17. Emma
Chapter Seventeen
EMMA
S he was used to feeling hungover after a migraine, but the dry mouth she felt upon waking, accompanied by the weird sensitivity of her brain as if it had shrunk, was new.
The likely suspect was the two glasses of wine she’d had with dinner last night.
She couldn’t drink because of her many meds, but if she was going to transition to a new medication, Emma needed to wean herself off the old one first. It gave her an unexpected window to enjoy herself a little. Which was why she had the answer to a question she’d never needed to ask.
Emma was a lightweight.
Maybe she’d had a higher tolerance before her accident. Since she’d been in her last year of college, that was a good bet.
Climbing out of her comfortable bed, she blinked and took a good look, the daylight revealing details she hadn’t noticed last night.
I can’t believe I’m staying here.
This guest room looked like a fancy hotel suite with its huge sleigh bed, posh furniture, and little conversation nook. Her middle-of-the-night visit to the bathroom had shown her a dimly lit space where everything was subdivided. There was a sink across from a big tub and a separate shower stall with more nozzles than the human body had parts.
Even the toilet had its own little room.
This morning she discovered her nightstand had a built-in mini fridge full of snacks and drinks.
Unreal . Emma took a bottle of water and drank, but the unsettled feeling in her stomach didn’t dissipate. If anything, it got worse.
This just proves what you suspected . She was not normal.
Any other woman who got a chance to spend a few weeks in a place like this would feel like she’d won the lottery. But it just made Emma anxious, her equilibrium shot.
That feeling intensified when she left her room in search of her clothes.
Clutching the towel, she backed up to avoid mowing down an almost-naked Garrett.
The man was wearing a very short pair of shorts and a pair of sneakers. Nothing else.
His sweat-sheened pecs were hypnotic. But why were his hands all bandaged? Had he hurt himself?
Concerned, she shifted to grip her towel with a single hand and pointed. “Did you burn yourself?”
Seemingly startled, he lifted his hands. “No.”
The combination of his answering smile with that muscled chest was lethal. “They’re wrapped because I was sparring with Rainer.”
Her brows drew together. “Sparring?”
“Boxing. We box.” He began to peel the bandages off, completely unselfconscious of the fact he was half-naked in front of her.
So are you, her damaged brain reminded her. “Oh, um. That’s stupid.”
His head jerked back. “What?”
She pointed at her head. “Risk of traumatic brain injury.”
The expression on his face was almost comical. She doubted this suave playboy had ever looked more uncomfortable.
Garrett coughed. “Well, we don’t hit each other that hard. Not enough to do any serious damage. ”
“Must be nice.” Emma tilted her head at him, stretching out the awkward moment for all it was worth.
He narrowed his eyes at her, suspicion making their hazel depths as bright as polished topaz. “Stop enjoying my discomfort.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “I will as soon as you tell me where my clothes are.”
His brows drew down. “In your room,” he said in the tone kind people reserved for talking to the mentally impaired.
Emma put her hand on her forehead. “There must be a box missing because I can’t find my work things.”
His face curdled as if he’d smelled something bad. “You’re going to work?”
“Yeah,” she said pointedly. “Why? Do you have an opinion on that?”
“Nope,” he backpedaled for all he was worth. “Of course, you’re going to work. So am I.”
Emma immediately knew that Garrett Chapman had taken the day off from whatever it was he did in that penthouse office.
Her brows drew together. “What did you expect us to do here all day?”
Garrett puffed up indignantly. It did very interesting things to his chest. Not to mention the six-pack over the waistband of those tiny shorts. “I said I was going into the office.”
“Uh-huh.”
Rolling his eyes, he stalked off, presumably to shower. Emma’s giggle followed him, but her amusement didn’t last long.
As much fun as it was to torture the man, she couldn’t let herself get too comfortable around him. Or this palace.
By the time Emma managed to find the box with her work clothes, Garrett had showered, dressed, and cooked breakfast. She followed the enticing smell to the kitchen. It was, as the scent promised, a full-service kitchen that would have been at home in any small or midsized restaurant.
Garrett seemed at home in it too, which was a bit of a surprise. He set a plate stacked with half a dozen coaster-sized pancakes. “Eat,” he growled.
“ Buen provecho to you too.”
His handsome face darkened further. “I ate already,” he said. “But thanks.”
“Are you fluent in Spanish?” she asked, lifting the fork that had accompanied the plate and taking a bite.
Damn him, the pancakes were perfect. Fluffy on the inside and golden brown on the outside, they had perfect crispy edges. Combined with a fat curl of gold butter on top, they might have been the best she’d ever had.
“It’s Southern California,” he said by way of explanation. “I’m driving myself to the office, which leaves my driver free.”
He took a card out of his pocket and set it in front of her. “That’s her number. She can drop you off at work and pick you up. You should call and give her at least twenty minutes' notice. Maybe a little longer if traffic is heavy.”
Emma hurried to swallow. “You’re kidding, right? I can walk to work in ten minutes.”
“Then aren’t you lucky?” he said, tilting his head in an echo of her earlier move. “You don’t have to.”
What an obnoxious ass.
Emma pointed her fork at him. “Can I say something?”
He passed her a napkin. “Is there any way to stop you?”
Emma shifted her grip on the utensil menacingly. “If you’re going all Christian Grey on me, I will stab you with this fork.”
He wiped his hands on a handy kitchen towel and tossed it down with a little too much vigor. “You wish.”
With that snappy comeback, he left.
Guilt nibbled at her the moment he was out of sight. Or at least it did until she remembered the cat.
Meowmus had been asleep in his basket when she went hunting for her clothes, but he was gone when she returned with them to the room to change.
It took twenty minutes, but she finally found him behind a baby gate Garrett must have had installed in the guest bathroom next to hers. A note taped to it informed her that someone from the building’s concierge service would be by to walk him around lunchtime.
“Good Lord.” She laughed, picking the kitten up and cuddling him. “Does he think cats get walked?”
The kitten purred in response.
Comforted by the little creature’s warmth, she kept stroking him as they walked around. “Maybe I should have told Mr. Moneybags that I don’t have to go in until ten thirty. Do you think we should explore?”
The kitten continued to purr. “Agreed, we definitely should.”
Garrett had neglected to give her a tour, and though the basic layout was like Georgia and Rainer’s apartment, the bits she’d seen were furnished and decorated with a completely different aesthetic than their place.
Next door was modern comfort with fun, edgy pieces. This place was a straight-up bachelor’s paradise with an almost embarrassing amount of leather. Not to mention the glass and dark polished wood.
It was like living in a cigar bar. Or at least what she’d always imagined one looked like.
And so began their explorations. In addition to that suspiciously well-stocked bar and gourmet kitchen was a plasma TV so large it could have replaced a classroom projector in a very wealthy school district.
She also found the gym, which had a dozen intimidating exercise machines, a motorized lap pool, and a hot tub. This was in addition to the spare bedrooms and the office-slash-library where she found a stash of magazines in a drawer.
Garrett graced the cover of each one. Most were business or real estate related but there was one with Most Eligible Bachelor emblazoned on it. He looked disgustingly hot in that one, sitting in a chair with his tie undone, she admitted with a frown.
His pose was that of a man about to call it a night and go to bed. The beautiful woman who would accompany him was not shown, but in Emma’s mind, she was strongly implied.
She took that one out of the drawer, snapping a pic of the cover in case the magazine mysteriously disappeared after she hung it on the refrigerator like a child’s art piece.
That task done, she wandered a little more, ending her self-guided tour in front of the master suite.
“For shame, Meowmus,” Emma chided as they contemplated the closed double doors. “We can’t go rifling through our host’s underwear drawer. That would be highly inappropriate. And we’re not going to go through his medicine cabinet either.”
Besides, his wouldn’t be anywhere near as interesting as mine .
She stroked the cat, her mood nose-diving as a rain of multicolored pills fell in her mind. “Great. Now I’m depressed.”
Shaking it off, she put Meowmus down on the floor. “Come on. Let’s go rearrange something and not tell him.”