Once Upon a Marriage

Marie stumbled. Her head bumping him halfway between his shoulder and his elbow. And he was reminded of how small she was. How easily she could be hurt.

He was reminded that he’d just promised to protect her for the rest of his life.

The thought of anything happening to her scared him in a way he hadn’t been scared since he’d been a little kid.

Elementally. To the bone.

And if she found out he’d lied to her about who he was? Even if only by omission? If she ever found out that her mother had hired him to watch over her, he’d lose her.

“I’d like to stay there,” she said now. “I mean, if you want to move, I’ll still be able to be there every day. I’ve got my shop. But...”

“I live in a one-bedroom apartment that’s less than nine hundred square feet,” he said.

“I have a three-bedroom apartment that is slightly more vacant than it was because my roommate just got married and moved out.” She was grinning up at him.

“Good.”

“It is good, isn’t it?” Marie’s big brown eyes seemed to see right to his heart, and it was as though they were in Denver. In her shop. Alone in the world.

“Everything with you and me, it just clicks,” she said when Elliott couldn’t find the right words to tell her all the things he was thinking. “You showing up right when I needed to find you. Us being in Vegas at the time that we’re both finally acknowledging that we’ve found the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with. Our living arrangements gelling at just the right time...”

They’d left the hotel carpet for marble floor—were walking down a wide hallway filled with high-end shops on each side. The ceiling above looked like blue sky with clouds.

A sky that promised either sunshine or rain. Or neither.

She hadn’t said she loved him.

They were married and he hadn’t told her he loved her, either.

She thought they’d found each other by a quirk of fate. That they were simpatico. He wanted her to keep thinking that forever.

“I love you, Marie,” he said as he walked by her side down that long hallway. “No matter what happens in our lives, I want you to know how much I love you.”

She turned, looked up at him, and the smile she’d been wearing all day and throughout the night slid away. “That sounds ominous.”

He stopped walking. Held both of her arms as he looked her right in the eye. “It’s not.” He swore it wouldn’t be. Ever. Not because of him. Not if he had the power to prevent it. “I’m just that serious about this. I’m not declaring some note of passion in a moment of anything goes. I’m telling you, no matter where we are, no matter what we’re doing, I love you.”

Her eyes filled with tears. And she stood on tiptoe to bring her lips to his. “I love you, too, Elliott Tanner. So much.” She kissed him then. It was the third time her lips had touched his. The brief caress outside her office. The more thorough but completely unsatisfying kiss with the minister and Liam and Gabrielle cheering them on. And now.

Elliott took her lips with his, sealing them together, a silent vow that nothing would ever split them apart.

And knew, even as he did so, that his word was worth nothing unless he told her the truth.

* * *

MARIE’S FIRST DAY married wasn’t anything like she’d ever imagined it might be. There was another threat waiting for them when they got back to the Arapahoe. Of sorts. A package had come in the mail. It contained a bottle of the sports drink Liam drank. On the label in stick-on letters it read How Does It Feel?

She’d thought that was the threat. The idea that whoever was stalking him knew what kind of sports drink he preferred. As if he was being watched that closely.

Elliott told all three of them differently. He’d noticed that the cap wasn’t sealed on the bottle and had immediately grabbed a towel, taken the bottle from Liam, placed it back in the box and backed up.

They’d been home less than an hour. Marie had been downstairs in her office, taking care of the weekend’s receipts and deposits while Eva and Sam ran the shop, when Elliott called, asking her to come up.

No one knew they were married yet. Other than Liam and Gabi, of course. They’d all been up more than twenty-four hours. And she’d wanted a night to get used to the idea of actually being part of a couple before the residents, and her staff, converged upon her.

“No one touch that box,” Elliott said. He’d already called the police. Before calling Marie upstairs.

“What do you think is in there?”