Full Bloom

I'm such a wimp I can't stand up to your family?"
    "That's not quite the way I would put it, Jacob," she retorted.
    "I don't care how you phrase it, that's the bottom line, right?"
    "Jacob, I'm trying to be reasonable."
    "You're running scared," he corrected in a scathing tone. "You know, Emily, that's the one thing I wouldn't have expected from you. You've always at least tried to fight back."
    "You know how much good it's done me in the past," she retorted. "I almost always lost and you know it. Sometimes you had a hand in my losing."
    He winced. "The point is, you always tried. And you didn't always lose. You've been in business as a florist now for nearly two years, right? And you've told me yourself that your family has objected all along the way."
    "That was different. I really wanted that shop. I wanted to run my own business and I loved flowers—" She broke off, biting her lip as she realized where that line of logic was leading.
    "Exactly," Jacob said quietly as he watched her face. "You really wanted that shop and you loved working with flowers. When it came to getting what you really wanted and doing what you loved, you held your ground and your family hasn't been able to do a damned thing about it. Do you really want me, Emily? Do you want me as much as you wanted your own business?"
    "Jacob," she whispered on a choked sob. She turned and crowded against him, burying her face against his shoulder. "I want you more than anything else in the world. But I'm so afraid of losing you."
    His arms closed fiercely around her. "You say you want me more than anything else in the world. Then want me enough to take the risk of marrying me. Trust me, sweetheart."
    Emily surrendered. There was no way out of the trap. She knew Jacob wasn't going to settle for anything less than marriage. She hugged him fiercely. "All right, Jacob." Somehow it was a tremendous relief to stop fighting him. Probably because deep inside she longed to believe that the marriage stood a chance.
    "I think," Jacob said musingly as he pinned her close against him, "that we're going to make a slight detour from our original itinerary."
    "A change of plans?" Emily looked up at him, her eyes still bright with tears. "Where are we going now?"
    "Reno. We'll spend the night here and catch a plane to Nevada in the morning. It's my turn to limit my risks and I'm not taking any chances that you'll talk yourself out of this marriage."

    Emily was still in shock the next day when the jet set down in Reno. She stayed in shock all through the short, assembly line wedding service and didn't show any signs of coming out of it when Jacob checked into the huge, plush casino hotel.
    He kept a close eye on her at dinner that night. Her appetite seemed off. Emily normally enjoyed her food, but tonight she just played with it. She was tense, jittery and uncertain.
    This was not a normal case of bridal jitters. Jacob finally realized she was scared to death. She wasn't thinking of her wedding night or their future. She was dreading having to tell her family that she was married. Part of him was furious, but another part of him acknowledged that she thought she had some genuine basis for her fears. After all, one way or another, her family had managed to destroy the few serious relationships she'd had. On two occasions, Jacob himself had helped bring them to an end. Small wonder she was nervous about the outcome of her marriage.
    But the measure of understanding he was able to summon up for her did not do much to cut through Jacob's annoyance. He wanted Emily to believe in him. By forcing her into marriage he had intended to more or less force her to demonstrate some faith in him.
    There were a lot of things you could accomplish by force, Jacob knew. But it was beginning to look as if making a wife trust her husband's strength was not one of them.
    He tried to take her mind off the subject by encouraging her to do some gambling. She promptly lost fifty dollars at the blackjack table. When he bought her several rolls of coins for the garish slot machines, she managed to lose every single quarter. He took her to see the lavish floor show and she did not smile once.
    Some wedding night, Jacob decided. Maybe he had been wrong to rush her into this. But he had been terrified she would change her mind about accepting his proposal if he did not seize the moment. The frustration, he realized, had driven him to the edge of his temper.
    "It's not normal, you know," Jacob told