“Don’t look so scared, Marie. See, that’s what I’m talking about. You get in your own way and...”
“I’m...not convinced I’m falling in love.” She blurted the thought in her head. “Love is a roller coaster. It’s angst and exhilaration. I feel neithe
r of those things.”
“Just promise me that if Elliott gives you any indication that he’s interested in you, really interested, you won’t run in the other direction? You’ll give him a chance?”
Marie nodded. Because at the moment, the way she felt, there didn’t seem much point in not doing so. Gabi knew she wanted to go out with Elliott.
“What if he doesn’t feel anything for me?”
“The way he hangs around you so much when it’s Liam he’s working for? And Walter? Besides, Liam says he can tell by the way Elliott watches you when you don’t know he’s looking that he has a thing for you. Bad, Liam said. He’s got it bad.”
Gabi fidgeted with Marie’s hair and then turned to readdress her own lipstick.
“And it’s not like he’s working for me,” Marie reemphasized. “He’s working for Liam. And if Liam’s good with him going out with me, then he wouldn’t be breaking a code of ethics or having some conflict of interest.”
“Exactly.”
“Unless I distract him, he misses seeing something and Liam gets hurt.”
“Elliott is too much a professional to miss any danger to anyone within a five-mile radius,” Gabi said dryly. Exaggerating, of course, but not as much as one might think.
“He’s always so careful about not doing anything that could jeopardize his license or his reputation with his clients,” Marie said, thinking out loud about previous conversations with the bodyguard to expel some jitters. “I think it’s because his career is everything to him.”
Which might not bode well for a long-term relationship. A sense of crushing disappointment assailed her. But it was quickly followed by a resurgence of her good mood. If he wasn’t an option for forever, it made him even more perfect for her.
Because she wasn’t, either. Marie didn’t believe in happily ever after.
As she applied her lipstick, something she’d been doing several times a day for years, Marie steadied herself.
“I trust him with my life,” she said to Gabi, completely serious, as she straightened. For Marie, it was not only a first. It was a miracle.
“You and all of his clients.” Gabi’s quip lightened the moment.
And Marie smiled. Grabbed her black silk clutch with pearls. Slipped into three-inch heels. Nervous. Excited. And...
“You really think I’m falling in love?” She glanced back at Gabi as they left the apartment. Liam was standing by the elevator, holding the door.
“Just go with it,” Gabi whispered as they got on behind him.
Marie nodded one more time.
* * *
FEELING LIKE A fraud in his dark suit, white shirt and black tie, Elliott headed out the door in his shined dress shoes, far more eager for the evening than he should have been. Adjusting the holster of his gun beneath the suit coat, he reminded himself that he was on the job.
Working.
He’d just gotten off the phone with Barbara Bustamante. He’d told her that he’d be sitting at the table as a guest, the fourth in a two-couple foursome, with her daughter and the newly married Liam and Gabrielle Connelly for dinner that night.
She’d been glad to hear that he’d have an opportunity for an entire evening of eavesdropping, an entire evening to watch how Liam treated the two women.
He’d warned that it was going to look as if he was Marie’s date.
She’d warned him to watch himself.
At which he’d suggested she find herself another bodyguard.