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the face of Jacob’s pointed anger, concern, and much more intimidating size.
    “Oh shut up, both of you,” Regina hissed disgustedly. She shoved David in the opposite direction of a dangerous-looking Jacob. Harper saw her look back once at Jacob in a kind of desperate longing before they disappeared into the crowd.
    Jacob turned to her with a jerky movement. His volatility seemed to roll off him in waves. Harper didn’t know what to say. It’d all happened so quickly. So unexpectedly . . . and it all seemed so out of character for Jacob.
    “I’m sorry,” he said thickly. He raked his fingers through his hair in a gesture of sharp frustration. His gaze focused on her. “Regina is . . . an old friend.”
    She didn’t reply. She’d never seen him so frayed. Harper wasn’t sure what she was feeling at that moment, beyond confused. It was clear that despite his anger at the woman, he cared about her a great deal.
    The chimes calling the audience back to the performance rung. Jacob blinked at the sound dazedly. Suddenly, a handsome, gray-haired man of medium build who was dressed to the nines separated himself from the crowd. He came toward them. Jacob glanced around and froze.
    “Clint,” he said, his voice hollow with disbelief.
    “I saw her. The girl. Gina,” he pointed in the direction where Regina and David had disappeared. “You still have contact with her?” the man asked incredulously, his mouth slanting into a frown.
    Jacob straightened, all vestiges of his strained state vanishing. Here was the glacial, utterly in control, intimidating man Harper recognized. “I saw her just now. What’s it to you?” A strange expression suddenly slid over Jacob’s face. He glanced uneasily at the doors where Regina had just exited with her date. “Did
she
see you? Regina?”
    Jefferies scoffed.
    Jacob lunged toward him. Jefferies’s smug, disdainful expression vanished and he took a half step back, clearly alarmed.
    “Did Regina see you, damn it?” Jacob seethed.
    “No, not that I’m aware of,” Jefferies said with bravado, although it was clear he was intimidated by Jacob’s pointed fury. He glanced around, seeming to take heart in the fact that they were in the middle of a public forum, despite the diminishing crowd. “Honestly, Jacob. I can’t believe you’re still letting her get to you. I swear, I’ve stopped trying to understand you.”
    Jefferies’s gaze landed on Harper and moved over her speculatively, as if suddenly aware that there was a close audience to their charged conversation.
    “Clint Jefferies,” he said, stepping toward Harper and putting out his hand, all smooth urbanity. He struck Harper as oily and manipulative in that moment. Jacob moved so fast, Harper was stunned. He came between her and the other man and grabbed her hand.
    “Don’t you even
look
at her.”
    She walked next to Jacob back toward the theater, his furious snarl echoing in her ears.

Chapter Four
    During the performance, Harper couldn’t help but be aware of Jacob’s continued tense state. Although he looked at the stage, he seemed to silently simmer, and she felt sure his mind was on what had just occurred during intermission—on Regina and Clint Jefferies—and not the opera. At one point, she glanced to the left and saw
him
in the audience: Clint Jefferies. His gaze was trained directly on Jacob and her.
    She knew from Ruth Dannen’s pre-cocktail-party coaching that Jefferies owned the multibillion-dollar Markham Pharmaceuticals and had once been a kind of older brother–father figure to Jacob.
    Jacob had made a great deal of money from a windfall sale of Markham Pharmaceutical stock at a very young age. He’d allegedly bought the stock just days before a breakthrough Markham medication for diabetes was given FDA approval. After approval went through, Jacob’s investment skyrocketed. Later, Clint Jefferies had become the target of an insider trading investigation because of that very deal in