Once Upon a Friendship

“When are you moving in?” she asked.

“Tomorrow.”

She nodded. And he figured she knew his father had disowned him.

“If you need any help unpacking, I’ll be home after four.”

Chin jutting, hands in his pockets, he nodded.

“Tomorrow? Before the renovations?” Marie asked.

“We signed the papers today because it’s the end of the month and that worked out best financially,” Gabrielle said before Liam could think of a believable explanation. “Liam’s expenses run month to month as well, I’m sure.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Not that I paid rent, of course, but the association fee will come due tomorrow...” The twelve hundred a month he paid for his share of the doorman and upkeep of the communal facilities.

Marie looked at them for a minute. And then she nodded, too. Something was going on. They all knew it. And somehow had just agreed to leave it alone.

They talked a couple more minutes. Marie offered to make dinner for the three of them the next night, since Liam would be busy getting settled. And then she was called out to help with a rush up front and was gone.

“Are you okay?” Gabi didn’t move from her seat at the desk. So why did he feel as though she’d hugged him—and like the feeling? Was he really that pathetic? That he needed a hug because his daddy was mad at him?

“I am okay.” Surprisingly, he was. “It’s past time, my doing this.”

She studied him a long minute longer. “Okay, then,” she said, glancing back down at her papers. Not dismissing him. Just going on with life as though everything was normal.

So he turned to go. Because it was what he would have done the day before. The week before. The year before.

“Liam?”

Hearing his name, he turned back. Looked at her.

“Good to have you in the partnership,” she said. Her gaze, her voice, was completely calm. Serious. And filled with something else, too. Something new. Something he needed. And something they were never going to talk about.

“Good to be here.”

He smiled. So did she.

And his new life had begun.

CHAPTER FOUR

GABRIELLE HOPED THAT Liam would talk to her about his father. After so many years of being half of his sounding board, she was concerned about his silence on a move so bold. Which was why she’d left work early the day after Threefold’s big purchase to help him move in. And why she’d decided to stay and help him unpack after Marie left to take the dinner leftovers to Alice in 409, who’d had knee replacement surgery.

He didn’t mention his father at all.

She found reasons to run into him every day that first week of his residency in their building—an easy enough feat, considering that they’d just gone into business partnership and there were a lot of decisions to make, regarding the order of tasks the old building needed them to complete.

All three of them agreed that the elevator was priority one. They wanted its historical value preserved but needed it to be dependable and safe. Liam knew which historic renovation company to hire and even obtained a quote at 40 percent off the going rate.

A day passed, then six, and still he hadn’t mentioned his father.

He’d written a couple of human interest stories, though. One regarding an incident that had happened that week outside a yoga studio close to their building, a near abduction. He’d heard the call on a new scanner he’d purchased, had been on the scene and had sold his story all within a matter of hours.

“I made a whole fifty dollars,” he’d told Gabi when she stopped up to see him after work the Monday following his move. He was brimming with something she’d never seen in him before.

Pride, maybe? Not that he’d ever been lacking in that department. But...this was different.

He wasn’t the same old Liam he’d always been. She loved the old Liam. He was family to her.