5. Garrett
Chapter Five
GARRETT
H e knew he had made a mistake the second Emma cried out, the overwhelming terror in the sound reaching into his gut to punch his lower intestine.
He had gotten a glimpse of her fiddling underneath Fletcher’s Ferrari and his vision had clouded as red as the car. His wild imagination had her planting a tracking device under the vehicle—or in the insanity of the moment—a bomb.
It wasn’t until she saw him and dropped the sandwich she was holding that he realized how monumentally he had fucked up.
But it was too late to stop. The paramilitary training he’d done with Auric Security had taken over and in a blink his momentum had carried them both to the wall behind the car, where he pinned her using the bulk of his body.
His only saving grace was that he’d had the foresight to cradle the back of her head with his palm before she hit the concrete, the sweet taste of vindication fleeing as quickly as it had come.
Now he was frozen in place, unable to see anything but Emma’s fear-filled eyes, his mind having blanked in self-protection against his own idiocy .
Even Fletcher’s shouts were barely making it through the wall of white noise his mind had created.
He had been walking his partner to his car, talking about the dinner they were about to have with a longtime client when they’d spotted Emma.
Fuck . Were those tears? Yes, they were.
Congratulations, asshole . He had terrorized his employee— in a parking garage no less —and made her cry.
The sob that escaped her mouth finally broke the ice that had encased him. Garrett let go, backing off before he threw up all over her.
It took Emma a minute to realize she’d been released. She looked from side to side, jerking abruptly before picking up the coffee cup he hadn’t noticed.
A thousand words of apology rose to his lips, but they got trapped in his throat.
Then he saw something, a scar about an inch long peeking out from behind her hair, the thick mass of it pulled forward over one shoulder in a side braid.
He fixed on the pale line of white that appeared to thicken before disappearing behind the glossy dark-brown strands.
“How old is that scar?” he breathed, his hand moving to push her braid back.
It was another idiot move of course. Garrett had just assaulted a woman in a parking garage and was now trying to stroke her hair.
He deserved what happened next.
Squeaking as if all the air had rushed out of her lungs, Emma jerked the coffee cup up.
De Olla was a premium coffee place but even they used those flimsy to-go lids that never managed to stay on.
Garrett reared back as the still-hot coffee splashed all over his pristine white shirt.
“Shit . ”
He ran his hands down his chest in rapid strokes, pushing the hot liquid off. It wasn’t scalding, but it was hot enough to shock him and incense Fletcher.
His partner stepped up around them, uncaring that Emma had flattened herself against the wall as two men crowded her, effectively trapping her.
“Emma! Did you just throw the coffee at him?” he asked, giving her an incredulous glare.
She didn’t answer. Garrett would have been surprised if she could. Emma was trembling, her eyes wide and glassy as if she was in shock.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” his partner continued yelling as Garrett yanked off his navy blazer and ruined tie. “What is wrong with you?”
He turned his head to glare at his partner. “Calm down. This is my fault.”
Garrett shouldn’t have taken his eyes off her.
Emma pushed past him, hitting him in the shoulder like a tiny linebacker. Surprised, he leaped back at the same time, knocking Fletcher into the side panel of his prized Ferrari.
“Emmy, wait, I’m sor—” he began but she was running too fast to hear.
Emma was already at the garage entrance, cutting off a tricked-out Jeep about to exit.
The driver leaned on his horn, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out Fletcher. He shouted at the two security guards Garrett hadn’t realized were there, waving at the fleeing girl.
“Don’t let her get away!”
This is officially a clusterfuck.
Garrett was a sticky mess, surrounded by people talking at him—Hector, the manager of the coffee shop; Kyle, the skinny barista; the building’s manager, Catherine; and Celeste Myers, his head of HR.
Emma was being held in Celeste’s office under the watchful eyes of the two security guards. He could see her through the open door, cowering in a chair while the guards stood like prison wardens on either side of her.
He thrust a hand through his hair, his stomach roiling. Shit, they had dragged Emma inside like some sort of criminal.
“She is a criminal,” Fletcher said, making him aware he’d spoken aloud.
“I assure you Emmaline is nothing of the kind,” Hector said, his hands gesticulating as if he was pouring something, a telling nervous response. “Whatever happened here is a big misunderstanding. She has special needs?—”
“I can’t believe you are dragging her to HR over the spilled coffee,” Kyle interrupted, his face sporting red blotches, either from anger or fear.
“She threw that coffee at him!” Fletcher was irate, his cheeks splotched with red.
He turned to Garrett with an apologetic grimace. “And I’m sorry I didn’t believe you earlier. We’ll get to the bottom of this mess. I promise you it ends today.”
“The bottom of what?” Kyle was near tears. “I thought you were on her side. Did those perverts on twenty-three get to you? Is that what this is about?”
Fletcher scowled at the kid before dismissing him.
“Security is sweeping my car for bugs now,” he told Garrett. “Once we find them, we can have her charged with corporate espionage.”
“ Bugs ? You think she’s some sort of corporate spy?” Hector asked in confusion. “No, that’s not right.”
Fletcher straightened, patting the man on the back in an awkward this-isn’t-your-fault gesture.
“Rest assured we don’t blame you. Whoever placed her here was very cunning,” he said, his tone implying that Hector was anything but. “However, I think it’s in everyone’s best interests if De Olla steps back right now. We’ll let the authorities handle this.”
Kyle threw up his hands. “This is crazy. How could you even think Emma is a spy?”
Fletcher pointed an accusing finger through the door. “How could we not? We see her every day and she just waltzes past like she doesn’t even recognize us.”
Kyle shook his head. “Why would she…”
The kid almost tripped, stumbling in front of Garrett. “ Wait . Did you know Emma before her accident?”
Garrett hadn’t been able to tear his eyes from Emma's huddled form, but he jerked to look at Kyle now. The contents of his stomach were trying to crawl back up his throat.
He silenced Fletcher with a slash to the air when he began to speak again.
“What fucking accident?”