Once Upon A Friendship

CHAPTER ONE

Present day

IT WAS REALLY going to happen.

Standing at the window of the bank, her back to the seats where Liam and Marie were sipping cheap coffee from takeout cups, public lawyer Gabrielle Miller gazed out at the snow-covered Denver sidewalks and focused on breathing. Not too deep. She didn’t want to hyperventilate. But passing out from lack of oxygen wouldn’t serve her well, either.

You’d think with five years of professional practice under her belt, and having personally vetted the contract they were all about to sign, she would be calm about the day’s events. It wasn’t as if they were buying a home that they were going to be moving into. No, they were simply transferring into their names the ownership of the historic Arapahoe—the old apartment building she and Marie had been living in and that Liam had been visiting as regularly as he’d visited their dorm rooms in college eight years ago. She and Marie were still going to be sharing the roomy three-bedroom unit that comprised part of the second floor of the eight-floor building in historic Denver. Marie’s coffee shop, a thriving business, was still going to encompass the entire bottom floor.

Liam would now be an official part of them, part of the family, instead of just an honorary member.

Gabi’s portion of the down payment hadn’t been a problem. She’d worked nearly full-time all four years of college in preparation for the law school loans that would eventually come due in her future. She’d continued to add to that account by working for Marie when she could during three years of law school, and when her loans had been paid off by the state as part of her employment agreement, she’d been able to slowly grow her savings.

Three-quarters of it was going into this deal.

But all but two of the thirty-eight apartments were rented on long-term leases that were transferring to them as the new owners, the majority of them held by residents who’d been in the building fifty years or more. They had guaranteed rent money coming. Most of them government checks.

Until the friends had made an offer on the place, most of the elderly residents had been trying desperately to find new homes. A few already had. The current owner’s rent increase, coming in a matter of weeks, would have put most of the elderly occupants out on the streets or into government-subsidized nursing homes. Fixed incomes could only be stretched so far.

Those who could afford to move had done so.

Most of those left had been in tears when Threefold had held a meeting with the residents to officially announce that they would soon be making rent checks out to them instead. In the same amount they’d been paying—not the new increased price.

Threefold. The name she and Liam and Marie had chosen for the LLC they’d formed to purchase the somewhat decrepit building and manage it, too.

Marie had come up with the name.

Neither she nor Liam had argued.

Gabrielle felt someone come up beside her, but she didn’t turn to look. Marie generally didn’t let anyone sulk for long.

“You having second thoughts?” Liam’s voice surprised her. He’d been over for dinner the night before—at least a biweekly ritual for the past nine years. When he was in town. And not in a relationship. Not that he didn’t come when he was in one. Just not as frequently.

The night before, the three of them had gone over all of the paperwork together. One more time.

“No. You?”

His tone was too distant. Impersonal. Something was wrong. She’d known the second he’d come toward them in the bank parking lot.

Maybe that was when she’d started to panic.

And now he was seeking her out alone. That only happened when he was in need of analytical thinking without the emotional twist.

Liam might prefer to be a freelance journalist rather than a financier, and he might even be better at it if the current success rate of his stories was anything to go by, but business was in his blood. And first on his college degree, too, with journalism as a minor. Business, working for his father at Connelly Investments, provided his substantial paycheck.

“No second thoughts at all.” Amazed at the instant calm that came over her at the words, she turned to look at him.

“You sure? Because I can’t afford to make a mistake here, Liam. If our figures are out of line, if you think there’s real risk here, I just can’t afford to take it. I mean, we’re looking at almost a solid year with no real income from rent. The elevator fix alone is going to eat up the first two months and...”

His smile made her smile. And she heard what she was doing.

“We’re going to be fine.” He reminded her of the extra money that was being rolled into their loan to keep in an account for unforeseen maintenance. Of the monies she and Marie would be saving in rent that would offset the building’s common utility costs. Of the down payment monies they’d all three contributed, which were keeping her third of the Arapahoe’s monthly mortgage payments within her means...

He was right about all of it.

And... “Something’s bothering you.” Were his suit and tie for the benefit of the real estate closing they were all about to attend? Or had he been at Connelly Investments that day? As his father’s patsy, he had a nice office on the top floor of the corporate office building. And put in a minimum of forty hours a week. But a lot of that time was spent at dinners and functions that bored him. Or at his personal computer on the desk in his home office in the fancy high-rise condominium that was his as part of his employee benefits. He analyzed. He reported. He made innocuous decisions. His father wouldn’t let him make any of the major ones.

“My father found out about the deal,” he said now.

“I thought you told him.” They’d specifically discussed the matter—he and she and Marie. They’d stressed to Liam the importance of keeping his father informed. The old man had the power to make Liam’s life miserable if he chose to do so.

And, in retrospect, theirs, too.

Taking Liam on as a partner meant taking on the unhealthy and rocky relationship he had with his old man.

Rocking back and forth in his expensive leather shoes, Liam shoved his hands into the pockets of his gray pants and looked down. “I intended to. Right after the papers were signed.”

She wanted to ask who’d spilled the beans to the elder Connelly, but the who didn’t matter. Nor, really, did the why. When you lived in circles where money was the most important factor, people stabbed friends and family if it meant they had a chance to climb even half a step.

Which was part of the reason, she knew, that Liam had adopted her and Marie as his family all those years ago. Because they weren’t part of that circle.

And didn’t want to be.

“So what’d he say?”

Liam’s shrug didn’t tell her enough.

“He didn’t forbid it?” Which was what she and Marie had expected.

“He can’t.” Liam’s jaw was firm, his gaze hard as he looked straight at her. “I’m using money earned from my writing, you know that.”

Only for the down payment.

“You’re living off your Connelly salary and living in a Connelly building.”

Best that the deal fall through now. Before any of them were financially ruined.

But...not really.

Because if they didn’t sign those papers today, more than fifty elderly people were going to be booted from their homes. Many of them had raised their families in that building and still had penciled lines on the walls in the kitchens marking the growth of their offspring through the years.

Matilda Schwann had color-coded hers...

“If your father doesn’t support you on this, you won’t have the money to pay your third of the mortgage.”

They weren’t college kids anymore. He couldn’t sign this deal and then capitulate.

Not that Liam would choose to leave elderly folks homeless. He’d give them the shirt off his back.

But Liam had never lived in the real world. His life, while not easy, had certainly been privileged.

“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

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.

Clear his head.

He might have to replace the shoes on his feet if the snow and salt had a chance to sit on the leather and ruin it. It would be a small price to pay for his freedom from tyranny.

All he’d wanted to do was use his own funds to buy a lousy apartment building. He’d made a deal on his own, daring to rely on his own acumen without consulting the father first. For eight years he’d subjugated his own adult interests out of respect for the man. Out of admiration. His father was hard, yes, but hardworking, too. Successful. And honest.

Still, buying an apartment building with his own funds and his desire to write some news pieces about things that were notable to him while traveling were hardly deserving of stripping him of his parking space and easy access key.

He was still hot, in spite of the cold, by the time he pulled open the heavy bullet-proof glass front door on the Connelly building. If James, the doorman, tried to stop him, he was going to...

“Afternoon, Mr. Connelly,” the guard said, as though Liam entering the building through the public entrance was a regular occurrence.

“James.” Liam nodded his head. Hoped he appeared more civil than he felt, and avoided eye contact with any other employees as he made a beeline for the elevator.

Half expecting his elevator card to be defunct as well, he was considering taking the stairs to the top floor, when he stepped into the arriving car to find a top-floor aide—Amy something or other—standing there. “Thirty-six, Mr. Connelly?” she asked, naming their destination like an elevator attendant.

“Yes, please.” He didn’t have to fake the smile he bestowed upon her. Amy was...nice on the eyes.

And his split from Jenna had happened over a week ago. Not that that made any difference. Liam didn’t hit on employees.

Or date them.

That was bad for business. Fodder for lawsuits. And made life far more complicated than it needed to be.

Just like he’d never, ever look at Marie or Gabrielle in that way. Not because he feared a lawsuit. No, something far worse. He feared losing them.

It was the worst thing he could imagine. Worse even than catching a deadly disease and being told he only had months to live.

Okay, that was a little dramatic, he allowed silently, as he watched the lit floor numbers climb slowly upward. When the button for floor thirty-six was pressed, the elevator didn’t stop on its way up or down.

Firmly in check, he thought about the imminent showdown with his old man. Pretty Amy was completely forgotten when the door opened, giving Liam access to the sacred top floor. His office was to the right. Though he was curious now to see if the old man had ordered his things to be packed, Liam didn’t bother to check.

Walter might take a hard line and make harsh threats, but Liam wasn’t a kid anymore. And his father wasn’t getting any younger.

The old man needed him.

They’d work through this.

His father’s office door was closed. Meaning nothing. It was always closed.

He didn’t kid himself. The hours, weeks, months ahead were not going to be easy. His father would do anything he could to make him pay for his obstinacy.

But in the end, he’d also acknowledge that Liam had done the right thing. Walter wouldn’t respect a man who didn’t know how to be strong in the face of adversity.

He didn’t knock. And didn’t listen as Gloria, his father’s personal assistant, tried to object to Liam’s occupancy in the private sanctum without an appointment. He wasn’t the least bit intimidated by the woman who was known to many in the company as the battle-ax. She’d been around since Liam was too young to know what battle-ax meant. She liked him.

He liked her, too.

Bursting into his father’s office, Liam was ready for battle.

Or he would have been if the door had opened. Turning the handle a second time, his sweaty palm slipped against the locked hardware.

“What’s going on?” He turned to Gloria. “Where’s my father?”

“He took the rest of the day off.”

Liam glanced back at the closed door. “He doesn’t ever take the day off.” Not even on Christmas—though he did tend to work at home more often than not on holidays.

Gloria shuffled a pile of papers, shrugged and said, “Well, he did.” She was glancing between her computer screen and the file folder she was sliding the newly aligned papers into.

He could try to charm information out of her, but he didn’t. His issues were with his father.

Besides, he knew now where the old man would be. Turning, he left the office without another word and went straight to his own. Where his father would have expected him to go first.

Just as he’d suspected, Walter was there. Sitting in Liam’s chair. Surrounded by...not a lot. Other than the mahogany desk and matching chair Liam had picked out for himself when he’d been promoted to the thirty-sixth floor five years before, the room was stripped bare.

“You work fast.” He leaned against the door he’d just closed. The thirty-sixth floor offices were soundproofed and what he had to say to his father had to stay between the two of them.

“You signed the papers. I told you what would happen if you did.”

“You had a spy at the bank?” Why the thought hadn’t occurred to him before then, he didn’t know. Walter was ruthless.

And Liam felt stupid. Thinking he was going to walk right in and announce to his father that he’d refused to give in to his threat. And then deliver the speech he’d been rehashing for years. The one where he told his father how much he respected and admired him, told him that he’d continue to serve him, but that he also had to have a life, a mind, of his own.

Building up to the part where he told him that while he still planned to give forty-plus hours a week to Connelly Investments, he was also going to more seriously pursue a career in journalism. Pointing out the benefits to the firm if he continued to rise to success in a world of internet information delivery.

“A spy, Liam? You think we’re playing some kind of game here? Grow up, man.”

He listened for the disappointment hiding in the derision in his father’s voice. The seemingly imperceptible note of fear.

And missed them both.

“I want to know about the conversation I overheard in George’s office this morning.” Liam stuck to his plan to fight aggression with aggression if he had to. If reason didn’t work. “Why would our head counsel promise someone an impossible investment return? Even at its best, the holding he mentioned didn’t promise those kinds of returns.”

Liam had overheard just a small bit of the conversation, but enough to know that something didn’t add up. He gave his father the particulars.

George had been on the phone and hadn’t heard Liam wander in. It had been before seven, before office staff started to arrive. Just before Walter had called Liam into his private sanctum to issue yet another threat—the one where he’d be cut off if he went through with the Arapahoe deal.

Otherwise Liam would have asked the question earlier that morning.

“That investment will not be impossible to meet.” Walter’s words were quiet. Deadening. “And you are no longer welcome here.”

Steel could not have been stronger. Or more cold.

“I heard what George said. I know that account. There’s no way it’s going to make that kind of return. I deserve to know what’s going on.”

“How dare you practice duplicity and then stand here and demand answers?”

Liam checked himself against the accusation of duplicity. The pause allowed his father to move in for the kill.

“I thought you’d learned your lesson freshman year, Liam. Today you have proven that you did not. We cannot be a team, you and I. I can no longer trust you. If you will go behind my back, keeping pertinent information from me because your two harlots call your name, there is no end to the possibilities of other ways you could betray me.”

“Buying that building had nothing to do with you, or with Connelly Investments. It wasn’t a lucrative purchase. Or a building you’d have any interest in. And they are not my, or anyone else’s, harlots. As I’ve told you before, they are family to me.”

More family to him than Walter was.

“You moved trust monies behind my back.”

“My trust money. I’m a man, Dad. I have to be able to do some things on my own.”

“But not behind my back. That trust money was yours, but it was family money.”

“From my mother’s family.” Walter had met Margaret, Liam’s mother, after he’d scratched and clawed his way to his first million. She’d been born into the privileged life.

“It was our money, your mother’s and mine, when we opened that trust for you.”

Technically. It had been given to them at his maternal grandfather’s death, with the express wish that if they didn’t need it to secure their own futures it be put in trust for Liam.

“If I’d told you about the building, you’d have done everything in your power to block that sale.”

“It’s a stupid purchase. Those old folks are paying far below average rent. You’ll never be able to turn a decent profit.”

“They’re paying all they can afford on fixed incomes.” Liam stated the more pertinent truth. “And we aren’t going to lose money on the deal. We didn’t go into it with an eye to support ourselves. Marie has her coffee shop. Gabrielle’s a lawyer. I told you that.”

“And you, Liam? While you’re so busy exerting your manhood, you still expect me to support you?”

“I earn every dime you pay me.”

“You say you’re a man, but you didn’t tell me about that old apartment building because you were afraid.”

The little bit of truth that lurked in the ugly words spurred Liam onward in a battle he didn’t want to fight.

“I’m standing up to you now.”

Going into business with Gabrielle and Marie...it had been his way to solidify his place in their future. To make the three of them, their little family, a brother and his sisters, legal. He’d done what he had to do.

“You are standing only because you don’t have a chair to sit on.”

The old man was sitting in the only chair left in the office. “What’s going on, Dad? What deal did I stumble on this morning that you don’t want me to know about? Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it? This has nothing to do with a loser apartment building I sunk my own pittance into.”

“You stumbled onto nothing more than a joke, Liam. A joke.” Spittle sprayed on Liam’s desk as his father repeated the word. “George was on the phone with Bob Sternan. They were mocking Senator Billingsley and his promises regarding the Indian land he recently purchased.”

Land that his father had purchased, with a signed agreement from the tribe, and developed several years before. A development that he’d since sold and which was for sale again. A development currently owned by Senator Ronald Billingsley—the immoral man whose campaign Liam had once thought his father had supported. He’d later found that neither his father nor anyone closely associated with Connelly Investments had been listed as campaign contributors.

And his father had told him to his face, looking him in the eye, that he’d never support the crooked politician.

Mock him, though, yes.

George had been on the line with Bob Sternan. A senator who’d proven himself trustworthy again and again. A family man who chose to serve his state without lining his own pockets.

Jenna’s dad.

Another man he respected whom he’d disappointed. Jenna had broken up with him. But Liam had agreed to take the blame so she didn’t have to face her father’s lectures. They hadn’t been in love. Nor had they relished the idea of a match made for business or the sake of the public good. They hadn’t wanted to marry just to bring together an appearance of money and morals that would instill public trust in their families.

Liam had asked her to marry him because he was thirty years old and the old man had been ragging on him constantly about his duties to provide a Connelly heir.

And Jenna had agreed because she hadn’t had the gumption to stand up to her father.

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.”