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Huge bodyguard, protector of all, scared of a little five-foot-two woman...
“Believe me, I’ve been struggling since the second I suggested being your groom in the bar that night. My bottom line has been that I know, in my heart, that working for your mother had absolutely nothing to do with my feelings for you. She was the means by which we met, period. But if I told you who I was, how I came to be at the Arapahoe, there was a better than average chance that your trust issues would kick in and you’d run scared and never give happiness, give us, a chance...
“And I was under professional obligation to keep her secret. I could lose my license if I did not do so...” He refrained from telling her about her mother’s threat to sue him. Because it wouldn’t help Marie to know that. “And without a job, how was I going to provide for you? For our family? I have no other education. I don’t know any other field...”
Her eyes fil
led with tears and Elliott figured he’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life. Because they told him her heart was softening. He couldn’t stand back and watch. Going against every grain of instinct he had he said, “Please, Marie, don’t throw me away because of this. I love you. I won’t let you down again.”
“You will,” she said. “Because no one is perfect. Including me. The truth is, Elliott, I’ve been regretting our hasty marriage for reasons of my own.”
His chest constricted so tightly he couldn’t breathe. A sensation Elliott had never experienced before. It was like being outside himself, looking down. He had the bizarre thought he was having a heart attack.
“I do have trust issues. And this whole thing, you not trusting me with the truth because you were afraid that I wouldn’t stick around, is exactly what’s been bothering me. I don’t think I’m good relationship material. I’m damaged goods. A combination of my mother’s paranoia and my father’s inability to be a good spouse—though for different reasons. I love you so much...too much to do to you what my father did to my mother...”
“You’ll never be unfaithful to me, Marie. You don’t have it in you.”
“Not with another man, no. But isn’t it unfaithful not to trust your spouse? Not to be able to believe in him?”
He didn’t like where this was going. She was giving him a problem a gun couldn’t possibly solve. He couldn’t brute-force the danger away.
“And this whole situation with my mother just shows me another aspect of the problem,” she said, her expression compassionate more than accusatory. He was beginning to think accusation would have been the preferable treatment to hope for. “You were under obligation to keep her secret. Like you will be with all your clients. Your whole life, outside of our home, will be unknown to me. I, a woman with trust issues, married a man with a secret life. It’s a recipe for disaster.”
He thought of Sailor Harcourt, the assignment he’d agreed to take on the following weekend, and knew she was right. Still, he couldn’t just let go. Not this time.
“So we’re aware of the issues, sweetie,” he said in his most gentle voice. “We’re way ahead of a lot of newlyweds. A lot of old married folks, too. As long as we talk about things, as long as we’re honest with each other, we can do this. Everyone has issues. No one is perfect. But not everyone has love.”
Having lived a lifetime without, he knew the value of what they shared.
Her lips quivering, she leaned forward to kiss him and he clung to her lips with his mouth, certain she was telling him goodbye.
“You win.”
He thought he’d made the words up in his head, to get him through the moment, until he saw the pained look in her gaze.
“But only for now,” she said. “If I can’t handle this, if I see myself doubting you beyond what’s healthy for either one of us, if I start to see myself acting or feeling like a crazy woman, I’m out. I love you too much to ruin your life.”
“The only way you’re going to ruin my life is to leave it,” he said. And wanted to be completely right about that. Love had to be enough. He’d waited too long to find it to have it not be. But he was trained to see danger. And when he listened to the truth she was telling him, he couldn’t deny that there was huge potential for failure staring straight at them.
“I have one more condition...”
Anything. She was going to let him move in. Move home. He’d do anything.
“You tell Liam and Gabrielle the truth.”
He’d already planned to do so. Agreeing to her stipulation was a piece of cake.
Earning her trust, being patient while she learned how to trust, might be the impossibility.
CHAPTER TWENTY
COMPLETELY TRUE TO his word, Elliott told Liam and Gabi about her mother’s hiring of him, about the way he’d insinuated himself into Liam’s situation, sparing himself nothing, before any of them loaded one thing into the moving truck.
Her friends had looked to her for her reaction to the news, and she’d done what a wife does. She’d supported her husband.
Inside, she’d been quaking. If she hadn’t known Elliott was lying to her about her mother, how would she know how to discern any other time? Her father had said that a woman had a certain instinct about such things, but Marie hadn’t had a clue.
Not until Elliott had been about to tell her the truth. That day when he’d been opening the door to his old life.
