Free Once Upon a Marriage by Tara Taylor Quinn Page B

were getting ready for the prom.
    Except that she was a heck of a lot more nervous. She’d liked her prom date well enough, but wouldn’t have gone out with him if it hadn’t been for the prom. She hadn’t been the least bit interested in dating anyone seriously back then.
    Not that she was interested now. She just...really liked Elliott.
    â€œLiam didn’t give him a chance to say what he wanted,” Gabi said now. “He just told Elliott we were going and invited him to share our table with us if he was going to insist on protecting us. But Elliott’s a grown man. He could have refused.”
    â€œNot with his code of ethics, he couldn’t,” she said. “Walter Connelly wants him watching Liam, more now than ever, I’m sure, since Liam’s taking a much more active role in the company.”
    â€œTrue.”
    She could always count on Gabi to call it like it was. Which was one of the reasons Marie loved her best friend so much. One of the reasons why Gabi
was
her best friend...
    â€œYou like him, though, don’t you?” Gabi’s question came just as she finished with Marie’s hair and set her free to fasten a black-and-white pearl-and-onyx-flowered earring in her bottom piercing. And pearl studs in the second one back.
    Marie didn’t know how to answer the question.
Liking
was not how she’d describe her feelings for the bodyguard. Not in the like-like sense Gabi seemed to mean. Yet she couldn’t deny, especially after the day she’d spent worrying about him, that she cared more than just friends.
    Still...
    â€œThat’s why Liam set this up,” Gabi said. “The way you reacted today, being so beside yourself upset when you thought Elliott was in danger... Liam thinks you have a thing for Elliott. I just need you to know what he’s doing so that you don’t think I’m part of something behind your back.”
    Marie got hot from the inside out. Flushing from her head to her toes. And then cooled just as quickly. “Does Elliott know that?” she asked, afraid to look at Gabi. To see the truth in her friend’s eyes.
    She didn’t look at herself in the big bathroom mirror they were both standing in front of, either. She looked at Gabi’s short dark hair. At the diamond stud she was wearing in her right ear.
    â€œI don’t know.” Gabi’s finger gently pushed a tendril of Marie’s hair back behind her ear as her words washed softly over her. “Nothing was said. Not in the car. I just wanted you to know...”
    Marie nodded. Had no answer for the question lying there between them. Was she falling for Elliott Tanner?
    â€œHe could have suggested that we eat at home and have a meal catered in,” Gabi offered after Marie just stood there, looking at herself in the mirror.
    Having the meal catered, at home, where they were safely guarded, sounded like something Elliott would certainly have preferred. “He didn’t suggest any alternatives?”
    â€œNo.”
    Marie’s grin started with butterflies in her belly and blossomed. Until the butterfly crashed. “Do you think Elliott knows that I’ve...that I would go out with him if he asked? If he didn’t think asking would be a conflict of interest? If Liam said something...”
    â€œHe didn’t,” Gabi quickly inserted. “At least, Liam didn’t say anything about you liking Elliott. But we both asked if he’d spoken to you,” she added. “When he picked us up from work. Just because you’d been so worried. But you always worry. He knows that...”
    Elliott knew that she always worried about Liam and Gabi. Not about him.
    â€œDon’t be mad at Liam,” Gabi said. Marie looked at her, saw the very real, very tender, concern in Gabi’s eyes and marveled again that her friend was so in love with the man who’d been best friend to both of them for more than a