Once Upon a Marriage

“He’s not open to it?”

“He wants to be.”

Sounded like a man who could show up with some crazy idea that he wasn’t going to let his wife, the mothe

r of his child, marry another man. It happened. More than Elliott was comfortable with.

“So maybe he’ll show up,” he said.

Marie shook her head. “He’s booked himself on a flight to Monte Carlo. He’ll be in the air during the wedding. And drunk in a swanky hotel and casino for the rest of the weekend.”

“He’s a heavy drinker, then?”

“Nope. It’s just the best plan we could come up with to keep him from doing something he’d regret.”

“Like showing up to stop the wedding?”

“No.” She frowned. “He really wants Mom to be happy. He knows he can’t give her what she needs and thinks Bruce can.”

It was Elliott’s turn to frown. “He knows the man your mother is marrying?”

“He was invited to a few of her early counseling sessions.”

Elliott nodded. Assessing. Looking for holes in what she was saying. For any sign that there could be a potential threat. For insight into the family in which Marie had grown up. The family that had helped make her the woman she was. For a key to her own emotional state.

Not because he saw a threat there. But because he’d promised her mother he’d protect her from hurt...

“So what would he do that he’d regret?”

“Get drunk here and call me or Mom instead of leaving her be to enjoy her day.”

“Phones work from Monte Carlo.”

“He’s turning off international dialing on his cell. And hoping to meet some young Italian, French or Greek beauty who’ll be bowled over by his good looks.”

“Sounds like in some ways he’s a pretty smart man,” he said now. Thinking about Barbara. About what he’d heard of Marie’s father.

And about the woman the two of them had created.

The woman who was looking up at him with a sheen of moisture covering those big brown eyes. “Yeah. In some ways. Just not smart enough to figure out how to be happy with only one woman. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t hurting. And it’s hard.”

She paused.

He nodded. He understood more than he’d like. Sometimes a man had to do hard things. Like lie to a woman who was quickly taking up the majority of his personal thoughts and starring in his dreams when he slept at night.

When he knew that her one vulnerability, the one thing that he could do to lose her forever, was to lie.

He’d called Barbara Bustamante the night before, after he’d returned Marie and Gabrielle to their respective apartments with their dresses—Marie first. He’d threatened to quit if the woman wouldn’t let him come clean with her daughter about his place in her life.

Barbara had been adamantly opposed. She didn’t want Marie to know that she didn’t trust her to make her own choices. And most unrelentingly didn’t want Marie to know that she’d lied to her by omission when Marie talked to her about Liam’s bodyguard who would be joining them that week. The older woman had also been strong enough willed to remind him what was at stake if he quit on her.

Not only his own ruined reputation, but possibly danger to Marie as well because there was no way Barbara would be able to slide one over on her daughter again. And until Liam’s stalker was caught, Marie’s shop, if not her person, was in the line of fire...

“I worry about him,” Marie was saying, still speaking of her father. “And worse, I feel so sorry for him...”

Elliott did, too.

“Anyway, sorry to go on like that,” Marie said, standing. “It’s time to get back to work.” She approached him.