76. Garrett
Chapter Seventy-Six
GARRETT
H e pressed his nose into Emma’s hair, hugging her lush body to him.
“Good morning,” he murmured when he felt her stir.
“Morning.” She turned around in his arms, hiding from the sun by pressing her forehead into his chest.
“Still not used to the sun on this side of the bed?”
Much to his satisfaction, she burrowed deeper. “Nope. You called the guy, right?”
“I did,” he assured her, taking advantage of the close contact to run his hands all over her. “He’s coming on Saturday to install the contact paper.”
Emma had been right when she said they both loved his apartment. But every time she’d sat in the living room, she’d grown quiet and withdrawn—even after he replaced the carpet. It was as if she couldn’t help but relive her attack.
Garrett wanted to move. He’d even called a real estate agent to start scoping out properties. But Emma took that personally, telling him he was letting Fletcher win. She dug in her heels and refused to move to a new place. Thankfully, her new bestie George came up with a simple plan that solved all their problems.
They switched penthouses .
“They’re almost identical apartments, with the same number of rooms and square footage,” George pointed out. “And we’ve been meaning to do some redecorating in any case, including adding a room to display a few more of my engines. Why don’t we just max out the number of movers and swap apartments?”
Fortunately for them, Rainer had gone for the idea.
It took a crew of two dozen moving men three days to shift their belongings the few dozen feet that separated their apartments.
If the movers thought they were crazy, swapping between two almost identical apartments, they kept their thoughts to themselves.
Georgia now had an entire room filled with pedestals to display her growing collection of car-related artifacts. This included two engines, over a dozen hood ornaments, and something she called the greatest innovation in carburetors the world had ever seen.
Meanwhile, Garrett and Emma had decided to knock down the wall between Stella’s room and the extra bedroom next door, using a broad arch to delineate the two spaces. The side room would serve as a playroom now and a study area when she grew older.
The other two bedrooms down the hall were kept in reserve for a possible future nursery at Emma’s insistence.
She was determined to have at least one more child. Garrett wanted one too, but he was determined to go the surrogacy route, to avoid additional stress on Emma’s body. However, she was equally determined to carry the child herself—which was why he was content to put the thing off.
But they kept the rooms available, just in case.
Despite keeping the penthouse as their primary residence, Garrett found he couldn’t let go of the idea of giving Stella a yard. That was why they had just closed escrow on a spacious three-story house in Del Mar with a big walled-off garden and a private staircase down to the beach.
So far, they had only spent one weekend there, but he’d taken a thousand pictures of his girl’s first beach day—the first one Emma remembered.
Garrett and Stella had built a sandcastle in front of the surf before climbing up the stairs to wash up and eat burgers. They grilled them on the sunny deck overlooking the water.
But the penthouse was still home. The only problem was that the sun came through at a different angle in the master bedroom first thing in the morning, one that woke them too early.
Rainer had used blackout curtains, but neither he nor Emma liked their view of the Pacific obstructed. That was why he was having a specialist come and install special UV contact paper compatible with their smart-glass windows and doors.
Until then, he pulled the navy Egyptian cotton sheets over his and Emma’s heads, making a private cave for the two of them.
He ran his hands over her backside, glorying in the silkiness of her skin before rolling over her like a wave.
“Someone wants a very good morning.” She giggled, wrapping her legs around his waist.
Garrett gave her his most charming grin. He nuzzled her neck. “Yes, please.”
Emma ran her foot over the back of his calf. “Stella’s going to wake up any minute. Do you think we can finish in time?”
He stripped out of the pajama bottoms he wore in deference to having a five-year-old. He pulled down the sheets before settling between her rounded thighs. “I do love a challenge.”
His gorgeous wife smiled up at him, lingering drowsiness making the gesture slow and wanton. “Well, then step right up, challenger,” she said with another giggle. “I’ll have to think of a suitable prize if you win.”
He stretched out over his wife, his touch flagrantly possessive. “Oh, I already won.”
He ended up being grateful to the intrusive sun, which had woken them a full half hour ahead of schedule.
Garrett made the most of every minute, driving his luscious wife to a panting orgasm just before the alarm went off.
They dived into the shower together, returning to the bedroom just in time for Stella to poke her head inside, asking for breakfast.
Whistling a happy tune, he set the table while Emma got Stella dressed for her big day. The pair entered the room wearing matching sweater dresses and new UGG boots in deference to the dreary January weather.
Stella’s hair was in pigtails. She was the most adorable thing he’d ever seen. But seeing her take Emma’s hand, the two of them walking toward him with such similar smiles—the sheer perfection of the moment knocked him flat.
“Did you start the coffee?” Emma asked.
When he could finally take a breath, he held up the freshly branded bag of Baby Bella Beans. “You mean the first batch of your special blend? Hell no, I wouldn’t dare.”
Rolling her eyes, Emma took the coffee from him, busying herself at the shiny professional-grade espresso machine while he fetched Stella her breakfast.
He watched his wife handle the shiny chrome espresso machine like a pro.
To say Emma was particular about her coffee was an understatement. He never quite got it right. But he flipped a mean pancake. And those were Stella’s favorite.
Emma and her little crew had busted their butts to get the specialty batch of beans out for the Christmas season. De Olla had stocked it at their café and their kiosks, and it flew off the shelves. Garrett had been lucky to reserve a few boxes before they sold out.
“Eat a whole one in case you don’t like your lunch today,” he told his daughter, pouring syrup on her pancake when she sat down to eat. If he let her do it, she’d empty half the jug onto her plate.
“Don’t tell her that.”
Emma kissed Stella on the forehead before handing him a steaming mug and going back to the machine to make her own. “You’re going to eat lunch in the cafeteria with all your new friends—I hear the food is really good.”
“I hope so,” Stella said primly, picking up her fork before attacking her pancake as if all the food in the world was disappearing. Garrett followed suit, with enough gusto that his wife muttered something about living with a pack of wolverines.
“At least she’s not nervous about today,” he said around a mouthful of pancake. It was a shame the same couldn’t be said for him. Garrett was a ball of nerves.
Emma, predictably, was a rock.
After breakfast, they piled into the Range Rover and drove to Francis Perkins Elementary, the best private primary school in the county.
Stella was starting kindergarten, on the first day of the spring semester.
“You need to stop making that face,” Emma whispered to him as he climbed out of the SUV. “She’s not worried now, but if she sees how anxious you are, she’ll start panicking. You know she’s like a sponge.”
“I’m not anxious,” he protested.
“You’re sweating,” she said, surreptitiously wiping his brow with the lens-cleaning cloth she used for her sunglasses before making room for their daughter to walk between them.
Emma took Stella’s right hand and he took the other after helping her with her furry panda backpack, a gift Mariana had bought her at the zoo.
“I still think we should have waited,” he muttered over his daughter’s head. “She could have kept on with the tutor for another semester. There would be more new kids starting school. Right now, she’s the only one.”
“It’s going to be fine, Papa,” Stella said, having caught all of that with her sharp five-year-old ears. “I want to go to school.”
Melting completely, Garrett gave her a wan smile. “I know, baby. And you’re going to do great.”
“I am.” Stella beamed. “I love school!”
He chuckled. “She gets that from you,” he told Emma as they entered the main office to find out where Stella’s class was.
Letting her walk inside it took nearly everything he had.
“See,” Emma said, pointing through the window once their daughter had skipped inside. “She is already making friends.”
Scowling, Garrett approached the window, the tight knot in his gut loosening when he saw the teacher had taken his baby to her seat at a table with three other kids.
It had been less than a minute, but Stella was already chatting a mile a minute with the little girl seated to her right, a black-haired girl with an impressive braid.
He studied the elaborate coiffure with a critical eye. “We need to watch hairdo tutorials on YouTube.”
Emma laughed, taking his arm. “ That’s your takeaway? Not that our beautiful baby is more than ready for school and already making friends?”
He grunted noncommittally, giving the other parents—some of them openly eyeballing them—a polite nod, but not engaging in conversation. Making other parent friends could wait, once he wasn’t a jumble of nerves and regret.
The bell rang. Emma waved at Stella one last time before dragging him to the front gate.
“You really have to loosen the apron strings,” she teased as they crossed the parking lot.
He gave the crowded hallway the side-eye. “There are more kids than I thought. What if she gets bullied?”
Emma paused. “Then we’ll deal with it. Or better yet, we’ll teach her how to deal with it.”
She looked up at him, wrapping her arm around his waist and squeezing. “Don’t worry. It will get easier once the next one comes along.”
Garrett nearly tripped, his heart hammering. “Don’t joke about that. My heart can barely take being in two places at once—half with you and half with Stella. But that’s it. No more.”
She smiled, a glint in her eye.
His shoulders straightened. “You are joking, right?”
With a sphinxlike smile firmly in place, Emma climbed into the Range Rover. She beckoned him to join her with one perfectly manicured finger.
As if he would ever do anything else. “Baby, tell me you’re joking…”
Emma set her purse inside the console divider, closing it before reaching for her seat belt. “What should we name our next child? I like Serena for a girl, but what do you think about Gabriel for a boy?”
Garrett stalked to the passenger side door, throwing it wide. “Woman, are you pregnant or not?”
Still no answer. Just that little smile.
She blew out a breath, the air displacing her thick bangs. “Fine. I’m not… yet. But someday soon I will be. And your heart will get used to being in three places at once. That’s the great thing about them—their infinite capacity to grow.”
His shoulders dropped. “You’re killing me,” he sputtered. “You know that, right?”
Emma fluttered her lashes, that familiar twinkle in her eye. “You love it.”
“God help me.” He sighed, his muscles relaxing as he reached around to fasten her seat belt. “I do. I really do.”
And it was true. Emma drove him crazy in all the best ways.
It no longer mattered that she didn’t remember their beginning. Garrett was going to fill the rest of her days with fantastic new memories. Her and Stella both.
His girls.