“I agree with him, Liam,” Gabrielle said. “I can get myself to work. You’re the target. Elliott should go with you.”
Pulling his hands out of his pockets, Liam faced Elliott. “You go with her.” He nodded toward his wife. “I’ll work from home for the next couple of days. Let’s reassess later in the week.”
One by one, Elliott looked at his three charges. One by one they nodded.
And he turned, wanting only to get out of there.
* * *
MARIE SAW ELLIOTT ready to leave, and her heart dropped.
What was the matter with her? It had no business dropping because the giant her friend had hired was going home.
Without giving her a chance to set things straight between them.
No wonder he was so eager to leave. He probably thought she’d been hitting him up for information on his client. Trying to coax him into breaking his code of ethics, or client/investigator privilege or something.
The elevator door opened before Elliott made it out to the hallway.
“Oh! Good! You’re all here!” Eighty-one-year-old that day Susan Gruber, slender and statuesque in a flowered housedress and black shoes with inch-thick soles, blocked Elliott’s departure. Dale, right behind her, stood there grinning.
“I just had to thank you,” she said. “Dale told me you all helped him plan my little party and gift, and I just don’t know when he’s made me so happy.” She told them, in second-to-second detail, how he came in the door with the cake and presented her with the envelope. She talked about the last time she went to the theater—thirty years before—and remembered exactly what she saw.
Marie, who ordinarily would have wanted to take the couple out to the coffee shop and sit with them through every detail, watched Elliott. Afraid he was going to slip out.
Instead, it was Liam and Gabi who did so. They had another couple upstairs in their huge, luxuriously remodeled apartment, someone Gabi had met at the governor’s mansion that day who could help her get more funding for indigent legal services, and the four of them had just been sitting down to a glass of wine when Elliott contacted them.
And by the time Susan and Dale left, she could see from the hallway that the coffee shop had closed and Eva was gone, too. Expecting Elliott to head straight out, she stopped just as they reached the shop.
“Can I make you a cup of coffee? Dark roast with a shot of espresso, black?” She knew what he liked. Just as she knew a good many of her clients’ preferences.
Expecting him to refuse, she was ready to talk him into at least taking it to go—which would give her time to apologize for her behavior the day before. She was shocked when he said instead, “Have you got a piece of that double-fudge cake to go with it?”
Which reminded her she had to bake another cake for the next day. Grace baked cakes twice a week. Tuesdays and Saturdays. She’d used up Monday’s double-fudge allotment with Dale.
“One piece,” she said, hoping that Eva hadn’t sold Sunday’s last piece of cake during the time she was in the back office.
Her chances of getting him to stay while another cake baked were pretty slim.
As she walked with him into the shop, moved the remaining piece of cake from the serving dish to a plate and started his coffee, Marie considered the ironies of life. Her life with men usually consisted of her thinking of ways to get rid of them.
Not to get them to stay.
Standing at the high-top table closest to the coffee counter, Elliott didn’t wait for his coffee before starting in on the cake. Marie grabbed a bottle of water for herself and took his drink over to him as she slid up onto one of the two stools at the tall round table. Even then, she was shorter than him by a good six inches.
Standing, it was more like a foot and a half. Which could be why she felt so safe with him.
Elliott was like a big umbrella, sheltering her from the storm that was threatening their lives.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted as she opened her water.
“For what? This is great.” He didn’t even look up from the cake he was devouring.
“For yesterday. Saying those things about Liam. I’m not as crazy as I sounded, and I know Liam would rather die than hurt Gabi.”
But then, her father had felt the same way about her mother. The reminder from the previous night’s conversation with her father popped unwanted into her head.
He nodded. Which meant what? That he forgave her? That she had sounded crazy? That Liam wouldn’t hurt Gabi?