Once Upon A Friendship. Tara Taylor Quinn

couldn’t help it that girls sought him out.

      “I played cards tonight...”

      “Liiiaammm.” That one drawn-out word was all Gabrielle said out loud. Her expression said the rest. Those silver-blue eyes of hers could be like pinpricks when she wanted them to be. He’d disappointed her.

      The soft lamplight was not unkind to the gray-and-white commercial tile on their dorm room floor. Marie’s purple rugs still helped, though.

      “You’re going to get yourself in trouble.” Marie was always the more vocal one. And the more fearful. “How much did you lose?” the blonde asked.

      He swallowed. Thinking about beer. Wishing, for a brief second, that he was still on the stupid drinking binge he’d ridden freshman year. And hadn’t boarded since.

      “You won, didn’t you?” Gabrielle’s tone was soft. He didn’t have to look in her direction to know that those coal-black eyebrows of hers would be drawn. And her lips would be pursed, too.

      “Yeah.”

      “How much?”

      He thought about his answer. About what she’d think. She waited. They both stared at him.

      Another flash of memory from that night two years before came to him. Gabrielle telling him that she’d been ready to write him off when, through the thin wall separating them, she’d heard him ask his father how he was going to get to work without a car. She’d thought he was buckling. Finding justification for doing so. A guy had to have a car to get to work.

      The old man had told him to take the bus. All the way to Denver, though she hadn’t yet known that part.

      “So I still have a job?” he’d asked. Not daunted by the more than an hour-long public commute each way.

      According to Gabrielle, when he’d asked that question, instead of fighting about having to take the bus, he’d won her admiration and friendship.

       “You’re my son. You will work in the family business and earn your keep.”

       “Fine.”

      His father had slammed out of his room, and five minutes later Gabrielle and Marie had knocked on his door. When he’d answered, they’d both just looked at him, as though they could see right into him.

      Just like they were doing now.

      “I won two thousand dollars,” he said. Which told them he hadn’t been playing with the college boys.

      Marie’s hissed intake of breath, the worry shining in her eyes, were his penance. The reason he’d come to them...

      He’d remember their disapproval the next time he was tempted to rebel against his father and do something stupid.

      Gabrielle didn’t lift her chin from her hands as she asked, “You going to report it to the IRS?”

      He hadn’t thought that far. “Yeah.” He played by the books.

      “You know you’re going to get yourself in trouble if you keep this up.” Gabrielle again.

      He did. Which was why he was in their dorm room instead of home in bed. Why, every time, in his quest for freedom from manipulation over the past three years, he’d run his antics by them first before carrying anything out. But not this time.

      “You’re winning now, but it won’t last,” Marie added. They knew his life story. Knew where and how to turn the screws. If he’d played cards that night just because he’d wanted a game of chance, then so be it. But he hadn’t. He’d played because he’d been looking for a way to slap the old man in the face. His son gambling would do it.

      The heir to his fortune, caught up in the excitement of the win...

      An excitement that had almost cost Walter everything. Liam had heard the story from his mother. And had repeated it to the girls on the anniversary of her death. Walter had earned his first million, married and had Liam. His whole life had been filled with the excitement of getting the carrot dangling in front of him. And suddenly, he’d been content. He had all he’d needed or ever wanted.

      That’s when his father-in-law had invited him to sit in on a game of cards. A game that had taken him to Atlantic City and then to Las Vegas, where he’d squandered away his own million and had started dipping into his wife’s money.

      The second chance she’d given him had been enough, though. Connelly Investments was healthy and Walter made back all he’d lost plus an extra billion or so. He never touched a card again. And had ordered his son never to do so.

      “You’ve been drinking.” Gabrielle, the practical one of the two, broke into his reverie. She didn’t ask. She told. Annoying thing was, she was usually right.

      “Yeah.”

      She didn’t react. “What did he do this time?”

      “I was dropping off a folder to the legal department today.” Liam’s current position in Connelly Investments was as liaison between upper management and the lower echelons. A fancy way of saying he was an interoffice mail boy. So, his father had justified, he could have a presence in every department. See how they all worked. Get to know everyone.

      It was a step up from sorting the incoming mail, which was what he’d been doing the previous year. His first year of college, after thwarting his father’s living arrangement plan, he’d been employed as a night janitor.

      Marie pulled her knees up to her ample chest, wrapping her arms around herself. “And?”

      “I overheard the head counsel, my father’s second in command, making overly optimistic return promises to a potential investor on land that we don’t own.”

      The facts sounded even worse out loud than they had rambling through his mind all night.

      Gabrielle, a prelaw student who lived life in black-and-white, sat up. “That’s illegal.”

      He shouldn’t have said anything. Shouldn’t have betrayed his father. He’d let his fear get the better of him.

      Something a boy would do.

      “It’s not illegal unless he actually took money, which he didn’t,” he quickly assured his friend. “The agreement is only verbal at this point. Thing is, it’s land that my father has wanted to develop into a mountain resort for as long as I can remember. Buying the land isn’t such a big deal. But he never did because it would have to be rezoned before he could do anything with it. And because it borders Indian land, there would have to be an agreement between him and the tribe to develop it, and the Indians refuse to even consider the idea. Which is why Dad’s never purchased the land. So why is this guy even talking to investors about it?”

      “Did you ask your dad?” Marie scooted to the end of her bed, both hands on the edge of the mattress.

      “Yeah.” That was when he’d have taken a big gulp of beer if he’d had one in front of him. He’d had two already that night. The first in months. He wasn’t going back down that road again.

      “And?”

      He turned as Gabrielle asked the question. Her brow was raised in concern now. Because it was late and he was tired, he allowed himself to wallow a moment in that look. And then said, “He told me that George Costas, lead attorney and top executive at Connelly, knows his business better than anyone. That he trusted George with his life—and mine. And that there was talk regarding the land, though he didn’t say who was talking, and they had to have investors lined up and ready because if the time came to move, the window of opportunity to do so would be very small.”

      “Sounds legit.”

      “Yeah.”

      “So what’s the problem?”

      Right. He was probably overreacting. “Problem is, the only way he’s going to get that