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“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.
Chapter Fifty-Five
GARRETT