“Jeb? Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah, I heard you.”
Dylan groaned. “But you don’t want to stay away from Brianna, do you? It’s already gotten personal. How far has it gone, little brother?”
Jeb saw little point in lying. Dylan was already assuming the worst. “Not far. I kissed her. That’s it.”
“You think she’s a corporate spy and you kissed her. Terrific. That’s really using your brain.”
“I didn’t consult my brain. That’s the difference between you and me, Dylan. Sometimes I just react to the moment.”
“Then perhaps you ought to severely restrict the moments you spend with Brianna,” his brother suggested.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’ve already made plans to see her again this morning.” He didn’t mention that Brianna knew nothing about those plans. “I want to check a little more closely into her lifestyle.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You’re not helping.”
“I’m trying to. You’re just not listening. Fax me those names, Jeb. And keep your distance from Brianna. See her today if you have to, but try to think of her as the enemy. Normally I recommend thinking of a suspect as innocent until proved guilty, but maybe that’s not such a good idea in this instance. Maybe considering Brianna a bad guy will help you to keep your hormones in check until we know what’s really going on.”
Jeb accepted his brother’s advice without comment. It hadn’t worked the night before, but he was willing to give it another try. This time he wouldn’t even take coffee, much less pastries, when he paid his surprise visit.
Chapter Four
“Tell me about the party, Mama,” Emma begged when Brianna stopped by the rehab facility on Saturday morning. “I want to know everything. Was your dress beautiful? Did it have lots of lace and ruffles? What color was it? Pink? That’s my favorite, you know.”
Brianna held back a chuckle at Emma’s idea of high fashion. “I know you love pink, but my gown was bronze and there wasn’t a ruffle on it. Sorry, angel. You know I’d look terrible in pink. That’s your color. You look like a little princess when you get all dressed up in pink.”
“I’ll bet you looked like a princess even if you were wearing some other color,” Emma said loyally.
“I don’t know about that.” Brianna thought of her escort, who had looked very much like a prince in his fancy tux. The formal attire suited his dark good looks, made him look more than ever like the scoundrel she had to keep reminding herself he was.
Not that he’d behaved that way…for the most part. For the major portion of the evening, he’d treated her with the utmost respect. He’d been a perfect gentleman. And she, perverse idiot that she was, had hated it. Apparently some long-dormant part of her had wanted him to kiss her, had wanted him to make a pass at her when he’d danced her into the shadows of the huge ballroom. Instead, when he’d merely settled her on a bench and gone for champagne, she had been ridiculously disappointed. He was a rogue, wasn’t he?
Later, when she got her unspoken wish, when he kissed her on the terrace, the results had been devastating. Her blood had almost literally sizzled. She hadn’t realized that was possible. She had also recognized belatedly just how intoxicatingly dangerous that could be.
After the kiss, they had danced some more, putting on a show, in fact. Then they had talked. And talked. Most of the time Jeb had been totally, utterly charming. Attentive. Witty. Compassionate, especially when it came to helping her claim revenge against Max Coleman. In fact, she hadn’t met a man she’d been more attracted to in years.
Or a man who was more out of reach. She had absolutely no intention of risking her job by getting involved with someone at the office, a Delacourt no less. She had no time for a relationship, period. Talk about courting disaster. She simply couldn’t risk it, not with so much at stake.
Besides, there had been all those probing questions he’d dismissed as nothing more than small talk. She knew better. He was after something, though she honestly had no idea what. Could it really be as simple as a man wanting to get to know a woman? She might be out of practice at dating, but her instincts said no. She could still recognize idle conversation. She did a lot of networking, especially with men. She knew how to play that game. Jeb’s questions had been too sharp, a little too pointed. They would have made her uncomfortable even if they hadn’t come so close to exposing all her secrets.
“Mama?”
Emma’s voice cut into her thoughts. “Sorry, baby. My mind wandered.”
“Wandered where?”
“Back to the party,” she said, forcing herself to inject a note of enthusiasm into her voice as she described all of the elegant clothes and beautiful decorations.
Emma had too few chances to hear about anything that could carry her away from this confined world in which she lived. Their rare outings were seldom more exciting than the drive-through line at a fast-food restaurant, though hopefully that would change now that Emma was getting more adept at dealing with her wheelchair. Up until now she had stubbornly refused to go anywhere unless she could remain in the car.
“I don’t want people to stare,” she declared, and that was that.
One day Emma’s world would open up again, but until then Brianna did her best to let Emma live vicariously through her own activities. Her site explorations were seldom as intriguing for a five-year-old as last night’s dance clearly was.
“It sounds like a fairy tale,” her daughter concluded with a little sigh when Brianna had finished. “I wish I could go to a ball and dance.”
Brianna’s heart broke at the wistfulness in her daughter’s voice. In Emma’s case, it wasn’t just childish yearning to be grown-up. Unspoken was the very real fear that she might never be able to walk, much less dance.
“You will, sweetie,” Brianna promised in an attempt to reassure her. “One of these days you will make all of the other girls weep with envy when you arrive with your handsome prince.”
“What about your prince? Is he very handsome? Can I meet Mr. Delacourt?”
The very idea horrified Brianna. “No,” she said curtly, then tempered it by adding, “He’s a very busy man.”
“But you like him, don’t you? You haven’t gone out with anyone since Daddy left, so you must.”
“This was just a business occasion, Emma, not a real date,” Brianna said, ignoring the fact that for a few minutes, out on the terrace, it had felt very much like a date. In fact, it had felt like the start of something important.
Then he’d started in with those questions again, and the mood had been lost.
“Oh,” Emma said, clearly disappointed.
Brianna decided it was time to change the subject. “Want to try to stand up for me? Gretchen says you’re getting better at it every day.”
Emma shook her head. “Not now.”
“It’s important to keep trying.”
Emma’s expression set stubbornly. “No,” she said as emphatically as she had when it had been the primary word in her vocabulary.
“Please,” Brianna coaxed.
“I don’t feel like it.”
Brianna sighed. She’d had to learn not to push, though it went against her nature. But she knew Emma had to be allowed her rebellions. There were so few things she had control over in her life. The therapists were demanding taskmasters.