Once Upon A Marriage

The girl wasn’t the best worker she’d ever had. But she was all heart. And great with customers. Marie liked the way the place felt when Eva was around.

“I can go now,” she said, guessing that he wasn’t going to leave her down there alone, and sensing that he wanted out. “I finished my ordering earlier today.”

He knew her routine. Sunday night was order night.

He didn’t have to know that she’d just decided to get up at three in the morning to get the cake baked before Grace came to work.

Elliott rinsed his cup and put it in the commercial-size dishwasher. Eva hadn’t started it, so she did. And then led him down the hall to the elevator, noticing how he turned off lights as they went. Leaving on the ones she always left on.

One thing was for sure, investigative bodyguards were observant.

She’d have said so. Said thank you. Good night. Anything. If his phone hadn’t just rung. Motioning for her to get on the opened elevator, he took the call. She stepped on and tried not to take it personally when Elliott didn’t return her wave as the doors closed in front of her.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_d1228a10-8d70-5057-9c7f-93f055979168)

HE’D KNOWN WHEN he made his mind up to give the Connelly situation a month to calm down that there was reason to believe the danger wasn’t over. He’d already seen the old blue car lurking across the street on two separate occasions. Perhaps that car had been part of the reason he’d allowed himself to be talked into staying on the case.

He wasn’t going to leave Marie or her friends in any kind of danger.

He wasn’t worried about himself actually acting out of turn, as much as he hated the subterfuge. Elliott was nothing if not in complete control of himself at all times. And it wasn’t as if he’d already fallen for Marie Bustamante. He just found her...interesting.

To the point of taking a vision of her, taking the memory of her words, with him everywhere he went. And he went a lot over the next few days. Escorting Gabrielle to and from work. Picking up a British client who was in Denver for a brief lunch stop on Tuesday, standing guard just feet behind him during the two-hour lunch and then delivering him back to the airport in time to get Gabrielle. The rest of the hours, in between watching the Arapahoe Coffee Shop and conferring with the private security at the residence entrance of the Arapahoe, he canvassed the area, looking for anyone who’d seen the old blue car with the stolen license plate. The Denver police had made a cursory round, but a stolen license plate was hardly worthy of their stretched-thin time.

On Wednesday he knocked on doors and talked to residents in the neighborhood where the plate had been stolen.

No one had seen anything in either area. And because he had nothing else to go on, he ended up at the coffee shop that afternoon after dropping Gabrielle off at the resident entrance in the back.

Eva was there, behind the counter. There was no sign of Marie. He ordered a dark roast minus the espresso. Had a seat in the corner. And sipped.

He really needed to speak with Marie. It was important to check in with his charges on a regular basis. You never knew when they might have seen something, witnessed something, that was harmless in and of itself, but that could spell potential danger to one who was trained to see such things.

While he’d seen her at a distance every day, they hadn’t spoken since Sunday. Barbara Bustamante was paying him to do better than that.

Twenty minutes passed with no sign of Marie. She took time off. But not often. And not usually with only one person behind the counter. Most specifically not with just Eva downstairs—though the girl was handling the small rush of late-afternoon customers with aplomb.

And shouldn’t have been alone in the shop. That was the rule he’d thought he’d established.

He waited until everyone had been served and then approached the counter. He’d just asked where Marie was when he saw her outside, walking toward the shop in the company of a man not much taller than she was. His brown hair was cropped, his pants a little short to be stylish and he was wearing a sweater vest instead of a suit jacket.

Nothing stood out as a threat. Elliott recognized him anyway. Burton Augustine. Her longtime theater date. She should have told him that she had matinee tickets. He’d let them know they were under higher security protocol. She knew what that meant. All three of the Arapahoe owners knew what that meant. It hadn’t been that long ago that they’d all lived under the protocol full-time.

Waiting while she bade the other man goodbye at the door, Elliott approached her before she had her purse off her shoulder.

“We need to talk.” His voice was always an octave below base. Came with his size. But even he heard the extra note of...displeasure in his quietly spoken words.

And wondered at it. She’d gone out, escorted, in the light of day. Yes, he should have known. If something had happened to her...

But, really, the infraction wasn’t so great as to raise his ire...

At a fast walk, Marie led him down the hall to her office, dropped her purse on her desk and shut the door behind him.

“What’s up?” Her cheeks, her lips, were pinched.

And he felt like a heel for upsetting her.

“You should have let me know you had tickets to the matinee.” He’d toned down the potentially threatening tone. Had a lot of practice doing so. His voice, as low as it was, had a tendency to scare people.

Something he’d learned while he was still in high school and had been called to the principal’s office for allegedly trying to intimidate a teacher—after which he’d learned to keep his mouth shut as often as possible.

“I didn’t have tickets to the matinee,” she said, frowning. Grabbing her purse, she moved it to the drawer at the bottom of her desk where she normally kept it, locking it in. She looped her apron over her head, giving it a yank when it got stuck on her ponytail. Dropped the desk keys into the pocket. She sat. And then stood. “Burton and I went for a short drive and shared an avocado sandwich.”

Freshly made that morning, he translated. By Marie. For sale at her shop with the rest of the organic lunch options on her limited menu.

“And before you say anything else, Eva wasn’t supposed to be alone. Sam was here. He just left because his mother called saying his son had a fever. They called me and I came straight back.”

She’d seen Burton for lunch. A change in their routine. Could indicate a change in the relationship from casual to more serious.

The tightening in Elliott’s stomach was as unexpected as it was uncomfortable. Emotion swirled within him. Negative emotion. Not warning signals. Not a sense of imminent danger.

He sat. And so did Marie.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d stick to the high-security protocol for at least a few more days,” he said.

She nodded. Looking straight at him, but for once the warm look in those big brown eyes was absent. Her gaze was almost vacant.

As if she was looking past him.

He’d grown accustomed to the compassionate openness she’d shown him since the first night they met.

“Have I done something to displease you?” he asked. Hoping that his tone of voice hadn’t put her off. He’d had no business being...

Jealous.

“No, of course not.” she said, appearing to focus on him now. “If anything I was beginning to think I’d scared you away,” she said with that unique openness of hers.

Such an incongruent woman, she was. Open and sharing and giving everything of herself. And trusting no man with her heart. No wonder her mother worried about her.

She was the type of woman people took advantage of.

“I don’t scare,” he said. “But just for full disclosure, what do you think you’d done that I’d find distasteful?”

He’d eased down in his seat and rested an ankle over his knee. And she still had to look up to meet him eye-to-eye.

“All that nonsense about thinking Liam would be unfaithful to Gabi. And giving you my disastrous love life history...”

He’d already known about the ex-boyfriends. Marie’s past relationships had fed Barbara’s own fears about her bighearted daughter following in her footsteps. Her “disastrous” love life, as she’d just described, was a big part of the reason Barbara had felt compelled to hire a private investigator bodyguard when Marie called to say that she was investing her savings to go into business with Liam Connelly and, with Gabrielle, purchase the historic Arapahoe.

“How could I possibly think less of you for caring about your friends? Or for the fact that the men in your life have treated you shabbily? If anything, I was impressed by the way you handled the Jimmy Jones situation.”