Once Upon A Friendship. Tara Taylor Quinn

A state senator who’s up for reelection in the fall.”

      “Let me guess, your dad’s a new campaign contributor.” Gabrielle’s dry response washed over him.

      Liam shrugged.

      “You didn’t ask?” Gabrielle again. Sounding more than a little surprised.

      “I asked. He told me to mind my own business,” Liam relayed. But he left out exactly how his father reacted to him daring to question the old man or implying that George was not trustworthy, in light of Liam’s own lack of support.

      “He can’t contribute through the corporation.” Gabrielle joined Marie on the end of her bed. “It’s against Colorado law. He’d have to do it as an individual. And the candidate is required to report it, including name and employment, within a specified period of time depending on the office being sought, but it’s usually within a month.”

      “I’m not worried about the legalities of the contribution,” Liam said. “Not with George watching over everything with his eagle eye. But the one thing I really admired about my dad was his integrity. He might not be around when you need him, or care about what you need as opposed to what he wants from you, but you can count on him to speak the truth and stand by his convictions. It is, I hope, the one way I take after him. This senator is a snake. I can’t believe my father would ever get into bed with him. Yeah, money rules him, but it’s always only gained legally, and he’s always drawn the line at bigotry. Which is how he made it from pauper to millionaire in ten years. People know they can trust him.”

      “He made it from pauper to billionaire because he made savvy investments at a time when real estate was booming. And then invested with uncanny cleverness.” Gabrielle’s expression was droll.

      She was repeating his words back to him. Words spoken in previous late-night sessions. Usually after he’d come back to Boulder from time in Denver with his father.

      “And he built his reputation on integrity,” he added, though why he was defending the man, he wasn’t sure. “He was faithful to my mother until the day she died.”

      His junior year in high school. Of heart disease. Something they’d discovered she had when she was pregnant with him. Which was why he was an only child.

      “Are you afraid he’s changed?” Marie’s question brought him back to the present. Where Gabrielle focused on the practical, Marie always homed in on the emotional aspect of things. They made a great team for him.

      And for each other.

      He wanted to tell Marie he wasn’t afraid. But these were his best friends. The one place he was completely honest with himself. “Maybe.”

      “So playing cards tonight...that was to get back at him for it?” Gabrielle’s derogatory opinion was clear.

      “I don’t know. Maybe.”

      “Don’t throw your life away because of him.” Marie spoke next. “Don’t throw your life away for anyone.” Her tone took on a bitter note that had him studying her more closely. And then he remembered something. She never went to bed with her hair still in a ponytail. He’d woken them up enough times to know that. The three of them had probably had a late-night conversation somewhere along the way about getting ready for bed, too. They’d talked about everything else in the world over the past three years.

      “You guys weren’t asleep, were you?”

      “No.”

      He sat forward, studying the two of them as he jetted himself out of the self-pitying fog he’d allowed himself to sink into.

      “What’s going on? What happened?” he asked, ready to get up and go find whoever had upset them.

      At one in the morning.

      Gabrielle looked at Marie, as though waiting for her to tell him. As if it was Marie’s story to tell. Which meant...

      “It’s the med student, isn’t it? What’d he do?”

      Marie’s lower lip started to quiver.

      “He has some big presentation coming up Monday and was going to be studying tonight, so Marie agreed to cover for a coworker who wanted the night off,” Gabrielle said. “As it turns out they were slow and Marie got off early. She made jerk face’s favorite coffee drink and took it over to his place to surprise him.”

      “He was...with the girl I was covering for at work.”

      Now he understood the edge Marie was carrying. It hadn’t been about the hour of his visit, or him at all. “They knew you wouldn’t find out because they made sure you were busy,” Liam summarized, watching Marie fight with heartache, wondering what on earth he was supposed to say to her.

      This was why he could never even think about getting involved with either one of them. He’d rather die than be the cause of that look on Marie’s face.

      And then it occurred to him. “You know this isn’t about you, right?”

      Marie and Gabrielle exchanged a glance. One of those glances. The ones that left him out in the cold.

      “You’re gorgeous, Marie. That blond hair and brown eyes...”

      “I’m too short.”

      She was shorter than Gabrielle, who was long and leggy, but— “You are definitely not too short.”

      “It’s not about her looks,” Gabrielle interrupted, with a sound resembling a snort. She was gorgeous, too. Not an obvious showstopper like Marie. But more in line with the kind of girl he went for. He was more of a leg man.

      “What is it with men?” Marie’s derisive tone wasn’t directed at him, but he sure felt as if it was. And took the brunt of her watery brown-eyed glare for all men. “Why can’t they be trustworthy?”

      “They can be.” Of that he was sure. Which was why his father’s actions earlier that day had upset him so much.

      “I sure didn’t see that tonight. Nor a good part of the time I was growing up...”

      Her father, who’d been unfaithful to her mother in the past and who’d only a few years earlier been brought back into the family fold, had been with another woman at their cabin in northern Arizona that summer. The girls had been the ones to discover him there. From what Gabrielle had told him, Marie had taken it pretty hard.

      “And Brad, freshman year.” A guy Gabi had dated who’d broken up with her when she wouldn’t sleep with him.

      “Jimmy Jones.” A cowboy the girls had met when they’d gone to a rodeo the year before. He’d played one for the other and gotten caught in the middle. For a day or two there, Liam had sweated that the jerk might break up a friendship he’d considered unbreakable. But the girls had surprised him—seeing through Jimmy and giving him a taste of his own medicine. Poor guy hadn’t seen what was coming...

      “Don’t forget Mark,” Marie said. She’d dated him the beginning of sophomore year. Until she’d found out that he had a fiancée at home in Phoenix.

      “All right, already,” Liam said, holding up a hand in surrender.

      “It’s like guys’ drive for sex is stronger than their hearts. Or their morals,” Marie added.

      “It’s a driving force,” Liam allowed, feeling only a little uncomfortable in his beanbag seat beneath the girls. They were family. Talked about anything. Everything. “The desire to have sex with women is always there,” he continued, knowing that the one thing he could give his friends was an honesty they probably wouldn’t get anywhere else. “It doesn’t matter how much you’re in love with a girl—you can’t help reacting when you see a beautiful woman. You’re right about that. But being attracted and acting on that feeling are two entirely different things.”

      “So when you were going with Karen last