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Until last week, she hadn’t known Elias was a founding investor of one of those DNA ancestry sites. He’d talked to her about it and a few of his other businesses, letting her pick his brain with a patience she wouldn’t have expected from such a tough, taciturn guy.
Elias had been open and full of helpful suggestions she could apply to any fledgling business.
It had been, in some ways, easier than talking shop with Garrett. Not that she wouldn’t take her husband’s advice. But that must be the nature of marriage—it was easier to accept that kind of guidance from an impartial third party.
Garrett seemed to instinctively understand this. Or at least he pretended to, she thought with a wry grin. She knew he was dying to overload her with advice but was making a superhuman effort to restrain himself.
Instead, he offered the rare suggestion, pointing to a resource she would find helpful, then standing back to let her figure things out for herself.
Happy wife, happy life.A motto to live by.
Satisfied with her progress on the bean test, she checked a few more things off her list: research into eco-friendly pour-over filters and Scandinavian coffee cheese, Kaffeost. That sounded like the weirdest combination. But it combined two of her favorite things so she wasn’t about to write it off.
Just where did one find Scandinavian cheese in the most southern part of Southern California?
After bookmarking likely cheese shops, she began to clean up the kitchen in preparation for dinner. Stella and her mother were at the zoo with George’s father, Ephraim, who was Mariana’s neighbor on the floor below them.
Despite their age difference, Mariana and Ephraim had hit it off, becoming fast friends. Maybe because they both had daughters who had married absurdly wealthy men, who also happened to be best friends.
Ephraim was at least two decades too old to be a love interest for Mariana, which was a pity. Emma wanted her mother to find what she had. But falling for her new bestie’s father was asking for too much.
Nevertheless, the two bonded over their changed circumstances, normal people now one percent adjacent.
Ephraim was a big fan of the zoo, and San Diego had the best one as far as he was concerned. He had an annual pass and had suggested taking Stella on a special backstage tour that allowed them to feed the giraffes, which were her favorite animal.
Stella had been thrilled. So had Mariana because Ephraim had purposefully made it a grandparent thing, leaving Emma and George out of the invite so they could get some work done.
Emma planned on having Stella’s favorite dinner on the table when they got home—chicken fingers and buttered pasta. It was a dish simple enough for her poor cooking skills, leaving Chef Mohammed free to take orders from the other building residents.
Garrett was going to be bringing their favorite sushi home for dinner, a feast large enough for all the adults, save for Ephraim, who didn’t eat anything raw.
She had just taken the chicken fingers out of the freezer when the front door opened and closed. It was still too early for her mother and Stella to return. But Garrett was in the habit of rushing home unexpectedly if he got a spare hour or two at work, especially when he knew Stella would be busy with her grandmother.
Emma poked her head out of the kitchen, expecting to see him. But the living room and bar area were empty.
Rustling noises came from down the hall. But they weren’t coming from the bedroom.
“Did you forget some—” Emma stopped short in the office. The man rifling through the desk drawers wasn’t Garrett.
“Fletcher,” she said weakly when Garrett’s partner looked up, dismay in the deep lines of his face.
“Oh, hi, Emma,” he said, shifting to hide a box behind him.
Only a corner of it was visible, but the bit shecould see was distinctive. It was that FedEx box that had arrived from Colorado this morning, the one from Sheriff Warner.
She rested a hand on the doorjamb. “What are you doing with that?”
Fletcher’s sudden smile was all wrong.
“This?” He moved his arm, holding the box out in front of him. “It’s nothing. Just some contracts Garrett asked me to pick up.”
“No, sorry. That’s the wrong box,” she told him. “That’s not work-related.”
The smile dropped off his face. “Oh, I knowthat,” he said, scoffing. “The contracts are already in my briefcase.”
He knelt behind the desk and lifted a matte black attaché case. It looked like the kind used to store portable nuclear weapons.
“Legal needs these contracts today,” he continued, stuffing the FedEx package inside. “I’m taking the box to work as well because Ian is going to swing by to pick it up.”