Once Upon A Friendship. Tara Taylor Quinn

was right about all of it.

      And... “Something’s bothering you.” Were his suit and tie for the benefit of the real estate closing they were all about to attend? Or had he been at Connelly Investments that day? As his father’s patsy, he had a nice office on the top floor of the corporate office building. And put in a minimum of forty hours a week. But a lot of that time was spent at dinners and functions that bored him. Or at his personal computer on the desk in his home office in the fancy high-rise condominium that was his as part of his employee benefits. He analyzed. He reported. He made innocuous decisions. His father wouldn’t let him make any of the major ones.

      “My father found out about the deal,” he said now.

      “I thought you told him.” They’d specifically discussed the matter—he and she and Marie. They’d stressed to Liam the importance of keeping his father informed. The old man had the power to make Liam’s life miserable if he chose to do so.

      And, in retrospect, theirs, too.

      Taking Liam on as a partner meant taking on the unhealthy and rocky relationship he had with his old man.

      Rocking back and forth in his expensive leather shoes, Liam shoved his hands into the pockets of his gray pants and looked down. “I intended to. Right after the papers were signed.”

      She wanted to ask who’d spilled the beans to the elder Connelly, but the who didn’t matter. Nor, really, did the why. When you lived in circles where money was the most important factor, people stabbed friends and family if it meant they had a chance to climb even half a step.

      Which was part of the reason, she knew, that Liam had adopted her and Marie as his family all those years ago. Because they weren’t part of that circle.

      And didn’t want to be.

      “So what’d he say?”

      Liam’s shrug didn’t tell her enough.

      “He didn’t forbid it?” Which was what she and Marie had expected.

      “He can’t.” Liam’s jaw was firm, his gaze hard as he looked straight at her. “I’m using money earned from my writing, you know that.”

      Only for the down payment.

      “You’re living off your Connelly salary and living in a Connelly building.”

      Best that the deal fall through now. Before any of them were financially ruined.

      But...not really.

      Because if they didn’t sign those papers today, more than fifty elderly people were going to be booted from their homes. Many of them had raised their families in that building and still had penciled lines on the walls in the kitchens marking the growth of their offspring through the years.

      Matilda Schwann had color-coded hers...

      “If your father doesn’t support you on this, you won’t have the money to pay your third of the mortgage.”

      They weren’t college kids anymore. He couldn’t sign this deal and then capitulate.

      Not that Liam would choose to leave elderly folks homeless. He’d give them the shirt off his back.

      But Liam had never lived in the real world. His life, while not easy, had certainly been privileged.

      “I have trust money that has been set up legally to pay my portion of the mortgage. I wanted to make certain that you both were covered if something ever happened to me...”

      And she knew...

      “That’s how he found out, isn’t it? Someone told him when you accessed your trust.” But the money was his to do with as he pleased.

      “I can only assume that George told him, though he swore to me that he wouldn’t.”

      “Did you pay him, as your attorney, to handle the transaction for you?”

      She was an attorney. And while she chose to work at a local legal services organization, making a pittance compared to what she could be making in average attorney fees in the private sector, Liam had always seemed to trust her abilities as much as he did those of the millionaire lawyer who’d worked for his family most of his life.

      But she’d consider it a conflict of interest to represent him on this deal, as she was one of the involved parties.

      “Of course I paid him. Separately and apart from Connelly Investments.”

      “Then legally and ethically he’s in violation if he said anything.”

      And a pertinent piece of paper could have fallen on the floor at Liam’s father’s feet when the elder Connelly was in the office of his head legal counsel. She knew how the world worked.

      “You should have hired someone outside the Connelly circle,” she said now, though she knew the words didn’t help anything. She was trying to think. To determine their next move.

      Did they sign the papers? Or not?

      “I trust George with my life. Or I did until today.”

      Hadn’t he once said something similar about his father’s feelings for George? Liam couldn’t be blamed for believing the man would uphold his word. And maybe he had. They were only assuming George had been the leak. So often when something was amiss the obvious culprit was not at fault. At least in her experience. None of which was helping the current situation.

      “So what did your father say? Is he going to be difficult?” The building was not going to be a money-maker. It was more in line of a community project that was hopefully not going to cost them anything out of pocket in the long run. And, best-case scenario, it would make them a few dollars apiece a year or two down the road.

      It was also doubling as a home for Marie and Gabrielle. Marie’s coffee shop would be paying them rent under the contract they were assuming from the current owner. Its success had provided her portion of the Arapahoe down payment.

      “No, he’s not going to be difficult.” Liam stared out the window and Gabrielle thought about the cup of coffee she’d turned down when the three of them had arrived. She didn’t need the caffeine. But now she wanted the warmth.

      “I have his word that he will not, in any way, interfere with, hamper or attempt to destroy Threefold or its holdings.”

      She stared at him. Then this was good, right? So why that mixed expression of lost boy and grim defender on his face?

      Until he caught her looking. Then he smiled. Gave her a soft fist to the shoulder of her blue suit jacket and said, “Let’s go buy a building, partner.”

      Wishing, inanely, that she could hold his hand, Gabrielle followed Liam back to Marie.

      They were her family. More so than the mother and two college-dropout brothers who’d moved down south a couple of years before and depended on her for financial help more months than not. Help she could give them, even on her salary, because she was good at what she did. She had already made enough of a name for herself to be able to pick up extra work, privately, when she had to. And her own living expenses were small since she still lived with Marie in the apartment they’d rented straight out of college.

      But her financial obligation was about to change.

      She was going to be a business owner.

      She, the girl who’d had to wear thrift-store clothes and shoes for the first eighteen years of her life, was about to become partners with one of the richest bachelors in Denver.

      Funny how life had a way of sounding like so much more than it was.

       CHAPTER TWO

      LIAM MADE IT through the signing of the papers. He paid attention. Read and reread the forms he’d already vetted. After Gabrielle