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She was there on business Marie was downstairs And when Gabrielle had told her she was going straight up to Lia just a fewdinner up to hie stare

She could be i it But she knew she wasn’t Marie knew exactly what Gabrielle knew about Liam They’d talked many ti About how sorry they felt for the women who inevitably fell for him

They both kneould happen if either of theh to fall for him themselves

And Gabrielle was not going to do anything that would ultimately destroy their family

CHAPTER EIGHT

LIAM SPENT EVERYLike his father had done when Lia up, he holed himself up in his home office—the newly converted kitchen in his second apartment—and came out only to eat Sleep And shower once

Unlike his father, he didn’t have anyone at ho

He spent hours going over Connelly accounts And then looking at account numbers in correlation with the somewhat complicated trail of deposits and payables the FBI had presented as evidence that his dad was a crook There were receivables that didn’this father’s business as well as he did Deposits made into accounts that shouldn’t exist, as far as Liam knew

Certainly there was information that had never been made available to him as a top-floor executive What the others had known, and kept fro Not until Gabi questioned theaining testimony that would be admissible in court if the occasion arose

Nu supposed income that showed up as deposits and then disappeared into accounts that weren’t used for official Connelly Investears

And focused on the work of his life

These were the hours that slid into oblivion as far as Lia he could find on the Douglas case—the teenager as suing his parents for the right to go off his antidepressants While there was case history of children suing their parents, there was no case that he could find similar to this one

He wasn’t privy to the closed records, of course To doctor testi the boy’s mental or physical health His job would be only to report on the case as it unfolded, and only then on the parts of it that were open to the public

But as he read, questions foran to present itself

There’d been a case in Massachusetts not all that long ago A Boston hospital had filed etting their daughter the medical attention she needed The parents clai the direction froinal doctor, orked for another, equally well-respected hospital The doctors had differing diagnoses And the child had spentallowed to see her on supervised visits while the case was in court In the end, the parents had won