19. Emma
Chapter Nineteen
EMMA
“ Y ou are seriously the luckiest bitch alive.”
Emma winced as Bethany handed a mom with her two elementary school-age daughters a latte through the waterfront kiosk’s service window.
“Could you maybe not swear in front of the customers?” she murmured after the woman shot Bethany a dirty look. “Or at least do it more quietly? Hector will get pissed if you get De Olla another bad Yelp review.”
Bethany popped the gum she was chewing as the woman and her kids moved on. “You’re such a Pollyanna.”
Emma frowned. Her internet dives had covered a lot of ground but there were still huge gaps. “Who is that?”
Her guess was a singer. It had that ring. Rihanna, Pollyanna…
Her coworker deflated her hopes with her usual diplomacy. “I forgot you have brain damage and no Disney channel subscription.”
“You’ve got me on the Disney stuff. I only have Pedro’s Netflix password.” Emma wiped the espresso machine’s steam wand with a hot towel. “But my brain is mostly recovered, thank you very much.”
“Not enough if you don’t remember tall, dark, and delicious,” Bethany pointed out, lowering herself on the upturned bucket they kept for when they needed to sit out of sight of the customers. “Forgetting a snack like that would require serious brain damage.”
Emma swallowed. This conversation was starting to give her a headache. “Can we stop talking about my brain? And Mr. Chapman?”
Bethany cocked a hip. “Let’s compromise. I’ll stop with the brain stuff, but we keep on dissecting this Mister Chapman thing.”
She cocked a hip, giving her a conspiratorial eyebrow waggle. “Does he make you call him that? Because if he does, it’s only a matter of time before you end up tied up in that guy’s sex dungeon.”
Emma threw up her hands. “That’s what I said!”
“To who?” Bethany was frowning. Then her eyes lit up. “Not to him!”
“Of course to him. I told him if he turned all Christian Grey on me, I’d stab him with a fork.”
They both laughed but Emma stopped first, subsiding with a sigh. “But it was a joke. I know he’s not interested in me that way.”
“Yeah, right.” Bethany smacked her lips. “The man tackles you one day and then boom! He’s moving you into his penthouse the next.”
“Only because nearly got my cousin evicted and then had Pedro kick me out,” Emma said darkly before frowning. “Or was it the landlady? I’m not sure how it went down.”
“Which just proves how badly he wants you in his clutches.” Bethany waved a finger to encompass her body. “He’s obviously into the T&A.”
Emma scowled and looked down at her size Ds. Bethany might have a point. Garrett had checked her out in the towel. That didn’t mean much, of course.
Garrett was a red-blooded man under eighty. Most men looked. The few who did anything about it usually restricted themselves to gross comments. A handful tried to cop a feel. Or they rubbed up against her on the bus—one of the many reasons she preferred to walk home.
But a man as wealthy and good-looking as Garrett Chapman wasn’t going to go for someone like Emma. Not that she wanted him to be interested. She could never be with someone who knew her before the accident.
“It’s not like that,” she repeated in a flat voice. “He…”
“Wants some of that booty?”
Emma held up a hand. “Let me finish. He feels guilty for accusing me of corporate espionage and going ballistic in the garage. He’s just trying to avoid a lawsuit.”
“If that were all it was, he could have gotten you a studio somewhere. He could certainly afford it. Hector says ours isn’t the only building he owns. Chapman has property all over the world. The dude is loaded.”
“And with that money comes a god complex,” she scoffed. “Garrett thinks he knows what’s best for everyone. Pedro and I weren’t perfect, but we were getting by. And then Garrett came in and blew that up. And you want to know why? It’s because he thinks I need supervision. More than Pedro can give because he’s a hoarder.”
Bethany stopped restocking. She turned around, making a face. “He is ?”
She rolled her shoulders uncomfortably. “Yes. Kind of.”
“Wow.” Bethany leaned against the side of the espresso machine. “I didn’t know that. Was it like gross? Like maggoty and stuff?”
“Not really. It was just very cluttered. He’s not as bad as the cases on those TV shows. Not yet.”
And really, who the hell was Garrett to decide what was best for her? Or for her cousin?
“It’s because he used to know me, how I was before.”
Emma stared down at her hands. Her palms had faint scars from the accident. She didn’t even know what had made them. Morose, she focused on the glimpse of the water out the service window.
Wouldn’t it be nice to sail off on one of the boats on the horizon? It beat being second-guessed, what little independence she had snatched away.
Her shoulders slumped. “Garrett compares the old Emma to the current one. He sees how broken and less I am, and he feels sorry for me.”
The words fell like bricks, almost thudding in the little space.
Bethany winced. After a minute, she raised her shoulders. “Are you sure you were that great before?”
Emma almost choked on her sudden laughter. Bethany might have been a monster, but Emma liked her brutal honesty.
“It’s pity. There’s some guilt too, but it’s mostly pity,” she said, but without the incipient tears. “Lucky me, I get to be his new charity project. Once I’ve improved to his satisfaction, he’ll move on to the next one.”
For once, her snarky coworker appeared at a loss for words.
“Not that I plan on waiting for him to decide,” Emma added. “I’ll be out of his place as soon as I find a roommate situation that’s not too far or too gross. Something affordable.”
Bethany held up her hands. “Don’t look at me. I already have two roommates.”
Also, it would have been a disaster. Bethany was best in small doses.
“Maybe Kyle,” Emma thought out loud. “He’s been saying he wants to move out of his mom’s house. Maybe we can find a cheap place together.”
“Dude, you think you’ve got guy problems now? Move in with Kyle and see what happens.”
Emma pursed her lips. Bethany had a point. Kyle was sweet but he had a puppy dog crush on her. That could get awkward very quickly.
“There’s always Craigslist. I’ll find something.”
Bethany rolled her eyes. “Better than a penthouse?”
She shrugged. “More permanent at least. Garrett’s white knight complex won’t last. I’ve got a week or two, a month tops, before he gets tired of me cramping his style.”
The other woman looked disappointed. “It does seem a little too Cinderella to be real.”
Finally, a reference she knew. “Hey, I’ve seen that one!”
Emma had watched both Disney versions of the movie last year with her little sister. Then their mother made them watch Ever After , which was her favorite film version of the fairy tale .
Bethany smirked and shook her head.
“I’m not wrong about Garrett, either. You should see his place. It screams Playboy bachelor so loud you can hear it.”
“Playboy, huh? I take it back. You are so going to end up in a sex dungeon.” Bethany smirked and rocked back on her heels. “Make sure he knows how to tie you up properly. If they haven’t practiced, they end up cutting off your circulation.”
Emma groaned. “I don’t want to know how you know this.”
The blonde preened, popping her gum again. “You really don’t.”