MARIE WAS TOO nervous to sleep. Too het up to sit still. Had it only been a week since she was in her bathroom with Gabrielle, getting ready to go out to dinner on a pseudo-date with her and Liam and Elliott? And now, in one week’s time, the four of them would be flying to Vegas to spend the weekend together?
She had her own room, of course.
As did Elliott.
But they’d be spending an entire weekend together.
And her mother was getting married. On hands and knees, scrubbing her bathroom floor at ten o’clock Friday night, Marie pressed harder on the ceramic tile that she and Gabi had chosen as a replacement for the ages-old cracked and yellowed linoleum that had been in both bathrooms when they first moved in.
If this relationship with Bruce was for real, if he turned out to be good to her mother for the rest of her days, then Marie was thrilled.
She was worried sick. After all, Barbara Bustamante had a poor track record when it came to her romantic choices—answering her father’s calls, hoping, hanging on, remarrying him—all in the name of love. True love, she’d said.
And now she was suddenly over him? In love with someone else?
The floor was clean. Just needed to be wiped. Marie got an old toothbrush and worked at the grout around the baseboard. You could never be too careful about grout. And once it discolored, it was nearly impossible to get like new again.
Who looked at grout that closely?
Who cared?
Except a woman who was spending Friday night alone in her apartment. Because she chose to go out with men who would let her down. Men who had other priorities in their lives, according to Gabi.
Marie wasn’t sure her friend was wrong.
But she’d seen what love did to her mother. How it took a strong, confident, smiling woman and slowly, year by year, chipped away at the smiles. At the confidence. And at the strength.
She wasn’t going to be like Barbara.
Was that her cell phone? She stopped scrubbing, sitting back on her heels as she listened. She’d left the phone on her nightstand. And yes, it was clearly ringing.
Dropping her toothbrush in the bucket of water she’d brought in with her, Marie ran. Someone was calling her.
A voice other than her own internal ones to pass time with.
Good Lord, she was losing it.
Had never expected to have such a tough time with Gabi getting married and moving upstairs.
Had never realized how much she’d jabbered to the other woman night after night after night...
“Hello?” She answered before she’d had a chance to read the caller ID.
“Hi, baby.”
Marie’s heart sank. Trekking slowly back to the bathroom, she said, “Hi, Dad,” in her cheeriest voice.
“I just got off the phone with your mother.”
At ten o’clock on Friday night? What had Barbara been thinking? Couldn’t she have waited until morning? Until the light of day?
Barbara knew better than most how awful things looked, how much more difficult they were, in the dark of the night. Marie had certainly spent enough of those dark hours with her mother through her adolescence.
“She told you her news?” Marie asked. There was no point in prevaricating. Or pretending that her heart wasn’t aching for him.
“Yeah, she told me. Bruce was there, too.”
“You know him?”
“Of course. I went to several sessions with him over the years. Always at your mother’s request.”
“You don’t sound bitter.”
“I’m not. He’s a good guy. And I’m not good for your mother.”
Wow. This was going much better than she’d figured. “So...you’re okay with them getting married?”
“No...” His voice broke. “No,” he said again. It took Marie a few seconds to identify the sound she was hearing coming over the line. Sobs.
“Daddy?” she half whispered. In all the years...all the battles and hurt and back and forth...she’d never once known her father to cry.
“I blew it...” he said, clearly crying now. “I blew it...”
“Daddy.”
He was in Phoenix. She was in Denver. What was she supposed to do? What could she do?
Except slide down to the floor, lean against the wall and talk to him.
Long into the night. About the past. And the future.
About wants and needs and about how, sometimes one person’s own needs opposed another’s.
And how a person can truly love someone and still, because of his own issues, hurt the ones he loves anyway.
Realizing, right along with him, that some things really were impossible and that some people just were not meant for marriage.
That some people were best spending their lives alone. Sometime in the wee hours of Saturday morning she hung up, scared to death that she, like her father, was going to be one of those people.
* * *
ELLIOTT DIDN’T HAVE a lot of opportunity to be alone with Marie that week. He arranged for her shopping trips to be in conjunction with Gabrielle’s. But other than that, his schedule was out of his hands. Liam had two evening functions to attend on behalf of Connelly Investments—a charity art event and a dinner at a private men’s club—and Elliott had to arrange for the front-door security guard to watch over Marie and escort her upstairs to her apartment.
She’d given the members of her staff who’d be covering for her that weekend fewer hours during the week, so she was short-staffed. And she was training Sam, the young man who worked full-time during the week, to cover Sunday’s inventory and ordering.
But in deference to the fact that she’d let Elliott know his previous reticence had hurt her feelings, he made a point of stopping by at least once a day to say hello. To look her in the eye and ask how she was doing.
On Thursday, midafternoon, he found her alone in her office during a lull.
“You ready to fly out tomorrow?” he asked, standing in her doorway, hands in his pockets in an attempt to be nonchalant.
“I haven’t even started packing.”
He’d taken her and Gabrielle to a well-known women’s dress shop earlier in the week. And while he’d waited out in his vehicle, they’d both purchased dresses for her mother’s wedding.
Completely contrary to his normal ways, he’d wanted to ask what they looked like. But hadn’t needed to as Marie chattered and Gabrielle responded all the way home. They were both going to wear short black shifts. Gabrielle’s was high necked but mostly backless. Marie’s was low cut in front, but high backed.
“How about you?” she asked when his mind had started to wander to what she might look like in that dress.
“Are you packed?” she tagged on.
“No.”
He was taking the tuxedo he wore to formal events. And then his everyday blacks. Wardrobe wasn’t much of an issue for him.
“Can you wear your gun in Las Vegas?”
“Yes. I’m licensed in most of the western states.”
She was looking at him as though the sight of him in her doorway pleased her. And his attraction to her started to take over the more rational part of his mind.
He turned to go. Couldn’t leave without saying goodbye.
Faced her again and said, “I’ve been wondering. You haven’t mentioned your father, but Liam and Gabrielle both did. Have you heard from him?” He’d half wondered if the man could be a problem that weekend. Not for Liam. But for Marie. Or Barbara.
Jilted men, ex-husbands, were all too common as perps.
“Yeah,” Marie said. “We’ve talked every day this week.”
A man out of control?
“Is he coming to the wedding?”
“No, though Mom invited him.” Marie stopped. Glanced at the forms on her desk and said, “She’s trying to be friends with him.”
“He’s not open to it?”
“He wants to be.”
Sounded like a man who could show up with some crazy idea that he wasn’t going to let his wife, the mother of his child, marry another man. It happened. More than Elliott was comfortable with.
“So maybe he’ll show up,” he said.
Marie shook her head. “He’s booked himself on a flight to Monte Carlo. He’ll be in the air during the wedding. And drunk in a swanky hotel and casino for the rest of the weekend.”
“He’s a heavy drinker, then?”
“Nope. It’s just the best plan we could come up with to keep him from doing something he’d regret.”
“Like showing up to stop the wedding?”
“No.” She frowned. “He really wants Mom to be happy. He knows he can’t give her what she needs and thinks Bruce can.”
It was Elliott’s turn to frown. “He knows the man your mother is marrying?”
“He was invited to a few of her early counseling sessions.”
Elliott nodded. Assessing. Looking for holes in what she was saying. For any sign that there could be a potential threat. For insight into the family in which Marie had grown up. The family that had helped make her the woman she was. For a key to her own emotional state.
Not because he saw a threat there. But because he’d promised her mother he’d protect her from hurt...
“So what would he do that he’d regret?”
“Get drunk here and call me or Mom instead of leaving her be to enjoy her day.”
“Phones work from Monte Carlo.”
“He’s turning off international dialing on his cell. And hoping to meet some young Italian, French or Greek beauty who’ll be bowled over by his good looks.”
“Sounds like in some ways he’s a pretty smart man,” he said now. Thinking about Barbara. About what he’d heard of Marie’s father.
And about the woman the two of them had created.
The woman who was looking up at him with a sheen of moisture covering those big brown eyes. “Yeah. In some ways. Just not smart enough to figure out how to be happy with only one woman. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t hurting. And it’s hard.”
She paused.
He nodded. He understood more than he’d like. Sometimes a man had to do hard things. Like lie to a woman who was quickly taking up the majority of his personal thoughts and starring in his dreams when he slept at night.
When he knew that her one vulnerability, the one thing that he could do to lose her forever, was to lie.
He’d called Barbara Bustamante the night before, after he’d returned Marie and Gabrielle to their respective apartments with their dresses—Marie first. He’d threatened to quit if the woman wouldn’t let him come clean with her daughter about his place in her life.
Barbara had been adamantly opposed. She didn’t want Marie to know that she didn’t trust her to make her own choices. And most unrelentingly didn’t want Marie to know that she’d lied to her by omission when Marie talked to her about Liam’s bodyguard who would be joining them that week. The older woman had also been strong enough willed to remind him what was at stake if he quit on her.
Not only his own ruined reputation, but possibly danger to Marie as well because there was no way Barbara would be able to slide one over on her daughter again. And until Liam’s stalker was caught, Marie’s shop, if not her person, was in the line of fire...
“I worry about him,” Marie was saying, still speaking of her father. “And worse, I feel so sorry for him...”
Elliott did, too.
“Anyway, sorry to go on like that,” Marie said, standing. “It’s time to get back to work.” She approached him.
He was supposed to move from the doorway, but he didn’t.
He stood toe-to-toe with her. Looking down over a foot into the eyes raised to his. And knew he had to protect her at all costs. From everything that hurt her. Even if one of those things was himself.
Lifting one hand, he pushed a strand of blond hair off the side of her face. There were always a few tendrils that had escaped from her ponytail by this time of day. “You don’t have to apologize for talking to me, Marie. Not ever,” he said.
Her gaze didn’t waver. And she didn’t step back. “I have a tendency to go on sometimes...”
“And I have an ear that enjoys listening to your voice.” Some things didn’t come with explanation. They just were.
“I’m glad you’re going to be in Las Vegas,” she said.
“Me, too.”
Her lips were lifted toward his. He needed to kiss her. To claim her as his own.
And he needed to let her go. To send her away from him.
Before he could do either, she raised herself up on tiptoe and touched her lips to his. “Thank you,” she whispered, and slid past him to hurry down the hall and back out to her shop.