Elliott was being set up.
“I cannot participate in a double date,” he said, never more serious in his life. “It would be a conflict of interest when I’m working.”
“So I’ll fire you.” Liam was no longer smiling.
Elliott had put up a bit of a battle to get the younger Connelly to accept his help to begin with. Liam had finally capitulated—and only, Elliott suspected, because he believed Elliott had been sent via his father’s bodyguard, Jeb Williams. Liam, who was only paying a cut rate for Elliott’s services, knew that Elliott was being paid elsewhere to watch over him. He’d had to disclose that information. He hadn’t been obligated to say who was paying his salary. Liam believed that his father was Elliott’s real employer.
It worked in Elliott’s favor to have Liam believe that.
And to have Liam believe that his father—Elliott’s supposed employer—would be very displeased with Elliott if Liam fired him.
The man was impressive. But not good.
“So, what do you say? Dinner at seven?” Liam asked.
Barbara would insist that he go.
“I don’t know, Liam,” Gabrielle, who only spoke when she had something important to say, butted in.
Elliott liked her more than ever.
“Don’t you think we should ask Marie first?” she asked.
Liam shrugged his expensively suited shoulder, opening the back door of the SUV. “It’s dinner,” he said, obviously done now. “The three of us are going to dinner with bodyguard protection at the table with us. If Elliott and Marie make it more than that, that’s up to them.”
With a look of apology to Elliott, Gabrielle joined her husband outside the vehicle.
And Elliott wished life were even half as simple as Liam Connelly wanted to believe it could be.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“ELLIOTT REALLY SAID he wanted to go to dinner with me?” Marie asked as Gabi, who’d come down to help her choose what to wear, twisted Marie’s blond hair up into a black-and-white-flowered clip and then curled the ends that floated down around her shoulders. In a black-and-white tweed and Lycra shift that hugged every curve, ending several inches above her knees, she felt as if she were getting ready for the prom.
Except that she was a heck of a lot more nervous. She’d liked her prom date well enough, but wouldn’t have gone out with him if it hadn’t been for the prom. She hadn’t been the least bit interested in dating anyone seriously back then.
Not that she was interested now. She just...really liked Elliott.
“Liam didn’t give him a chance to say what he wanted,” Gabi said now. “He just told Elliott we were going and invited him to share our table with us if he was going to insist on protecting us. But Elliott’s a grown man. He could have refused.”
“Not with his code of ethics, he couldn’t,” she said. “Walter Connelly wants him watching Liam, more now than ever, I’m sure, since Liam’s taking a much more active role in the company.”
“True.”
She could always count on Gabi to call it like it was. Which was one of the reasons Marie loved her best friend so much. One of the reasons why Gabi was her best friend...
“You like him, though, don’t you?” Gabi’s question came just as she finished with Marie’s hair and set her free to fasten a black-and-white pearl-and-onyx-flowered earring in her bottom piercing. And pearl studs in the second one back.
Marie didn’t know how to answer the question. Liking was not how she’d describe her feelings for the bodyguard. Not in the like-like sense Gabi seemed to mean. Yet she couldn’t deny, especially after the day she’d spent worrying about him, that she cared more than just friends.
Still...
“That’s why Liam set this up,” Gabi said. “The way you reacted today, being so beside yourself upset when you thought Elliott was in danger... Liam thinks you have a thing for Elliott. I just need you to know what he’s doing so that you don’t think I’m part of something behind your back.”
Marie got hot from the inside out. Flushing from her head to her toes. And then cooled just as quickly. “Does Elliott know that?” she asked, afraid to look at Gabi. To see the truth in her friend’s eyes.
She didn’t look at herself in the big bathroom mirror they were both standing in front of, either. She looked at Gabi’s short dark hair. At the diamond stud she was wearing in her right ear.
“I don’t know.” Gabi’s finger gently pushed a tendril of Marie’s hair back behind her ear as her words washed softly over her. “Nothing was said. Not in the car. I just wanted you to know...”