Full Bloom

Friday night I was so angry that I told myself nothing had changed. But now I realize you were as trapped by your old loyalties as I was trapped in my role of dutiful daughter. But we've both taken steps to free ourselves from my family. We're on our way, Jacob. Maybe together we can accomplish what neither one of us can quite manage alone. Maybe we can finally get out from under their shadows."
    "Emily! Dammit, wait a minute…"
    Jacob surged out of the car as she stepped out onto the sidewalk. He was beginning to feel as if he were falling down the rabbit hole. Emily was not reacting the way he had anticipated.
    He had expected anything from more tears and accusations to a stony silence. He had been prepared to handle either extreme, but what he was getting had not been on his list of possibilities.
    Jacob could have sworn Emily was feeling sorry for him. She seemed to be offering sympathy—a sort of comrades-in-arms affection.
    It occurred to him that though sympathy was not what he wanted from her it might make a good starting point for building a more passionate relationship. He took her arm as he caught up with her.
    "Emily," he said urgently as he steered her into the restaurant, "maybe it would be best if we didn't discuss your family for a while. Let's just concentrate on getting to know each other again, all right?"
    She smiled brilliantly up at him with her eyes and Jacob thought he would drown in amber. His whole body was suddenly tight and hot and vibrating with need. For a tantalizing instant he allowed himself to fantasize about carrying her out of the restaurant, driving her back to her apartment and making love to her in the middle of her white-carpeted living room. He could just picture her lying there with flowers scattered around her. He could feel himself inside her, taking her, having her, loving her.
    "All right," Emily said willingly enough.
    Jacob groaned, knowing she was agreeing to his earlier question about getting to know each other, not to his silent, searing fantasy. Patience, he told himself. He had to have patience. Things were going very well—better than he'd had any right to expect. He could use her budding sense of sympathy to lead her into a warmer relationship.
    "Thank you, Emily." Jacob spoke with genuine gratitude. He kept his hold on her softly rounded arm as the host showed them to a table.
    Three hours later, as Jacob stood in the hall outside her apartment and wished Emily good-night, he mentally cursed his decision to practice patience. Intellectually he knew it was the right one. He had to give Emily time to adjust to the idea of thinking of him as a lover.
    They had made great progress tonight, he decided as he rode the elevator back down to the lobby. Emily had actually begun to treat him as a friend.
    She had chatted easily about her work and his, as well as a variety of other subjects. She seemed quite willing to get to know him as a man who had other aspects to his personality besides the ability to be a paid "enforcer" for Ravenscroft International. Jacob winced at the description.
    But it was going to be tough to be patient. The dull, restless aching sensation in his lower body made him vividly aware of just how tough. He did not want to give himself cheerful little lectures on how much progress he was making with Emily. What he really wanted to do was spend the night in Emily's bed. Five years was a long time to wait for a woman.
    She apparently thought of him as a muscle-brained hit man, but he thought of her as an intriguing, exotic flower that had blossomed from the sweet little bud he had first met five years ago.
    Jacob was tormenting himself with more fantasies and a lot of hard-edged plans when he walked out of the empty lobby and onto the sidewalk. Preoccupied with his thoughts, he climbed into his car and automatically turned the key in the ignition.
    He would not have noticed the dark car that had been parked behind his own vehicle if it had not pulled away from the curb at the same time he did. But bright headlights flared briefly in his rearview mirror for an instant, and Jacob instinctively noted them.
    Three blocks later the dark car was still behind him. It had fallen behind two other vehicles but it was still there.
    Jacob looked for it again when he eased into the hotel parking garage. This time when he glanced into the mirror, there was no sign of the other car.
    A coincidence, he told himself calmly. But he made a mental note and filed it