Loe raamatut: «Once Upon A Friendship»

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.