Part 301 (2/2)

It was the last thing he saw before pa.s.sion dragged him under.

IT iNFuRiATED EMMA that she kept looking over her shoulder. Almost a

week had pa.s.sed since she'd settled back into the house on the

beach-since Michael and Conroy had unofficially settled in with her. A

rehearsal, she sometimes thought, for the future she was beginning to

believe in. Living with Michael, sharing her bed and her time with him,

didn't make her feel trapped. It made her feel, at long last, normal .

. . and happy.

Yet no matter how content she was, Emma couldn't shake the sensation of

being watched. Most of the time she ignored it, or tried to, telling

herself it was just another reporter looking for a new angle. Another

photographer with a long lens looking for an exclusive picture.

They couldn't touch her, or what she was building with Michael.

But she kept the doors locked and Conroy close whenever she was alone.

No matter how often she told herself there was no one there but her own

ghosts, she kept watching, waiting. Even walking down Rodeo Drive in

bright suns.h.i.+ne she felt the tension in the back of her neck.

She was more embarra.s.sed than afraid, and wished she had called a limo

rather than driving herself

She'd thought she would enjoy looking for just the right outfit, trying

on both the outrageous and the cla.s.sic, being pampered and cooed over by

the clerks. But it was only a relief to have it over, to tuck the dress

box into her car and drive off.

It was pitiful, she told herself, this persecution complex. Emma

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