Once Upon a Marriage

by Tara Taylor Quinn

And then Marie processed what Elliott was telling them. Someone really was out to get Liam.

  “So this guy...he’s going to lead you to whoever hired him, right?” she asked. And wished she was more surprised when Elliott shook his head.

  “He was just some guy who approached him on the street. Outside the car shop where he worked. The perp’s story is that this guy comes up to him as he’s leaving work, tells him he was told in a bar the perp frequents that the perp needed some extra money, would definitely know how to ‘fix’ a car and knew how to look the other way when he needed to.”

  “He’s committed crimes before,” Gabi said. “He has a record?”

  “For penny-ante stuff. Steeling bikes, pickpocketing, that kind of thing. His older brother’s upstate for armed robbery with attempt to harm.”

  “Great,” Gabi said just as Liam asked, “So we have a description of the guy who hired him?”

  Again Elliott shook his head. “Not much of one. The guy was wearing a trench coat that hung loose and he stayed in the shadows. Besides which, it was dark. He thinks he’s white. No facial hair that he could tell. He’s not sure about the length or color of his hair because he had a hoodie on under the coat. Average height. Not sure about his weight. The one thing he noticed was that the guy wore what the perp called a flashy ring. He figured if the guy could afford jewelry like that, he’d pay him as agreed. And that’s all he really cared about. Our slasher has a bookie after him.”

  “Did he say why he wanted the car disabled?” Gabi asked.

  “No. Just told him the make and model and where to find it.”

  “So he didn’t have Liam’s license plate number?” Marie asked, remembering the first time Liam’s car had been vandalized right after news of the Ponzi scheme had broken. That first time had brought Elliott to them. But the other time, his car had been the only one in a deserted public park lot.

  “Yes, he did,” Elliott said, glancing down and then back at Liam and Gabi, almost as though he’d been reluctant to give the information.

  Because it meant that... “This is more than just pranks,” Gabi said.

  “He’s seriously out to get me,” Liam said. “But he just doesn’t want me hurt, he wants to play with me first. To make me suffer.”

  “No,” Marie blurted. “That’s ridiculous. He’s angry, but not dangerous, right?” She looked to Elliott.

  He towered over them as he shook his dark head. “Liam’s right.” His words hit Marie hard. “The pattern shows a desire to stay low-key and anonymous—playing a game, like Liam said—but it’s escalating. You don’t go looking for a thug to hire, or hire one, if you’re not serious about doing harm.”

  “And Liam’s the target.” Marie forced the words through the sudden dryness in her throat.

  “That’s correct.”

  “I’m moving into a hotel.” Liam stood, setting Gabi on her feet beside him. Marie could see the fear in her friend’s eyes when Gabi looked over at her.

  “Wait.” Elliott held up his hand. His body in front of the door was enough to prevent any of them from leaving. “I don’t think anyone should go anywhere,” he said. “We have full security set up here. We’re contained. The police are putting extra surveillance on this place. Staying put is the quickest and best way to draw this guy out.”

  “I am not putting my wife or Marie in danger,” Liam said. “Or any of our residents, either. I’m leaving.”

  “But...” Gabi looked to Marie, as though she could somehow make things better.

  “You’re not going anywhere, Liam.” Marie said the only thing she knew. “This is your home. We’re a team. Family...” She stood now, too, in spite of wobbly knees.

  “Your leaving will only put everyone more at risk.” Elliott’s deep tone stilled the room. No one moved. Or said a word.

  “Whoever is after you knows by now that you’re married, regardless of how quickly and quietly you two got it done. He obviously knows you’re in business with Marie and Gabrielle, as well. The purchaser of the Arapahoe is public record, as is the incorporation of Threefold’s LLC. If you disappear and he can’t find you, or if you move someplace where it’s not as easy to access you, chances are good he’ll go after you in a way that he knows will hurt you. Through your wife and best friend. He seems to be getting something out of stalking you. You take that away and he might try to hurt you worse, by going after your loved ones instead. He knows where they are.”

  “Here,” Marie said. “If he can’t get Liam, he’ll get us.”

  Liam’s lips were tight. Gabi’s eyebrows drawn together. Marie’s stomach was one big knot.

  “What do you propose?” Gabi was the first to speak. She slid her fingers in between Liam’s. And Marie was glad. They’d stay together, like always.

  She looked over to the large man dwarfing the door of her office. And now they had Elliott.

  They were going to be fine.

  * * *

  ELLIOTT CLEARED HIS SCHEDULE. Until Liam’s attacker could be found, he was going to be at the Arapahoe full-time. Liam had insisted on his presence. Barbara Bustamante also offered to pay him to stay on the premises. He couldn’t take her money for that.

  “But you’re undercover as Liam’s bodyguard at my behest,” she’d said early Saturday morning when he first called her to tell her what he was going to recommend to the newly married financier.

  “And he’s not going to believe my cover if I don’t charge him extra for the time,” he’d said to her. “Besides, he can afford me.”

  He’d looked into Barbara’s finances. She wasn’t destitute, but she wasn’t wealthy enough to afford, for too many more months, the fees he normally charged for the work she’d hired him to do.

  For once the woman had relented. Elliott had packed a bag.

  Which was now settled in the spare bedroom in Liam Connelly’s apartment. There’d be a twenty-four-hour security guard at the front of the building as well as the back until the perp was caught. Police would be doing extra patrols.

  And Walter Connelly had called insisting that his son fly to Florida for the duration.

  Liam had told his father what he could do with that suggestion. Elliott could only hear Liam’s part of the conversation, but was a bit surprised when it ended as soon as it did. In congenial tones. Walter Connelly’s topple off his high horse must have softened him up.

  “So, what now?” Liam asked as Elliott came out of the room he’d been allotted in the back of the condo. He and Gabrielle were standing in the kitchen, salad fixings on the counter.

  “Now we go on as we have been,” Elliott said. “I’ll accompany you wherever you need to go, take you and Gabrielle to work and generally just be around.”

  “What about Marie?” Gabrielle looked up from the lettuce she’d been breaking into a bowl.

  “As long as Liam is around, neither I nor the police believe Marie is in any danger. She’s in business with Liam, not married to him.”

  Liam’s jaw tightened, and Elliott surmised the man was upset at the reference to the danger his wife could be in.

  He felt for the guy.

  “But I’ll be watching the shop, as usual,” he added. “As I said downstairs, I’m going to set up shop at the table by the front window, and pretty much, when I’m not escorting one or the other of you, that’s where I’ll be.”

  Slowly churning inside, an hour at a time, as he watched the beautiful barista go about her daily business. If earlier today had been any indication.

  He’d be uncomfortable. His charges would be safe.

  And life would go on.

  It always did.

  * * *

  BY SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Marie felt like a nervous twit, flitting around her shop washing counters and floors and then rewashing them as her afternoon help served the customers
that came through. She could be upstairs. Or out shopping.

  She could be watching a movie or reading a book or in-line skating.

  She didn’t want to leave the shop. Because Elliott was there. Finally forcing herself back to her office so she wouldn’t look overeager—after all, the man was paid to be observant, and there was clearly little for her to do out front—she focused on the week’s stock orders. Normally a Sunday night job. She finished them. Finished filing her bank receipts, going over the books and writing checks to her employees.

  Then she called upstairs. Liam was working on the next installment on his Walter Connelly series for June Fryberg, his editor. Gabi had been working, too, but was ready for a break. Marie asked her if she’d help her with inventory.

  Until Gabi’s marriage, the biweekly chore had always been shared by the roommates.

  When she opened her office door to her friend ten minutes later, Gabi stood there with a bowl of popcorn. “Want some?” she asked, holding out the stainless steel bowl she’d inherited when she’d married Liam.

  Prior to that their popcorn bowls had been plastic.

  Where some women craved chocolate, Marie was a sucker for popcorn. And hated that her friend thought she needed to be spoiled. As if something were wrong with her life. Or that, if something didn’t change, people were going to start thinking she was...pathetic.

  Not that anyone gave any indication that they thought that. Maybe it was just Marie who was feeling it...

  “So...” Marie ventured an hour later when the two were finishing up the last of the counting—paper products that lined the entire back wall of the storeroom. The popcorn was nearly gone. “You and Liam okay?”

  The question could have been in reference to the news they’d had the day before, to the new roommate they had. Or it could have been more.

  “Yep.”

  Gabi’s upbeat tone made Marie happier, too.

  “Is it weird, being so newly married and now having a...roommate?”

  From up on a ladder, leaning over the top of a tall shelving unit, Gabi chuckled. “You want to know what Elliott’s like to live with, don’t you? I could always send him down to you.”

  She wouldn’t, of course. But Marie warmed inside, just thinking about the large man sleeping in her spare room. “Does he sing in the shower?” The question slipped out. Only because this was Gabi. And Marie was clearly spending too much time alone.

  “How do I know?” Gabi laughed out loud. “His room is fifteen hundred square feet away from ours, and the bathroom is on the far side of that.”

  All of which Marie knew. She’d helped Gabi decorate the guest suite the month before.

  Her friend called down numbers. Marie jotted in columns. And then held the ladder steady as Gabi climbed down.

  “I’m losing it,” she confessed, as soon as her friend was on solid ground. “Ever since Friday night...he’s all I can think about. I mean, I thought of him a lot before that, too, but... I think you’re right, Gabi. I’m falling for him. And it’s nuts. I’m thirty-one, not sixteen. And I’ve only known him three months.”

  “I married Liam less than a month after I knew I had feelings for him.”

  “But you’d known him forever.” They both had.

  They stood there, both with their hands on the ladder, facing each other. “I just think that there are some things you can’t quantify,” Gabi said, her voice softer than Marie was used to hearing it. Gabi was the practical one of the three of them. The attorney who was always preparing for the worst. And counting every penny.

  She dotted every i. Crossed every t. Marie tended to go more by the heart and forgot the i’s and t’s sometimes. While Liam just breezed by them, pushed them or found a way to get rid of them if they got in his way.

  “And there are some things over which you have no control. No matter how hard you try.” Gabi’s eyes glistened. And Marie, nodding, reached out to brush a piece of her friend’s short dark hair away from her face.

  “Just let it happen,” Gabi whispered, taking Marie’s hand in hers. “Please, Marie. Just let go and let it happen. Elliott’s a good guy.”

  “You really think so? Because it’s not like I’ve got a great track record in that department.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your ability to choose a man,” Gabi said, her voice getting stronger as she folded up the ladder and put it away. “You choose men who you know aren’t going to tempt you to be in it for life. Men who are preoccupied by other things. Or who you aren’t particularly attracted to.”

  “I do n...” Marie broke off as Gabi turned to give her the look. The one where she was challenging Marie to be completely honest.

  “Freshman year,” Gabi said. “He was more into his church than he was into you. To the point that you had to go to church with him to spend any real time together.”

  Maybe.

  “And the doctor... He was in med school, Marie. And was going to be for some time. Years. He made it clear from the very beginning that his studies came first...”

  “That still didn’t give him the right to be unfaithful to me.”

  “Of course not!” Gabi was back. Right in front of her. “The guy was a schmuck as well as a med student. I’m just saying, you’ve never seriously dated anyone who didn’t have something else that came first in his life.”

  “Then I’m doing it again,” Marie said, her emotions settling down into some semblance of normal for the first time in what felt like months. “Because Elliott’s career definitely comes first with him.”

  “Does it?” Gabi walked toward the door of the storeroom that led back into Marie’s office. “Or is he just dedicated to his job? Maybe he wants a home and family just as much as you do but hasn’t found the right woman yet.”

  In all of their talking, he’d never said much about his life. About his wants and needs. Marie needed to know about them. “Has he said something to you?”

  “No. But if I were you, I’d be asking him the next time I had a chance.”

  “Yeah, right. Out of the blue I’m going to get all personal with him,” she said. But she knew that the idea wasn’t as far-fetched as she was making it out to be. While Elliott kept a professional distance, he’d also breached that line the other night when he told her he liked her. Too much.

  She’d been going crazy ever since.

  “So, you going to talk to him?” Gabi, with a handful of popcorn, sat down alone in the chair Liam had occupied with her the day before.

  “You really think I should?”

  “I think you want to, and if you don’t, you’ll regret it.”

  As usual, Gabi was right.

  But Marie was still getting used to the idea of falling for someone. She wasn’t ready to take that plunge yet.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ALMOST A WEEK PASSED. The Denver police had no leads on the man who’d hired a two-bit criminal mechanic to debilitate Liam’s car. George Costas, the corporate attorney charged with fraud in conjunction with the Ponzi scheme that had been uncovered at Connelly Investments, still had no plea deal.

  And Elliott Tanner was in real danger.

  Marie Bustamante was not only a big part of his waking hours; she was appearing in his dreams now, too.

  “What’s up, Elliott? You look like I made your coffee too strong.” The woman, dressed in black leggings, a cinched-in white top and her Arapahoe apron, slipped into the chair opposite him Thursday night. It was late. The shop was closed. Her last employee had left an hour before.

  As had become their routine, she’d made him a cup of coffee—on the house—while he waited for her to tally up her day’s income and make out the bank deposit that would be picked up the next morning by the free courier service provided by her bank. He’d then see her upstairs to her apartment before he
ading up to spend another long evening alone in his own room.

  Liam and Gabrielle had invited him, every single night he’d been there, to join them. He’d politely excused himself.

  He was working. And, until he’d met Marie Bustamante, he had always had very clear boundaries where his clients were concerned. The boundaries were blurred, but he was still determined to hold on to them.

  “We should be getting upstairs,” he said, picking up the napkin he’d dropped to the table when he carried his coffee over.

  Her hand touched his. “Wait.”

  As carefully as he could, he extracted his hand. Picking up what was left of his coffee—cold now—and taking a sip.

  “I...wanted to talk to you for a minute.”

  And her apartment wasn’t the place to do it. He got where she was going with this. And relaxed. “What’s up?”

  Shuffling in her seat, she looked as though she wasn’t sure what to do with her hands. Fold them together. Or leave them open on the table.

  He voted for folded. In her lap.

  They ended up on the table.

  “I just...how much longer do you think this is going to go on? I mean, it’s been almost a week and...nothing.”

  “If you remember, I told you last Saturday, in the office, that it’s not all that unusual to have a period of inaction after an arrest. And this guy, while the frequency of his attacks might be escalating, doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to let Liam off the hook. Either by hurting him or ending the harassment.”

  “So we could be living like this for months? Or longer? I got the impression last week that this was a very temporary arrangement.”

  “I expect it to be.” Was she that eager to be rid of him?

  Disgusted at the inane thought that he’d had it at all, and that there’d been real emotion attached to it, Elliott continued. “There was a surveillance camera at a shop across the street from the garage where our slasher was hired. I thought we’d get something from that.” He hadn’t told them before. Not while it had been part of the investigation.

  “They didn’t?”