Once Upon a Marriage (21 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

E
LLIOTT
 
HAD
 
JUST
 
dropped Sailor off at the airport with her sincere thanks for a successful evening, on all counts, when his phone rang.

Seeing Liam's name come up on the dash screen, he pressed the answer button on his steering wheel immediately.

“Tanner.” He said the one word clearly and quickly. His mind geared to process just as rapidly. Something had happened. He shouldn't have left...

“You'd mentioned earlier about dropping your client off at the airport for an eleven o'clock flight. Are you alone?” The man's tone was different.

“Yes.” He pulled onto the main thoroughfare that would take him to the downtown area where the historic Arapahoe stood among other stately homes—most of them housing boutique businesses now.

“So you're free to talk.” The streets were dimly lit. Traffic was light.

“Yes. Is something happening there? Are you all okay?” He'd ascertained no hint of alarm in the other man's voice, but Liam's usual congenial conversational approach was most definitely missing.

“We're fine. The girls are in on the couch. Marie was going to go downstairs to wait for you, but Gabi insisted that she stay up with us.”

All things Liam—or Marie—could have told him when he got home.

“Soooo...” Liam paused. “You were working tonight?”

His neck tensed. “Yes.”

“I don't suppose you can tell me what you were doing. Or with who.”

Dread filled his gut. “You know I can't.”

“But you
were
working.”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. I guess I'll see you when you get here, then.”

Whoa. That was it?

Sitting back in his seat, one hand on the steering wheel, Elliott said, “Hold on a minute. You mind telling me what's going on here?”

“Caught a glimpse of the news this evening. A piece about a high-end fund-raiser attended by some pretty impressive people. A domestic violence benefit. Not a cause Connelly has ever supported—though I don't know why not and I think we should—so I didn't know about it until tonight.”

Elliott swore silently. Twice.

The week of foreboding. He'd
known.
Or he'd brought this on himself by focusing on it so much. “It was a no-press-allowed event.” He knew, as soon as the words were out of his mouth, that he was only making himself look worse.

“Someone from a local shelter took some photos. Shared them with a local news station.”

He'd been
working.
But the only way he could prove that would be to break his client's confidence.

Elliott swore again. Not as silently. “Marie saw.”

“Yep.”

He couldn't believe it. Just couldn't...what the...? He'd been working. And couldn't live his life feeling he had to apologize for that fact. Or explain himself.

And needing to explain to Marie meant explaining to the other two triplets.

“She's the daughter of a long-standing respected client of mine. At his request I protect her anytime she's in town.”

“I understand.”

Did he?

“But she doesn't.”

“That's between you and your wife.”

Right.

“So why the phone call?”

“I felt it was my duty.”

“You think I'm cheating on my wife?”

“Just checking.”

Elliott didn't like it. But it was probably fair. “I wasn't. And I won't.”

“I know.”

He turned a corner and then made another quick turn. Onto the back lot. Pulled into his parking spot and stopped the car.

Was he understanding this correctly? Could Liam be calling for
his
benefit? “You want to give me a heads-up what I'm walking into?”

“I think I already did that.”

Right. Okay.

Pocketing his keys, Elliott nodded at the guard by the back door and, once inside, decided to take the stairs.

Two at a time.

* * *

H
E
 
WAS
 
A
 
MAN
used to going home alone at the end of the day. Answering to no one when he was off the clock.

Elliott kissed Marie hello, as though he'd done nothing wrong.

Because he hadn't.

She kissed him back the same way.

A trap?

“How was your evening?” she asked as they took the elevator down to their floor.

He shrugged. Told the truth. “Uneventful. Which makes it good.”

A quick twinge showed on her upper lip. In the right corner. Once.

“Mostly you wait out in the car when you're on the job. Unless someone needs extra security, or there's no security where they're going to be.”

Swearing silently again, he knew exactly where this was going.

“Mostly.”

The elevator door opened. Key ready, Elliott let them in.

And waited.

What did he do now? Heading off to the bedroom, which was all he really wanted to do, probably wasn't good.

Her arms slid around his middle. “I love you.”

Elliott held on tight. He was not a stupid man. “I love you.”

Chin at his chest, she looked up at him. “You ready for bed, or you need to unwind first?”

Was there a right answer here? He'd give her whatever she needed. He just really needed to know what that was.

“I'd like to go to bed,” he said. “But not until you're ready.”

“I'm ready.”

She took his hand. Started to lead him down the hall. Elliott pulled her back.

Held her to him and pinned her with a look he hoped reached her soul. “I was working tonight.”

Her gaze didn't falter and he had a feeling she was struggling. She didn't believe him. He could tell by the way she was looking at him. She was trying. And she was failing.

“I know,” she said. Lying to him. Tears filled her eyes.

He had to be honest with her. “Liam called me. About the photo on the news.” There would always be things he couldn't tell her. Things she'd find out only if his clients happened to make the news. People who needed bodyguards were often newsworthy. And bodyguards were often in the background when they were photographed out in public.

The news could report. He couldn't. And so he had to have complete honesty when he could. Even if it wasn't easy.

Even if he could get away with less.

“I didn't know he'd called, but I'm not surprised. He's been slaying dragons that he thought might hurt my heart since I was eighteen.”

They were talking. Just as they'd said they would.

“I work for her father. For the whole family. Anytime any one of them is in town.” He could tell her that much. Harcourt didn't hide the fact that he had a bodyguard. Only Sailor had done that. The last time she was in town.

“The caption said you were her escort.” Her doubts were there. Loud and clear.

“It was part of tonight's job.”

She studied him. “I threw up when I saw you.”

His stomach knotted.

“My head is telling me that you were working, Elliott. But my heart... It knows you were out with a beautiful woman at a fancy event—my heart knows that men get tempted all the time while they're working.”

His heart sank.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I
T
 
HAD
 
BEEN
 
Elliott's suggestion that he pack a bag and stay elsewhere until they had time to sort through what was going on. To determine if their rushed, impromptu wedding had been a mistake. Not Saturday night. He'd stayed with her then. But they'd slept far apart, each hugging their own side of the bed.

He'd tried to get close. She'd pulled away when he reached for her.

Early Sunday morning after she and Grace had finished labeling the day's baked goods and before the shop opened, Marie had gone up to tell Liam and Gabi that she and Elliott needed some time apart.
She
needed time apart, she'd told them.

Because of the unsolved threats against Liam and the heightened security they were still under, Liam had suggested Elliott bunk in their spare room. He'd agreed.

In spite of her friends' protests, Marie went right back downstairs to work. She stopped in the office first, to put the wedding ring she'd removed in the safe. And then she spent the next several hours losing herself in coffee. In closing up alone, having let her overworked weekend staff go home early. Eva was too thrilled with unexpected time off to notice that Marie wasn't her usual cheery self. She was smiling. Eva would have had to look more closely to know that the expression only went skin deep.

Did he kiss her good-night?

The questions started to seep in.

Since when does a bodyguard pose as an escort?

Never.

Unless there was some reasonable explanation that she didn't know. Because Elliott was not at liberty to tell her.

She tried to shut down the doubts. She was screwing up the best thing that had ever happened to her.

She filled out orders. Counted receipts. Made out a deposit. Studied her budget to determine how many more employee hours she could afford, while still making a decent profit, and then made up a sign for the front door, seeking part-time weekend help. She'd put it up in the morning. Take it down every night. Until the position was filled.

In the early days...all the conversations. The way he'd listened. I thought he was different. That we had something. And all the while, I was just a job to him. He was listening, asking questions, because he was being paid to do so. At least in the beginning.

Would you please just shut up?

She swept all the floors, moving tables as she went. Followed herself with a mop.

She didn't call anyone. Not even Gabi, who'd been texting her nonstop since they got home.

And when she was done with all she could do in the shop, she notified the security guard out front that she was going upstairs. She didn't tell him that Elliott wouldn't be at the elevator, waiting for her. She could get herself upstairs.

Once there, she drew a hot bath. Poured in two capfuls of rose-scented bubble bath. She lit a candle. Put in a CD she'd found years ago in an artsy bookshop.
Voice of the Feminine Spirit.
She had no idea who it was by. Didn't care.

With all the lights out, she slid out of her clothes and into her bath.

From there, by candlelight, she could see Elliott's cologne on the counter. He hadn't taken it with him.

His extra shaving cream and razors would be in the chest, too.

Marie turned around in the tub.

She closed her eyes. And thought about her mother. Did Barbara have so little faith in her that she'd felt the need to hire someone to babysit her?

She could let herself think so. If she wanted to wallow in self-pity. Marie didn't need pity. Nor did she need to go looking for reasons to hurt. The pain that she was barely holding at bay, one that was threatening to attack her so acutely she doubted her ability to cope if it broke free, had little to do with her mother.

Barbara's hiring of Elliott had very little to do with Marie. She knew that. It had to do with Barbara. With her own paranoia. Her need to reassure herself.

She'd hired Elliott because she loved her daughter that much. Not because she trusted her that little.

Still, it rankled. And she told herself again that she was going to talk to Barbara about all this.

At some point.

When the rawness wore off the wound.

And this wasn't about Elliott's lie to her. Not really. She'd be having the same exact reaction if he'd been exactly who he'd said he was, and she'd married him and then seen him sitting at a fancy dinner with another woman.

As tears threatened, she closed her eyes against them. Squeezing tightly. Holding them in. And imagined that young woman staring up at Elliott.
Marie's
husband. Her eyes flew open.

Towels were hanging on the rack. His and hers. Both hers. One had just been used by him.

Was Elliott sitting in the living room upstairs with Liam and Gabi? Or was he alone in his room?

What was he doing?

Had he had dinner?

Had Barbara paid him to marry her?

She sat up, sloshing water on the floor as she reached for her towel. Her robe was next, and then she was in the living room, grabbing her phone out of her purse.

He picked up on the first ring. “Hello?” He never said that. He always answered with his name.

This wasn't Elliott's issue. It was hers. Even her father wouldn't have been so crass as to step out in the first two weeks of marriage. And for what? To attend a governor's function?

Elliott wasn't anything like her father. And did not deserve to pay for his sins.

“Marie? You still there?” His voice wasn't as commanding as usual.

“Yes.”

“Me, too. I'm still here.”

Obviously.

So. She'd called him for a reason.

“Did my mother pay you to marry me?”

“Absolutely not.”

“But she knew, didn't she? That you were...that we were...”

She remembered the conversation her mother had started in bed that night before her wedding. She'd talked about not being able to live her life as the warden. As she'd have had to do with Marie's father.

Barbara had been having a hard time with what she'd done—hiring Elliott behind Marie's back. She got that now.

“I think she suspected that you were falling for me.”

“She gave her blessing?”

“To the contrary. She didn't want you to fall for me because of the duplicity between us.”

“But she gave you the go-ahead, didn't she?” She was pushing. But she had to know.

“Why does it matter?”

“Because. If she didn't you never would have pursued me. You would have put the job first.”

His silence gave her her answer. And still she said, “She gave you the go-ahead, didn't she?”

“No, Marie. She didn't.”

“Then...you and me being married... She really is going to have your head for hiring you to watch out for me and then taking advantage...”

“I can assume so.”

He'd sacrificed everything for her and she still felt sick to her stomach every time she thought about that picture. “I need to go.”

“I understand.” He didn't hang up.

She'd take care of her mother. Make certain that Elliott felt no backlash for any of this. Even if she had to play on Barbara's self-expressed vulnerabilities and remind her mother of her own culpability. She didn't want to. Would ordinarily not even consider doing so.

But to protect Elliott...she would if she had to. She didn't say so out loud.

They were married. Had to discuss that fact, too. Somehow.

“Your stuff is here.”

“Yes.”

“You're welcome to come in and out of the apartment as you need to.”

“I appreciate that.”

“We're still married.”

“I know.”

“I have to go.”

“I understand.”

Hang up, woman.

“Okay. So...goodbye, Elliott.”

“Good night.”

She hung up and, grabbing his robe off the back of her bathroom door, lay down on the couch and cried herself to sleep.

* * *

E
LLIOTT
 
DIDN
'
T
 
TAKE
 
any calls Monday morning. He'd had a couple from potential clients. He'd return those. He just needed some time to himself first.

Time to figure out how to move forward. Until he knew if there would be formal blemishes on his reputation—which he expected as soon as Barbara returned from her honeymoon, if not before—he was going to proceed with business as usual.

He would proceed with business afterward, too. He had to eat. He might not get any more gigs as a bodyguard, but the world was filled with shady PIs. And he was a darn good investigator. One of the best in the state, he'd been told more than once. Depending on any ethics complaints that came forth against him, if his private business slowed down, he could always look into police work. If nothing else he'd be able to support himself.

He'd reached that conclusion sometime around three that morning. And then he'd slept awhile. He didn't feel a whit better.

But he was at the table for coffee as he and Liam and Gabrielle had arranged when he came upstairs the night before.

Liam was at the table alone. Elliott chose an extra-strong coffee, brewed it and sat.

He could hear Gabrielle in the other room, moving around.

“You didn't date a lot, did you?” It was the first thing, other than “good morning” and “help yourself,” that Liam had said to him since he appeared.

“No.” Not that it was any of his business. But the answer didn't cost him anything, so he gave it. The way he looked at it, he owed the other guy. He'd taken his money under somewhat false pretenses. Though he'd also given Connelly the services he'd paid for. Was still paying for.

“Barbara can be a real pain.”

“Understood.”

“I have to know, Tanner, do you love her?”

“Completely.”

“If you two were to stay married, you'd be faithful until the day you died.”

“Unequivocally.”

“You're a real pain in the...forget I said that.”

Elliott hadn't expected anything could make him feel better. But he almost smiled as he said, “Forgotten.”

Liam didn't say another word, and, when she finally appeared, neither did Gabrielle, other than to apologize for her lateness.

Neither asked any more questions. Or had any answers for him, either. Yet both had to have spoken with Marie.

He wanted to ask a few questions of his own. To hear someone else's words running through his mind for a moment or two. He wasn't about to talk about Marie behind her back. Or in any way risk putting any more shadows over his head.

Living with shadows was worse than being on the outside looking in.