7. Garrett
Chapter Seven
GARRETT
H e pulled out the last drawer of Hector’s desk, stacking the manila file folders on the blotter while he ignored the argument brewing at the door.
“You tell him—” Kyle hissed.
“I’m going to,” Hector insisted. But he kept silent as Garrett continued going through De Olla’s confidential papers.
The tattooed and pierced female barista snickered. “Maybe sometime this year.”
That one didn’t bother to keep her voice down like the other two. Ignoring them, he flipped through the top folder.
“Oh no—not the employee satisfaction forms,” the manager said in consternation. “You were rather harsh, Bethany.”
Garrett suppressed a frown. Did that mean Hector let his employees rate him ?
Doesn’t matter . Keep your eye on the prize. He set that folder aside, flipping through the others until he found the one containing the health plan information.
“Her address isn’t in there,” Hector called from the door as Garrett pushed aside some purchasing orders.
Damn . Cinnamon was more expensive than he thought .
“I’m not looking for Emma’s address,” he muttered without looking up.
Garrett’s private detective had sent that to him yesterday. However, after a long lecture from Celeste, he had refrained from going there last night.
But he had wanted to. At one point he’d even climbed into his car and turned it on. The only reason he hadn’t driven over had been the realization it was after two a.m.
Needless to say, he hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep.
He wasn’t going to find what he needed on his own. Garrett pinned the trio at the door with a pointed look. “Please come in here, Hector.”
The threesome in the doorway looked at each other.
“Go,” whispered Kyle.
“Err. Yes, I will come into my office,” Hector replied, walking in with an exaggerated put-upon expression. He ruined it a moment later when he sat in the chair reserved for employees.
The man was going to need assertiveness training if he wanted De Olla to succeed.
“Where are your health insurance agreements?”
Hector blinked. “Our what?”
Garrett sighed and held up a folder. “The agreements that spell out the medical coverage terms for full-time employees. Emma is full-time, isn’t she?”
“Yes?”
Garrett scowled. “Is that a question?”
“No.” The manager cleared his throat as Bethany snickered in the background. “She is a full-time employee. My employee.”
The emphasis was not lost on him. Garrett looked over the man’s shoulder. “Can you two leave us? I need to speak to Hector alone.”
The junior staff melted away. When he turned back to Hector, the other man was sitting straighter, having taken the time to bolster his confidence.
“Perhaps we should switch sides here?” Hector suggested, gesturing to his desk chair. “Or not,” he added quickly when Garrett gave him a flat look.
Garrett placed his hand on the pile of folders. “How long has Emma been working for you?”
Hector’s brow creased as he thought about it. “A little over nine months.”
“In this building?” he asked, unwilling to believe Emma Mendez had been under his nose all that time.
“No,” Hector said. “She was at the waterfront kiosk for most of it. I transferred her here when we got the contract.”
Garrett relaxed. It had only been a couple of months, then. But his brain couldn’t help calculating the exact number of hours Emma had been in this building without his knowledge.
“And what do you know about her accident?”
Hector began to look uncomfortable—even more than he had been. “I’m not sure that’s something we should be discussing without Celeste… maybe in some form of mediation?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“I, um, I think it is.”
“Why?”
“Well…” Hector swallowed. “You appear to have very intense feelings about Emma.”
Garrett tried to play that off. “I’m not sure I would characterize it that way.”
Hector raised his brows. “You broke into my office to look for her address.”
“No, I used my key—the one I have as the owner of the building,” he added. “And I don’t need her address. What I need to know is what her health insurance covers because she sustained a major brain injury that left her with permanent memory loss .”
He was nearly shouting by the time he finished. Aware that he’d just blown his facade of indifference, he took a deep breath and cleared his throat.
“So, it would help if you could find your medical plan information.”
As for the details of her accident, Garrett didn’t need to pump this man for that. His PI was already gathering that information .
Hector stared at him for a long moment before finally finding his voice. “I thought you hated her.”
Garrett tossed a file folder to the side. “What?”
“Fletcher Sweeney said you and Emma hated each other.”
“ Oh .” He waved that off. “That was high school stuff. Over ages ago.”
Hector’s head drew back. “High school is a formative time for many of us. And if you had an issue with Emma, it’s only natural that you might carry it into the present.”
Guess who’s been to therapy . Instead of asking Hector who had bullied him in school, he decided some honesty would serve him better.
“It was a healthy rivalry. We were competitive,” he elaborated. “Sure, there was some arguing—we did debate each other. But most of it was good-natured bickering.”
All right, that last part was a stretch, but he wasn’t about to get into his and Emma’s real history.
Judging from the look on his face, that wasn’t enough for a still-skeptical Hector.
Garrett let the tight line of his shoulders drift into a slump. Damn, he was tired. What came out of his mouth next was probably the most truthful thing he’d ever said. Something he’d never told anyone, not even himself.
“I don’t think I’d be here if it weren’t for Emma.”
He’d totally lost the man. Hector sat forward. “Excuse me, what now?”
Garrett leaned back in the manager’s chair.
“I was pretty focused on sports and partying in high school.” That and disappointing his absentee father. Garrett had excelled at that .
“I didn’t get serious about school until Emma skipped those two grades. She ended up in most of my classes.”
It had been a rather small school, so it had been impossible to avoid each other despite the faculty’s best efforts to keep them apart after that first disastrous semester.
He smiled, remembering a not-quite fifteen- year-old Emma pointing at him, calling him out during drama class. “I wouldn’t be his Juliet if you paid me.”
Yeah, she had been smart as hell and impossible to intimidate.
“Rather than letting her keep making me look bad, I cracked open a book.”
In fact, Garrett had cracked several. And when he was done with those, he cracked some more, enough to dig himself out of the hole he’d dug coasting along freshman and sophomore year.
Because of Emma, he’d managed to get into his second choice for college. From there he’d gone on to business school and started Next Chapter with Fletcher a few months after graduating.
It wasn’t an empire—yet. More like his own little fiefdom. But it was expanding. Many things were happening, all at once. Including the realization he’d had at midnight last night.
Garrett wouldn’t be a success without the kick in the pants Emma Mendez had given him.
Hector was intrigued. “So you think you owe her now?”
“Something like that,” he murmured, realizing he hadn’t paid close enough attention when he pulled these folders out because now he didn’t know where they went.
“And this payback involves getting ahold of our health insurance forms?”
Garrett chose a folder at random and stuck it in the bottom drawer. “I think, under the circumstances, I should make sure that the woman who suffered a head injury bad enough to forget high school has the best insurance possible.”
“Because she forgot high school or because she forgot you ?”
Garrett paused in the act of randomly sticking folders in drawers. He nodded, letting the man interpret that however he wanted.
Hector continued, wincing. “I’m sorry but I can’t bump up Emma’s health insurance coverage. It wouldn’t be fair to the others. And as a new business in the process of expanding, I can’t afford to give everyone premium coverage.”
Garrett waved that off. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of Emma.”
“Oh.” Hector was undeniably relieved but still didn’t seem completely on board. “Well, maybe you don’t have to. You know she was a disabled hire, right? We get benefits from the state, and I know she gets some extra things too. Physical therapy and stuff like that.”
It was meant to be comforting but the fact that Emma was considered disabled hit him like a punch to the gut. “I’m still going to need those papers.”
“Of course.” Hector stood. “But it might go faster if we switch places because the information you’re looking for is on the computer. All the records are online.”
Garrett flushed, straightening his jacket as he rose. “In that case, why don’t you forward it to my email?”
“I’ll do that.”
“Thanks.”
He left, racking his brain. It was one thing to make sure Emma had access to the best care. But judging from the way she’d run out of the office yesterday, it would be quite another to get her to accept it from him.