Once Upon a Marriage

Her mother’s hiring him, while it made her angry, didn’t really surprise her. She’d been living with, and being at the brunt of, Barbara’s paranoia for most of her life. Ultimately, while she didn’t like it, she understood it.

And hadn’t yet determined how she was going to handle that situation. Elliott was her husband. She wasn’t going to run to her mother with the fact that he’d betrayed a professional trust. At the same time, she didn’t feel comfortable keeping the truth from her mother. It was what her father had done. And she couldn’t be her father.

Not unless she wanted to end up alone and lonely...

Figuring she and Elliott were going to have to figure out together what to do—and determining that they had time before they had to cross that bridge, she tried, instead, to focus on him. Loving him. Seeing him with her heart.

And just to be safe, she put off her father’s visit for a bit.

* * *

THE WEEK WAS everything a second week of marriage should be. And yet it wasn’t. Elliott’s days were filled with a new anticipation, a greater capacity to enjoy everything, from the taste of his food to the blue skies above him. And he lay in bed every night, after his wife had fallen asleep, and wondered what he could do to hold them together.

His upcoming job with Sailor loomed over him as much as telling Marie the truth about their meeting had done.

If it wasn’t Sailor, it would be another job.

How could he help Marie trust him? How could he trust her to trust him? Because that was what it came down to.

She was right. As a husband, he didn’t just need to be loved, he needed to be trusted. He wasn’t going to be able to live with constant mistrust at the core of his relationship.

He couldn’t live his life concerned about telling his wife the truth for fear of her not believing him.

And he’d already fed that mistrust by marrying her under false pretenses.

She knew all about his job and what it entailed. Had known since the first night they met—in her coffee shop the night after Liam and Gabi had found Liam’s car vandalized in the park.

But she’d known Liam for a dozen or more years, had gone into business with him and had still freaked when Liam had had dinner with his editor.

Elliott sat in her shop Saturday morning, the night with Sailor looming to the point of being dangerous. He was still working for Liam and had to be alert, not worrying about what his wife would think if she knew what the evening’s assignment entailed.

She hadn’t trusted Liam to go to dinner with his editor and her husband of two weeks was going to be posing as Sailor Harcourt’s escort for the evening?

Time was closing in on him. Again. He had to tell her.

With dread in his gut, he waited until he saw her heading down the hall to her office and then followed her. He couldn’t live a lifetime like this.

But he’d promised to give her time.

And knew, in his heart of hearts, he couldn’t just walk away from her, either. Not while happiness still lurked in their midst.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said as she greeted him with a kiss in the middle of the hall between the back elevator and the shop. “I should learn how to run all your machines. How to do whatever needs to be done behind the counter.”

What the...? He hadn’t been thinking any such thing. Not right then, at any rate.

He’d never been behind the counter of her shop.

“Really?” Her grin made him glad he’d had the thought at some point. And that it had come to rescue him.

He’d tell her he was working that night. She knew he worked on call. He’d taken other spur of the moment jobs since she’d known him.

And that was all he had to tell her. Pretty much all he could tell her. No point in letting her know he was posing as someone’s escort.

Or even that he was protecting a young woman that night.

Sailor had assured him there’d be no press.

He’d been making too much out of nothing. Not doing his part in trusting her to keep her word to him to come to him if she started to doubt him.