Full Bloom (4 page)

"He's planning on marrying you. That's the problem. You heard the tape. Better to end it fast, Emily. The man's a user and he'll use you. He's out of your league."

"Obviously your opinion of my ability to take care of myself isn't any higher than it was the last time we met, in spite of what you said earlier." Emily held open the door. "Good night, Jacob."

He did not move for a moment, just stood there studying her as if trying to come to some internal conclusions. Emily was seriously beginning to wonder what she would do if he did not leave when he finally broke the impasse and walked toward the door.

"You have turned into one stubborn little cat, Emily Ravenscroft," he observed with a fleeting expression that might have been humor. With Jacob Stone it wasn't always easy to tell.

"The word is 'assertive.' I keep telling you, I've had classes in the subject. I started taking them two years ago when I finally pulled myself up by the bootstraps and decided I was tired of letting my family run my life."

"What are you doing with your life these days?" Jacob asked with a thoughtful frown. "Your mother said something about working in a florist's shop."

"Which is one step above being a scullery maid in her estimation." Emily smiled breezily. "A total waste of a fine liberal arts education and good social background, according to her. But you know what?"

"What?" He looked wary of the answer.

"I love it. I own that shop, and soon, with or without the financial backing of my family, I'm going to open another branch. Who knows? Maybe Damon Morrell will offer to make me the loan I was planning to ask my father for. I can always use my connection to Ravenscroft International as collateral."

Halfway toward the door, Jacob swung around in astonishment. There was a thunderous look on his stark face. "You little cat, you wouldn't dare! Your whole family would hit the roof."

"An interesting thought," she said sweetly. She gave him a firm push that, surprisingly enough, got him over the threshold. "For the last time, good night, Jacob." This time she succeeded in closing the door and locking it behind him.

Outside in the empty hall, Jacob stood glaring at the paneled door. The fluffy little kitten had turned into a tigress with very sharp claws. Amazing how a woman could change in two years. Obviously her family was badly underestimating her.

But somehow, Jacob Stone was finding Emily more interesting than ever.

His chief victory for the evening, he decided as he stepped into the elevator, was a minor one, but under the circumstances he would take what he could get.

She had kissed him with all the passion she had shown two years ago and more. She still wanted him.

Jacob savored that simple fact as he walked out into the damp night.

Emily had stopped seething by the time she opened Emily's Garden early the next morning, but she was still aware of a lingering residue of humiliation and dismay. She did not plan to admit it to her family or to Jacob, but the unfortunate truth was that Damon Morrell had completely fooled her. She had never once guessed that he was interested in her because of her relationship to Ravenscroft International.

The only thing she could say in her favor was that she had never planned on marrying the man. As far as Emily was concerned, he was a pleasant companion and an interesting and amusing date. That was all. Not one of her family or Jacob had bothered to inquire as to how serious she actually was about Damon, of course. With typical Ravenscroft-Stone arrogance, they had all assumed the worst. They had also assumed that she was nothing but a helpless pawn of Morrell's.

Emily sighed as she arranged fresh yellow tulips and chrysanthemums in the front window of the shop. The embarrassing truth was that if she had been serious about Morrell, she might, indeed, have found herself in a real disaster of a situation.

It was infuriating to realize that after all her efforts to stand on her own two feet and resist the intrusiveness of her family, she could have come so close to making such a major mistake.

Not that the Ravenscrofts would ever have allowed her to actually marry Morrell, Emily thought wryly. Somehow or other, her family would have found a way to put a stop to such a plan, just as a way had been found to get rid of Brad Carlton two years ago. It was highly doubtful that any man who did not fit the
Ravenscroft image of a perfect son-in-law would be allowed to marry her. And Emily did not, offhand, know of any man who would have the courage to marry her if her family decided to object. Ravenscrofts could be very persuasive.

And when persuasion did not work, her family sent in the heavy artillery: Jacob Stone.

The memory of Jacob's kiss intruded at that moment, and Emily's fingers tightened around the delicate stems of the tulips. For a moment she stared out the shop window at the sidewalk full of people on their way downtown to shop in the rain. One thought filled her mind. Jacob wanted her.

The door opened and Diane Ames, Emily's assistant, sauntered in, dripping cheerfully. She was a couple of years younger than Emily and tended toward the slightly outrageous in clothing and hairstyles, but she was an intelligent young woman with a genuine flair for flowers and design. Emily considered her a prize and often told herself that her judgment of human nature could not be totally faulty or she would never have had the sense to hire Diane.

"What in the world are you doing here?" Diane demanded as she set a Styrofoam cup of coffee on the counter and shook out her umbrella. "It's Saturday. I thought you were spending the weekend in sunny Portland." She shrugged out of the shiny taxi-yellow rain slicker she was wearing.

"Portland wasn't very sunny, after all."

Diane peered at her from eyes that were outlined by vivid makeup. "Uh-oh, what happened? The family wasn't interested in loaning you the money to open the new shop on Fourth?"

"The subject never came up," Emily explained grimly as she went behind the counter to open the cash register for the day. "My family had something else on their collective brain."

"Something else?" Diane hung up the raincoat and reached for her coffee. "Like what?"

"Like my love life."

Diane choked on her first sip. "Your
what
?'

"You heard me." Emily glared at her assistant's overdone expression of astonishment and grinned in spite of her bad mood. "I know. What love life? You don't have to look so stunned. I do have the occasional date now and then."

Diane looked dubious. "The only man you've been dating recently is that good-looking Damon Morrell, and I recall you telling me distinctly he was just a 'friend.' "

"My family thought it might amount to more than that."

"So? Where's the problem if it did? Morrell's got everything most mothers would kill for in a son-in-law. He's making a fortune in that construction company he inherited from his father, he knows how to dress for success and he works out four times a week at a health club. What more could a parent ask?"

"They would prefer that he did not happen to own a company that's in direct competition with Ravenscroft International," Emily said succinctly. "You have to understand that where my family is concerned, business always comes first. They assume everyone else operates under the same premise. They, therefore, came to the conclusion that there's only one reason Damon Morrell might be seeing me on a regular basis."

Diane stared at her and then realization dawned in her blue eyes. "Good grief, you don't mean they're afraid he's got his eyes on you because of your position at RI?"

"Bingo," Emily said with mock approval. "Go to the head of the class."

"And that's what they wanted to talk to you about this weekend?"

"They invited me down for the weekend to talk business," Emily said. "I, of course, naively assumed they meant they were finally willing to listen to my proposal about a loan for the new shop. As you can imagine, there was a slight communication problem."

"Oh, Emily, how awful. What did they say? How did they handle it?"

"They handled it the way they often handle a crisis. They called in Jacob Stone."

"You're losing me," Diane warned. "Who's Jacob Stone?"

Emily drummed her fingers on the counter, considering that question. "Jacob has worked for my family for several years, although I'm told he officially resigned from RI a couple of months ago. Obviously he didn't really sever his ties with the firm or he wouldn't have been available for checking out Damon Morrell."

"What was his position with Ravenscroft?"

"His position?" Emily narrowed her eyes. "Officially he was a vice president in charge of certain aspects of overseas construction operations. But unofficially he was my family's personal trouble-shooter. When the going got tough, my family's motto was Send Stone. Problems on the construction site? Labor difficulties? Industrial espionage? Trouble with local laws? Send Stone. One hundred percent reliable. Totally discreet. Utterly loyal. Always gets the job done with a minimum of fuss. In short, the perfect employee. I always thought of him as a paid enforcer. If my family had been a bunch of hoods instead of reasonably respectable business people, Jacob probably would have been a hit man."

"He sounds fascinating." Diane took another sip of coffee. "So your family called him back into temporary service when they wanted Damon vetted, huh?"

"Right. It's not the first time they've used him to get me out of what they considered trouble."

"When was the first time?" Diana asked.

Emily arched one brow behind her glasses, remembering. "The first time I ever encountered Jacob was five years ago. He had joined the company a year before that, but I hadn't run into him. No reason why I should have. RI is a big firm, and I rarely met many of the employees."

"So how did you happen to meet him when you did?"

Emily sighed. "I got myself kidnapped."

"Good God! You're joking?"

"Afraid not. A deranged employee who had recently been let go by RI decided to grab me and hold me for ransom. He somehow tracked me down at college and cornered me one night as I was walking back from the library. He had a gun."

Diane looked severely shaken. "How awful."

Emily made a face. "It sounds worse than it was. Oh, I was scared to death at first, but then I realized the man was more to be pitied than feared. He would never have used the gun. In fact, I later found out it was empty. But it looked real enough at the time, so I did what he said. He drove me to a cabin he had in the woods and started making ransom calls to my folks."

"How did Jacob get involved?"

"My parents called in Jacob and asked him to handle the payoff. They wanted someone they could trust completely. They didn't want the police involved at that point. They were terrified I'd get killed. Jacob talked to the man on the phone who gave him instructions where to deliver the money. Then I was allowed to talk to Jacob myself. Fortunately the guy holding me was half panicked and not thinking very straight. I managed to give Jacob enough clues that he was able to figure out where I was being held."

"So Jacob showed up with the payoff and you were set free?"

"Not exactly," Emily said. "Jacob located the cabin and came in through a back window. The guy who had grabbed me never knew what hit him."

Diane's eyes were very wide. "Jacob rescued you! How incredibly romantic."

"Not really. As far as everyone was concerned, it was just one more dumb mess I'd gotten myself into. Even Jacob yelled at me for being so stupid as to walk back through the campus alone at night and expose myself to risk. I was mortified and humiliated, as usual." And she had fallen madly in love with her rescuer, only to discover that Jacob Stone was married. At the time it had seemed like the end of the world.

"It's not unusual for people to yell at someone who's just given them a major fright. Parents yell at kids all the time for just that reason. Out of curiosity, what was the outcome of the investigation involving Damon Morrell? Or did your Mr. Stone find out anything really interesting other than the fact that Morrell's a competitor with RI?"

Emily paused and then decided there was no reason to be coy. "Jacob Stone could find something incriminating about an angel if someone assigned him the task."

Diane leaned on the counter, her coffee cup cradled in both hands. "Okay, let's have it. What did he find out about Damon?"

"It's embarrassing, Diane."

"That's what friends are for."

Emily's mouth curved. "To embarrass myself in front of?"

"Come on. We have no secrets from each other. If you can't tell me, who can you tell?"

"You may be right." Emily sighed. "Jacob turned up evidence that Damon Morrell intended to marry me in order to gain control of my shares in Ravenscroft International."

"Evidence? Stone found actual proof? How?"

"There was a nasty little tape recording he made at a restaurant. On it is a conversation between Damon and a woman named Marcia."

"Who's Marcia?"

"Damon's mistress, apparently. He took her to lunch and explained to her that she wasn't to be jealous of what he was planning to do. He intended to marry me long enough to gain control of my RI shares and then he intended to get divorced and marry Marcia. In addition to the tape, there were also a couple of incriminating memos Damon sent a couple of years ago vowing vengeance on Ravenscroft, regardless of what it took or what it cost. Apparently his dislike of RI goes beyond the normal feelings of a competitor. He hates my family and the firm."

Diane's mouth fell open. "How strange. Why does he hate Ravenscroft?"

"I don't know. Something to do with a bid Morrell lost a couple of years ago. My father and brother didn't want to burden me with the whole sordid tale, naturally. They consider me very naive when it comes to the harsh realities of big business. All they're concerned about is making sure I don't marry Damon."

"Did you tell them you hadn't planned to marry him?"

Emily smiled, the first smile reflecting genuine humor since she had walked into her father's study. "Are you kidding? I had to salvage something from the fiasco. I decided not to give any of them, including Jacob Stone, the satisfaction of knowing they didn't have to worry about me marrying Damon. Let them stew about it for a while. I'm sick and tired of them interfering in my life."