Once Upon a Marriage

He’d looked into Barbara’s finances. She wasn’t destitute, but she wasn’t wealthy enough to afford, for too many more months, the fees he normally charged for the work she’d hired him to do.

For once the woman had relented. Elliott had packed a bag.

Which was now settled in the spare bedroom in Liam Connelly’s apartment. There’d be a twenty-four-hour security guard at the front of the building as well as the back until the perp was caught. Police would be doing extra patrols.

And Walter Connelly had called insisting that his son fly to Florida for the duration.

Liam had told his father what he could do with that suggestion. Elliott could only hear Liam’s part of the conversation, but was a bit surprised when it ended as soon as it did. In congenial tones. Walter Connelly’s topple off his high horse must have softened him up.

“So, what now?” Liam asked as Elliott came out of the room he’d been allotted in the back of the condo. He and Gabrielle were standing in the kitchen, salad fixings on the counter.

“Now we go on as we have been,” Elliott said. “I’ll accompany you wherever you need to go, take you and Gabrielle to work and generally just be around.”

“What about Marie?” Gabrielle looked up from the lettuce she’d been breaking into a bowl.

“As long as Liam is around, neither I nor the police believe Marie is in any danger. She’s in business with Liam, not married to him.”

Liam’s jaw tightened, and Elliott surmised the man was upset at the reference to the danger his wife could be in.

He felt for the guy.

“But I’ll be watching the shop, as usual,” he added. “As I said downstairs, I’m going to set up shop at the table by the front window, and pretty much, when I’m not escorting one or the other of you, that’s where I’ll be.”

Slowly churning inside, an hour at a time, as he watched the beautiful barista go about her daily business. If earlier today had been any indication.

He’d be uncomfortable. His charges would be safe.

And life would go on.

It always did.

* * *

BY SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Marie felt like a nervous twit, flitting around her shop washing counters and floors and then rewashing them as her afternoon help served the customers

that came through. She could be upstairs. Or out shopping.

She could be watching a movie or reading a book or in-line skating.

She didn’t want to leave the shop. Because Elliott was there. Finally forcing herself back to her office so she wouldn’t look overeager—after all, the man was paid to be observant, and there was clearly little for her to do out front—she focused on the week’s stock orders. Normally a Sunday night job. She finished them. Finished filing her bank receipts, going over the books and writing checks to her employees.

Then she called upstairs. Liam was working on the next installment on his Walter Connelly series for June Fryberg, his editor. Gabi had been working, too, but was ready for a break. Marie asked her if she’d help her with inventory.

Until Gabi’s marriage, the biweekly chore had always been shared by the roommates.

When she opened her office door to her friend ten minutes later, Gabi stood there with a bowl of popcorn. “Want some?” she asked, holding out the stainless steel bowl she’d inherited when she’d married Liam.

Prior to that their popcorn bowls had been plastic.

Where some women craved chocolate, Marie was a sucker for popcorn. And hated that her friend thought she needed to be spoiled. As if something were wrong with her life. Or that, if something didn’t change, people were going to start thinking she was...pathetic.

Not that anyone gave any indication that they thought that. Maybe it was just Marie who was feeling it...

“So...” Marie ventured an hour later when the two were finishing up the last of the counting—paper products that lined the entire back wall of the storeroom. The popcorn was nearly gone. “You and Liam okay?”

The question could have been in reference to the news they’d had the day before, to the new roommate they had. Or it could have been more.

“Yep.”