Once Upon A Friendship
“Have you had a chance to talk to Liam?” she leaned in to ask in Marie’s ear as she passed her friend standing with a couple who ran a print shop down the street.
“Not a word,” Marie told her, and then said, “Put that pot down, Gabi. This is your party, too.”
Nodding, Gabi continued on through the room, filling cups and accepting well-wishes as she made her way back to the counter to dispose of the pot. Two hours and fifteen minutes had passed since her lunch hour. She needed to get upstairs and could probably say a quick word to Marie and slip out without many noticing...
“I need to talk to you before you leave.” Liam was suddenly there, standing beside her, a smile on his face for the room to see, but a seriousness in his gaze. Her being shifted, accepting the weight that settled upon her shoulders at his words.
Nodding, she stepped toward the hallway leading to the back of the store.
Liam grabbed her arm, letting go as soon as she stopped. “To both of you.”
His tone didn’t sound ominous. Fear filled her heart anyway. But before she could question him any further, he’d rejoined the throng. She was going to have to wait.
* * *
“I’D LIKE TO RENT 321 and 324 and knock out the wall in between them,” Liam said as soon as Marie walked into the small office in the back of the coffee shop and shut the door. Gabi, who’d been sitting at Marie’s desk for close to an hour, working from the briefcase she’d brought in from her car, watched him, as though waiting for him to say more.
He’d given her all he had. A carefully rehearsed all-he-had. He wasn’t going to worry them.
Bottom line: no worry for them.
Or from them.
Whatever. No worry in the girl department. He was going to be fine.
“It’s your building, too,” Marie said. She was standing next to him. Closest to him. So why was it Gabi’s stare that he felt cutting into him? “We’ve got the biggest apartment in the place. You’re certainly entitled to two smaller ones,” she added.
“What’s up?” Gabrielle’s question tacked on to the end of Marie’s comment.
“You want to use it as an office for your writing?” Marie asked.
Made sense. Or would have, if he’d still been the person he’d been when they’d purchased the building that morning.
“Since your dad’s so anal about you not spending any time writing in your real office, and the desk in your condo isn’t going to hold many more of those research files.”
He could say yes. Leave it at that. For now. Until he gave his dad time to cool down. To come to his senses...
“No.” Liam hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud until he heard his voice crack out into the room. “No,” he said again. “I want to live here.”
Other than the nine months he’d spent in the dorm his freshman year of college, he’d never even lived in a building without a doorman.
“Live here?” Both women spoke at once.
“With association fees, my living expenses at the condo are more than rent and utilities will be here.” He’d studied the spreadsheets.
“Especially since, as owners, we aren’t paying rent,” Gabi said dryly. Her frown bothered him far more than the words. She was always on to him first.
“I cannot spend the rest of my life living under my father’s thumb in a building he owns and relying only on him for my livelihood.” They’d heard the part about the livelihood before. More than once. “If I’m going to be the man I claim to be, I have to do more than just talk.”
After sharing a long look with Gabrielle, Marie caught up. “What’s going on?”
“He kicked you out, didn’t he? For buying this place. He took away your condo.” Elbows on the desk, Gabrielle didn’t move. He felt as though she’d punched him.
“He thinks he can take away your home, like he took away your car freshman year? Who does that?” Marie asked, a horrified expression on her face. “That’s ludicrous.”
Her horror made his stomach crawl. As though he was far worse off than he’d allowed himself to believe. And they didn’t even know the half of it.
“Liam?” Gabrielle had him with just one word. But he couldn’t lean on her. Not this time. He didn’t have to prove to himself that he was a man. He knew the hell he’d been through with his father, how hard it had been to bite his tongue and offer the old man the respect he’d deserved. He knew of the responsibilities he’d carried at Connelly Investments—all with successful results.
But seeing himself in Gabi’s eyes and then in Marie’s, right then, homeless and disowned, he saw what they’d seen, what he was afraid they still saw: that eighteen-year-old kid whose father had stripped him of his keys...
“My father has agreed to leave me completely alone,” he said. “I am choosing to move here. I am tired of having people look at me as the two of you are looking at me right now. Like my existence depends upon my father. Like ultimately my decisions rest with him.”
There was no moral obligation to tell them he’d been disinherited. Their investment, backed by the trust which his father couldn’t touch, was completely safe. If he was truly going to stand up and take control of his life, he had to do this on his own. A part of Liam eased at the thought. Leaning on no one meant that no one could yank the rug out from under his feet. The loss of a job, of a fancy home, were worth that freedom.
He was going to be someone people leaned on. Starting with Gabi and Marie.
“I’ll pay for the renovations,” he told them. For instance, he wasn’t going to need two kitchens. The idea was growing on him. He’d make one kitchen an office. Or maybe one of the four bedrooms should be used for that purpose. Truth was, he had no idea what he was going to do with the space. He just knew he wanted it.
More and more with every minute that passed.
He didn’t feel quite as desperate anymore.
“And another thing,” he added, nodding as he looked first at one and then the other. “I’ve decided to give myself one year to make it as a writer. I’m going to devote myself to full-time writing. And if, at the end of the year, I’m not self-supporting, I’ll go back into finance.”
“Your father agreed to that?” Marie’s shock was evident. Liam looked at Gabrielle. Expecting—he didn’t know what. Doubt, maybe? Concern, certainly. She always saw the risks.
And saw through him, too.
She was staring at him, and for once he couldn’t tell at all what she was thinking.
“You don’t think I can do it.” Why he said the words, he didn’t know. Didn’t much matter what she thought. His life was unfolding before him, one wilted petal at a time.
“When are you moving in?” she asked.
“Tomorrow.”
She nodded. And he figured she knew his father had disowned him.
“If you need any help unpacking, I’ll be home after four.”
Chin jutting, hands in his pockets, he nodded.
“Tomorrow? Before the renovations?” Marie asked.
“We signed the papers today because it’s the end of the month and that worked out best financially,” Gabrielle said before Liam could think of a believable explanation. “Liam’s expenses run month to month as well, I’m sure.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Not that I paid rent, of course, but the association fee will come due tomorrow...” The twelve hundred a month he paid for his share of the doorman and upkeep of the communal facilities.
Marie looked at them for a minute. And then she nodded, too. Something was going on. They all knew it. And somehow had just agreed to leave it alone.
They talked a couple more minutes. Marie offered to make dinner for the three of them the next night, since Liam would be busy getting settled. And then she was called out to help with a rush up front and was gone.
“Are you okay?” Gabi didn’t move from her seat at the desk. So why did he feel as though she’d hugged him—and like the feeling? Was he really that pathetic? That he needed a hug because his daddy was mad at him?
“I am okay.” Surprisingly, he was. “It’s past time, my doing this.”
She studied him a long minute longer. “Okay, then,” she said, glancing back down at her papers. Not dismissing him. Just going on with life as though everything was normal.
So he turned to go. Because it was what he would have done the day before. The week before. The year before.
“Liam?”
Hearing his name, he turned back. Looked at her.
“Good to have you in the partnership,” she said. Her gaze, her voice, was completely calm. Serious. And filled with something else, too. Something new. Something he needed. And something they were never going to talk about.
“Good to be here.”
He smiled. So did she.
And his new life had begun.
CHAPTER FOUR
GABRIELLE HOPED THAT Liam would talk to her about his father. After so many years of being half of his sounding board, she was concerned about his silence on a move so bold. Which was why she’d left work early the day after Threefold’s big purchase to help him move in. And why she’d decided to stay and help him unpack after Marie left to take the dinner leftovers to Alice in 409, who’d had knee replacement surgery.
He didn’t mention his father at all.
She found reasons to run into him every day that first week of his residency in their building—an easy enough feat, considering that they’d just gone into business partnership and there were a lot of decisions to make, regarding the order of tasks the old building needed them to complete.
All three of them agreed that the elevator was priority one. They wanted its historical value preserved but needed it to be dependable and safe. Liam knew which historic renovation company to hire and even obtained a quote at 40 percent off the going rate.
A day passed, then six, and still he hadn’t mentioned his father.
He’d written a couple of human interest stories, though. One regarding an incident that had happened that week outside a yoga studio close to their building, a near abduction. He’d heard the call on a new scanner he’d purchased, had been on the scene and had sold his story all within a matter of hours.
“I made a whole fifty dollars,” he’d told Gabi when she stopped up to see him after work the Monday following his move. He was brimming with something she’d never seen in him before.
Pride, maybe? Not that he’d ever been lacking in that department. But...this was different.
He wasn’t the same old Liam he’d always been. She loved the old Liam. He was family to her.
And yet, the difference was... Well, she didn’t know.
“I’ve been watching the site,” she told him, standing there in the arch between his kitchen and dining table, leaning on the wall. “Marie sent me the link. Your article’s the headliner.”
“Yeah, it’s had thousands of hits. But when it’s a hundred thousand I’ll get excited,” he told her. His grin was different, too. It made her stomach jump.
Shaking her head, Gabi asked him about the editor of the independent news site who’d published him, June Fryburg—a local woman he’d sold travel stories to in the past. She wasn’t making millions, but she was making a living. And she believed that if Liam turned his focus to human interest, with his ability to see inside the story to the honest emotions that made everything come alive, he could be the one who took her to the big leagues.
Gabrielle wanted to ask what was going on with his father. But she didn’t.
And he didn’t say. He’d never not said before.
Maybe that was why she didn’t just ask. She’d been awake in the middle of the night two nights that week—concerned about Liam. And glad that he was living upstairs.
It wasn’t until that Wednesday, when Marie called her at the office to tell her that someone from the FBI had just been in the coffee shop and asked to see Liam, that Gabrielle’s reticence ended. Finishing up with her last client—a divorced woman with three children who needed help with child custody enforcement—Gabi packed up for the day, slung her bulging soft-sided briefcase over her shoulder and locked her office door.
She didn’t stop to say goodbye to anyone and sped home as fast as Denver traffic allowed. She wanted to get to Liam before the agents left. To invoke his right to counsel, just in case. Liam tended to think that everything was going to be fine. He didn’t always take things as seriously as Gabrielle knew he should.
And...he was hers. Hers and Marie’s. They looked out for him whenever he was around. And now that they had him full-time again—for the first time in more than a decade—she felt...extra responsible. At least until he settled in.
Clearly his father hadn’t been pleased by the Arapahoe deal. That, mixed with Liam suddenly moving and not talking about the old man for the first time ever...
Once home, she opted not to wait for the as yet unfixed and very slow elevator in their building and took the stairs to Liam’s.
She knew she’d done the right thing—barging in on him uninvited like this—when Liam opened the door to her knock. He was white with shock and let her in without saying a word—not even asking how she’d known to be there. Heart thudding, she followed him to the living room, where a man and a woman, both dressed in dark pants with matching suit coats, sat on opposite ends of the sofa.
Liam introduced her by name. She added, “I’m an attorney.”
The female agent, introducing herself as Gwen Menard, and her associate as Mark Howard, showed her badge and looked at Liam. “You called your attorney?”
“No, he didn’t call me,” Gabrielle said before Liam could respond. “A...friend of ours...let me know you were here.”
The agents looked at each other. Shared a frown. And she realized, too late, that her sudden invasion made Liam look guilty.
“Gabi’s a friend of mine from college,” Liam said. “She and Marie—the woman you met in the coffee shop—live in the building. They’ve appointed themselves my guardian angels.” He shrugged, looking handsome, all male and as though having unsolicited attention from pretty women was all in a day’s living for him.
He stood with his back to the window, the sunlight behind him casting shadows on his face. A face other women fell for. In droves.
He had his hands in his pockets.
Something she’d long ago noticed he did when he was unsure of himself.
“So what’s going on?” She stepped forward and took a seat in the armchair opposite the agents, inviting herself into their gathering whether they wanted her there or not.
They looked at Liam. He looked back.
“You want her to stay, Mr. Connelly?”
She held her breath.
“Of course.”
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. Did he want her there because he knew something she didn’t and thought he might need her? Professionally?
Or was this just him sharing his private business with her again?
Years before, Liam had made some stupid, rebellious mistakes, but nothing even close to breaking the law. He was a man of integrity.
Gwen Menard had Gabrielle’s full attention when she started to speak.
“What can you tell us, Mr. Connelly, about the Grayson deal?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you know about it?” Agent Mark Howard addressed Liam with narrowed eyes.
“Nothing.”
“Is Liam in trouble?” Gabrielle had to ask.
“No,” Agent Menard said, directing a serious look at Gabrielle before returning her attention to Liam. “At least at this point we have no reason to believe he is.”
“Obstruction of justice is a crime,” Howard said, his gaze never leaving Liam. Probably watching for a reaction to his not so veiled threat. Gabrielle could have told him he was wasting his time, not only because she believed Liam wouldn’t have committed a crime, but because she’d never met anyone with as much skill at hiding his reaction to threats.
Liam had had a lifetime of practice. “He’s right, Liam,” she said, just in case he didn’t know that this threat was not empty. “If you know something about this Grayson deal, and it turns out to be illegal, and you didn’t say anything, you could be brought up on charges.”
He nodded, pulling his hands out of his pockets to cross his arms. Not in self-protection, but in a way that showed a confidence that was all Liam. “The Grayson deal is the Indian land,” he told her.
“I thought that sold to Senator Billingsley.”
“It did.”
Menard and Howard were looking at them intently.
Liam had been out of college by the time his father had gotten all of the agreements and changes he’d needed and actually purchased the land that bordered the Indian reservation. He’d been on the top floor when his father sold the completed development.
A sale that had never made sense to her. The elder Connelly had wanted that land, to develop it, seemingly forever. He’d finally gotten the tribe to sign an agreement allowing the development, created the successful upscale shopping, eating and housing community he’d envisioned, and then had promptly sold it.
“Did you have anything to do with the sale?”
“Are you kidding?” Liam asked. “Grayson was my father’s dream. No way would he entrust that to me.”
Walter Connelly was not only a controlling jerk, in Gabrielle’s opinion, but he was also plain stupid where his only offspring was concerned. Liam might appreciate beautiful women a bit too much for Gabrielle’s taste, and was prone to wanting expensive things, but he was 100 percent trustworthy. She’d bet her life on that fact. He also had a good business head on his shoulders.
“What about in your Connelly files?” Menard asked.
“I am not in possession of a single file that is the property of Connelly Investments.”
Gabrielle practically gave herself whiplash as her gaze shot to Liam. What? No files? That didn’t make sense.
“Access to them, then,” Howard said.
When Liam turned, giving her only a side view of him, as though he was shutting her out, Gabrielle’s stomach clenched.
“I already told you,” Liam was telling the agents, “I no longer have access to anything pertaining to Connelly Investments. My father took my key card, emptied my office and wrote me out of his will.”
The air was cold on her face.
His father had completely cut him off? She’d known something was wrong, that Walter Connelly was acting out another threat of some kind, but surely even in the worst case scenario, the man wouldn’t cut Liam out of his will.
She’d always believed, as Liam had said, that deep down his father not only loved him but needed him. Other than Liam, the old man was alone in the world.
“Just before Ms. Miller interrupted, you were about to tell us why your father just happened to disown you a week before the FBI served his office with a search warrant.”
Oh. No. This was bad.
“I think I can tell you why,” Gabrielle blurted, afraid that they’d twist whatever Liam might say. “Walter Connelly has been controlling Liam for his entire life. He gives him the world so that he can then take it away if he does anything he doesn’t like...”
Menard’s gaze softened as she looked at Liam. “Is this true?”
He shrugged. Grinned. “Pretty much.” And then he added, “Last week I really pissed him off.”
“I have been privy to the private details of Liam’s dealings with his father for more than a decade,” Gabrielle said, needing these two powerful people to understand that Liam was not one of their suspects. “He insisted that Liam work in the family business and then kept him doing menial jobs. He promoted him to the top floor so that he had the status to appear at social functions as a Connelly, but paid him less than middle department managers. Liam has degrees in journalism and finance, and wanted to seriously pursue his writing. Mr. Connelly sent a piece Liam had done to a friend of his in the business and gave it back completely slashed up. He told Liam that it was time he faced the truth and grew up. That’s when he moved him to the top floor.”
“It’s okay, Gabi.” Liam’s smile was turned on her. And she was so shocked she fell silent. He must have meant that look for Gwen Menard. Liam never, ever gave her or Marie that look. He smiled at them, of course. Laughed at them, or with them, mostly. But that warm look, the way-a-man-looks-at-a-woman look—never. “I didn’t take the editor’s criticisms to heart. I knew he’d probably paid the guy to fill my article with red ink. And I didn’t stop writing.”
He turned to the agents. “I have a couple of mother hens who look out for me.”
“He took away Liam’s car our freshman year of college just because Liam wanted to live in a dorm, forcing him to take a bus from Boulder to Denver five nights a week to work, and then demoted him from mail room clerk to night janitor.” Gabrielle wanted these people to know that Liam’s father was over-the-top mean.
To the point of abusive.
“One Christmas, when Liam wanted to have dinner here with Marie and me, Walter forbade it. He gave Liam ten thousand dollars’ worth of gifts that year, and then when Liam came to dinner anyway, he took every one of them back. He was also the only Connelly employee that year who didn’t receive a bonus.”
“It was an expensive dinner,” Liam said with a smile. “But worth every bite.”
Liam might not want others to know about his father’s tactics. She understood that he was embarrassed, even humiliated. But these were federal officials. They hadn’t just come around to chat. “Anyway, Liam went into partnership with Marie and me—you can check us out, Threefold, we formed an LLC—to buy this building. We closed last week. Liam didn’t tell his father about the deal, but Mr. Connelly found out just before we closed. He confronted Liam. Liam closed on the deal anyway...”
She might not have Liam’s testimony or proof of the exact facts, but the truth was clear to anyone who’d been Liam Connelly’s friend during the twelve years he’d been on the road to being his own man while still tending to familial responsibility.
Menard turned to Liam, her big brown eyes softening even more. “So you’re saying that your father disowned you for purchasing this building?”
“I believe his exact words were, ‘We cannot be a team, you and I. I can no longer trust you.’”
Gabrielle’s breath caught in her throat.
“He can no longer trust you?” Agent Howard’s investigative manner wasn’t softening at all. “For buying an old building?”
“For using money he and my late mother put in a trust for me without telling him. He claims that I was duplicitous in that I deliberately hid from him an investment of ‘family’ money.”
“This guy sounds like a real...” Gwen Menard stopped herself.
But the agents had a few pieces of information to impart before they left.
The FBI was seeking charges against Walter Connelly, for running a Ponzi scheme and money laundering. They were accusing him of defrauding clients out of millions of dollars. He’d taken their money, telling them he was investing it in the Grayson Communities, after he’d already sold the development. He’d used a small portion of that new money to purchase land that he’d billed as phase two of Grayson but that had, in fact, been swampland. He’d continued to take investments and then used the newer monies gained to pay dividends to earlier investors. The rest of the money had been deposited into legitimate businesses but then spent to buy things that did not exist anywhere except on paper. In reality the money had been given back to Walter, who could spend it at will without any way for it to be traced.
Any Connelly assets that were part of the investigation had been frozen.
Walter Connelly was under arrest.
CHAPTER FIVE
LIAM WASN’T GOING to panic.
“If I’m somehow going to be implicated, I’m going to cooperate fully,” he said to Gabi, who was sitting in the passenger seat of his BMW an hour and a half after she’d burst into his apartment. They were on their way to FBI headquarters, where his father was being held for questioning before being booked into a city holding cell.