Once Upon a Friendship

He turned. And Gabi moved enough to avoid his running into her.

When what she wanted to do was hold him in her arms until his hurt went away. Liam would be just fine without his father in his life. Better, probably.

But he still, on some level, wanted him there. And at the moment, that was what mattered to her.

When Marie had told her he was at the door, she’d quickly changed from the work clothes she’d still had on into a pair of her oldest and baggiest sweats and an oversize gray sweatshirt.

Clothes that would hopefully put them back on normal footing.

She’d been supposed to meet him upstairs.

“Maybe he heard about the story you’re doing,” Marie suggested, looking cute in her new jeans and black sweater. Maybe Liam would notice how good she looked.

No, that wasn’t any better. For any of them.

She didn’t need Liam with another woman. That would hurt too much. She just needed to quit caring for him in that way.

She’d done fine for more than a decade. “The order prevents him from derogatory or inflammatory comments, doesn’t it?” Marie’s question was directed over her shoulder at Gabrielle.

“I’m not making derogatory or inflammatory comments about him. He can’t stop me from reporting what I know any more than he can stop any other member of the press. And I can’t believe, even with his far-reaching fingers, that he’d know about this series. Only June, me and a couple of people she works with even know I’m doing it.”

“Elliott Tanner knows,” Gabrielle pointed out.

“Elliott wouldn’t do anything to hurt us,” Marie said. “He’s a good guy.” The kettle’s whistle sounded over her words.

“He’s working for my father.” Pulling out an antique dining chair from the

table Marie and Gabi had purchased together at an auction one summer, Liam plopped down.

Marie put tea bags in the kettle. “You don’t know that for sure.”

Sitting down opposite him—keeping enough distance that they couldn’t possibly bump into each other—Gabrielle said, “I think we do. I didn’t say anything on Tuesday because it wasn’t pertinent in the moment since we’d already pretty much figured out that Tanner showed up at your father’s behest, but when I was at Connelly to meet with your father, I saw Elliott Tanner go into an office on the top floor.”

“Did he see you?” Liam asked. “He didn’t say anything to me about it.”

“There’s no way he saw me,” she assured him, pulling close the cup of tea Marie placed in front of her.

Joining them, sitting at the head of the table between the two of them, Marie asked, “Are you sure it was him?”

“I’m sure. The man he was with called him by name.”

“Did you see who it was?”

“I saw him, but I’d have no way of knowing who he was, except that I saw the name on the door and Tanner called him by name, too. It was Williams.”

Jeb Williams. His father’s bodyguard.

The three of them looked at each other. “I think I know what’s going on,” Liam said.

* * *

HIS LIFE WAS never going to be the same.

“What’s going on?” Marie placed her hand atop his. He felt her warmth. Her beauty—inside and out. But nothing beyond that. At all. Not even a little bit.

Gabi, on the other hand...

“I think my father’s framing me,” he said. “He’s setting me up to take his fall.” He’d never have thought so. Would have given his life on the knowledge that his father would never, ever do anything to seriously hurt him. But he’d have been just as certain that Walter would never be unfaithful to Liam’s mother. That he’d never keep Liam’s sibling’s existence a secret. That he’d never out-and-out disown him. That he’d never gamble again...