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.
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