“Is Kennedy talking to you yet?” He hadn’t broached this subject at all. Until now.

Gabby waded in carefully. She leaned against the sink, hoping it would hold her up if the topic turned on her. “Barely.”

“She’ll come around.”

She almost asked if he had, but she didn’t want to know the answer. “We talk every day. Not about you or what happened. It’s more like school gossip, but it’s something. Baby steps.”

“Speaking of strange things happening over the last few weeks . . .”

Gabby had to laugh. “Interesting segue.”

Liam spun around on the chair to face her. “Earl contacted me. We talked about the bid paperwork you found. I expected him to stomp around and use it to have us disqualified from this project and a bunch of others, but he asked about us teaming up.”

Liam coming clean about Baines’s actions and the enormity of what that could mean for his business sank in right as he mentioned the team thing. “Wait, go back. A merger?”

“Not really. Under Earl’s proposal, we’d combine for one job then see how it goes. Talk about more later.” Liam didn’t sound convinced about the plan. “Apparently, he and Retta bought a place in Florida and plan to spend a lot of time there now that she’s retired and—”

“No!” Gabby didn’t realize she’d screamed the order until she saw Liam’s reaction. “Please don’t do it.”

His eyes widened, and he leaned away from her a bit. “Wow.”

She needed to stay calm and be clear. “Sorry, but you don’t want to get in bed with Earl.”

“Want to tell me why?”

She needed him to hear her. She hadn’t gambled and blackmailed only to have him undo all her hard work by walking into an arrangement with Earl. That man had an agenda, and a ruthless one. “I don’t have a right to ask this, and I normally wouldn’t. Not now. Not when things are uncertain, and you’re barely tolerating me being in your house, but please. No deals with Earl. Be careful around him. He’s . . . a problem.”

He sat there for a few seconds then nodded. “For the record, I like having you in my house.”

She couldn’t go there or handle that. Not right now. Later, yes. They had to deal with all those balled-up, pushed-aside, ignored, and abandoned feelings. But they both had to grieve for Baines first. Be mad at him and miss him.

“I can’t tell you why now, or go into details, but I promise I will soon. I will show you everything, tell it all. But we need distance from all the horrors of the last six weeks. We’ll keep everything I say between us and agree to let it die there because we must.”

“That’s a hell of an ask.”