in danger, assuring him that she had him on speed dial.
He hadn’t wanted to leave her alone, not after being so certain they were being followed, but she didn’t want to be coddled. He thought back to when he had first met Emily. She had recently decided to leave her career as a real estate agent and had taken on her first case as a PI.
Emily was so new to private investigation that Colin had given her a bad time about her lack of experience—or so she told him. They were at a barbecue at Alex and Isabel’s house, a set up by the girls. Seated next to her at the dining table, he’d felt the physical attraction was mutual. He had casually asked her what she did for a living.
“Well, I was a real estate agent, but I am currently transitioning into being a private investigator,” she’d said.
He nearly choked, coughing and sputtering. He grabbed his glass of iced tea and took a couple of gulps.
“Did something go down the wrong way?” she’d asked.
“You could say that,” Colin replied, coughing a few more times. “You said you’re transitioning into being a private investigator?”
“Yes…why?”
“Well, you can’t just be a real estate agent one day and decide to be an investigator the next.”
The pleasant smile that had graced her face then twisted into a grimace, as she’d seemed to bristle at his comments. She’d picked up her plate and stomped to the kitchen. She told him later, after they’d begun dating, that on that first night he had offended her so deeply that she didn’t care how handsome he was—his words were so condescending she’d had to get away from him before she’d told him what she really thought of him.
Thinking back now, Colin wondered how he’d ever convinced her to give him a chance.
Since those early days, Emily had developed into a skilled investigator and had learned to adeptly handle a gun. She was a bulldog for details and confident in her abilities. He hoped that confidence wouldn’t be her undoing.
She was lovely and kind-hearted and she looked for the best in people. Yet at times she was stubborn to a fault. Altogether, these were the qualities that made her so endearing and attractive to him—in her line of work those qualities could also get her killed.
He had already been down that road once, losing a woman he loved, and he had been reluctant to go down it again, but he was so in love with Emily he couldn’t help himself. He had almost told her several times that he loved her, but each time something stopped him, something got in the way. He wondered if maybe he wasn’t supposed to say it, wasn’t supposed to lay his heart out bare to her.
She had been the only woman in the last two years to break through the wall he had built around his heart after Miranda’s death. He’d had no intention of falling for her like that, but Emily had systematically dismantled that wall with her sweetness and her charm, her vulnerability and her strength. But now that his heart was exposed and ready to love again, he was beginning to feel the need to start rebuilding the wall again.
The other night when Sully came over to her house, Emily had glossed over the truth when Colin had asked her what they were quarreling about. And earlier at Maggie’s, he had seen Emily talking to Sully out front, it looked like they were arguing about something, but she wouldn’t tell him what. She was hiding something from him—he knew it—but what?
How could he trust her if she was holding something back from him?
He looked in the rearview mirror as he drove. The pair of headlights in the mirror could have been anyone’s, but now he was keenly aware of impending danger and was taking no chances. He abruptly pulled the car to the curb and watched as the next few cars passed him. No black sedans.
Collin rejoined the flow of traffic and headed to his apartment, just a few more blocks ahead.
Was he the object of the pursuer, or was she? Did it have to do with the murder case Emily was working, or something else?
He knew she was still following leads in her late husband’s murder, even talking to a former FBI agent to see if he could be any help in uncovering Evan’s true past. He had friends in the CIA as well as the FBI, Emily had