked where Marie was when he saw her outside, walking toward the shop in the company of a man not much taller than she was. His brown hair was cropped, his pants a little short to be stylish and he was wearing a sweater vest instead of a suit jacket.

Nothing stood out as a threat. Elliott recognized him anyway. Burton Augustine. Her longtime theater date. She should have told him that she had matinee tickets. He’d let them know they were under higher security protocol. She knew what that meant. All three of the Arapahoe owners knew what that meant. It hadn’t been that long ago that they’d all lived under the protocol full-time.

Waiting while she bade the other man goodbye at the door, Elliott approached her before she had her purse off her shoulder.

“We need to talk.” His voice was always an octave below base. Came with his size. But even he heard the extra note of...displeasure in his quietly spoken words.

And wondered at it. She’d gone out, escorted, in the light of day. Yes, he should have known. If something had happened to her...

But, really, the infraction wasn’t so great as to raise his ire...

At a fast walk, Marie led him down the hall to her office, dropped her purse on her desk and shut the door behind him.

“What’s up?” Her cheeks, her lips, were pinched.

And he felt like a heel for upsetting her.

“You should have let me know you had tickets to the matinee.” He’d toned down the potentially threatening tone. Had a lot of practice doing so. His voice, as low as it was, had a tendency to scare people.

Something he’d learned while he was still in high school and had been called to the principal’s office for allegedly trying to intimidate a teacher—after which he’d learned to keep his mouth shut as often as possible.

“I didn’t have tickets to the matinee,” she said, frowning. Grabbing her purse, she moved it to the drawer at the bottom of her desk where she normally kept it, locking it in. She looped her apron over her head, giving it a yank when it got stuck on her ponytail. Dropped the desk keys into the pocket. She sat. And then stood. “Burton and I went for a short drive and shared an avocado sandwich.”

Freshly made that morning, he translated. By Marie. For sale at her shop with the rest of the organic lunch options on her limited menu.

“And before you say anything else, Eva wasn’t supposed to be alone. Sam was here. He just left because his mother called saying his son had a fever. They called me and I came straight back.”

She’d seen Burton for lunch. A change in their routine. Could indicate a change in the relationship from casual to more serious.

The tightening in Elliott’s stomach was as unexpected as it was uncomfortable. Emotion swirled within him. Negative emotion. Not warning signals. Not a sense of imminent danger.

He sat. And so did Marie.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d stick to the high-security protocol for at least a few more days,” he said.

She nodded. Looking straight at him, but for once the warm look in those big brown eyes was absent. Her gaze was almost vacant.

As if she was looking past him.

He’d grown accustomed to the compassionate openness she’d shown him since the first night they met.

“Have I done something to displease you?” he asked. Hoping that his tone of voice hadn’t put her off. He’d had no business being...

Jealous.

“No, of course not.” she said, appearing to focus on him now. “If anything I was beginning to think I’d scared you away,” she said with that unique openness of hers.

Such an incongruent woman, she was. Open and sharing and giving everything of herself. And trusting no man with her heart. No wonder her mother worried about her.

She was the type of woman people took advantage of.

“I don’t scare,” he said. “But just for full disclosure, what do you think you’d done that I’d find distasteful?”

He’d eased down in his seat and rested an ankle over his knee. And she still had to look up to meet him eye-to-eye.

“All that nonsense about thinking Liam would be unfaithful to Gabi. And giving you my disastrous love life history...”

He’d already known about the ex-boyfriends. Marie’s past relationships had fed Barbara’s own fears about her bighearted daughter following in her footsteps. Her “disastrous” love life, as she’d just described, was a big part of the reason Barbara had felt compelled to hire a private investigator bodyguard when Marie called to say that she was investing her savings to go into business with Liam Connelly and, with Gabrielle, purchase the historic Arapahoe.

“How could I possibly think less of you for caring about your friends? Or for the fact that the men in your life have treated you shabbily? If anything, I was impressed by the way you handled the Jimmy Jones situation.”

Barbara hadn’t told him about that one. Maybe, with the whole thing happening so quickly, Marie had opted not to tell her mother about the debacle. A shame, really. It would have done Barbara good to know that her daughter had been able to see through the man and then take care of herself quite effectively.

He’d have lingered awhile, curious about what else she might have to say, but Eva buzzed her, letting her know they had a line out front.

Reminding her that they were on high-security protocol, Elliott watched her all the way to the front of the store and then let himself out the back.

* * *

SHE DIDN’T HAVE to make a trip to the members-only bulk store that exact night. Marie bought enough in advance to always have extra supplies on hand. But she’d opened her last case of organic chips and the store had a coupon special on them. She also wanted a new air purifier for the apartment and those were on sale, too. Ben Schumann, the seventy-seven-year-old who, with his wife, Matilda, lived on the second floor with her, had been smoking in the hallway again and the stench was beginning to permeate her apartment and was driving her crazy.

Probably because she had enough quiet time to notice it there, all alone as she was.

She didn’t, technically, have to call Elliott to let him know she was going out, either. But he’d asked. Insisted. And she didn’t want to be more of a pain in his backside than she’d already been.

When his agreement to accompany her lit a burst of excitement inside her, she knew she had to start getting out more. To get a life.

Living alone, being alone every evening, just didn’t agree with her. Maybe she should find someplace to volunteer in the evenings. And start looking for a new roommate.

The fact that the weight had started to slowly lift from her heart as she walked down the huge aisles of floor-to-ceiling warehoused bulk sale items with Elliott walking quietly beside her, his hands in the pockets of his black chino pants, reiterated her earlier thought. She needed a roommate. To get out more.