Once Upon a Marriage

She studied him. “I threw up when I saw you.”

His stomach knotted.

“My head is telling me that you were working, Elliott. But my heart... It knows you were out with a beautiful woman at a fancy event—my heart knows that men get tempted all the time while they’re working.”

His heart sank.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

IT HAD BEEN Elliott’s suggestion that he pack a bag and stay elsewhere until they had time to sort through what was going on. To determine if their rushed, impromptu wedding had been a mistake. Not Saturday night. He’d stayed with her then. But they’d slept far apart, each hugging their own side of the bed.

He’d tried to get close. She’d pulled away when he reached for her.

Early Sunday morning after she and Grace had finished labeling the day’s baked goods and before the shop opened, Marie had gone up to tell Liam and Gabi that she and Elliott needed some time apart. She needed time apart, she’d told them.

Because of the unsolved threats against Liam and the heightened security they were still under, Liam had suggested Elliott bunk in their spare room. He’d agreed.

In spite of her friends’ protests, Marie went right back downstairs to work. She stopped in the office first, to put the wedding ring she’d removed in the safe. And then she spent the next several hours losing herself in coffee. In closing up alone, having let her overworked weekend staff go home early. Eva was too thrilled with unexpected time off to notice that Marie wasn’t her usual cheery self. She was smiling. Eva would have had to look more closely to know that the expression only went skin deep.

Did he kiss her good-night?

The questions started to seep in.

Since when does a bodyguard pose as an escort?

Never.

Unless there was some reasonable explanation that she didn’t know. Because Elliott was not at liberty to tell her.

She tried to shut down the doubts. She was screwing up the best thing that had ever happened to her.

She filled out orders. Counted receipts. Made out a deposit. Studied her budget to determine how many more employee hours she could afford, while still making a decent profit, and then made up a sign for the front door, seeking part-time weekend help. She’d put it up in the morning. Take it down every night. Until the position was filled.

In the early days...all the conversations. The way he’d listened. I thought he was different. That we had something. And all the while, I was just a job to him. He was listening, asking questions, because he was being paid to do so. At least in the beginning.

Would you please just shut up?

She swept all the floors, moving tables as she went. Followed herself with a mop.

She didn’t call anyone. Not even Gabi, who’d been texting her nonstop since they got home.

And when she was done with all she could do in the shop, she notified the security guard out front that she was going upstairs. She didn’t tell him that Elliott wouldn’t be at the elevator, waiting for her. She could get herself upstairs.

Once there, she drew a hot bath. Poured in two capfuls of rose-scented bubble bath. She lit a candle. Put in a CD she’d found years ago in an artsy bookshop. Voice of the Feminine Spirit. She had no idea who it was by. Didn’t care.

With all the lights out, she slid out of her clothes and into her bath.

From there, by candlelight, she could see Elliott’s cologne on the counter. He hadn’t taken it with him.

His extra shaving cream and razors would be in the chest, too.

Marie turned around in the tub.

&nb

sp; She closed her eyes. And thought about her mother. Did Barbara have so little faith in her that she’d felt the need to hire someone to babysit her?

She could let herself think so. If she wanted to wallow in self-pity. Marie didn’t need pity. Nor did she need to go looking for reasons to hurt. The pain that she was barely holding at bay, one that was threatening to attack her so acutely she doubted her ability to cope if it broke free, had little to do with her mother.