44. Garrett
Chapter Forty-Four
GARRETT
H e wiped the scowl off his face in the elevator. He was still frustrated over missing Emma’s doctor’s appointment, but today’s meetings had been too important to cancel. They’d also been too sensitive for Fletcher or any of his subordinates to handle without him.
The coming week wasn’t looking any better either. He resented every minute he didn’t get to spend with her. He’d missed too many of them as it was.
“Emmy,” he called out, noting the now familiar sight of coffee shop pastries lined up on the bar.
Garrett allowed himself a brief smile. He’d eaten more pastries these past few weeks than his entire life.
He had compensated by adding some time to his normal workout, but in truth, his new favorite form of exercise was sex with his smoking hot wife, whenever and however she wanted.
The thought made him hard, and he was already stripping, hoping she wasn’t hungry after her coffee shop research. But all amorous thoughts died when he found her in bed, awake but pale and in obvious pain.
“ Hey .” Kneeling to the side, he grew calmer when she focused on him and smiled, even if it was weak as hell .
“Hey,” she rasped. “Don’t worry. I slept off the worst of it.”
“Another headache?”
Her headaches weren’t frequent but when they struck, Emma went down hard. “Did you speak to Dr. Saha about them?”
“Mmm, yeah,” she said, rising sluggishly. “But it wasn’t Saha. She wasn’t available to fly down. It was another doctor she recommended. Some French guy.”
Garrett scowled. He’d paid a considerable sum for Dr. Saha’s services. However, it wasn’t a contract in the traditional sense. Another doctor could take charge of her care when Saha wasn’t available, but he didn’t like it. “I’ll call the hospital.”
“I don’t need another exam.”
He meant that he’d be doing a background check on the new doctor, to verify the worthiness of his credentials, but didn’t say so. Emma didn’t need to know how thoroughly he investigated everyone who treated her.
“Did he at least give you a refill of your pain meds?”
“I took one of my old ones,” she said, touching his arm when he made a face. “They work better.”
Garrett sighed. “It’s because they’re too strong.”
It was a traditional analgesic with a significant percentage of an opiate to make it effective.
Emma’s skull had been fractured in the accident, so Garrett understood the need for such a strong painkiller in the beginning, but the newer formulations would be better for her in the long term.
But that wasn’t good enough. Not when she kept going back to the old pills for real relief.
“What can I do?” he asked, settling down more comfortably on the floor.
“No, here.” She patted his normal spot next to her. “Come lie with me for a minute.”
He didn’t need to be asked twice. He finished undressing, leaving his boxers on before climbing onto the bed next to her, grateful he’d sprung for the deluxe mattress. It barely moved when he climbed next to her. But he was still careful not to jostle her.
To his surprise, she turned toward him, cuddling up against him. His muscles relaxed, some of his tension dissipating. If she could move, her pain wasn’t as bad as he thought.
Garrett wrapped an arm around her, pressing his lips to her hair. “I know you don’t like the new pills, but perhaps we can try again. Find a better formulation. Perhaps DNA testing might help. That’s the new frontier for drugs—finding the ones that work for you on a genetic level and tailoring the dosage to you.”
She hummed, tilting her head up a touch to face him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” Emma could ask him anything. “Do you need a kidney? If you think it will help, I’ve got a spare.”
She poked him. “See, it’s things like that. You do so much for me, but I’m not sure why you’re so hell-bent on changing my meds. I’m not saying that isn’t a good idea. It is. But you seem so invested in it.”
“Ah.” He let his head fall back, tightening up again despite himself. “Caught that, did you?”
Her fingers shifted to rest over his heart. “You’re not as subtle as you think you are.”
Yeah, she had him there. He hadn’t done a good enough job hiding the anxiety and discomfort he felt whenever she took certain pills.
“Did I ever tell you about my ex?”
Emma didn’t react, just a small betraying twitch of her stomach muscles that he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been holding her.
He didn’t call attention to it. He just stroked her until she lay quiescent in his arms.
“No. You never speak of her.”
There was a hint of something in her voice. Curiosity, of course, but also caution.
He couldn’t reassure her fast enough. “It’s not because she’s special. I married Ekaterina Hermes in the European equivalent of a drunken Vegas weekend.”
Her eyes widened. “For real?”
“Not my proudest moment,” he admitted. “I wasn’t in love.”
“Then how did it happen? ”
“Too much booze, a big boat, and a jaded captain who had seen it all. He was happy to take the tip-slash-bribe Ekaterina slipped him to marry us despite the copious amount of alcohol we’d imbibed.”
A line came and went between her brows. “It was her idea?”
“I think it was one of her clique actually, although I can’t be one hundred percent sure. But Ekaterina adopted it as her own with the enthusiasm only the truly wasted can have.”
He could laugh about it now, but it had taken a whole week to come to terms with what he’d done. That was around how long it had taken for him to sober up and figure out that joke ceremony he only half remembered on deck hadn’t been a drunken hallucination.
“Surprisingly, Ekaterina stuck to her guns afterward. She started introducing me as her husband to everyone and I… I just sort of went with it.”
Emma’s brows drew together. “ Why ?”
He hated discussing his marriage, for so many reasons, but Emma deserved an honest answer. “I guess I wasn’t bothered by it.”
“That’s it? You decided to stay married because you didn’t mind ?”
He wrinkled his nose. “I wasn’t in a real good place back then. Sardonic amusement seemed a fitting response. Of course, her father found it less than amusing when he found out.”
She raised her brows. “He disapproved?”
“On the contrary. He wanted the marriage to stand.”
Emma blinked. “What?”
He couldn’t blame her for being startled. “Ekaterina’s father Andreas was a Greek shipping magnate. He was tired of his spoiled daughter’s antics. She shopped, drank, and partied with no thought of the future.”
“He was disappointed in her?”
It was so much more complicated than that. “He didn’t expect anything from her. He was too busy running his empire to parent, leaving everything child-related to his wife. But Ekaterina’s mother was an older version of her. Pretty, shallow, with no aspirations but to do as they pleased.”
“Why did her father want you to stay married?”
“I wasn’t the Greek millionaire he’d hoped she’d land. My father was small potatoes compared to him, but he had made a name for himself in certain circles. I had gone to business school and done well there. Andreas came to see me as clay to mold. After thinking it over, I decided I was willing to get shaped.”
“That’s surprising.” She poked his pec with her index finger. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not exactly what I would call malleable.”
He chuckled. “I’m not, but I was ambitious enough to recognize that Andreas was a damn fine businessman, and I could do worse than learn at his feet.”
“And what about your wife?”
He jerked reflexively. “You are my one true wife. Ekaterina was a drunken mistake and then an obligation.”
Damn, he hadn’t even thought about his ex in over a year and now he had to sum up his entire relationship with her.
“Ekaterina didn’t love me and I didn’t love her. But she was fun, bubbly, and she didn’t ask difficult questions. I wasn’t intentionally seeking that out, but it ended up working for me.”
Emma’s lips parted. “How long was it after my accident?”
“Almost eleven months,” he said. “Most of which I spent drinking my way across Europe, under the guise of studying different business enterprises so I could broaden my horizons.”
“No looking back, right?” she asked evenly.
“No,” he whispered. And there was nothing he regretted more.
“Did you enjoy being married?”
“For a little while. A very little while.”
She leaned toward him. “What went wrong?”