54. Garrett
Chapter Fifty-Four
GARRETT
“ G arrett ?” Emma’s voice sounded as if it was coming from very far away. His ears were ringing. Literally. That had never happened before.
Blinking, he tore his eyes off Stella, checking Emma’s reaction. But she was smiling down at her ‘sister,’ no hint of tension in her expression.
Garrett swallowed the lump in his throat and stuck out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
A giggling Stella shook it, her tiny hand enveloping his index and middle fingers.
Her small touch sent a painful jolt of electricity running through his entire system.
“It’s nice to meet you too,” she said shyly in the voice of a cartoon princess before letting go to tug on Emma’s arm. “C’mon, Em! I want to show you my new bike.”
“Just a second, baby,” she said, her gaze going from him to her mother in an obvious way. “I have to show Garrett to our room.”
“It can wait,” he rasped past the constriction in his throat. The sleeping arrangements were the last thing on his mind. “Go see the bike.”
“Yeah! Let’s go.” Stella pulled Emma to the door .
“ Are you sure ?” she mouthed.
He nodded, waving them on despite the fact his heart was going a million miles an hour.
“I’m good,” he lied. “I’m about to head out myself. I thought I would make a quick grocery store run. I think this baby’s fifth birthday calls for champagne. You like champagne, don’t you, Stella?”
His words were met with the tinkle of silver bells. “Yeah!” Stella cheered. “I do.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said with a nod. Mouthing ‘sparkling apple cider,’ he fished out his car keys with numb fingers.
Dear God, he might need a consult from Dr. Douchebag Desjardin. Numb extremities. That was bad, wasn’t it?
“Go play,” he rasped. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Emma gave him a weird look. She knew something was up.
“Go,” he insisted.
“Okay.” Emma let Stella tug her out the door with only one backward glance—a puzzled one, but grateful too.
He waited till they were gone to round on his hostess. “Please excuse me,” he said tightly. “I have to check something out.”
Mariana stared at him, alarmed. Yeah . That was the appropriate response.
He left before he did something he would regret. Garrett walked out of the house, waving to the girls without looking at them, hustling to the car.
Leave , as quickly as you can.
That was the smart thing to do. Not that other thing—going up to Stella and picking her up to peer into her eyes until the truth came to him.
This was crazy. He had to be wrong. That was Mariana’s daughter back there. Stella was Emma’s sister. Not her daughter. Not his .
But the look on Mariana’s face just now . It had been as if she’d seen a ghost.
Well, so had he.
Evidence. I need evidence. Fortunately for him, some existed .
Garrett drove straight to Sally’s Liquor. It wasn’t called that anymore, but the new place still sold booze.
He glanced at the freshly painted sign, his lip curling. What did it say that the most prosperous business in this town was the liquor store? Not that he wasn’t tempted to march in there and buy out their lot of whiskey. But he wasn’t going to do that. He had work to do.
Lifting his cell phone, he pulled up the group chat he maintained with Rainer, Ian, and Elias.
I need a favor ASAP. It’s an emergency. Who is in town?
The universe was with him because the answers instantly poured in. Rainer was in a meeting in Los Angeles and Ian was on a plane. But Elias was free, and he was ten minutes from Garrett’s apartment.
Elias called him the minute he was inside. “Okay, are you going to tell me why I’m here?”
Garrett sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes, aware that what he was about to reveal made him sound like a lunatic. “I need you to go to my bedroom.”
“Wait. Is this something kinky?” Elias hesitated. He’d been anxious, spurred on by Garrett’s urgency. But now he was just his usual sardonic self. “Because if I’m about to walk into your room to find your blushing bride tied to your bed and I need to untie her, I warn you, I will enjoy it. Of course, I’ll act like I don’t. But I totally will.”
Garrett grunted, but the pulsing fight-or-flight adrenaline coursing through him eased back. “This is the part where I would normally threaten your life, but there is no need. Emma and I are together in Colorado.”
Elias’ amusement ended there. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? Didn’t her doctors warn you about forcing memories to surface?”
Emma’s doctors hadn’t said anything of the kind. But that was almost enough to derail him. “No, and you watch too much TV. This isn’t about that.”
He sucked a deep breath. “I just met Stella, Emma’s kid sister.”
Elias grunted. “That clarifies nothing.”
It was a good thing he was sitting down. Garrett was getting dizzy just contemplating saying this aloud. “I need you to go into my bedroom closet. I have some photo albums on the top shelf.”
His aunt Phil had the family photos meticulously recreated for him almost a decade ago. He had never uploaded the JPEG scans they’d made to the cloud, but the fine leather photo albums the photography studio sent him were right there in his closet.
Garrett hadn’t looked at them in years.
“I need you to find the oldest. Find the picture labeled ‘Iris, first day of school.’”
His mother would have been five in that photo. That would have been the same age Stella was now.
“It should be somewhere in the middle of the album,” he added.
There was no noise on the other end of the line.
“Elias, I really need a copy of that picture right now.”
It was a good thing his friend was quick on the uptake. “Uh, yeah. Of course. Wow . Shit.”
Garrett waited, trying to calm down. If he was right—no, he couldn’t think about it now.
There was noise finally, rustling and stuff being moved around. “Have I ever told you you’re a neat freak?” Elias asked.
“I’m not,” he mumbled. “I just have a very good cleaning service.”
“Shit, there’s like a dozen albums here. Which one is the oldest?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, picturing the albums in his head. “The spines have the years they cover printed on them.”
“Oh, I see them.” More rustling. “I think I got it.”
An eternity later there was a click and then a picture popped onto his screen.
Everything stopped. He could feel every molecule of air in his lungs, the blood rushing through his veins.
“Well? Don’t keep me in suspense. Is this what the kid looks like?”
His mother’s hair and skin were lighter but the eyes and mouth and the shape of the nose were identical. They could have been twins.
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “She looks just like this.”
More silence .
“It could be a coincidence,” Elias said. “A lot of little kids look like each other. Do you have a photo of Emma’s kid sister? You need to do a side-by-side comparison to know for sure.”
“Uh…” He’d met Stella for all of two minutes when Emma introduced her. Damn it, he should have offered to snap a picture of the two of them, to commemorate the occasion.
“Can you check Emma’s old room? It’s the one across the hall.”
He waited.
“No, there’s no picture frames out.”
Garrett groaned. That was what he thought but had hoped he remembered wrong.
“I’ll have to go back and take one.” It wouldn’t be hard. This was Stella’s birthday weekend and Emma would want lots of pictures.
Garrett tried to start the car, but his fingers slipped off the starter button. He had to calm the fuck down.
He was doing a piss-poor job of that when the text chime he’d assigned to his wife dinged.
She had sent him a message, accompanied by a photo. It was a close-up shot of her and Stella, their heads pressed together.
I just explained that champagne is alcohol, so Miss Stella has changed her order to cookies and cream ice cream.
Tears stung at his eyes, his throat thickening. Emma’s timing was impeccable, as always.
With shaky fingers, he wrote back.
Her wish is my command.
“I got a picture,” he muttered for Elias’ benefit before downloading and cropping the photo. Then he sent the side-by-side back.
There was a long low whistle. “That… that is a damn close match,” Elias said. “You need to get a DNA swab to be sure.”
He sat frozen, unable to comprehend anything but the most obvious and painful fact. “ Emma lied to me.”
Elias’ answer was immediate. “Oh, hell no! You don’t fucking know that.”
Garrett flattened his free hand on his thigh to get it to stop shaking. “But she has to know.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Elias spat. “Her head’s all messed up. Or did you forget you married a woman with amnesia?”
Garrett closed his eyes. Could it be that Emma believed Stella was her college boyfriend’s baby? Is that why she hadn’t told him?
That didn’t make sense. Emma had to know he was a better contender for the father, right? He’d laid out their past sexual history in excruciating detail.
And Mariana—what the hell was going on with her? Why had she gone along with this? Or had it been her idea?
“I know this is all kinds of fucked up, but whatever you’re thinking, stop ,” Elias ordered in that tone that he reserved for ordering his private security soldiers around.
“For all you know, her mom slept with your uncle or something and we’re looking at a cousin right now. Stranger things have happened.”
“My mom didn’t have a brother,” he said tonelessly. Nor did she have any male cousins.
But Elias had a point. Conjecture would only drive him mad. He needed the truth, and he needed it now.
“I gotta go.”
“All right, but don’t go all half-cocked with Emma. There must be a reasonable explanation for the resemblance.”
He shook his head at Elias’ mental one-eighty. “I thought you said marrying her was crazy. That was you, right?”
“That was before. She makes you happy so don’t do anything stupid to jack it up. Go back and have a nice calm conversation with her. And get that DNA swab.”
If he was right, the DNA swab was pointless, but he would get it anyway. His lawyers would hound him if he didn’t.
“You’re right,” he decided. “I am going back there for a good long talk.”
Just not with Emma.