24. Garrett
24
Garrett
“ I t’s really been a year since you slept with anyone?” Emma asks out of the blue on our hike the next day.
“Probably longer,” I tell her.
“Why is that?”
“Just been too busy to date, I guess.”
“You don’t have to date to have sex,” she counters. “Ethan seems to find the time. He’s just as busy as you are, right?”
I shrug. The truth is that I shield Ethan from a lot of things. I always have. Even though I know he’s fully capable of the job – great at it, even – I don’t want him working himself to death. I built this company into what it is today to take care of my family. To make sure that none of us would have to worry about money ever again. To ensure that we have all the resources we need to live the best life possible. The best life for my brother isn’t stressing about the day-to-day minutia of the company. I can handle it, and he shouldn’t have to. What he does with the time that frees up for him is none of my business, although I’m fully aware that my younger brother is intimately familiar with half the women in Denver. We can hardly even go out for a beer without running into at least one woman he’s slept with.
“Have you ever been married?” Emma asks, her tone shifting.
My eyebrows shoot up. I turn to look at her, surprised to find her looking very serious.
“No, of course not. Don’t you think I would have mentioned that? Worn a ring or something?”
“Well, you’re not much of a sharer, Garrett. You never mentioned having another brother or a dog either…but you did mention a divorce lawyer.”
I draw my brows together in confusion.
“At the Grand Canyon,” she clarifies, “when that Carl guy insulted his wife.”
“Ah,” I say quietly. Unfortunately, the answer to that question only reinforces Emma’s assertion that I’m not good at sharing. This isn’t my secret to share though. “That was just someone I hired for a family member.”
Luckily, Emma doesn’t ask any more questions about the lawyer, but she doesn’t exactly drop it either.
“There was a woman who used to call the office a lot for you,” she continues with a hint of apprehension in her voice.
I rack my brain but come up short. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, Emma.”
“She left a message once about the hot water heater going out at your house.”
“Oh right…the nanny.”
Emma stops walking abruptly. Her eyes flare and her mouth pops open. “Garrett North, I swear that if you waited until this moment to tell me you have children…”
I cut her off, running my hands down her arms. A quiet laugh hums in my throat.
“Emma, I’m kidding. Lucy is a dog nanny. Ron had trouble adjusting after he moved in. The vet said he had separation anxiety. I hired someone to hang out with him during the day while I was at work. She would call the office sometimes and put me on speaker phone so he could hear my voice. The day she called about the water heater, Ron had rolled through some mud in the yard, and she was trying to give him a bath.”
She relaxes in my arms. “Somehow, the fact that you had a dog nanny is more surprising than you having a secret family.” Then, through the wildest, most colossal jump in conversation I’ve ever heard, Emma asks, “Why didn’t you sleep with her?”
“Why on earth would I sleep with my dog’s nanny?”
Emma shrugs. “I don’t know. It just sounds like something out of a rom com movie. Guy adopts dog. Dog misses guy. Guy hires nanny. Dog likes nanny. Guy bangs nanny, and they all live happily ever after. And I mean, her name is Lucy.”
“What does her name have to do with it?”
Emma rolls her eyes as if I’ve just said the dumbest thing imaginable. “ Everyone in rom coms is named Lucy.”
“Well, this particular Lucy happens to be my cousin.”
“Oh,” she says with an apologetic cringe.
I run my hands back up her arms. My fingers casually trace the column of her neck before coming to rest on her jaw. “If I haven’t already made this perfectly clear, I’ve spent the last year wanting you. Only you . It’s true that I’ve been too busy to date, but even if I had the time to spare, I didn’t have any interest because I was too busy torturing myself over my assistant who hated my guts.”
A smile forms on her lips, and I bend forward to press a kiss against them.
“You know I don’t hate you now, right?”
“I know,” I say, smiling down at her.
“Any other questions?” I ask, slipping my hand down her arm and threading my fingers with hers as we start walking again.
“Just one.”
Emma hesitates so long that I glance back at her. She flashes a smile at me, but it doesn’t quite touch her eyes.
“Do you ever think about quitting?” she finally asks.
I laugh. “Quitting the company that I founded?”
“Okay, so maybe not quitting exactly, but…taking a step back? Maybe hiring more people and delegating some of your work?”
“Not really,” I say. “The way I see it, the company is my responsibility, and I can’t really step away from it and expect it to succeed. Is there a reason you’re asking?”
“It just seems like your job causes you a lot of stress,” Emma says. “When you’re away from the office, you’re like an entirely different person.”
I know she’s right, but it doesn’t change anything. I can’t just walk away. I won’t turn my company over to some soulless board of directors or to a perfect stranger.
“Stress is normal,” I say with a shrug.
“Sure, but you just seem…I don’t know…unhappy.”
A heavy sigh pours from my chest. Again, she isn’t wrong. I guess Emma has been paying closer attention than I realized.
“It’s different than I imagined,” I admit after a long pause. “The whole company started as a kayak rental tent next to the lake. I had this dream of doing something I loved – something outdoors – but the company just kept growing and changing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for its success because it’s allowed me to provide for my family in ways I never imagined. But yeah, sometimes it feels a little stifling to be stuck in an office all day. That’s life though.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Look at the guides,” Emma says. She motions up the trail, presumably to the members of our group that we’ve lost sight of on the winding mountain trail. “They aren’t stuck in an office all day.”
These guides have my dream job. There’s no denying it. If I could start all over again, I would probably push True North in this direction instead, offering comprehensive guided outdoor adventure packages. But I’m not convinced that the outcome would be any different. If the company is successful, there comes a point when every business owner ends up stuck in an office doing the soul-sucking corporate bits and pieces. That’s just a fact that I’ve had to accept.
“What about you?” I ask, redirecting the conversation. “Do you ever think about quitting?”
I mean this somewhat jokingly, but I instantly regret asking. Emma tenses up beside me, her grip on my hand tightening ever so slightly. She blows out a big breath and keeps her eyes focused on the trail ahead when she says, “There’s something I should probably tell you.”