A Legal Affair (12 page)

He sent her a bemused look over his shoulder. “My judgment can be flawed on occasion,” he said in a tone that suggested he wasn’t just talking about her decorating skills.

Daniela gave him a guileless smile. “I’ll try not to hold it against you,” she quipped, brushing past him to head into the kitchen. She waved him into a chair at the breakfast table, then lunged for the stack of mail she’d been sorting through when he rang the doorbell—mail addressed to Daniela Roarke.

He raised a puzzled brow at her, but said nothing as she hastily tucked the letters inside one of the cabinet drawers.
Close call,
she thought.

“Do you live here alone?” he asked as Daniela busied herself with dinner preparations, which consisted of heating up the tortilla soup and uncorking a bottle of Pinot Grigio.

She shook her head, filling two long-stemmed wineglasses. “My mother lives with me. She’s in Houston visiting her sister for the week.”

“Thanks,” Caleb murmured, accepting a glass from her. He took a sip, watching her over the rim. “You two must be close. You and your mother, I mean.”

“We are.” As Daniela walked over to the stove to check the simmering tortilla soup, she grinned ruefully. “I must confess to being somewhat of a mama’s girl. When I bought this house three years ago, I had to convince my mom to move in with me, offering the explanations that I wanted to help look after her, and that it made economic sense to combine our two households and save money on rent and utilities. While both of those reasons are true, the simple fact of the matter is that I wanted her around. I enjoy her company.” She glanced over her shoulder at Caleb. “Does that make me a loser?”

A gentle smile curved his mouth. “Not at all. I think it’s very sweet, actually.”

Smiling, Daniela picked up her glass and took a sip of wine, though she knew it wasn’t wise to drink alcohol on an empty—and as yet unstable—stomach. “What about you and your father?” she casually probed. “Are you two close?”

Just as she’d expected, Caleb’s expression grew shuttered. “Not as close as you and your mother,” he answered abstractedly. He nodded toward the stove. “Soup smells great.”

“Wait till you taste it. It’s my sister-in-law’s mother’s secret recipe.” Daniela ladled tortilla soup into two ceramic bowls, then carried them over to the table. “Don’t worry about catching my germs,” she joked as she served Caleb. “I didn’t cough or breathe into the pot.”

He chuckled. “I’ll take my chances.”

She settled into a chair beside him. It wasn’t exactly a romantic candlelight dinner at Le Rêve, but it was as good a start as any.

“What did I miss in class today?” she asked as they began eating.

“Get the notes from April,” Caleb told her. “I don’t do encore lectures.”

“Not even for the sick and shut-in?”

“Nah.” Dark eyes glinting with amusement, he gave her a long, considering look. “Come to think of it, you don’t look all that bad for someone three days into the flu.”

She laughed. “That’s not what you said when we were standing on the porch.”

“What I mean is, when I had the flu, I was laid up for a week.”

“That’s surprising. You don’t strike me as the type of person who gets sick very often.”

“I don’t. The last time I had the flu was in tenth grade.”

She grinned. “In that case, you should be totally immune to me.”

He bent his head over his bowl. “Not quite,” he said, his voice pitched so low she couldn’t be sure she’d heard right.

Except she knew she had.

Hiding a private smile, she swallowed another mouthful of soup. “I have Sister Jenkins to thank for my speedy recovery,” she informed Caleb.

“Yeah?” He eyed her curiously. “Who’s Sister Jenkins?”

“A woman who attends my mother’s church. She’s this tiny, demure, soft-spoken lady—until she opens her mouth to pray. And then it’s like she’s calling down the heavens in this loud, hellfire-and-brimstone, Southern Baptist preacher voice. It’s a little scary, I tell you.”

Caleb chuckled. “Sounds more comical than scary.”

“That’s what my brother Noah said. The whole time Sister Jenkins was praying over me, he could hardly contain his laughter.”

“Your brother was here with you?”

Daniela nodded, wondering if she’d only imagined the note of relief in Caleb’s voice. “He came over yesterday to take care of me. It was just like old times,” she said with a reminiscent smile.

Caleb sipped his wine, watching her with a quiet, focused absorption that made Daniela feel as if they were the only two people in the world. No other man had ever made her feel that way, as if every word she spoke was of paramount interest to him.

“How many siblings do you have?” he asked.

“Two older brothers.”

“They must be mighty protective over you.”

She shrugged, idly toying with the crystal stem of her wineglass. “Sometimes. But they know I can take care of myself.”

Humor lifted one corner of Caleb’s mouth. “I can only imagine,” he murmured.

Her eyes narrowed on his face. “What’s that supposed to mean? How am I supposed to take that?”

“Any way you like, Miss Moreau,” he said with a slow, lazy grin that made her pulse accelerate. “Thanks for dinner. I think that was the best tortilla soup I’ve ever had.”

“Janie’s mother will be thrilled to hear that,” Daniela said, rising from the table with their empty bowls. “Janie is my sister-in-law, by the way. Would you like seconds?”

“No, thanks. I’m good.”

“How about coffee, and some dessert? My mom made her award-winning peach cobbler before she left for Houston. Unless Noah devoured it all while he was here, there should be some left.”

Caleb glanced at his watch. “I really should be going.”

“Are you sure? Not many people can turn down my mother’s famous cobbler, baked with the sweetest, juiciest peaches she handpicks from the orchard herself.”

He hesitated. “Award-winning, huh?”

Daniela grinned. “Six years in a row at the annual church bake-off.”

“In that case,” Caleb drawled, “how can I refuse?”

He should have refused. Really, he should have. But refusing Daniela Moreau was fast becoming a foreign concept to him.

So he agreed to a slice of peach cobbler, and when Daniela asked innocently, “À la mode?” he shook his head, and forced his body not to react to the memory of the last time she’d offered him ice cream.

He polished off the cobbler in three bites, not because he was in a hurry to leave—as should have been the case—but because it was so damn good. When he’d finished eating, a laughing Daniela poured him a cup of coffee and led him into the living room. He couldn’t help but admire the sensual, hypnotic sway of her hips as she walked, and his mouth watered at the way the plush fabric of her robe molded the delectable roundness of her bottom.

When Daniela joined him on the sofa, he realized, too late, that he should have sat in one of the armchairs. When she leaned forward to slide a coaster beneath his coffee cup, her robe gaped open, tempting him with an eyeful of lush cleavage.

He swallowed hard, feeling like a horny teenager on his first date.

He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when she moved back, settling against the overstuffed cushions and tucking her long legs beneath her. She gave him a smile of relaxed contentment. “So you live in the Towers, huh? Pretty swanky.”

He shrugged. “Believe it or not, my reasons for moving there had nothing to do with seeking a prestigious address.”

“Ah, yes, you had sentimental reasons,” Daniela murmured. “Your parents used to take you to see shows at the Majestic.”

“That’s right.” A soft, nostalgic smile touched his mouth. “I saw
The Wiz
for the first time there. I’ll never forget how excited I was to see an all-black cast in a live performance. It’s all I talked about for weeks afterward.”

Daniela chuckled. “I felt the same way when I watched
The Wiz
for the first time. I won’t even tell you how long I pretended to be Dorothy. My brothers were ready to put me out of the house.”

“My parents probably wanted to do the same to me,” Caleb admitted wryly.

They exchanged teasing grins.

“What a little prince you must have been,” Daniela ribbed, poking him playfully on the arm. “As the only child, I bet you were spoiled rotten.”

“Think again. In fact, my father went out of his way
not
to spoil me, and he made damned sure my mother didn’t, either. He said he didn’t want to raise a soft, pampered rich boy, and I applaud him for that.”

“You do?”

Caleb nodded, vaguely amused by her surprised tone. “One of the best things Crandall Thorne ever did for me was to make me work hard for everything I ever wanted. Whether it was money to attend football camp or to buy my first car, I had to earn it. I took nothing for granted, ever. And that’s the way it should be.”

“You’re pretty adamant about this,” Daniela observed. “Do you plan to raise your own children with the same tough love?”

“
If
I ever have children,” Caleb drawled, “then, yes, I see nothing wrong with teaching them the value of a work ethic. I’ve watched too many of my childhood friends crap out because they never learned to fend for themselves.”

“That’s a shame.” Dark, exotically tilted eyes studied him in silence for a moment. “How did your mother die, Caleb?”

He stiffened, his jaw hardening.

Seeing his reaction, Daniela hastened to say, “I’m sorry, that was too personal. You don’t have to answer if—”

“She died of complications from lupus. I was fourteen.”

“Oh, Caleb,” Daniela murmured gently. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago,” he said gruffly, suddenly awash with memories of his mother, a quiet, unassuming woman who’d struck him as a tragic figure long before her death. He remembered, as a child, wondering about the sadness in her eyes, the smiles she sometimes forced when Crandall spoke to her. Although his parents had never argued in front of him, Caleb had known that their marriage was unstable, fraught with a tension he hadn’t understood until he was much older. That was when he’d learned about his father’s extramarital affair with a woman he’d loved since childhood, a woman who grew up to become the wife of Crandall’s worst enemy—Hoyt Philbin. Crandall’s affair with Tessa Philbin had hastened his wife’s descent into depression, making her more susceptible to the disease that eventually claimed her life. Because to this day, Caleb knew that what had killed his mother couldn’t have been cured with medicine. She’d died of a broken heart.

“I guess we both know what it’s like to lose a parent,” Daniela said quietly. “But at least you had your mother for fourteen years. Does that make it better, or worse?”

“I don’t know.” He hesitated, then confided, “My mother and I weren’t that close. I didn’t know her very well.”

Daniela fell silent for several moments, thinking. Then, “Can I ask you another personal question?”

He tensed, automatically bracing himself. “Go ahead,” he said warily.

“Why did you stop practicing law, Caleb? I heard you were amazing.”

Caleb frowned. “Don’t believe everything you hear,” he said grimly. Absently he realized she’d been calling him by his first name, but he didn’t bother correcting her. What was the point? His behavior on Friday night, and his very presence in her home that evening, was proof that their relationship—or whatever it was—had progressed beyond the use of formal addresses.

“Don’t be so modest,” Daniela teased. “It’s okay to say you kicked butt and took names as one of San Antonio’s most formidable attorneys.”

“You have a flair for the dramatic, Miss Moreau.”

“It’s Daniela,” she corrected. “And you’re avoiding my question.”

“No, I’m not.” He rubbed a hand over his face and pushed out a long, deep breath. He could feel the dull edges of fatigue settling into his muscles. He’d overdone it at the ranch this weekend, trying to purge her from his system.

As if such a thing were possible.

“I stopped litigating because I got burned-out,” he said finally. “Contrary to what you may have heard, there was no deep, philosophical reason behind my decision. I didn’t wake up one morning and have an epiphany. The truth is, I didn’t particularly like the people I was defending, and over time, I didn’t like myself too much, either. So I got out.”

“You make it sound so simple,” Daniela said softly, watching him with eyes that saw too much. “I know it wasn’t that simple.”

Caleb shrugged, unnerved by her perceptiveness, but unwilling to show it. “No simpler than it was for you to walk away from your accounting career. But once you did it, you knew it was the right thing to do. Seems to me you should understand better than anyone my reasons for leaving the courtroom.”

“I think I do,” she murmured.

And somehow, Caleb knew she did. “Come to think of it,
you
never answered my question that day in the coffee shop. I asked you why you wanted to be a lawyer, and you never told me.”

“I didn’t?”

“No,” he said succinctly, “you didn’t.” Why did he get the sense that Daniela was being deliberately evasive?

She shrugged, the edge of her teeth digging into the plump flesh of her bottom lip. “I don’t know. Maybe I feel silly admitting to my law professor that I’m not really sure what I want to do with my law degree. I mean, I’m twenty-seven years old, too old not to know what I want to do with the rest of my life.”

Caleb smiled, touched by this rare glimpse into her vulnerable side. “At the risk of sounding like a patronizing grown-up, there’s nothing wrong with not knowing what you want to do with the rest of your life. At some point or another, everyone experiences that uncertainty about the future, no matter how old—or
young
—they are. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

She beamed a smile at him, that beautiful, endearing smile that made his chest swell and caused him to feel twenty feet tall.

Gruffly he said, “But I would suggest that you come up with a game plan soon, because law school doesn’t get any easier as you go along. And if you’re in it for the long haul, you might as well have a clear idea what you expect to get out of it.”