Once Upon A Marriage. Tara Taylor Quinn

left him and their newborn to go to New York to be a dancer was a fool. Smiling, she shooed him out.

      She wanted him gone in case Elliott came in. She had to set the bodyguard straight. To apologize for unloading on him the day before. What had she been hoping? That he’d betray his client and give her a rundown on everything he knew about Liam? Like she didn’t already know far more than Elliott would ever know about the man who’d been one of her two best friends for more than a decade—since she and Gabi had lived next door to him their freshman year in college.

      Liam wouldn’t purposely or knowingly hurt Gabi. Or her, either.

      The door rattled and she looked up to see...not Elliott. A young woman, dressed in leggings and a spandex top with expensive-looking running shoes, wanted a cappuccino with peppermint spice. Drink made and money collected, Marie watched the woman out the door and couldn’t help glancing up and down the sidewalk. No Elliott.

      She didn’t see him every day. Or ever know what time he’d show up if he did. He had other clients and was a private investigator as well as a bodyguard—a private security expert, he’d once told her. And it wasn’t as if he was working for her. Liam was the one getting threats.

      Liam’s dad, Walter Connelly, had had a bodyguard on staff for years. When you worked in high finance, you made a few enemies.

      And when your company stole millions of dollars from investors, even if you didn’t know it was happening, people still blamed you. Still, there hadn’t really been much danger around the Arapahoe. Early on, Liam’s car had been vandalized—but not when he was home. He and Gabi had been in-line skating late one night and Liam’s car had been the only one left in the park’s lot.

      After that they’d received a total of three anonymous notes: one left at the coffee shop shortly after the car incident and two others slid under the door since the first of March—when Liam’s first installment of a series he was writing about his father’s life was published. Both of those notes had arrived during the night when the shop was closed, proclaiming that Liam would get what was coming to him. All three notes had been addressed to Liam. Not Gabi or Marie.

      When Liam’s car had been painted with graffiti just after news of the Ponzi scheme at Connelly had hit, Elliott came to them as a recommendation from Walter’s bodyguard. Elliott had been to school for both guarding bodies and investigating. Was certified and licensed in both fields.

      From the beginning Marie had felt safe with him.

      A mild feat considering her ready propensity for mistrusting the male species.

      But she didn’t really know that much about him. He couldn’t talk about his work—clients’ business was private, and there was a code of ethics he was sworn to follow or risk losing not only his good reputation but his license to practice. He had an aunt and cousin in California somewhere. His parents had been killed in a small plane crash when he was a toddler.

      She knew nothing more.

      Except that she’d told him about her paranoia, how fearful she was that Liam was ready to cheat on Gabi.

      Made herself sound like a crazy woman. When, in fact, she knew her fears were completely groundless. She was just obsessing because she had too much time to think. Too much time alone. But she’d adjust.

      She’d known she and Gabi weren’t going to live together forever. She’d just never seen herself living alone. But it wasn’t as if she didn’t have enough to do. Or enough friends.

      And she still saw Gabi and Liam all the time. Pretty much every day...

      Another customer came in. And then two more. A group of law students were studying in the corner, making use of the free Wi-Fi Liam had just had installed for the entire building. Elliott was nowhere to be seen.

      At three, Eva, her new evening part-timer came in, and the two of them spent the next two hours serving a steady flow of sandwich eaters and coffee drinkers. Elliott Tanner wasn’t among them.

      At six the back door of the shop opened—someone coming in from upstairs. Expecting to see Liam or Gabi—or both, as was the case more often than not these days—she was surprised when Dale Gruber, an eighty-two-year-old retired railroad worker, came toward her with a worried look on his face.

      “What’s wrong, Dale?” she asked, moving from behind the counter down the hall before Dale made it halfway into the shop. “Is it Susan?” she asked after the man’s wife of more than sixty years.

      “Yep,” Dale said, heading into the shop, still frowning. The man didn’t move as quickly as he once did, but he kept a pretty good clip. “It’s Susan, all right,” he said, standing in front of the nearly empty bakery case.

      “Did she fall? Did you call 911?” Marie wasn’t sure the man, who was normally sharp as could be, was all there—perhaps demented with panic? She grabbed her cell phone out of her apron pocket. “Can she talk?”

      “What’s that? Call who?” Dale’s false teeth, a little too big for his mouth, hissed a bit as he talked. But she had his full attention.

      “Is Susan hurt?”

      “What? No! But you can bet your dinner that I’m going to be if I don’t find something pretty quick that can pass as a cake and a present and not look like I just come down here and got it last minute,” he said, staring at the case again. “I darn forgot her birthday,” he said, looking perplexed as he glanced at Marie again. “Sixty years of knowing when my wife was born, and I forgot today was the day. Eighty-one she is today. And a fine-looking woman still.”

      With a little adrenaline remaining, Marie went into high gear. She pulled a chocolate cake out of the walk-in, making a mental note to replace it before morning so Grace wouldn’t have to, sent Eva down the block to the drugstore for candles and one of the puzzle books that Susan and Dale liked to work on together and then, with a brain flash, hurried back to her office, opened the safe and pulled out the two theater tickets for next month’s Broadway performance. Grabbing an envelope and a piece of paper, she hurried back in to Dale, who was pulling money out of his pocket so it was ready to give to Eva when she returned.

      “Here,” she said, pulling a chair out from one of the small round tables toward the back as she set down paper, pen, envelope and tickets. “Write something. And wrap the tickets in this,” she said. Dropping the envelope beside the pile.

      “Tickets?” His teeth clacked as he spoke.

      “To the theater. Susan would love to go to the theater, wouldn’t she?”

      Dale’s grin made her day. Her week. “That she would,” he said, smiling at her. “You have theater tickets to sell me?”

      She’d been planning to give them to him. But one look at his face and she changed her mind.

      “What do I owe you?” he asked, pulling a roll of bills out of his pocket. Mostly ones.

      “Twenty dollars,” Marie said, trying to remember if the seventy-five-dollar ticket price was on the actual tickets.

      “Twenty dollars.” He began counting bills, handed them to her and pulled the chair out to sit down. “I’ll hire a car,” he said. “She can wear that pretty rose-colored dress and her sparkly earrings and I’ll even get a shave and a haircut...”

      He bent to his writing.

      The door rattled again. Eva returning, Marie hoped.

      She looked up, a smile on her face. And blinked.

      It wasn’t Eva.

      It was him.

       CHAPTER THREE

      ELLIOTT HADN’T PLANNED to see Marie on Sunday. Or anytime he could avoid seeing her in the near future. After a long night watching Sailor and Terrence Metcalf, the yacht designer, seemingly