Once Upon A Friendship
This was why he could never even think about getting involved with either one of them. He’d rather die than be the cause of that look on Marie’s face.
And then it occurred to him. “You know this isn’t about you, right?”
Marie and Gabrielle exchanged a glance. One of those glances. The ones that left him out in the cold.
“You’re gorgeous, Marie. That blond hair and brown eyes...”
“I’m too short.”
She was shorter than Gabrielle, who was long and leggy, but— “You are definitely not too short.”
“It’s not about her looks,” Gabrielle interrupted, with a sound resembling a snort. She was gorgeous, too. Not an obvious showstopper like Marie. But more in line with the kind of girl he went for. He was more of a leg man.
“What is it with men?” Marie’s derisive tone wasn’t directed at him, but he sure felt as if it was. And took the brunt of her watery brown-eyed glare for all men. “Why can’t they be trustworthy?”
“They can be.” Of that he was sure. Which was why his father’s actions earlier that day had upset him so much.
“I sure didn’t see that tonight. Nor a good part of the time I was growing up...”
Her father, who’d been unfaithful to her mother in the past and who’d only a few years earlier been brought back into the family fold, had been with another woman at their cabin in northern Arizona that summer. The girls had been the ones to discover him there. From what Gabrielle had told him, Marie had taken it pretty hard.
“And Brad, freshman year.” A guy Gabi had dated who’d broken up with her when she wouldn’t sleep with him.
“Jimmy Jones.” A cowboy the girls had met when they’d gone to a rodeo the year before. He’d played one for the other and gotten caught in the middle. For a day or two there, Liam had sweated that the jerk might break up a friendship he’d considered unbreakable. But the girls had surprised him—seeing through Jimmy and giving him a taste of his own medicine. Poor guy hadn’t seen what was coming...
“Don’t forget Mark,” Marie said. She’d dated him the beginning of sophomore year. Until she’d found out that he had a fiancée at home in Phoenix.
“All right, already,” Liam said, holding up a hand in surrender.
“It’s like guys’ drive for sex is stronger than their hearts. Or their morals,” Marie added.
“It’s a driving force,” Liam allowed, feeling only a little uncomfortable in his beanbag seat beneath the girls. They were family. Talked about anything. Everything. “The desire to have sex with women is always there,” he continued, knowing that the one thing he could give his friends was an honesty they probably wouldn’t get anywhere else. “It doesn’t matter how much you’re in love with a girl—you can’t help reacting when you see a beautiful woman. You’re right about that. But being attracted and acting on that feeling are two entirely different things.”
“So when you were going with Karen last year, you were still attracted to other women?”
“Of course!” His honesty was going to help Marie see that this had nothing to do with her. Needing to do what he could to erase the hurt from her eyes, he continued. “Karen had this woman who groomed her dog. I don’t know what it was about her, but she did it to me every time. I just had to see someone that reminded me of her and...”
“Did you ever come on to her?”
“No.” It would have been indecent and, having grown up in a superficial world, Liam put his highest value on authenticity. As his father had taught him by example. And that wasn’t what this conversation was about. He was trying to save Marie from self-flagellation. “But that didn’t mean I didn’t want to. Or that I didn’t think about it. Or try to find her when Karen and I broke up. She’d moved.” And he’d moved on.
Marie’s med student was a schmuck. But since there was no chance that they would still have a relationship, there was no reason to belabor that point.
“Did Karen know?” Gabi’s question was softly spoken.
“Of course not.” He was authentic—not stupid. “I didn’t tell her when I thought the dress she had on made her look heavier than she was, either,” he said, to prove his point. “Nor did I admit it when she asked me if I saw the cellulite on her thigh.” He’d grabbed her up in a hug instead, telling her that she was beautiful and she needed to quit worrying so much. He’d distracted her with a kiss.
And he’d noticed that cellulite every time he saw her after that. But only because she’d made such a big deal about it. Not because it changed—in any way—how he felt about her.
“So, like I said, guys are jerks,” Marie said. But she was kind of smiling and didn’t look as though she was going to break any minute.
“I wouldn’t go that far.” Liam had to defend his sex. “Some take longer to mature than others.” He was grinning, too. And then sobered. “I think there are men who, for whatever reason, just like women. In the plural,” he told her with complete honesty.
“Like you.”
“Maybe. And maybe I’m just immature. But whichever, at least I’m accountable enough to know not to promise forever. And if I’m in a monogamous relationship, it stays that way until I’m out.”
“You don’t think you’ll ever marry?”
“Not unless something changes inside of me. Right now...” He shrugged. “I figure I’m just not the marrying kind.”
They’d passed through the bullet hole, on to the other side. Again.
The three of them chatted for another half hour. Gabrielle cajoled Marie and Liam into volunteering with her that next weekend, bagging donated food to hand out to homeless people. They talked about meeting up for pizza on Sunday. And then, with a shudder at the thought of graduating from college and the three of them going off their separate ways, Liam reminded himself not to borrow trouble and went home to bed.
CHAPTER ONE
Present day
IT WAS REALLY going to happen.
Standing at the window of the bank, her back to the seats where Liam and Marie were sipping cheap coffee from takeout cups, public lawyer Gabrielle Miller gazed out at the snow-covered Denver sidewalks and focused on breathing. Not too deep. She didn’t want to hyperventilate. But passing out from lack of oxygen wouldn’t serve her well, either.
You’d think with five years of professional practice under her belt, and having personally vetted the contract they were all about to sign, she would be calm about the day’s events. It wasn’t as if they were buying a home that they were going to be moving into. No, they were simply transferring into their names the ownership of the historic Arapahoe—the old apartment building she and Marie had been living in and that Liam had been visiting as regularly as he’d visited their dorm rooms in college eight years ago. She and Marie were still going to be sharing the roomy three-bedroom unit that comprised part of the second floor of the eight-floor building in historic Denver. Marie’s coffee shop, a thriving business, was still going to encompass the entire bottom floor.
Liam would now be an official part of them, part of the family, instead of just an honorary member.
Gabi’s portion of the down payment hadn’t been a problem. She’d worked nearly full-time all four years of college in preparation for the law school loans that would eventually come due in her future. She’d continued to add to that account by working for Marie when she could during three years of law school, and when her loans had been paid off by the state as part of her employment agreement, she’d been able to slowly grow her savings.
Three-quarters of it was going into this deal.
But all but two of the thirty-eight apartments were rented on long-term leases that were transferring to them as the new owners, the majority of them held by residents who’d been in the building fifty years or more. They had guaranteed rent money coming. Most of them government checks.
Until the friends had made an offer on the place, most of the elderly residents had been trying desperately to find new homes. A few already had. The current owner’s rent increase, coming in a matter of weeks, would have put most of the elderly occupants out on the streets or into government-subsidized nursing homes. Fixed incomes could only be stretched so far.
Those who could afford to move had done so.
Most of those left had been in tears when Threefold had held a meeting with the residents to officially announce that they would soon be making rent checks out to them instead. In the same amount they’d been paying—not the new increased price.
Threefold. The name she and Liam and Marie had chosen for the LLC they’d formed to purchase the somewhat decrepit building and manage it, too.
Marie had come up with the name.
Neither she nor Liam had argued.
Gabrielle felt someone come up beside her, but she didn’t turn to look. Marie generally didn’t let anyone sulk for long.
“You having second thoughts?” Liam’s voice surprised her. He’d been over for dinner the night before—at least a biweekly ritual for the past nine years. When he was in town. And not in a relationship. Not that he didn’t come when he was in one. Just not as frequently.
The night before, the three of them had gone over all of the paperwork together. One more time.
“No. You?”
His tone was too distant. Impersonal. Something was wrong. She’d known the second he’d come toward them in the bank parking lot.
Maybe that was when she’d started to panic.
And now he was seeking her out alone. That only happened when he was in need of analytical thinking without the emotional twist.
Liam might prefer to be a freelance journalist rather than a financier, and he might even be better at it if the current success rate of his stories was anything to go by, but business was in his blood. And first on his college degree, too, with journalism as a minor. Business, working for his father at Connelly Investments, provided his substantial paycheck.
“No second thoughts at all.” Amazed at the instant calm that came over her at the words, she turned to look at him.
“You sure? Because I can’t afford to make a mistake here, Liam. If our figures are out of line, if you think there’s real risk here, I just can’t afford to take it. I mean, we’re looking at almost a solid year with no real income from rent. The elevator fix alone is going to eat up the first two months and...”
His smile made her smile. And she heard what she was doing.
“We’re going to be fine.” He reminded her of the extra money that was being rolled into their loan to keep in an account for unforeseen maintenance. Of the monies she and Marie would be saving in rent that would offset the building’s common utility costs. Of the down payment monies they’d all three contributed, which were keeping her third of the Arapahoe’s monthly mortgage payments within her means...
He was right about all of it.
And... “Something’s bothering you.” Were his suit and tie for the benefit of the real estate closing they were all about to attend? Or had he been at Connelly Investments that day? As his father’s patsy, he had a nice office on the top floor of the corporate office building. And put in a minimum of forty hours a week. But a lot of that time was spent at dinners and functions that bored him. Or at his personal computer on the desk in his home office in the fancy high-rise condominium that was his as part of his employee benefits. He analyzed. He reported. He made innocuous decisions. His father wouldn’t let him make any of the major ones.
“My father found out about the deal,” he said now.
“I thought you told him.” They’d specifically discussed the matter—he and she and Marie. They’d stressed to Liam the importance of keeping his father informed. The old man had the power to make Liam’s life miserable if he chose to do so.
And, in retrospect, theirs, too.
Taking Liam on as a partner meant taking on the unhealthy and rocky relationship he had with his old man.
Rocking back and forth in his expensive leather shoes, Liam shoved his hands into the pockets of his gray pants and looked down. “I intended to. Right after the papers were signed.”
She wanted to ask who’d spilled the beans to the elder Connelly, but the who didn’t matter. Nor, really, did the why. When you lived in circles where money was the most important factor, people stabbed friends and family if it meant they had a chance to climb even half a step.
Which was part of the reason, she knew, that Liam had adopted her and Marie as his family all those years ago. Because they weren’t part of that circle.
And didn’t want to be.
“So what’d he say?”
Liam’s shrug didn’t tell her enough.
“He didn’t forbid it?” Which was what she and Marie had expected.
“He can’t.” Liam’s jaw was firm, his gaze hard as he looked straight at her. “I’m using money earned from my writing, you know that.”
Only for the down payment.
“You’re living off your Connelly salary and living in a Connelly building.”
Best that the deal fall through now. Before any of them were financially ruined.
But...not really.
Because if they didn’t sign those papers today, more than fifty elderly people were going to be booted from their homes. Many of them had raised their families in that building and still had penciled lines on the walls in the kitchens marking the growth of their offspring through the years.
Matilda Schwann had color-coded hers...
“If your father doesn’t support you on this, you won’t have the money to pay your third of the mortgage.”
They weren’t college kids anymore. He couldn’t sign this deal and then capitulate.
Not that Liam would choose to leave elderly folks homeless. He’d give them the shirt off his back.
But Liam had never lived in the real world. His life, while not easy, had certainly been privileged.
“I have trust money that has been set up legally to pay my portion of the mortgage. I wanted to make certain that you both were covered if something ever happened to me...”
And she knew...
“That’s how he found out, isn’t it? Someone told him when you accessed your trust.” But the money was his to do with as he pleased.
“I can only assume that George told him, though he swore to me that he wouldn’t.”
“Did you pay him, as your attorney, to handle the transaction for you?”
She was an attorney. And while she chose to work at a local legal services organization, making a pittance compared to what she could be making in average attorney fees in the private sector, Liam had always seemed to trust her abilities as much as he did those of the millionaire lawyer who’d worked for his family most of his life.
But she’d consider it a conflict of interest to represent him on this deal, as she was one of the involved parties.
“Of course I paid him. Separately and apart from Connelly Investments.”
“Then legally and ethically he’s in violation if he said anything.”
And a pertinent piece of paper could have fallen on the floor at Liam’s father’s feet when the elder Connelly was in the office of his head legal counsel. She knew how the world worked.
“You should have hired someone outside the Connelly circle,” she said now, though she knew the words didn’t help anything. She was trying to think. To determine their next move.
Did they sign the papers? Or not?
“I trust George with my life. Or I did until today.”
Hadn’t he once said something similar about his father’s feelings for George? Liam couldn’t be blamed for believing the man would uphold his word. And maybe he had. They were only assuming George had been the leak. So often when something was amiss the obvious culprit was not at fault. At least in her experience. None of which was helping the current situation.
“So what did your father say? Is he going to be difficult?” The building was not going to be a money-maker. It was more in line of a community project that was hopefully not going to cost them anything out of pocket in the long run. And, best-case scenario, it would make them a few dollars apiece a year or two down the road.
It was also doubling as a home for Marie and Gabrielle. Marie’s coffee shop would be paying them rent under the contract they were assuming from the current owner. Its success had provided her portion of the Arapahoe down payment.
“No, he’s not going to be difficult.” Liam stared out the window and Gabrielle thought about the cup of coffee she’d turned down when the three of them had arrived. She didn’t need the caffeine. But now she wanted the warmth.
“I have his word that he will not, in any way, interfere with, hamper or attempt to destroy Threefold or its holdings.”
She stared at him. Then this was good, right? So why that mixed expression of lost boy and grim defender on his face?
Until he caught her looking. Then he smiled. Gave her a soft fist to the shoulder of her blue suit jacket and said, “Let’s go buy a building, partner.”
Wishing, inanely, that she could hold his hand, Gabrielle followed Liam back to Marie.
They were her family. More so than the mother and two college-dropout brothers who’d moved down south a couple of years before and depended on her for financial help more months than not. Help she could give them, even on her salary, because she was good at what she did. She had already made enough of a name for herself to be able to pick up extra work, privately, when she had to. And her own living expenses were small since she still lived with Marie in the apartment they’d rented straight out of college.
But her financial obligation was about to change.
She was going to be a business owner.
She, the girl who’d had to wear thrift-store clothes and shoes for the first eighteen years of her life, was about to become partners with one of the richest bachelors in Denver.
Funny how life had a way of sounding like so much more than it was.
CHAPTER TWO
LIAM MADE IT through the signing of the papers. He paid attention. Read and reread the forms he’d already vetted. After Gabrielle had vetted them. The deal was sound.
He’d planned to take his new partners out to lunch at the Capitol Grille—a place in historic Latimer Square where Denver’s elite and powerful movers and shakers were known to dine—but knew he wouldn’t be able to maintain the calm facade long enough for lunch to be served.
Instead, he gave them both a big hug. Thanked them for taking him on. Promised that their future together would be even better than their past, and told them he’d see them at the Arapahoe in an hour or so.
Gabi was working from home that afternoon, and Marie would be returning to the coffee shop.
What they didn’t know was that with some help, he’d arranged a surprise party to celebrate this milestone that was the biggest in each of their lives, if maybe for different reasons. He wasn’t going to miss it.
But first, he had to get back to Connelly Investments. To find out what in the hell was going on and to take on the fight of his life with his old man. Walter Connelly had been ruling Liam by threats for as long as he could remember. Today was the day it stopped.
Today was the day he’d called his father’s bluff in the real world.
And now it was time to guide himself and the old man into the new regime. He’d have liked to feel better prepared.
He’d planned to schedule a meeting with his father after the Threefold papers had been signed. Walter would have been displeased, to say the least, but there would have been no opportunity for him to issue threats that he’d then have to follow through on. At least in part.
He’d planned to prevent the threat stage and talk like rational adults.
To have more solid plans, a clearer vision as to exactly what the new world would look like. He was going to be writing more. He knew that much. Covering stories that had some meat in them, not just being a glorified society-page freelancer while on Connelly-financed vacations. Writing about the world’s biggest catch didn’t interest him nearly as much at thirty as it had a few years ago.
Skating in behind another car that was entering the bar-coded private garage, so that he didn’t have to wait for the bar to lower and the scanner to read his windshield, Liam waved to the woman in front of him—someone from accounting—who turned in the direction opposite of the front spaces reserved for top-floor personnel.
Liam’s gut clenched when he pulled into his prime parking spot under Connelly Investments corporate offices. His nameplate—the one his father had gifted him for his college graduation—was no longer hanging on the wall. In its stead were two ditches in the cement, marking the nails that had just been pulled, and a rectangle of paint that was brighter than the rest of the wall.
Eight years. Had it been that long since he’d officially become a man? Taken up a life of full-time work? He wasn’t proud of that. It was a wonder Gabi and Marie wanted to go into business with him at all.
Slamming the door of his Lexus, he strode toward the top floor’s private, secured entry, listening for the horn to emit its half honk, letting him know that the car locked itself as the key fob in his pocket reached the required distance away from the vehicle.
That part of the garage was devoid of other human presence at four o’clock, leaving him too aware of the sound of his own leather soles stepping across the cold cement. So good old Dad had wasted no time in having his name stripped from his parking spot. The old man was trying to scare him. Just as he’d done freshman year.
Walter Connelly was, in his own twisted way, still making a man out of his son. And he was doing it one threat at a time.
So now what? He’d have him parking in a public lot that would require him to pay a monthly stipend and walk across the street to get to work? Putting him in his place, like when he’d had to ride the bus from Boulder to Denver to get to work?
Liam swiped his card with a bit more force than necessary to get into the building. But when he pulled on the door and it refused to open, he swiped it again calmly. Technology didn’t respond to brute force. And as of today, neither did he.
The click that sounded when his card gained him entrance...didn’t sound.
Liam tried half a dozen times before he finally realized that his father had had his key card stripped of its clearance.
Instead of worrying him into capitulation, the action only angered him more. And maybe it was meant to do so, if Walter was making him into a man.
Returning to his car, he backed up and sped out of the garage, around the corner, and pulled to a quick stop at a meter a block away from the front of the Connelly building. A walk in the frigid Denver air would do him good.
Clear his head.
He might have to replace the shoes on his feet if the snow and salt had a chance to sit on the leather and ruin it. It would be a small price to pay for his freedom from tyranny.
All he’d wanted to do was use his own funds to buy a lousy apartment building. He’d made a deal on his own, daring to rely on his own acumen without consulting the father first. For eight years he’d subjugated his own adult interests out of respect for the man. Out of admiration. His father was hard, yes, but hardworking, too. Successful. And honest.
Still, buying an apartment building with his own funds and his desire to write some news pieces about things that were notable to him while traveling were hardly deserving of stripping him of his parking space and easy access key.
He was still hot, in spite of the cold, by the time he pulled open the heavy bullet-proof glass front door on the Connelly building. If James, the doorman, tried to stop him, he was going to...
“Afternoon, Mr. Connelly,” the guard said, as though Liam entering the building through the public entrance was a regular occurrence.
“James.” Liam nodded his head. Hoped he appeared more civil than he felt, and avoided eye contact with any other employees as he made a beeline for the elevator.