Page 102 of Ramsey & Emerson

“Is this your way of telling me that you’re a very happily married woman?” he asked, his tone a bit darker than normal.

I shook my head. “No. This is my way of telling you that it wouldn’t matter if I was happily married or not,” I clarified. “As long as I’m married, there will only ever be one man for me. In fact, even if Ramsey divorced me tomorrow, he’d still always be the only man for me.”

“No man deserves that kind of dedication, if you don’t mind me saying,” he replied, and I could only let out a deep breath as the writing on the wall became clearer.

Ramsey was going to destroy this man.

“That depends on the man,” I countered as I stood up from the chair. “Thank you for listening.”

Adrian gave me another terse nod. “Of course, Emerson.”

“I think it’s time I get back to work,” I said before stepping away to return to my office.

“Emerson?”

I turned back to look at him. “Yes?”

“I never would have pegged Ramsey Reed for the kind of man that needed his wife to defend him, but you did it beautifully,” he said, and it was clear that he was underestimating me.

“I wasn’t defending Ramsey,” I replied, my back straight, my eyes on his.

“Oh, no?”

“No,” I clarified as I shook my head. “I was saving you.”

“From?” he asked coolly.

“From Ramsey Reed,” I stated simply before turning to walk out of his office.

I ignored everyone as I made my way back down to my floor, and as soon as I sat back down at my desk, I pulled my phone from my purse to check for any emergencies. Though I normally kept my phone on me, I hadn’t wanted any interruptions while I’d been speaking to Adrian, so I’d left it back in my office.

With no missed calls or texts, I started gathering my stuff for a house visit that I needed to make after lunch. A part of me wanted to call Ramsey, but now wasn’t the time. We needed to talk, but it could wait until we got home this evening. He needed to know about the conversation that I’d just had with Adrian, and we needed to make up.

We needed to make up because I hated fighting with my husband.

Chapter 19

Ramsey~

After R.J. and Mad had left my office this morning, my day had been busy enough to keep me from losing my mind completely. We’d had a crisis with one of our energy subsidiaries, and not willing to fly across the country while Emerson and I were on the outs, I’d made my expectations clear. Of course, Deke had jumped in to take the reins when it looked like I might be setting us for a lawsuit, but still. I’d gotten my point across, and that should have been enough.

At any rate, walking into the house should have come with some sort of feeling of relief, but when I noticed the stunning bouquet of flowers sitting on the kitchen counter, I didn’t feel relief at all.

I grabbed the note sitting next to the vase, but it didn’t tell me anything. It was just a quick note written by Julia, saying that they were delivered earlier for Emerson. We had a cleaning service that came by every two weeks, and Julia Tremell was in charge of the crew, and we trusted her like one of the family. She’d been with us for years, and so she had permission to accept deliveries and things like that. Ideally, we’d have a housekeeper for all that, but Emerson had been against the idea. She’d wanted to be in charge of her home, and so we had compromised on the cleaning part since even she’d had to admit that there were only twenty-four hours in a day.

Staring at the beautiful floral arrangement, I set the note back down on the counter, and that’s when I noticed the small envelope tucked between all the petals, but it just had Emerson’s name on it, no indication of who had sent the flowers, but it wasn’t hard to guess. If it’d been anyone in the family, they would have warned me that they were sending Emerson some flowers. They knew how I was, and they respected how obsessed I was with my wife.

Now, normally, I’d opened the damn envelope to see for myself, but since Emerson and I were fighting, I thought it best if she did the honors. She was accusing me of overreacting, so this was her chance to see the shit for herself. No matter the reason, no one could argue that it was inappropriate to be sending another man’s wife fucking flowers.

Grabbing the vase, I made my way through the house, stopping in my office long enough to drop my briefcase off on my desk, then headed straightfor Emerson’s office. Because Emerson was a bit of a neat freak, there was a clean space on her desk for the flowers, so I set the vase down as carefully as I could when I really wanted to throw the entire thing against the fucking wall.

Leaving the flowers on her desk, I went to my office, then poured myself a drink, needing to do something before I drove over to Adrian Cossacks’ house. There was no fucking way that the flowers weren’t from him, and if Emerson told me that they were no big deal, I had no idea what I was going to do. This was a man that she had to see every fucking day at work, and I was not okay with his personal interest in my wife, whether she returned that interest or not.

I wasn’t sure how long I sat in my office, doing my best to keep my rage intact, but when I finally noticed a shadow in my doorway, I looked up to see Emerson eyeing the glass in my hand, the bottle of bourbon on my desk.

“How long have you been home?”

Instead of answering her, I set the empty tumbler on my desk, stood up, then walked over to where my wife stood. Without a word, I grabbed her hand, laced her fingers in mine, then pulled her with me towards her office, and as soon as we reached the room, I stepped aside, so that she could see the flowers on her desk.

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