Once Upon A Friendship

“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 (#ulink_acd3ff62-8f15-53ca-ade6-a4e6c4920800)

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.