Once Upon a Marriage by Tara Taylor Quinn

wanted to tell me that he won’t be able to accompany me to the theater anymore. He and Rebecca are getting season tickets together.”
    There. She’d told someone. She hadn’t even been able to keep a boring mama’s boy faithful to her.
    Not that she’d tried. She’d told Burton, quite emphatically, that she was not and was never going to be interested in a romantic relationship with him.
    â€œI’m happy for him,” she blurted next. Why didn’t he turn on the car? Get them home where she could take a hot bath and forget life’s little embarrassments?
    Or cry in a glass of wine?
    â€œThe timing kind of sucks, though,” she added when he just sat there.
    â€œWhy’s that?”
    He’d been listening to her. “You know, with Gabi and Liam all newlywed-like. At least I could count on Burton for a night out when I needed it.”
    She couldn’t believe how selfish that sounded. Out loud. What about what Burton needed?
    â€œI really am happy for him,” she said, feeling better for no reason whatsoever. As evidenced by the smile she sent Elliott’s way. She’d just needed to talk the whole thing through. Would have done so with Gabi by now if her friend were around more.
    â€œI think you really mean that.”
    â€œOf course I do. He’s a nice man. A good man. He deserves to be happy.”
    He’d probably be faithful, too.
    Marie kept that last thought to herself.
    Â 

CHAPTER FIVE
    L IAM ,  WHO ’ D   GRADUATED with a degree in finance and business administration, but a minor in journalism so he could pursue his first love—writing—had a full day at the Connelly Building on Thursday. Jeb Williams, his father’s bodyguard and also a financier on the top floor, had Liam’s back while he was in the building, but Elliott insisted on seeing the man to and from the downtown high-rise. Gabrielle first, then Liam. Reverse on the return. With time in between to watch the neighborhood around the Arapahoe. To talk to people. Get a report from the security guard checking residents in at the back door. Something was amiss. He just didn’t know what.
    So there’d been a blue car with a stolen plate that had left when he approached. Didn’t mean it had anything to do with Liam Connelly. Or was any threat to Marie.
    His gut was telling him not to walk away from this one. Not to let go.
    Because there was something he hadn’t seen yet? Something he’d missed?
    Or because he needed to believe there was still danger so he’d be forced to stay on this job?
    Liam waited inside the employees’ private parking garage entrance to the Connelly Building until Elliott pulled up in the SUV. Finally. He’d been telling his client to take his safety more seriously since news of his father’s duplicity—and the company’s criminal activities—first broke.
    â€œWilliams is going to be calling you,” the expensively suited man said as he settled casually into the seat. Before Elliott could ask why, his cell rang and Williams’s name popped up.
    â€œYou got Connelly there with you?” The man, whom Elliott had first visited during his initial investigation of Liam on behalf of Barbara Bustamante, didn’t introduce himself.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHas he told you about the reporters?”
    â€œNo.” He didn’t look at his charge.
    Pulling out of the darkened garage into bright sunshine, Elliott turned left, making another quick left to head toward the building that housed the public law offices where Gabrielle worked.
    â€œHe sent me an email while I was out. While he assured me he was going to be lunching in, after which I kept the business lunch I’d scheduled, he instead skipped out to a corner deli apparently to meet with his editor to go over last-minute edits to the May installment of the series he’s writing on his father’s life...”
    The