They’re a team…not a couple!

Falling for Liam was unthinkable. He and Gabi had been best friends since college, nothing more. And crucially, now Liam was her client and needed her to be focused on his case. Gabi could never risk their friendship—or Liam’s freedom—over these feelings. They could never be a couple, anyway. He was Liam Connelly, the handsome and privileged son of a billionaire. She was Gabrielle Miller, the girl who’d fought her way out of poverty and put herself through law school. They were unlikely friends to begin with. Anything more was impossible. Unless…he felt it, too.

She had no place to run.

She never had. She was who she was. A woman who cared deeply. Who was loyal to death. Who’d been in love with a man for more than ten years and had never let herself admit it.

The thought of Liam actually going to jail was almost more than she could bear. Living without his kisses was something she could endure. But a world without Liam at all?

Her reaction to the reality that had hit her at the FBI office the day before had finally opened her eyes to the truth.

She couldn’t stop herself from being in love with Liam Connelly.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to The Historic Arapahoe! And to my first original title in Mills & Boon Heartwarming series! I am very happy to be joining the Heartwarming family and look forward to many more stories of the heart to come.

And I’m still ttq all the way. Bringing you stories that are emotionally intense, psychological looks at life. An editor once said, a long time ago, that when you read ttq books, you live the life. My hope is that when you read my books, you get something to take with you in your life. Even if it’s just a smile. A renewed memory. The hope of happily-ever-after in the real world.

On the surface, Once Upon a Friendship was kind of ordinary when I started writing. Three friends who buy an old apartment building together to keep the senior citizens who live there from being kicked out onto the street. But in the first chapter a Ponzi scheme appeared. And one of the friends could be involved. His father is arrested. I wanted to stop it all from happening. After all, this was my sweet apartment-building book. But as I’ve come to accept over the years, the book wasn’t really mine. The story belongs to Liam and Gabi and Marie. And the things that happened to them are not mine to change.

They belong to you now.

All the best,

Once Upon a Friendship

Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The author of more than seventy novels, TARA TAYLOR QUINN is a USA TODAY bestselling author with over seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering emotional and psychologically astute novels of suspense and romance. Tara is the past president of Romance Writers of America and served eight years on that board of directors. She has appeared on national and local TV across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning, and is a frequent guest speaker. In her spare time Tara likes to travel and enjoys crafting and in-line skating. She is a supporter of the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you or someone you know might be a victim of domestic violence in the United States, please contact 1-800-799-7233.

For Rachel, whose life introduced me

to Boulder, Colorado. I thought of you,

of walking with you on campus,

as I wrote this book.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Copyright

PROLOGUE

Nine years ago

Junior year, University of Colorado, Boulder

WITH A WAD OF money in his pocket and a couple of beers in his system, business and journalism major Liam Connelly had to thank the old man for having taken away his every mode of personal transportation back in freshman year. While the deprivation had only lasted nine months—and had been lifted two years ago—he’d never have discovered the beauty of a long walk at night if he hadn’t been without a car. Walking took longer, but the cool Colorado spring air cleared his head.

Yeah, the old man had done him a huge favor back then when he’d come storming up to his dorm room, pissed because Liam had moved into the dorm instead of the upscale apartment, complete with doorman, that his father had chosen for him off campus. As Liam had suspected, he’d later had confirmation that his father had prepaid the doorman to keep an eye on Liam’s comings and goings and submit weekly written reports.

The brutal match of wills that had taken place two years before hadn’t been pretty. The old man had demanded—not kindly or softly, either—that Liam leave with him immediately. That night had been the first time Liam had openly stood his ground with his father. Face-to-face, instead of in the quietly rebellious ways he’d managed prior to that—such as deliberately answering questions wrong on his college entrance exams so that he didn’t score high enough to be shipped off to Harvard.

But that night in his dorm, he’d called the old man’s bluff. He’d lost motor vehicle privileges, including his BMW 3 Series sports car, all three boats and the Jet Skis, but the price had been a small one to pay.

But humiliating, when he’d found out that the two girls who lived in the room next door had heard every word of the ugly altercation.

That was the night he’d met Gabrielle Miller and Marie Bustamante.

Detouring from his path to the plush apartment he’d moved into at the beginning of his sophomore year—in a bargain with his father to get his car back—he headed toward an upperclassman dorm on the Boulder campus. This dorm was different from the one two years ago. The girls had moved twice since freshman year: at the beginning of sophomore year, and again at the beginning of their junior year. They’d been talking about getting an apartment for senior year. Gabrielle was leery of the extra cost. Marie, who was majoring in food and nutrition, wanted a place closer to the coffee shop where she’d been promoted to senior barista.

Didn’t matter to him one way or another as long as he knew where to find them.

He might be the only guy who visited a confessional before he slept off his sins, but he’d found that he woke up better that way. Besides, if more guys had a two-girl confessor instead of a priest, there’d probably be a whole lot more confessing.

He knocked. And waited. Past midnight on Saturday, they might be asleep. But they’d get up for him. Just as he’d done for them the time Gabrielle’s car had broken down when they’d gone to Denver for some Wednesday night charity thing to raise money for one of the kitchens or something she was always volunteering at.

And the time Marie’d been invited to a frat party and had had two guys trying to force her to spend the night there.

He’d called his father for the first issue. The old man had sent a tow truck for the car and a cab to take the girls to Gabrielle’s mother’s house. Liam had personally paid to have the car fixed so the girls could drive it back to Boulder.

The second one, the frat party that had gotten out of hand, he’d handled himself. With a fist, because the guys were too drunk to reason with, and then the next day, when they’d sobered, he’d issued threats. Neither Marie nor Gabrielle had been bothered by the frat boys since.

He knocked again, glanced at his watch and then tried to discern if light was coming from beneath the door. The sweep prevented such a tell. They could both be out. Marie had been dating a guy she’d met at the coffee shop. Some older dude in med school. And Gabrielle—she’d talked about going home to Denver for the weekend. One of her younger brothers played baseball for his high school team and had a tournament game. He’d thought she was leaving the next day. Saturday. Gabi didn’t really like spending the night at her mother’s place.

Not that Liam blamed her. The place had seen better days. And better neighbors. His BMW wasn’t safe parked out front...

Just as he was turning to leave, the door opened. Both girls stood there in flannel pants and baggy, thigh-length T-shirts, staring at him. Gabrielle’s short black hair was sticking up randomly—pillow hair, she called it. Marie’s hair was pulled back into her usual ponytail.

“You guys in bed already? It’s Saturday night.” Liam sauntered into the barely lit room, dropping down to the beanbag chair he’d left in their room freshman year when it had become obvious to him that they were going to be his keepers.

His conscience.

Hell, he might as well admit it—because he’d had two beers—they were his best friends.

The room wasn’t much different from the others the girls had shared throughout college—two beds, two built-in desks, wall cabinets for dressers, a closet and a small private bathroom. At least this john they didn’t have to share with suite mates who took exception to a guy using it.

“It’s one o’clock in the morning.” Gabrielle yawned, not bothering to turn on any more than the small lamp between the girl’s beds, which she’d probably switched on when he’d knocked. “What’s up?”

“Let me guess, hot girl of the week passed out on you?” Marie’s sarcasm was out of character, making him hesitate in his plan to spill all, as she plopped her perfectly shaped, not quite five-foot-two body cross-legged on her unmade bed.

Gabrielle curled her long legs on her desk chair, arms hooked on the back of it, resting her chin on top of her hands.

Guys he hung with ribbed him. Insinuating that something was wrong with him for not going for one or both of the girls. Everyone said the way they let him come and go made it pretty obvious that he could take things further with either one of them anytime. But he couldn’t. They were like...sisters to him. Ever since that first night in the dorm when they’d overheard his father coming at him so hard and had come to see if he was okay. He’d been annoyed at first. Knowing that they’d heard. And then secretly thankful to have them there.

He’d never had siblings. Never had anyone close enough to have his back where his father’s mental and emotional abuse were concerned—and had only begun to realize in the past few years that the old man was, in his own way, abusive. In a weak moment he’d bared his soul to the girls.

And then hadn’t been able to quit.

So...yeah...they had way too much on him.

And were about to have more.

“No one passed out on me,” he said now, in a hurry to get this done and get out, not discounting that there might have been a hot girl of the week.

He couldn’t help it that girls sought him out.

“I played cards tonight...”

“Liiiaammm.” That one drawn-out word was all Gabrielle said out loud. Her expression said the rest. Those silver-blue eyes of hers could be like pinpricks when she wanted them to be. He’d disappointed her.

The soft lamplight was not unkind to the gray-and-white commercial tile on their dorm room floor. Marie’s purple rugs still helped, though.

“You’re going to get yourself in trouble.” Marie was always the more vocal one. And the more fearful. “How much did you lose?” the blonde asked.

He swallowed. Thinking about beer. Wishing, for a brief second, that he was still on the stupid drinking binge he’d ridden freshman year. And hadn’t boarded since.

“You won, didn’t you?” Gabrielle’s tone was soft. He didn’t have to look in her direction to know that those coal-black eyebrows of hers would be drawn. And her lips would be pursed, too.

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

He thought about his answer. About what she’d think. She waited. They both stared at him.

Another flash of memory from that night two years before came to him. Gabrielle telling him that she’d been ready to write him off when, through the thin wall separating them, she’d heard him ask his father how he was going to get to work without a car. She’d thought he was buckling. Finding justification for doing so. A guy had to have a car to get to work.

The old man had told him to take the bus. All the way to Denver, though she hadn’t yet known that part.

“So I still have a job?” he’d asked. Not daunted by the more than an hour-long public commute each way.

According to Gabrielle, when he’d asked that question, instead of fighting about having to take the bus, he’d won her admiration and friendship.

“You’re my son. You will work in the family business and earn your keep.”

“Fine.”

His father had slammed out of his room, and five minutes later Gabrielle and Marie had knocked on his door. When he’d answered, they’d both just looked at him, as though they could see right into him.

Just like they were doing now.

“I won two thousand dollars,” he said. Which told them he hadn’t been playing with the college boys.

Marie’s hissed intake of breath, the worry shining in her eyes, were his penance. The reason he’d come to them...

He’d remember their disapproval the next time he was tempted to rebel against his father and do something stupid.

Gabrielle didn’t lift her chin from her hands as she asked, “You going to report it to the IRS?”

He hadn’t thought that far. “Yeah.” He played by the books.

“You know you’re going to get yourself in trouble if you keep this up.” Gabrielle again.

He did. Which was why he was in their dorm room instead of home in bed. Why, every time, in his quest for freedom from manipulation over the past three years, he’d run his antics by them first before carrying anything out. But not this time.

“You’re winning now, but it won’t last,” Marie added. They knew his life story. Knew where and how to turn the screws. If he’d played cards that night just because he’d wanted a game of chance, then so be it. But he hadn’t. He’d played because he’d been looking for a way to slap the old man in the face. His son gambling would do it.

The heir to his fortune, caught up in the excitement of the win...

An excitement that had almost cost Walter everything. Liam had heard the story from his mother. And had repeated it to the girls on the anniversary of her death. Walter had earned his first million, married and had Liam. His whole life had been filled with the excitement of getting the carrot dangling in front of him. And suddenly, he’d been content. He had all he’d needed or ever wanted.

That’s when his father-in-law had invited him to sit in on a game of cards. A game that had taken him to Atlantic City and then to Las Vegas, where he’d squandered away his own million and had started dipping into his wife’s money.

The second chance she’d given him had been enough, though. Connelly Investments was healthy and Walter made back all he’d lost plus an extra billion or so. He never touched a card again. And had ordered his son never to do so.

“You’ve been drinking.” Gabrielle, the practical one of the two, broke into his reverie. She didn’t ask. She told. Annoying thing was, she was usually right.

“Yeah.”

She didn’t react. “What did he do this time?”

“I was dropping off a folder to the legal department today.” Liam’s current position in Connelly Investments was as liaison between upper management and the lower echelons. A fancy way of saying he was an interoffice mail boy. So, his father had justified, he could have a presence in every department. See how they all worked. Get to know everyone.

It was a step up from sorting the incoming mail, which was what he’d been doing the previous year. His first year of college, after thwarting his father’s living arrangement plan, he’d been employed as a night janitor.

Marie pulled her knees up to her ample chest, wrapping her arms around herself. “And?”

“I overheard the head counsel, my father’s second in command, making overly optimistic return promises to a potential investor on land that we don’t own.”

The facts sounded even worse out loud than they had rambling through his mind all night.

Gabrielle, a prelaw student who lived life in black-and-white, sat up. “That’s illegal.”

He shouldn’t have said anything. Shouldn’t have betrayed his father. He’d let his fear get the better of him.

Something a boy would do.

“It’s not illegal unless he actually took money, which he didn’t,” he quickly assured his friend. “The agreement is only verbal at this point. Thing is, it’s land that my father has wanted to develop into a mountain resort for as long as I can remember. Buying the land isn’t such a big deal. But he never did because it would have to be rezoned before he could do anything with it. And because it borders Indian land, there would have to be an agreement between him and the tribe to develop it, and the Indians refuse to even consider the idea. Which is why Dad’s never purchased the land. So why is this guy even talking to investors about it?”

“Did you ask your dad?” Marie scooted to the end of her bed, both hands on the edge of the mattress.

“Yeah.” That was when he’d have taken a big gulp of beer if he’d had one in front of him. He’d had two already that night. The first in months. He wasn’t going back down that road again.

“And?”

He turned as Gabrielle asked the question. Her brow was raised in concern now. Because it was late and he was tired, he allowed himself to wallow a moment in that look. And then said, “He told me that George Costas, lead attorney and top executive at Connelly, knows his business better than anyone. That he trusted George with his life—and mine. And that there was talk regarding the land, though he didn’t say who was talking, and they had to have investors lined up and ready because if the time came to move, the window of opportunity to do so would be very small.”

“Sounds legit.”

“Yeah.”

“So what’s the problem?”

Right. He was probably overreacting. “Problem is, the only way he’s going to get that land rezoned anytime soon—and there’s still no development agreement with the tribe, I checked—would be to back a politician who we both know takes bribes.”

“A particular politician?” Marie asked now, poking at his beanbag seat with the tip of her toe.

“Yeah. A state senator who’s up for reelection in the fall.”

“Let me guess, your dad’s a new campaign contributor.” Gabrielle’s dry response washed over him.

Liam shrugged.

“You didn’t ask?” Gabrielle again. Sounding more than a little surprised.

“I asked. He told me to mind my own business,” Liam relayed. But he left out exactly how his father reacted to him daring to question the old man or implying that George was not trustworthy, in light of Liam’s own lack of support.

“He can’t contribute through the corporation.” Gabrielle joined Marie on the end of her bed. “It’s against Colorado law. He’d have to do it as an individual. And the candidate is required to report it, including name and employment, within a specified period of time depending on the office being sought, but it’s usually within a month.”

“I’m not worried about the legalities of the contribution,” Liam said. “Not with George watching over everything with his eagle eye. But the one thing I really admired about my dad was his integrity. He might not be around when you need him, or care about what you need as opposed to what he wants from you, but you can count on him to speak the truth and stand by his convictions. It is, I hope, the one way I take after him. This senator is a snake. I can’t believe my father would ever get into bed with him. Yeah, money rules him, but it’s always only gained legally, and he’s always drawn the line at bigotry. Which is how he made it from pauper to millionaire in ten years. People know they can trust him.”

“He made it from pauper to billionaire because he made savvy investments at a time when real estate was booming. And then invested with uncanny cleverness.” Gabrielle’s expression was droll.

She was repeating his words back to him. Words spoken in previous late-night sessions. Usually after he’d come back to Boulder from time in Denver with his father.

“And he built his reputation on integrity,” he added, though why he was defending the man, he wasn’t sure. “He was faithful to my mother until the day she died.”

His junior year in high school. Of heart disease. Something they’d discovered she had when she was pregnant with him. Which was why he was an only child.

“Are you afraid he’s changed?” Marie’s question brought him back to the present. Where Gabrielle focused on the practical, Marie always homed in on the emotional aspect of things. They made a great team for him.

And for each other.

He wanted to tell Marie he wasn’t afraid. But these were his best friends. The one place he was completely honest with himself. “Maybe.”

“So playing cards tonight...that was to get back at him for it?” Gabrielle’s derogatory opinion was clear.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Don’t throw your life away because of him.” Marie spoke next. “Don’t throw your life away for anyone.” Her tone took on a bitter note that had him studying her more closely. And then he remembered something. She never went to bed with her hair still in a ponytail. He’d woken them up enough times to know that. The three of them had probably had a late-night conversation somewhere along the way about getting ready for bed, too. They’d talked about everything else in the world over the past three years.

“You guys weren’t asleep, were you?”

“No.”

He sat forward, studying the two of them as he jetted himself out of the self-pitying fog he’d allowed himself to sink into.

“What’s going on? What happened?” he asked, ready to get up and go find whoever had upset them.

At one in the morning.

Gabrielle looked at Marie, as though waiting for her to tell him. As if it was Marie’s story to tell. Which meant...

“It’s the med student, isn’t it? What’d he do?”

Marie’s lower lip started to quiver.

“He has some big presentation coming up Monday and was going to be studying tonight, so Marie agreed to cover for a coworker who wanted the night off,” Gabrielle said. “As it turns out they were slow and Marie got off early. She made jerk face’s favorite coffee drink and took it over to his place to surprise him.”

“He was...with the girl I was covering for at work.”

Now he understood the edge Marie was carrying. It hadn’t been about the hour of his visit, or him at all. “They knew you wouldn’t find out because they made sure you were busy,” Liam summarized, watching Marie fight with heartache, wondering what on earth he was supposed to say to her.

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.

Half expecting his elevator card to be defunct as well, he was considering taking the stairs to the top floor, when he stepped into the arriving car to find a top-floor aide—Amy something or other—standing there. “Thirty-six, Mr. Connelly?” she asked, naming their destination like an elevator attendant.

“Yes, please.” He didn’t have to fake the smile he bestowed upon her. Amy was...nice on the eyes.

And his split from Jenna had happened over a week ago. Not that that made any difference. Liam didn’t hit on employees.

Or date them.

That was bad for business. Fodder for lawsuits. And made life far more complicated than it needed to be.

Just like he’d never, ever look at Marie or Gabrielle in that way. Not because he feared a lawsuit. No, something far worse. He feared losing them.

It was the worst thing he could imagine. Worse even than catching a deadly disease and being told he only had months to live.

Okay, that was a little dramatic, he allowed silently, as he watched the lit floor numbers climb slowly upward. When the button for floor thirty-six was pressed, the elevator didn’t stop on its way up or down.

Firmly in check, he thought about the imminent showdown with his old man. Pretty Amy was completely forgotten when the door opened, giving Liam access to the sacred top floor. His office was to the right. Though he was curious now to see if the old man had ordered his things to be packed, Liam didn’t bother to check.

Walter might take a hard line and make harsh threats, but Liam wasn’t a kid anymore. And his father wasn’t getting any younger.

The old man needed him.

They’d work through this.

His father’s office door was closed. Meaning nothing. It was always closed.

He didn’t kid himself. The hours, weeks, months ahead were not going to be easy. His father would do anything he could to make him pay for his obstinacy.

But in the end, he’d also acknowledge that Liam had done the right thing. Walter wouldn’t respect a man who didn’t know how to be strong in the face of adversity.

He didn’t knock. And didn’t listen as Gloria, his father’s personal assistant, tried to object to Liam’s occupancy in the private sanctum without an appointment. He wasn’t the least bit intimidated by the woman who was known to many in the company as the battle-ax. She’d been around since Liam was too young to know what battle-ax meant. She liked him.

He liked her, too.

Bursting into his father’s office, Liam was ready for battle.

Or he would have been if the door had opened. Turning the handle a second time, his sweaty palm slipped against the locked hardware.

“What’s going on?” He turned to Gloria. “Where’s my father?”

“He took the rest of the day off.”

Liam glanced back at the closed door. “He doesn’t ever take the day off.” Not even on Christmas—though he did tend to work at home more often than not on holidays.

Gloria shuffled a pile of papers, shrugged and said, “Well, he did.” She was glancing between her computer screen and the file folder she was sliding the newly aligned papers into.

He could try to charm information out of her, but he didn’t. His issues were with his father.

Besides, he knew now where the old man would be. Turning, he left the office without another word and went straight to his own. Where his father would have expected him to go first.

Just as he’d suspected, Walter was there. Sitting in Liam’s chair. Surrounded by...not a lot. Other than the mahogany desk and matching chair Liam had picked out for himself when he’d been promoted to the thirty-sixth floor five years before, the room was stripped bare.

“You work fast.” He leaned against the door he’d just closed. The thirty-sixth floor offices were soundproofed and what he had to say to his father had to stay between the two of them.

“You signed the papers. I told you what would happen if you did.”

“You had a spy at the bank?” Why the thought hadn’t occurred to him before then, he didn’t know. Walter was ruthless.

And Liam felt stupid. Thinking he was going to walk right in and announce to his father that he’d refused to give in to his threat. And then deliver the speech he’d been rehashing for years. The one where he told his father how much he respected and admired him, told him that he’d continue to serve him, but that he also had to have a life, a mind, of his own.

Building up to the part where he told him that while he still planned to give forty-plus hours a week to Connelly Investments, he was also going to more seriously pursue a career in journalism. Pointing out the benefits to the firm if he continued to rise to success in a world of internet information delivery.

“A spy, Liam? You think we’re playing some kind of game here? Grow up, man.”

He listened for the disappointment hiding in the derision in his father’s voice. The seemingly imperceptible note of fear.

And missed them both.

“I want to know about the conversation I overheard in George’s office this morning.” Liam stuck to his plan to fight aggression with aggression if he had to. If reason didn’t work. “Why would our head counsel promise someone an impossible investment return? Even at its best, the holding he mentioned didn’t promise those kinds of returns.”

Liam had overheard just a small bit of the conversation, but enough to know that something didn’t add up. He gave his father the particulars.

George had been on the phone and hadn’t heard Liam wander in. It had been before seven, before office staff started to arrive. Just before Walter had called Liam into his private sanctum to issue yet another threat—the one where he’d be cut off if he went through with the Arapahoe deal.

Otherwise Liam would have asked the question earlier that morning.

“That investment will not be impossible to meet.” Walter’s words were quiet. Deadening. “And you are no longer welcome here.”

Steel could not have been stronger. Or more cold.

“I heard what George said. I know that account. There’s no way it’s going to make that kind of return. I deserve to know what’s going on.”

“How dare you practice duplicity and then stand here and demand answers?”

Liam checked himself against the accusation of duplicity. The pause allowed his father to move in for the kill.

“I thought you’d learned your lesson freshman year, Liam. Today you have proven that you did not. We cannot be a team, you and I. I can no longer trust you. If you will go behind my back, keeping pertinent information from me because your two harlots call your name, there is no end to the possibilities of other ways you could betray me.”

“Buying that building had nothing to do with you, or with Connelly Investments. It wasn’t a lucrative purchase. Or a building you’d have any interest in. And they are not my, or anyone else’s, harlots. As I’ve told you before, they are family to me.”

More family to him than Walter was.

“You moved trust monies behind my back.”

“My trust money. I’m a man, Dad. I have to be able to do some things on my own.”

“But not behind my back. That trust money was yours, but it was family money.”

“From my mother’s family.” Walter had met Margaret, Liam’s mother, after he’d scratched and clawed his way to his first million. She’d been born into the privileged life.

“It was our money, your mother’s and mine, when we opened that trust for you.”

Technically. It had been given to them at his maternal grandfather’s death, with the express wish that if they didn’t need it to secure their own futures it be put in trust for Liam.

“If I’d told you about the building, you’d have done everything in your power to block that sale.”

“It’s a stupid purchase. Those old folks are paying far below average rent. You’ll never be able to turn a decent profit.”

“They’re paying all they can afford on fixed incomes.” Liam stated the more pertinent truth. “And we aren’t going to lose money on the deal. We didn’t go into it with an eye to support ourselves. Marie has her coffee shop. Gabrielle’s a lawyer. I told you that.”

“And you, Liam? While you’re so busy exerting your manhood, you still expect me to support you?”

“I earn every dime you pay me.”

“You say you’re a man, but you didn’t tell me about that old apartment building because you were afraid.”

The little bit of truth that lurked in the ugly words spurred Liam onward in a battle he didn’t want to fight.

“I’m standing up to you now.”

Going into business with Gabrielle and Marie...it had been his way to solidify his place in their future. To make the three of them, their little family, a brother and his sisters, legal. He’d done what he had to do.

“You are standing only because you don’t have a chair to sit on.”

The old man was sitting in the only chair left in the office. “What’s going on, Dad? What deal did I stumble on this morning that you don’t want me to know about? Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it? This has nothing to do with a loser apartment building I sunk my own pittance into.”

“You stumbled onto nothing more than a joke, Liam. A joke.” Spittle sprayed on Liam’s desk as his father repeated the word. “George was on the phone with Bob Sternan. They were mocking Senator Billingsley and his promises regarding the Indian land he recently purchased.”

Land that his father had purchased, with a signed agreement from the tribe, and developed several years before. A development that he’d since sold and which was for sale again. A development currently owned by Senator Ronald Billingsley—the immoral man whose campaign Liam had once thought his father had supported. He’d later found that neither his father nor anyone closely associated with Connelly Investments had been listed as campaign contributors.

And his father had told him to his face, looking him in the eye, that he’d never support the crooked politician.

Mock him, though, yes.

George had been on the line with Bob Sternan. A senator who’d proven himself trustworthy again and again. A family man who chose to serve his state without lining his own pockets.

Jenna’s dad.

Another man he respected whom he’d disappointed. Jenna had broken up with him. But Liam had agreed to take the blame so she didn’t have to face her father’s lectures. They hadn’t been in love. Nor had they relished the idea of a match made for business or the sake of the public good. They hadn’t wanted to marry just to bring together an appearance of money and morals that would instill public trust in their families.

Liam had asked her to marry him because he was thirty years old and the old man had been ragging on him constantly about his duties to provide a Connelly heir.

And Jenna had agreed because she hadn’t had the gumption to stand up to her father.

But when the wedding date started to get closer and neither one of them had been able to see themselves married to the other...

Liam had told himself he’d go through with it out of duty. He’d given his word. And because the idea of a kid of his own someday was kind of growing on him.

He’d have been faithful to Jenna.

He just wouldn’t have been happy with her.

So when she’d begged him to dump her, he had.

Liam was batting a thousand here at striking out.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Because it was the right thing to do. “I should have told you about the deal. I am grateful for all that you’ve done for me. I just need to be my own man, Dad. Surely you can understand that.”

His father’s steely blue gaze didn’t warm a bit. “I understand only that I can no longer trust you.”

“Of course you can. You know me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, son. I would have bet this building, my entire empire, on the fact that you would never be duplicitous with me.”

He’d needed to make the deal on his own. He needed Marie and Gabrielle solidly in his life. To have something, someone, to call his own. Someone he could trust with his inside self.

“It’s a worthless apartment building.” By Connelly standards.

“Then you’re stupider than I thought, trading your future for a worthless piece of real estate.”

The old man was testing him. There was a way to turn this around. He had to know his father well enough to find it.

“Get out.”

He wanted to speak, to come up with the right words.

“Dad...”

“Get out, Liam. I’ve had George remove you from my will. You are no longer my son.”

He was bluffing. It wasn’t the first time Walter had said such a thing. And he’d done worse. Walter had once likened Liam to a terminal disease. He’d called him a fool. Told him time and time and time again that he’d never make it in the world.

And then he’d buy him a new car. Give him a promotion...

“Anything personal you had in this room has been relocated to your apartment. You have twenty-four hours to get that cleared out. Anything left there at this time tomorrow will be disposed of when the locks are changed. You can keep the car.”

“Dad...”

“Get out.”

The man sitting calmly in Liam’s chair didn’t blink. His hands weren’t trembling. His mouth didn’t twitch.

Liam looked at him and saw a stranger.

“You are no longer welcome here, Liam,” Walter said as though he was ordering a glass of water with the coffee he’d just been served. “Either you go quietly or I will call security.”

Liam didn’t remember getting back to his car. He knew he’d done so on his own. Without escort. He climbed behind the wheel, starting the car with a calm he’d probably feel if he felt anything at all.

What did you do when you realized that what you’d counted on to never change didn’t even exist?

All these years he’d put up with the man’s abuse because he’d thought he understood him. Thought that, ultimately, he and his father would be a team.

The old man was really capable of disowning him? What honorable man did that? Threaten, yes. Make life hell, maybe, if he thought his son needed toughening up.

But denounce him completely, as though he didn’t exist?

He had someplace to be. So he drove.

He turned away from the showpiece building that housed Connelly Investments, heading toward historic downtown, and then found a moving and storage company with his satellite phone service. Placed an order for the following morning.

And only faltered once—when the friendly female voice on the other end of the line asked him the final delivery address for his packed-up life.

He told them he’d have to get back to them.

CHAPTER THREE

MARIE AND GABRIELLE took each other out to a quick lunch at their favorite salad shop—not the fine dining Liam would have preferred. The building’s purchase was a big deal—more for Gabrielle than any of them, as no one in her immediate family had ever owned anything more than a car.

“I might not be able to eat out again for a while.” Gabrielle chuckled as she slid her arm through her friend’s, hugging Marie’s elbow to her side as they left the self-serve restaurant and headed toward her car. “I’ll just have to take scraps from our business tenant’s kitchen.”

“I have a feeling our new business tenant, the owner of that famous coffee shop downstairs, will give both of us anything we want,” Marie said laconically. They were heading back to the coffee shop. Marie had good, dependable employees, a few of whom were qualified to run the shop in her absence. She just didn’t enjoy being absent.

“Yeah, and if history serves, the owner will work us both to the bone for it, too.” Gabrielle had been with Marie from the very beginning, traipsing around Denver looking for just the right space to lease. Spending eighteen-hour days cleaning the place. Choosing a logo. Ordering. And working until they dropped when business picked up before Marie had had a chance, or enough profit, to hire employees.

“Can you believe it?” Marie skipped as she glanced at Gabrielle, yanking a bit on her arm. “We actually did it. We own an entire historic apartment building!”

Gabrielle smiled. And worried, too. About Liam. The future. The mammoth undertaking they’d agreed to. The fifty or more senior citizens who were counting on them to keep a roof over their heads.

The empty apartments they had yet to rent. Hopefully to a young family or two. Starting a new generation of traditions.

She wanted to tell Marie about Liam’s despondency regarding his father that morning. But why put a damper on her friend’s joy? Especially since the only evidence she had that anything was wrong was her own sense of foreboding...

Still, she couldn’t help but ponder the practical ramifications of their new responsibility while she drove the two of them home. Parking in her reserved spot in the small lot behind the building—parking was going to be a problem if, in the future, they rented to too many young, two-car families—she put a smile on her face as she followed Marie out of the car.

“Let’s go in the front door,” Marie said, her grin bubbling over as Gabrielle pulled out her key and turned toward the private back entrance off the parking lot. “Let’s be like landlords checking up on our business tenant...”

Even at thirty, Marie had a playful, girly streak. It was one of the things Gabrielle loved about her. “You are the business tenant,” she reminded her on a laugh.

They were in partnership, she and Marie and Liam. A legally binding arrangement that kept the three of them together. Solidifying their odd little family into the future. More than the building, the investment, the asset, it was that fact that put the smile on Gabrielle’s face.

* * *

“WHAT’S TAKING THEM so long?”

“They’re coming around the front.”

“Janice, watch your mother, she’s at it again.”

Standing behind the counter of Marie’s quickly decorated coffee shop, Liam turned when he heard Grace speaking to Janice in the cacophony of voices around him.

Janice’s mother Clara, a ninety-five-year-old woman who lived with her seventy-three-year-old daughter in apartment 491, was picking up the chocolate Hershey’s Kisses that Grace had had a couple of women spreading around the tables. Clara was stashing them away in the covered compartment beneath the seat of her walker. The old woman was known for her stealing. Most often involving chocolate.

Marie was known for buying chocolate and purposely leaving it lying around just to watch the elderly woman’s joy as she found it. Grace, an eighty-year-old resident who baked every morning for Marie and was the organizer of all functions among the residents of the building, was still tying balloons to chairs. Knowing everyone well from his years of visiting the girls, Liam had known just whom to seek out in planning the homecoming that was to have been in lieu of dessert after the fancy lunch that was supposed to have happened that day.

The lunch, of course, hadn’t happened. And the party would have gone on, with or without him, too. That’s how it usually was with him and the girls. He came and went at his pleasure. If he was there, great. If not, no big deal. Was that why it worked so well?

The realization, on this day of standing up as a man, didn’t sit well with him. At all. He loved Marie and Gabrielle more than anyone else on earth. They were his sisters in his heart. He looked out for them. Felt protective of them.

And, he supposed, he used them, too. Like a brother used sisters.

To whine to.

To have them always be there.

And to know they’d always be happy to see him when he bothered to show up.

Like now, as he stood there, hands in his pockets, watching as the residents got ready for the big moment. He’d paid for the party.

And here he was thinking it was a bonus that he’d been able to show up.

Liam didn’t like the man he was seeing.

At all.

Was the old man right then? Was he worthless?

“Shh, quiet, everyone, they’re rounding the corner! They’re coming in the front!” Susan Gruber, wife to Dale, said, with a sideways smile to her husband. Liam had never seen one without the other.

The front door opened. He pasted a huge smile on his face, glad that he’d made it back in time.

“Surprise!” More than fifty voices chorused at once. His was among them. And the shocked happiness on both of the girls’ faces was worth the effort it was costing him to hang around, to pretend that all was well. That he was going to be fine.

He was a good man. Maybe he’d taken advantage of the girls all these years. Maybe he hadn’t seen that. And maybe, now that he did see it, it was up to him to do what he could to rectify the situation. Maybe, very soon, he’d be in a position to be around more, to tend to them for a change.

Because he was decent. His father be damned.

He’d remembered every birthday. Always took them out. Brought gifts that he’d picked out himself and that they’d loved. Whenever they needed a favor, he did what he had to do to grant it.

He should have noticed that they didn’t call much.

And maybe he should call them more often, instead of just stopping in for his weekly home-cooked meals when he didn’t have anything else to do. Or dropping by after an evening function when he needed to whine.

He watched as their gazes scanned the crowd gathering around them—residents and many of Marie’s regular coffee customers, all with cards and good wishes. Both of his partners were grinning from ear to ear. Gabi noticed him first, elbowed Marie and nodded in his direction. Their shock at his presence was obvious. Their gazes met with his. Nothing was said. They didn’t know he’d just lost the only life he’d ever known. They’d just been glad to find him there.

And he was glad he’d come.

* * *

PEOPLE STAYED FOR over an hour. Eating cake. Drinking coffee. Conversation flurried. As some of the older residents drifted upstairs to their homes, more customers came in with cards and congratulatory messages. Police officers. A couple of board members from a downtown historical society. The district state representative.

They might not be expecting to turn much of a profit, but the building they’d purchased was valuable to the community. At least in a historical sense.

And Liam had written the guest list. Gabrielle had just learned that from Grace. But she knew that he’d wanted people to know that a good thing was happening at the Arapahoe. He thought if people knew, they’d be more apt to support Marie’s shop.

He’d wanted that for her.

He’d always wanted what was best for them.

Gabrielle couldn’t remember feeling so utterly...almost content. They’d done a good thing, her and Marie and Liam. Threefold. A goofy name for their business, but it fit them.

Her partners, who were both more social than she was, were working the room now, moving from group to group while Gabi made certain that everyone had enough to drink. Liam had stood back until she and Marie finally noticed him there. But he was making up for his reticence. And seemed to be just fine. So, good. Her concern that morning had been unwarranted.

Grace was keeping the coffee flowing. The shop was still open to the public and business went on even in the midst of celebration. Sam, one of Marie’s full-time employees, was taking orders and serving organic sandwiches as well as coffee.

Gabi had to get back to work, too. While she’d kept her afternoon clear of appointments, she had a hearing in the morning regarding an estate dispute between siblings and had notes to prepare. She’d brought everything with her to work from home where she wouldn’t be interrupted.

She was surprised Liam hadn’t left.

Glancing his way as she carried a coffeepot around the room, refilling the cups of those who were just drinking it straight and black, she tried to catch his eye. He’d been managing to avoid her.

Because they were crowded with well-wishers? Or because he had something to hide? Maybe her relief had been premature.

“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.

If Agents Menard and Howard had thought they were going to get a reaction out of him by informing him that he no longer had access to any of his father’s assets—as if his reaction to the news was somehow going to trap him in his supposed lies—they must have been disappointed.

They were a week late on that blow. He’d already lost everything. Knowing that some of Connelly’s assets were frozen didn’t change his day a bit.

“Did you call George?” Gabi’s question kept him focused—unlike the horror on Marie’s face when they’d let her know what was going on. He’d felt a stab of fear then.

But he was a man, in spite of his father treating him like the stupid kid he might once have been. He’d handle this.

“I called him,” he said. “While you were out front getting Marie.” They’d told her the news in the coffee shop’s back office. “He wasn’t in his office and didn’t answer his cell. I left messages both places.”

“Chances are he’s with your father.”

He agreed. Which made him more eager than ever to get where they were going. Ten miles had never seemed so far.

“Did your father really cut you out of his will?”

Did he detect a note of hurt in her voice? Liam glanced in her direction. Gabi was watching the traffic. Of course. She was always on the lookout for the dangers ahead.

“Yes.”

“Last week?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” The bite in her tone bothered him. He’d hurt her. As usual, he’d been thinking about his own life.

“It had nothing to do with you or Marie, so my not telling you—”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. And I should have known that. I’m... I didn’t like the way I saw myself in your eyes.” They were stopped at a light and he glanced over at her. “Like I’m some kid whose daddy abuses him and he just keeps going back for more.” It was humiliating. And worse.

Her gaze softened. “You might have wanted to check your vision against ours,” she said. The small smile on her lips had him looking back at the road. Staring at it.

He’d...felt...something. From Gabi. His Gabi. The feeling hadn’t been sister-like.

And that was not only humiliating. It was horrible.

“You’re way stronger than you know, Liam,” she said, as the light changed and he started forward. “I see a man who puts up with his father’s abuse while still managing to claim an identity in his own small ways, because you know he has no one and relies on you. You subjugate your own desires for his, but because you think it’s the right thing to do, to be responsible, not because you fear what he can do to you.”

Her vision was definitely different from his. But it wouldn’t be forever. He was working on becoming the man she seemed to think he was.

“What about this car? He didn’t take it.”

“I paid it off last year, but even so, the old man kindly informed me that I was welcome to keep it.”

“He didn’t know you’d paid it off?”

“Are you kidding? Nothing happens without him knowing about it. He knew we’d closed on the building before I drove from the closing back to the office. His car remark was just to get a rise out of me.”

He waited for her to ask if it had. Any other time she would have.

But he hadn’t run to her this time. He’d shut her out.

“It didn’t,” he said, frowning as he signaled a turn and changed lanes. “Get a rise out of me,” he clarified, pushing harder on the gas pedal, increasing his speed to two miles above the limit. Any more than five could get him a ticket, and he didn’t have time for that.

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