Full Bloom

as he opened his own door and got behind the wheel. "You used me to retaliate against your family."
    Emily stared at him, trying to read his mood in the hard lines of his face. It was slowly sinking in that Jacob was coldly furious.
    "That's not true," she whispered.
    "Sure it is." He started the engine and eased the car out of the driveway. "You learned a lot from that assertiveness training, didn't you? Including strategy. As a Ravenscroft you're something of a late bloomer, but you finally showed you've got some of the family talent. You wanted a showdown and you created it. Those shares in RI constituted the weapon you'd been looking for. Protecting me was your excuse for using it."
    "It wasn't an excuse! Jacob, I did it for you."
    "Don't hand me that line. I don't recall asking for protection."
    Emily was suddenly incensed. She had been through a lot this evening and to learn that Jacob did not appreciate anything she had done was too much. Didn't he realize the jeopardy they had been in? "Why don't you believe me when I tell you I did it for you? For years I've been expected to put up with all sorts of interference in my life on the grounds that people were just doing it for my own good. You yourself have fed me that line on more than one occasion. What's so illogical about my acting out of similar motives? What I just did, I did for your own good."
    He shot her a swift, savage glance. It was a look that revealed far too much about his current mood. Emily remembered what Drake had said about Jacob's being potentially dangerous. She watched him, wide-eyed, and withdrew as far as she could into the corner of her seat.
    "I know what was motivating you tonight, little witch. I should have guessed several days ago just why you surrendered to me so easily."
    Emily gasped. "Don't you dare call my going to bed with you an act of surrender."
    "You're right. It wasn't an act of sweet, feminine surrender at all, was it? It was a tactical move. I'll have to hand it to you, Emily. Up until that scene in the study I didn't realize what you had in mind. I knew you were tense and that you seemed to be nerving yourself up for something, but I thought you were just worried about what your family would think when they saw you with me."
    "That was exactly what I was worried about."
    He shook his head. "No. You were working yourself up for your big victory assault. You had decided you could use me as a means of demonstrating your independence to your family. You knew you couldn't use Morrell because doing so would have meant the risk of doing serious damage to RI and to your relatives. Morrell would have found a way to use you to wreck RI. Deep down, you're a Ravenscroft, too, and the last thing you would do is cause real irreparable harm to the company. But you figured it was safe to use me because fundamentally I'm loyal to the firm. You knew you could trust me to never actually try to take control of your chunk of RI. You could taunt your family with our affair and threaten to sell the shares if they didn't stay out of your life because you thought it was safe for you to use me. Unlike Morrell, I don't represent a real risk to RI."
    Emily was appalled. Her whole world seemed to be turning upside down. She turned her head to gaze blindly out the window. "I can't believe you're interpreting things this way," she whispered dully. "I just can't believe it. I only did it to protect you."
    "Whatever made you think I needed protection?" he asked coldly. "What the hell did you think your family could do to me?"
    Emily hugged her arms around herself. She suddenly felt sick. "I thought my family might try to manipulate you. I wanted them to know they couldn't get away with it. I just went through the biggest showdown of my life with my family for your sake."
    Jacob concentrated his attention on the traffic. "You went through that showdown because you've been looking for revenge. You've probably dreamed of it for years. You finally put nerve, opportunity and means together to get it. You should have seen the look on your face when you knew you had won."
    Emily frantically tried one last time to explain. "I was happy because I thought I had just managed to protect you and our… our relationship."
    "You were thrilled because you had finally beaten your family at their own game. I have to hand it to you, Emily. You looked and acted like a real Ravenscroft back there in the study."
    Emily swallowed miserably, fighting tears. "And you don't